THE EARLY CHRISTIAN SABBATH - Friends of the Sabbath Australia

The Early Christian Sabbath
statements, we must remember that these testimonies from the early centuries are from
men who themselves were Sunday keepers. They were not at all interested in
emphasizing Sabbath observance. They took Sunday keeping for granted, and only
casually mentioned that the seventh day Sabbath was being observed. Their testimony is
therefore so much the more valuable.
We have already read from Justin Martyr his statement, the earliest we have in the
Fathers, concerning Sunday keeping, that on the “day of the sun” Christians had religious
worship. In this testimony addressed to the emperor, he carefully avoided mentioning the
fact that any Christians were keeping the Sabbath. This is doubtless because he did not
wish the emperor to make too close an identification of Christians- with the hated Jews.
But Justin Martyr, a Syrian writing in Rome, did recognize that Christians were
keeping the Sabbath, when writing against a Jew by the name of Trypho who had
attacked the Christians. Justin did not like the Jews. He did not like Trypho. He did not
like Sabbath keeping. But in chapter 47 of his Dialogue With Trypho, a Jew, Justin tried
to be “broadminded” in his attitude toward Christian Sabbath keepers. He made this
concession: 1 hold that we ought to join ourselves to such [Sabbath keepers], and
associate with them in all things as kinsmen and brethren.” - The Ante-Nicene Fathers,
volume 1, page 218. Because this is so grudging a testimony to Christian Sabbath
keeping, it is the more conclusive.
We will now consider another witness in the West, who was under influences
similar to those which led the Church of Rome .to attempt to destroy Sabbath keeping.
Tertullian was a noted Christian writer of North Africa. He died about AD 235. He was
deeply interested in Sunday keeping, and held that Sunday should be kept as a day of joy
in commemoration of the happy event of Christ's resurrection. It was his wish that there
be no fasting, or any kneeling in prayer, on Sunday. He was displeased to find Sabbath
keeping Christians insisting that they should not have to kneel in prayer on the Sabbath
day. Here is what he wrote in his essay On Prayer, chapter 23:
“In the matter of kneeling also prayer is subject to diversity of observance,
through the act of some few who abstain from kneeling on the Sabbath. And since this
dissension is particularly on its trial before the churches, the Lord will give His grace that
the dissentients may either yield, or else indulge their opinion without offense to others.”
- The Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. 3, p. 689.
With a great effort Tertullian sought to be considerate toward the Sabbath keepers
who desired the Sabbath to be a day of joyful, unhampered worship. He said that, out of
consideration for others, they should kneel in public prayer on the Sabbath, as the Sunday
keeping Christians were doing. He made it plain that Sunday keeping Christians were not
kneeling on Sunday, but it is equally plain that the Sunday keepers were going to the
churches and kneeling in worship on the Sabbath. Virtually all Christians, it is evident,
were worshiping, one way or another, on the Sabbath day.
A contemporary of Tertullian, a teacher of Alexandria named Origen, though
himself a Sunday keeper, is in no doubt as to the virtue of Sabbath observance, and tells
just how Christians should observe it. He meant to place this observance of the seventh
day by Christians in contrast to Jewish practices, when he said:
“After the festival of the unceasing sacrifice [the crucifixion] is put the second
festival of the Sabbath, and it is fitting for whoever is righteous among the saints to keep
also the festival of the Sabbath. Which is, indeed, the festival of the Sabbath, except that
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