The writer of the Syriac Documents concerning Edessa comes last, and he defines the services of Sunday as follows: “On the first [day] of the week, let there be service, and the reading of the Holy Scriptures, and the oblation.”[602] These are all the passages in the writings of the first three centuries which describe early first-day observance. Let the reader judge whether we have correctly stated the nature of that observance. Next we invite attention to the several reasons offered by these fathers for celebrating the festival of Sunday. The reputed epistle of Barnabas supports the Sunday festival by saying that it was the day “on which Jesus rose again from the dead,” and it intimates that it prefigures the eighth thousand years, when God shall create the world anew.[603] Justin Martyr has four reasons:— 1. “It is the first day on which God having wrought a change in the darkness and matter, made the world.”[604] 2. “Jesus Christ our Saviour on the same day rose from the dead.”[605] 3. “It is possible for us to show how the eighth day possessed a certain mysterious import, which the seventh day did not possess, and which was promulgated by God through these rites,”[606] _i. e._, through circumcision. 4. “The command of circumcision, again, bidding [them] always circumcise the children on the eighth day, was a type of the true circumcision, by which we are circumcised from deceit and iniquity through Him who rose from the dead on the first day after the Sabbath.”[607] Clement, of Alexandria, appears to treat solely of a mystical eighth day or Lord’s day. It is perhaps possible that he has some reference to Sunday. We therefore quote what he says in behalf of this day, calling attention to the fact that he produces his testimony, not from the Bible, but from a heathen philosopher. Thus he says:— “And the Lord’s day Plato prophetically speaks of in the tenth book of the _Republic_, in these words: ‘And when seven days have passed to each of them in the meadow on the eighth day they are to set out and arrive in four days.’”[608] Clement’s reasons for Sunday are found outside the Scriptures. The next father will give us a good reason for Clement’s action in this case. Tertullian is the next writer who gives reasons for the Sunday festival. He is speaking of “offerings for the dead,” the manner of Sunday observance, and the use of the sign of the cross upon the forehead. Here is the ground on which these observances rest:— “If, for these and other such rules, you insist upon having positive Scripture injunction, you will find none. Tradition will be held forth to you as the originator of them, custom, as their strengthener, and faith, as their observer. That reason will support tradition, and custom, and faith, you will either yourself perceive, or learn from some one who has.”[609]