Chapter XIII.214    Comp. The Apology, c. xvi.—The Charge of Worshipping the Sun Met by a Retort.

Others, with greater regard to good manners, it must be confessed, suppose that the sun is the god of the Christians, because it is a well-known fact that we pray towards the east, or because we make Sunday a day of festivity.  What then? Do you do less than this? Do not many among you, with an affectation of sometimes worshipping the heavenly bodies likewise, move your lips in the direction of the sunrise? It is you, at all events, who have even admitted the sun into the calendar of the week; and you have selected its day,215    Sunday. in preference to the preceding day216    Saturday. as the most suitable in the week217    Ex diebus. for either an entire abstinence from the bath, or for its postponement until the evening, or for taking rest and for banqueting. By resorting to these customs, you deliberately deviate from your own religious rites to those of strangers. For the Jewish feasts on the Sabbath and “the Purification,”218    On the “Cœna pura,” see our Anti-Marcion, p. 386, note 4. and Jewish also are the ceremonies of the lamps,219    See Lev. xxiv. 2; also 2 Chron. xiii. 11. Witsius (Ægyptiaca, ii. 16, 17) compares the Jewish with the Egyptian “ritus lucernarum.” and the fasts of unleavened bread, and the “littoral prayers,”220    Tertullian, in his tract de Jejun. xvi., speaks of the Jews praying (after the loss of their temple, and in their dispersion) in the open air, “per omne litus.” all which institutions and practices are of course foreign from your gods. Wherefore, that I may return from this digression, you who reproach us with the sun and Sunday should consider your proximity to us. We are not far off from your Saturn and your days of rest.

13. Alii plane humanius solem Christianum deum aestimant, quod innotuerit ad orientis partem facere nos precationem vel die solis laetitiam curare. Quid vos minus facitis? Non plerique affectatione adorandi aliquando etiam coelestia ad solis initium labra vibratis? Vos certe estis, qui etiam in laterculum septem dierum solem recepistis, et ex diebus ipsum praelegistis, quo die lavacrum substrahatis, aut in 0579B vesperam differatis, aut otium et prandium curetis. Quod quidem facitis exorbitantes et ipsi a vestris ad alienas religiones. Judaei enim festi, sabbata et coena pura, et judaici ritus lucernarum et jejunia cum azymis et orationes litorales, quae utique aliena sunt a diis vestris. Quare, ut ab excessu revertar, qui solem et diem ejus nobis exprobratis, agnoscite vicinitatem; non longe a Saturno et sabbatis vestris sumus.