Tertullian’s frankness is to be commended. He had no Scripture to offer, and he acknowledges the fact. He depended on tradition, and he was not ashamed to confess it. The next of the fathers who gives Scripture evidence in support of the Sunday festival, is Origen. Here are his words:— “The manna fell on the Lord’s day, and not on the Sabbath to show the Jews that even then the Lord’s day was preferred before it.”[610] Origen seems to have been of Tertullian’s judgment as to the inconclusiveness of the arguments adduced by his predecessors. He therefore coined an original argument which seems to have been very conclusive in his estimation as he offers this alone. But he must have forgotten that the manna fell on all the six working days, or he would have seen that while his argument does not elevate Sunday above the other five working days, it does make the Sabbath the least reputable day of the seven! And yet the miracle of the manna was expressly designed to set forth the sacredness of the Sabbath and to establish its authority before the people. Cyprian is the next father who gives an argument for the Sunday festival. He contents himself with one of Justin’s old arguments, viz., that one drawn from circumcision. Thus he says:— “For in respect of the observance of the eighth day in the Jewish circumcision of the flesh, a sacrament was given beforehand in shadow and in usage; but when Christ came, it was fulfilled in truth. For because the eighth day, that is, the first day after the Sabbath, was to be that on which the Lord should rise again, and should quicken us, and give us circumcision of the Spirit, the eighth day, that is, the first day after the Sabbath, and the Lord’s day, went before in the figure; which figure ceased when by and by the truth came, and spiritual circumcision was given to us.”[611] Such is the only argument adduced by Cyprian in behalf of the first-day festival. The circumcision of infants when eight days old was, in his judgment, a type of infant baptism. But circumcision on the eighth day of the child’s life, in his estimation, did not signify that baptism need to be deferred till the infant is eight days old, but, as here stated, did signify that the eighth day was to be the Lord’s day! But the eighth day, on which circumcision took place, was not the first day of the week, but the eighth day of each child’s life, whatever day of the week that might be. The next father who gives a reason for celebrating Sunday as a day of joy, and refraining from kneeling on it, is Peter of Alexandria, who simply says, “Because on it he rose again.”[612] Next in order come the Apostolical Constitutions, which assert that the Sunday festival is a memorial of the resurrection:— “But keep the Sabbath, and the Lord’s day festival; because the former is a memorial of the creation, and the latter of the resurrection.”[613]