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
"That commemoration should be made of the faithful dead every day,
with the exception of the Lord's day."
The church of Alexandria have also a series which they ascribe to him.
The thirty-third is thus given:--
"Of the _Atalmsas_ (the oblation), which they shall present for
those who are dead, that it be not done on the Lord's day."
The thirty-eighth one has these words:--
"Of the night on which our Lord Jesus Christ rose. That no one
shall sleep on that night, and wash himself with water."
These are the only things in Hippolytus that can be referred to the
Sunday festival. Prayers and offerings for the dead, which we find
some fifty years earlier in Tertullian, are, according to Hippolytus,
lawful on every day but the so-called Lord's day. They grew up with
the Sunday festival, and are of equal authority with it. Tertullian, as
we have already observed, tells us frankly that there is no scriptural
authority for the one or the other, and that they rest on custom and
tradition alone.
TESTIMONY OF NOVATIAN, A ROMAN PRESBYTER.
Novatian, who wrote about A. D. 250, is accounted the founder of the
sect called _Cathari_, or _Puritans_. He tried to resist some of the
gross corruptions of the church of Rome. He wrote a treatise on the
Sabbath, which is not extant. There is no reference to Sunday in any of
his writings. In his treatise "On the Jewish Meats," he speaks of the
Sabbath thus:--
"But how perverse are the Jews, and remote from the understanding
of their law, I have fully shown, as I believe, in two former
letters, wherein it was absolutely proved that they are ignorant of
what is the true circumcision, and what the true Sabbath." Chapter
i.
If we contrast the doctrine of the Pharisees concerning the Sabbath
with the teaching of the Saviour, or with that of Isaiah in his
fifty-eighth chapter, we shall not think Novatian far from the truth
in his views of the Jewish people. In his treatise "Concerning the
Trinity" is the following allusion to the Sabbath:--
"For in the manner that as man he is of Abraham, so also as God he
is before Abraham himself. And in the same manner as he is as man
the 'Son of David,' so as God he is proclaimed David's Lord. And in
the same manner as he was made as man 'under the law,' so as God he
is declared to be 'Lord of the Sabbath.'" Chapter xi.
These are the only references to the Sabbath in what remains of
the writings of Novatian. He makes the following striking remarks
concerning the moral law:--
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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