Western Churches, the friend of Chrysostom, and a writer of whom it has been said that his Homilies are so replete with learning and eloquence, as to vie with the best productions of ancient Greece; Gregory, bishop of Nyssa, Basil's brother, the profoundness of whose scientific knowledge, says Hase, with his peculiarities, assign to him the first place among the followers of Origen; and the friend of Basil, Gregory of Nazianzum, afterwards bishop of Constantinople, surnamed "The Theologian," and author of two invectives against Julian, as well as of many other works. They are succeeded by Jerome (A.D. 321-420), the serious deductions from whose character on the score of his favouring the adoration of the Virgin, and other errors, must not induce us to forget his eminent services to learning and religion, by his making "the West acquainted with Grecian and Hebrew erudition," his care of the canon of Scripture, his opposition to the errors of Pelagius and Origen, and, let us add, the contribution of a small quota of sayings on behalf of the Christian Sabbath; by Ambrose (A.D. 320-394), bishop of Milan, who was "the chief pillar of the Nicene orthodoxy in the West, and exerted considerable practical influence upon Augustine;" by Rufinus (fl. A.D. 390), the friend, and subsequently the antagonist of Jerome, one of the ablest men, according to Dupin, of his time, to whom the Latin Church was so much indebted for his translations of the most considerable of the Greek authors; by Chrysostom (A.D. 344-407), a native of Antioch, and bishop of Constantinople, who frequently lent his powers of surpassing eloquence to the enforcement of the Divine claims of the weekly holy day to hallowed respect and observance; and by Augustine (A.D. 354-430), bishop of Hippo, in Africa, who, if we except his great contemporary just named, has written more on the Sabbath than any Father that has not made it the subject of a special treatise, and who, the greatest of his class, has accorded the testimony of his profound knowledge and rich experience to the authority, sanctity, and importance of the Salbatic institution.

FIFTH CENTURY.-To this century belong the three well-known historians-Socrates Scholasticus of Constantinople, Hermias Sozomenus, and Theodoretus, bishop of Cyrus, whose works are continuations of Eusebius, bringing down the record of ecclesias

tical affairs for upwards of another century, and forming, along with the other writings of the last-mentioned and learned individual, sources of information on our subject. To these have to be added Petrus Chrysologus, Archbishop of Ravenna (433), author of many homilies; and Leo, bishop of Rome (440), who in his youth was acquainted with Augustine, was a man of learning, and left sermons, with other works.

SIXTH CENTURY.-The institution is noticed in this century by Fulgentius Ferrandus, who, trained under Fulgentius (467-533), bishop of Ruspae in the north of Africa, "the Augustine of his age," became a deacon in the Church of Carthage, published several works, including an abridgment of the Canons, and died in 550. The Lord's Day had expounders of its character, and advocates of its observance in Anastasius Sinaita, bishop of Antioch, who flourished in 561, and Gregory of Tours (544), who was made bishop there in 573, and was the author of the earliest history of France, of a commentary on the Psalms, and of other works. Columba does not rank among the writers of the Christian Church, but he was an advocate and an example of respect for the Sabbath.1 The list for this century is completed with Gregory the Great (550-604), Bishop of Rome, whose learning, zeal in reforming abuses, in opposing ecclesiastical assumptions, and propagating Christianity, with his aversion to all persecution, his simple frugal life, and princely liberality to the poor, so strangely contrasted with his entire prohibition of the reading of the classics, his credulousness as to miracles, his lofty notions of Papal authority, and his flattery of Phocas.

The Sabbatic views of the Fathers will fall to be presented in another part of this volume. Let it be sufficient in this place to say, that by one or more of them, uncontradicted by the others, has each of the doctrines been held, which in our days have,

1 A native of Ireland, he visited Scotland, and was the means of converting the northern Picts to Christianity. Fixing his residence in Iona, he founded a seminary, from which his disciples went forth with the Bible in their hands to enlighten the dark regions around. His followers, known by the name of the Culdees, had no fellowship with the Church of Rome, and held forth the word of life till near the time of the Reformation, not knowing the decrees of synods respecting festivals, and having learnt only what was contained in the writings of the prophets, evangelists, and apostles.

though improperly, been termed Sabbatarian-the primæval appointment and patriarchal observance of a weekly day of rest and worship-the substitution by Divine authority of the first day of the week as the Christian Sabbath for the Jewish seventh day and the consecration by the same authority of the former, or Lord's Day, entirely to rest from secular labour, and to the immediate service of God, as required and directed in the Fourth Commandment, cases of necessity and mercy being, as they were also under the former economy, excepted.

The Fathers had on the subject of the Sabbath, as on others, to engage in dialectic conflicts with the Jews. Besides frequent passages which touch on Judaism, we find some of them devoting entire treatises-others, large portions of works, to the subject.' The Sabbatic institution in particular is treated of by Novatian and Athanasius, and referred to in various patristic writings, with special respect to Jewish opinions. In Justin Martyr's Dialogue with Trypho, a Jew-whether a real or fictitious person, is not certain the Christian and Jewish arguments on, among other points, the continued observance of the seventh day as a holy day, are presented. Trypho charges Justin and other Christians as affecting superior excellence, and yet not at all differing from the Gentiles, inasmuch as they observed neither the feasts nor the Sabbaths. To this Justin replies, that as circumcision was not necessary before Abraham, nor the celebration of the Sabbath and festivals and oblations before Moses, neither now is there any need of these observances after Christ has come.2 Irenæus and Tertullian reason in the same way. 66 'Abraham," says the former, "believed God without circumcision and the Sabbath."3 them show me," says the latter, "that Adam sabbatized, or that Abel in presenting his holy offering to God pleased Him by sabbatic observance, or that Enoch, who was translated, was an observer of the Sabbath, or that Noah, the builder of the Ark on account of the great deluge, kept the Sabbath, or that Abraham amidst Sabbath-keeping offered his son Isaac, or that Melchisedec in his priesthood received the law of the Sabbath."

"4

"Let

1 As Justin Martyr, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, Hippolytus, Cyprian, Eusebius, Basil, Chrysostom, and Augustine.

2 C. 12.

3 Adv. Ilæres. lib. iv. c. 30.

4 Adv. Judæos, sec. 4.

2

The word "Sabbath," as will afterwards more fully appear, must be understood in these passages to signify the Jewish Sabbath. The connexion of the word with "oblations" in the argument of Justin Martyr, shows that this was the sense in which he used the term. That Tertullian employed it in the same acceptation follows from the drift of his reasoning, and from his usual mode of writing; as for example, "We celebrate the day after Saturday in distinction from those who call this day their Sabbath, and who devote it to ease and eating, departing from the old custom, of which they are now very ignorant;"1 and, "All anxiety is to be abstained from, and business postponed on the Lord's Day." Neither Justin nor Tertullian can intend to question the need or the obligation of a weekly holy day under Christianity, for they have both not only detailed the manner in which "Sunday" was observed by the Christians in their times, but positively affirmed the Divine authority of the day. Irenæus, too, mentions the Sabbath along with circumcision, thus making it manifest that he refers to Mosaic ordinances, and has plainly stated his conviction that the Decalogue is of perpetual obligation," as well as that the Lord's Day is supreme among the days of the week, being the only season on which it was right to celebrate the resurrection of Christ.3 "The Fathers," observes Bishop Patrick, "in saying that there was no Sabbath among the patriarchs, meant Jewish Sabbaths." How would Justin Martyr and Tertullian have indignantly spurned the interpretation put on their words by a recent writer, when, to accomplish the ungodly and unphilanthropic purpose of overthrowing a Divine institution, he neglects to ascertain the meaning of words employed by ancient writers, or of their views elsewhere expressed; and charges them with saying what warranted the inference that, 66 except during the time of divine service, the Christians of that period lawfully might, and actually did, follow their worldly pursuits on the Sunday."4

The works of Athanasius, particularly his treatise on the Sabbath, which was expressly designed to prove the abrogation of the seventh-day rest, furnish further examples of the manner in which

the Christians conducted the controversy on this subject against the Jews. To instance in one "We then honour the Lord's Day on account of the resurrection; but the Jews to this hour cling to the Sabbath, even after Isaiah has said, Your Sabbaths my soul hateth.' There is nothing in my view so unholy as the Sabbath which God has hated. I refer not to the cycles of days, but to that which is accounted Judaism." 1

There is a phase of the controversy which has led to the mistaken notion that the Christian Church itself was for a considerable time divided on the subject of a weekly holy day. There were even in the days of the apostles persons who wished to impose upon converts from heathenism the obligation of observing the times of the Jewish calendar, along with the other parts of the ancient ritual, an obligation from which the Apostle of the uncircumcision declared them to be free (Col. ii. 16, 17), and which was not to be required on the one hand (Acts xv. 19), nor to be yielded to on the other (xxi. 25). Yet a party, the Ebionites, who professed to be Christians, though they denied the Divinity of the Saviour, not only held and acted on the necessity of keeping the whole law of Moses, but insisted that all others should do the same. This party continued to exist for four or five centuries. But although, as Eusebius informs us, they celebrated the Sundays in remembrance of the resurrection of our Saviour, yet, as they observed the Jewish Sabbath, and other ceremonies like the Jews, 2 as they made this observance an indispensable part of religion, and as they disbelieved the doctrine of Christ's Deity, they had no claim to be considered Christians. They were accordingly ranked among heretics, and some of the Fathers wrote against them as such. Epiphanius devotes a part of his Panarion to the Ebionites, in which, while he holds that the first Sabbath has revolved in its septenary cycle from the beginning of the world, he also contends that the Jewish day had been discharged.

Besides the Ebionites, there was a class, who were sometimes confounded with them, but who, for a long period at least, remained distinct, the Nazarenes. These believed in the Divinity of our Lord, but clung to the Jewish ritual, which, however, they

1 Hom. De Semente.

2 Hist. lib. iii. c. 27.

B