Note 12 — STATESMAN’S REPLY. ARTICLE EIGHT. PATRISTIC TESTIMONY TO THE FIRST-DAY SABBATH.

The culpable carelessness of Dwight, Wilson, and other authors, in citing from the early fathers, is nowhere more noticeable than in the case of Irenæus. These writers quote him as saying: “On the Lord’s day, every one of us Christians, keeps the Sabbath, meditating on the law, and rejoicing in the works of God.” There is no reference given to the writings of Irenæus. And for good reason. After a most careful examination, we are persuaded no such passage is to be found in his writings. The mistake was probably first made by President Dwight, whose weakness of sight compelled him to depend upon an amanuensis. “For twenty years of his presidency,” we are informed by his biographer, “he was rarely able to read as much as a single chapter in the Bible in the twenty-four hours.” (Dwight’s Theology, London, 1821, vol. i. pp. 91, 95.) Others followed this high authority.

In order to guard our readers against injuring the cause they would advance, we must mention another important instance of considerable negligence. In a number of works on the Sabbath, Dr. Justin Edwards’ “Sabbath Manual,” for example, we find not only the blunders already noticed, but another quite as bad. The language—“Both custom and reason challenge from us that we should honor the Lord’s day, seeing on that day it was that our Lord Jesus completed his resurrection from the dead,” is ascribed to Theophilus, bishop of Antioch, about A. D. 162. The words quoted are in reality those of another Theophilus, who was bishop of Alexandria, at the close of the fourth century. We hand over these criticisms upon advocates of the first-day Sabbath to our seventh-day Sabbatarian friends, trusting to their honor and fairness not to separate them from the rest of this discussion. For our own part, whether it may be pleasant to the advocates of the seventh-day Sabbath, we desire to have for ourselves, and to aid others to have, the whole truth. It was in this spirit that we gave room in our columns for a full presentation of the arguments on the other side of this question.