The Complete Testimony of the Fathers of the First Three Centuries Concerning the Sabbath and First DayAndrews, John Nevins
Religion
The Complete Testimony of the Fathers of the First Three Centuries Concerning the Sabbath and First Day
Andrews, John Nevins
Sabbath; Seventh-Day Adventists; Sunday
The Sabbath was not violated in the case of Jericho, and yet it
certainly was there violated! Tertullian adds that if Christ hated the
Sabbath he was in this like the Creator himself, who declares [Isa.
1:14] that he hates it. He forgets that the Creator has expressly
declared his great regard for the Sabbath by this very prophet
[chap. 58:13, 14], and overlooks the fact that what God hates is the
hypocritical conduct of the people as set forth in Isaiah 1. In his
fourth book against Marcion, chapter xvi., Christ is mentioned as
the Lord of the Sabbath, but nothing is said bearing upon Sabbatic
obligation. In chapter xxx., of this same book, he alludes to the cure
wrought by Christ upon the Sabbath day, mentioned in Luke 13:11-16,
and says, "When, therefore, he did a work according to the condition
prescribed by the law, he affirmed, instead of breaking, the law," etc.
In the twelfth chapter of this book, however, he asserts many things
relative to Christ. He says that the disciples in rubbing out the ears
of corn on the Sabbath "had violated the holy day. Christ excuses them
and became their accomplice in breaking the Sabbath." He argues that
as the Sabbath from the beginning, which he here places at the fall
of the manna though elsewhere dating it from the creation, had never
been designed as a day of fasting, the Saviour did right in justifying
the act of the disciples in the cornfield. And he terms the example of
David a "colorable precedent" to justify the eating of the corn. But
though he represents the Saviour as "annulling the Sabbath" at this
time, he also asserts that in this very case "he maintains the honor of
the Sabbath as a day which is to be free from gloom rather than from
work." He justifies the Saviour in his acts of healing on the Sabbath,
declaring that in this he was doing that which the Sabbath law did not
forbid. Tertullian next affirms precisely the reverse of many things
which he has advanced against the Sabbath, and even answers his own
objections against it. Thus he says:--
"In order that he might, whilst allowing that amount of work
which he was about to perform for a soul, remind them what works
the law of the Sabbath forbade--even human works; and what it
enjoined--even divine works, which might be done for the benefit of
any soul, he was called 'Lord of the Sabbath' because he maintained
the Sabbath as his own institution. Now, even if he had annulled
the Sabbath, he would have had the right to do so, as being its
Lord, [and] still more as he who instituted it. But lie did not
utterly destroy it, although its Lord, in order that it might
henceforth be plain that the Sabbath was not broken by the Creator,
even at the time when the ark was carried around Jericho. For that
was really God's work, which he commanded himself, and which he had
ordered for the sake of the lives of his servants when exposed to
the perils of war." Book iv. chap. xii.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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