Testimony of Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage

Cyprian wrote about A. D. 255. I find only two references to Sunday in his works. The first is in his thirty-second epistle (the thirty-eighth of the Oxford edition), in which he says of one Aurelius that “he reads on the Lord’s day” for him. But in the second instance he defines the meaning of the term, and gives evidence in support of his application of it to the first day of the week. He is arguing in behalf of infant baptism, or rather in controverting the opinion that baptism should be deferred till the child is eight days old. Though the command to circumcise infants when eight days of age is one of the chief grounds of authority for infant baptism, yet the time in that precept according to Cyprian does not indicate the age of the child to be baptized, but prefigures the fact that the eighth day is the Lord’s day. Thus he says:-TFTC 91.3

“For in respect of the observance of the eighth day in the Jewish circumcision of the flesh, a sacrament was given beforehand in shadow and in usage; but when Christ came, it was fulfilled in truth. For because the eighth day, that is, the first day after the Sabbath, was to be that on which the Lord should rise again, and should quicken us, and give us circumcision of the Spirit, the eighth day, that is, the first day after the Sabbath, and the Lord’s day, went before in the figure; which figure ceased when by and by the truth came, and spiritual circumcision was given to us.” - Epistle 1viii. sect.4; in the Oxford edition, Epistle 1xiv.TFTC 92.1

Circumcision is made to prove twin errors of the great apostasy, infant baptism, and that the eighth day is the Lord’s day. But the eighth day in the case of circumcision was not the day succeeding the seventh, that is, the first day of the week, but the eighth day of the life of each infant, and therefore it fell on one day of the week as often as upon another. Such is the only argument addressed by Cyprian for first-day sacredness, and this one seems to have been borrowed from Justin Martyr, who, as we have seen, used it about one hundred years before him. It is however quite as weighty as the argument of Clement of Alexandria, who adduced in its support what he calls a prophecy of the eighth day out of the writings of the heathen philosopher Plato! And both are in the same rank with that of Tertullian, who confessed that they had not the authority of Scripture, but accepted in its stead that of custom and tradition!TFTC 92.2

In his “Exhortation to Martyrdom,” section 11, Cyprian quotes the larger part of Matthew 24, and in that quotation at verse 20, the Sabbath is mentioned, but he says nothing concerning that institution. In his “Testimonies against the Jews,” book i., sections 9 and 10, he says “that the former law which was given by Moses, was about to cease,” and that “a new law was to be given;” and in the conclusion of his “Treatise against the Jews,” section 119, he says “that the yoke of the law was heavy which is cast off by us,” but it is not certain that he meant to include in these statements the precepts of the moral law.TFTC 93.1