It is to be observed, therefore, that the first trace of Sunday as a Christian festival is found in the church of Rome. Soon after this time, and thenceforward, we shall find “the bishop” of that church making vigorous efforts to suppress the Sabbath of the Lord, and to elevate in its stead the festival of Sunday. It is proper to note the fact also that Justin was a decided opponent of the ancient Sabbath. In his “Dialogue with Trypho the Jew” he thus addressed him:— “This new law teaches you to observe a perpetual Sabbath; and you, when you have spent one day in idleness, think you have discharged the duties of religion.... If any one is guilty of adultery, let him repent, then he hath kept the true and delightful Sabbath unto God.... For we really should observe that circumcision which is in the flesh, and the Sabbath, and all the feasts, if we had not known the reason why they were imposed upon you, namely, upon the account of your iniquities.... It was because of your iniquities, and the iniquities of your fathers, that God appointed you to observe the Sabbath.... You see that the heavens are not idle, nor do they observe the Sabbath. Continue as ye were born. For if before Abraham there was no need of circumcision, nor of the sabbaths, nor of feasts, nor of offerings before Moses; so now in like manner there is no need of them, since Jesus Christ, the Son of God, was by the determinate counsel of God, born of a virgin of the seed of Abraham without sin.”[557] This reasoning of Justin deserves no reply. It shows, however, the unfairness of Dr. Edwards, who quotes Justin Martyr as a witness for the change of the Sabbath;[558] whereas Justin held that God made the Sabbath on account of the wickedness of the Jews, and that he totally abrogated it in consequence of the first advent of Christ; the Sunday festival of the heathen being evidently adopted by the church at Rome from motives of “expediency” and perhaps of “patriotism.” The testimony of Justin, if genuine, is peculiarly valuable in one respect. It shows that as late as A. D. 140 the first day of the week had acquired no title of sacredness; for Justin several times mentions the day: thrice as “the day called Sunday” and twice as “the eighth day;” and by other terms also, but never by any sacred name.[559] The next important witness in behalf of first-day sacredness is thus presented by Dr. Edwards:— “Hence Irenæus, bishop of Lyons, a disciple of Polycarp, who had been the companion of the apostles, A. D. 167, says that the Lord’s day was the Christian Sabbath. His words are, ‘On the Lord’s day every one of us Christians keeps the Sabbath, meditating on the law and rejoicing in the works of God.’”[560]