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
"Moses, that illustrious servant of God, committed to those who
wished to have the right vision, an emblematic law, and also a real
law. Thus, to take an example, after God had made the world, and
all things that are in it, in the space of six days, he rested on
the seventh day from all his works; by which statement I do not
mean to affirm that he rested because he was fatigued, but that he
did so as having brought to its perfection every creature which he
had resolved to introduce. And yet in the sequel it (the new law)
says: 'My Father worketh hitherto, and I work.' Does that mean,
then, that he is still making heaven, or sun, or man, or animals,
or trees, or any such thing? Nay; but the meaning is, that when
these visible objects were perfectly finished, he rested from that
kind of work; while, however, he still continues to work at objects
invisible with an inward mode of action, and saves men. In like
manner, then, the legislator desires also that every individual
among us should be devoted unceasingly to this kind of work,
even as God himself is; and he enjoins us consequently to rest
continuously from secular things, and to engage in no worldly sort
of work whatsoever; and this is called our Sabbath. This he also
added in the law, that nothing senseless should be done, but that
we should be careful and direct our life in accordance with what is
just and righteous." Section 31.
These words appear to teach that he held to a perpetual Sabbath,
like Justin Martyr, Tertullian, and others. Yet this does not seem
possible, inasmuch as, unlike Justin, who despises what he calls days
of "idleness," this writer says that we are "to engage in no worldly
sort of work whatsoever and this is that our Sabbath." It is hardly
possible that he could hold it a wicked thing to labor on one or all of
the six working days. Yet he either means to assert that it is sinful
to work on a single one of the days, or else he asserts the perpetual
obligation of that Sabbath which it is manifest he believed originated
when God set apart the seventh day, and which he acknowledges on the
authority of what "he also added in the law." We shall shortly come to
his final statement, which seems clearly to show that the second of
these views was the one held by this writer.
After showing in this same section that the death penalty at the hand
of the magistrate for the violation of the Sabbath is no longer in
force because of forgiveness through the Saviour, and after answering
the objection of Manes in sections 40, 41, 42, that Christ in healing
on the Sabbath directly contradicted what Moses did to those who in his
time violated the Sabbath, he states his views of the perpetuity of the
ancient Sabbath in very clear language. Thus he says:--
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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