"Others, with greater regard to good manners, it must be confessed, suppose that the sun is the god of the Christians, because it is a well-known fact that we pray towards the east, or because we make Sunday a day of festivity. What then? Do you do less than this? Do not many among you, with an affectation of sometimes worshiping the heavenly bodies likewise, move your lips in the direction of the sunrise? It is you, at all events, who have even admitted the sun into the calendar of the week; and you have selected its day [Sunday], in preference to the preceding day, as the most suitable in the week for either an entire abstinence from the bath, or for its postponement until the evening, or for taking rest, and for banqueting. By resorting to these customs, you deliberately deviate from your own religious rites to those of strangers. For the Jewish feasts are the Sabbath and 'the Purification,' and Jewish also are the ceremonies of the lamps, and the fasts of unleavened bread, and the 'littoral prayers,' all which institutions and practices are of course foreign from your gods. Wherefore, that I may return from this digression, you who reproach us with the sun and Sunday should consider your proximity to us. We are not far off from your Saturn and your days of rest."--_Ad Nationes_, b. i. chap. xiii. Tertullian in this discourse addresses himself to the nations still in idolatry. The heathen festival of Sunday, which was with some nations more ancient, had been established among the Romans at a comparatively recent date, though earlier than the time of Justin Martyr, the first Christian writer in whom an authentic mention of the day is found. The heathen reproached the early Sunday Christians with being sun-worshipers, "because," says Tertullian, "we pray towards the east, or because we make Sunday a day of festivity." And how does Tertullian answer this grave charge? He could not say, We do it by command of God to honor the first day of the week, for he expressly states in a former quotation that no such precept exists. So he retorts thus: "What then? Do you [heathen] do less than this?" And he adds: "You have selected its day [Sunday] in preference to the preceding day" (Saturday), etc. That is to say, Tertullian wishes to know why, if the heathen could choose Sunday in preference to Saturday, the Christians could not have the same privilege! Could there be a stronger incidental evidence that Sunday was cherished by the early apostatizing Christians, not because commanded of God, but because it was generally observed by their heathen neighbors, and therefore more convenient to them? But Tertullian next avows his faith in the ten commandments as "the rules of our regenerate life," that is to say, the rules which govern Christian men; and he gives the preference to the seventh day over the eighth:--