It is important that the reader note carefully what sort of Sunday observance Justin describes. Laying aside all “suppositions,” and “inferences,” and _ex-post-facto_ conclusions, we learn from him that at the middle of the second century a form of religious service was held on Sunday. But it is equally evident that there was no sabbatic regard for the day. Sir WILLIAM DOMVILLE summarizes the case as follows:
“This inference appears irresistible when we further consider that Justin, in this part of his _Apology_, is professedly intending to describe the mode in which Christians observed the Sunday.... He evidently intends to give all information requisite to an accurate knowledge of the subject he treats upon. He is even so particular as to tell the Emperor why the Sunday was observed; and he does, in fact, specify every active duty belonging to the day, the Scripture reading, the exhortation, the public prayer, the Sacrament, and the alms-giving: why then should he not also inform the Emperor of the one inactive duty of the day, the duty of abstaining from doing in it any manner of work? The Emperor well knew that such abstinence was the custom of all his Jewish subjects on the Saturday (_die Saturni_), and could readily have understood it to be the custom of his Christian subjects on the Sunday (_die Solis_, as Justin calls it in his _Apology_), and, therefore, if such was the custom of Christians in Justin’s time, his description of their Sunday duties was essentially defective. It is not, however, at all probable that he would intend to omit noticing so important a characteristic of the day, as the Sabbatical observance of it, if it was in fact Sabbatically observed. But even were it probable he should intend to omit all mention of it in his Apology to the Emperor, it would be impossible to imagine any sufficient cause for his remaining silent on the subject in his _Dialogue_ with Trypho the Jew; and this whether the _Dialogue_ was real or imaginary, for if the latter, Justin would still, as Dr. Lardner has observed, ‘choose to write in character.’... The testimony of Justin, therefore, proves most clearly two facts of great importance in the Sabbath controversy: the one, that the Christians in his time observed the Sunday as a prayer day; the other, that they did not observe it as a Sabbath-day.”[169]