“Moreover the Sabbaths of God, _that is, the kingdom_, was, as it were, indicated by created things,” etc.[641] “These [promises to the righteous] are [to take place] in _the times of the kingdom_, that is, upon the seventh day which has been sanctified, in which God rested from all the works which he created, which is the true Sabbath of the righteous,”[642] etc. “For the day of the Lord is as a thousand years: and in six days created things were completed: it is evident, therefore, that they will come to an end at the sixth thousand year.”[643] But Irenæus did not notice that the Sabbath as a sign does not point forward to the restitution, but backward to the creation, that it may signify that the true God is the Creator.[644] Nor did he observe the fact that when the kingdom of God shall be established under the whole heaven all flesh shall hallow the Sabbath.[645] But he says that those who lived before Moses were justified “without observance of Sabbaths,” and offers as proof that the covenant at Horeb was not made with the fathers. Of course if this proves that the patriarchs were free from obligation toward the fourth commandment, it is equally good as proof that they might violate any other. These things indicate that Irenæus was opposed to Sabbatic observance, though he did not in express language assert its abrogation, and did in most decisive terms assert the continued obligation of the ten commandments. Tertullian offers numerous reasons for not observing the Sabbath, but there is scarcely one of these that he does not in some other place expressly contradict. Thus he asserts that the patriarchs before Moses did not observe the Sabbath.[646] But he offers no proof, and he elsewhere dates the origin of the Sabbath at the creation,[647] as we shall show hereafter. In several places he teaches the abrogation of the law, and seems to set aside moral law as well as ceremonial. But elsewhere, as we shall show, he bears express testimony that the ten commandments are still binding as the rule of the Christian’s life.[648] He quotes the words of Isaiah in which God is represented as hating the feasts, new-moons, and sabbaths observed by the Jews,[649] as proof that the seventh-day Sabbath was a temporary institution which Christ abrogated. But in another place he says: “_Christ did not at all rescind the Sabbath_: he kept the law thereof.”[650] And he also explains this very text by stating that God’s aversion toward the Sabbaths observed by the Jews was “because they were celebrated without the fear of God by a people full of iniquities,” and adds that the prophet, in a later passage speaking of Sabbaths celebrated according to God’s commandment, “declares them to be true, delightful, and inviolable.”[651] Another statement is that Joshua violated the Sabbath in the siege of Jericho.[652] Yet he elsewhere explains this very case, showing that the commandment forbids our own work, not God’s.