Sabbath Historical Highlights

... it is fitting for whoever is righteous among the saints to keep also the festival of the Sabbath. There remaineth therefore a sabbatismus, that is, a keeping of the Sabbath, to the people of God (Hebrews 4:9).

- “Homily on Numbers 23," par.4, in Migne, "Patrologia Graeca," Vol. 12, cols. 749, 750

Thus Christ did not at all rescind the Sabbath: He kept the law thereof, . . .even in the case before us He fulfilled the law, while interpreting its condition; moreover, He exhibits in a clear light the different kinds of work, while doing what the law excepts from the sacredness of the Sabbath and while imparting to the Sabbath day itself, which from the beginning had been consecrated by the benediction of the Father, an additional sanctity by His own beneficent action.

For He furnished to this day divine safeguards, — a course which His adversary would have pursued for some other days, to avoid honouring the Creator's Sabbath, and restoring to the Sabbath the works which were proper for it.

- Against Marcion, Book IV, Chapter XII [Opera Tertulliani et Arnobii Quotquot ab Interitu Vindicari Summorum Virorum Industria Potuerunt, 1580]

... except ye make the sabbath a real sabbath, ye shall not see the Father ...

But the works of the Nicolaitanes were in that time false and troublesome men, who, as ministers under the name of Nicolaus, had made for themselves a heresy, to the effect that what had been offered to idols might be exorcised and eaten, and that whoever should have committed fornication might receive peace on the eighth day.

-Victorinus of Pettau c. 3rd Century, Victorini Pictaviensis Episcopi in Apocalypsin Beati Ioannis Scholia, 1558