THE EARLY CHRISTIAN SABBATH - Friends of the Sabbath Australia

The Early Christian Sabbath
resurrection.” - Reply to Faustus the Manichaean, book 18, paragraph 5, in Nicene and
Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, volume 4, Page 238.
Again Pope Leo, in Sermon 42, says: “Be not infected with the error of those [the
Manichaeans] who are corrupted merely by their own ordinances, 'serving the creature
rather than the Creator,' and offering a foolish abstinence to the service of the lights of
heaven. Seeing that they have chosen to fast on the first and second days of the week in
honor of the sun and moon, proving themselves in this one instance of their perverseness
twice disloyal to God, twice blasphemous, by setting up their fast not only in worship of
the stars but also in contempt of the Lord's resurrection.” - Paragraph 5, in Nicene and
Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, volume 12. Pages 157, 158.
The Christians prayed toward the east as early as the beginning of the third
century. This is perfectly clear from Clement of Alexandria. (The Stromata, or
Miscellanies, book 7, chapter 7, in The Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume 2, Page 535.) It is
also seen in the so called Constitutions of the Holy Apostles, (b. 2, section 7, chapter 57,
in The Ante-Nicene Fathers, volume 7, Page 421.) A fourth-century leader of the Eastern
Church, Basil, admits this:
“Thus we all look to the east at our prayers,” and then defends the practice by
saying: “But few of us know that we are seeking our own old country, Paradise, which
God planted in Eden in the east.”-On the Spirit, chapter 27, in Nicene and Post-Nicene
Fathers, 2d Series, volume 8, Page 42. The explanation of Basil is ingenious, but
Tertullian who preceded him is franker when he shows that the east meant the place of
the sun. He says in his essay Against the Valentinians:
“Of our dove, however, how simple is the very home!-always in high and open
places, and facing the light! As the symbol of the Holy Spirit, it loves the (radiant) east,
that figure of Christ.” - Chapter 3, in Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. 3, P. 504.
Mosheim, noted church historian of the eighteenth century, says in his Institutes
of Ecclesiastical History:
“Nearly all the people of the East, before the Christian Era, were accustomed to
worship with their faces directed towards the sun rising. For they all believed that God,
whom they supposed to resemble light, or rather to be light, and whom they included
within certain bounds, had His residence in that part of the heavens where the sun rises.
Those of them, indeed, who became Christians rejected this error, but the custom that
originated from it, which was very ancient and universally prevalent, they retained.” -
Book 1, century 2, part 2, chapter 4, paragraph 7, in the Stubbs's edition of 1863, volume
1, Page 134.
It was inevitable, therefore, that Christians should thus become involved in the
practices and ideas of the sun worshipers around them. Although ecclesiastical writers
denied that the Christians had become infected with sun worship, the similarities were so
close that the pagans felt free to accuse them of worshiping the sun. The fact that
Christians were making more and more of the sun-day did not help their defense. Notice
Tertullian again:
“Others, again, certainly with more information and greater verisimilitude,
believe that the sun is our god. We shall be counted Persians perhaps, though we do not
worship the orb of day painted on a piece of linen cloth, having himself everywhere in his
own disk. The idea no doubt has originated from our being known to turn to the east in
prayer. But you, many of you [the pagans], also under pretense sometimes of worshiping
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