It is evident that in the judgment of Novatian, the ten commandments enjoined nothing that was not sacredly regarded by the patriarchs before Jacob went down into Egypt. It follows, therefore, that, in his opinion, the Sabbath was made, not at the fall of the manna, but when God sanctified the seventh day, and that holy men from the earliest ages observed it. The Apostolical Constitutions, written about the third century, give us an understanding of what was widely regarded in the third century as apostolic doctrine. They speak thus of the ten commandments:— “Have before thine eyes the fear of God, and always remember the ten commandments of God,—to love the one and only Lord God with all thy strength; to give no heed to idols, or any other beings, as being lifeless gods, or irrational beings or dæmons.”[672] “He gave a plain law to assist the law of nature, such a one as is pure, saving, and holy, in which his own name was inscribed, perfect, which is never to fail, being complete in ten commands, unspotted, converting souls.”[673] This writer, like Irenæus, believed in the identity of the decalogue with the law of nature. These testimonies show that in the writings of the early fathers are some of the strongest utterances in behalf of the perpetuity and authority of the ten commandments. Now let us hear what they say concerning the origin of the Sabbath at creation. The epistle ascribed to Barnabas, says:— “And he says in another place, ‘If my sons keep the Sabbath, then will I cause my mercy to rest upon them.’ The Sabbath is mentioned at the beginning of the creation [thus]: ‘And God made in six days the works of his hands, and made an end on the seventh day, and rested on it, and sanctified it.’”[674] Irenæus seems plainly to connect the origin of the Sabbath with the sanctification of the seventh day:— “These [things promised] 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 his works which he created, which is the true Sabbath, in which they shall not be engaged in any earthly occupation.”[675] Tertullian, likewise, refers the origin of the Sabbath to “the benediction of the Father”:— “But inasmuch as birth is also completed with the seventh month, I more readily recognize in this number than in the eighth the honor of a numerical agreement with the Sabbatical period; so that the month in which God’s image is sometimes produced in a human birth, shall in its number tally with the day on which God’s creation was completed and _hallowed_.”[676]