Origin of the Sabbath and of the festival of the sun contrasted—Entrance of that festival into the church—The Moderns with the Ancients—The Sabbath observed by the early Christians—Testimony of Morer—Of Twisse—Of Giesler—Of Mosheim—Of Coleman—Of Bishop Taylor—The Sabbath loses ground before the Sunday festival—Several bodies of decided Sabbatarians—Testimony of Brerewood—Constantine’s Sunday law—Sunday a day of labor with the primitive church—Constantine’s edict a heathen law, and himself at that time a heathen—The bishop of Rome authoritatively confers the name of Lord’s day upon Sunday—Heylyn narrates the steps by which Sunday arose to power—A marked change in the history of that institution—Paganism brought into the church—The Sabbath weakened by Constantine’s influence—Remarkable facts concerning Eusebius—The Sabbath recovers strength again—The council of Laodicea pronounces a curse upon the Sabbath-keepers—The progress of apostasy marked—Authority of church councils considered—Chrysostom—Jerome—Augustine—Sunday edicts—Testimony of Socrates relative to the Sabbath about the middle of the fifth century—Of Sozomen—Effectual suppression of the Sabbath at the close of the fifth century.
The origin of the Sabbath and of the festival of Sunday is now distinctly understood. When God made the world, he gave to man the Sabbath that he might not forget the Creator of all things. When men apostatized from God, Satan turned them to the worship of the sun, and, as a standing memorial of their veneration for that luminary, caused them to dedicate to his honor the first day of the week. When the elements of apostasy had sufficiently matured in the Christian church, this ancient festival stood forth as a rival to the Sabbath of the Lord. The manner in which it obtained a foothold in the Christian church has been already shown; and many facts which have an important bearing upon the struggle between these rival institutions have also been given. We have, in the preceding chapters, given the statements of the most ancient Christian writers respecting the Sabbath and first-day in the early church. As we now trace the history of these two days during the first five centuries of the Christian era, we shall give the statements of modern church historians, covering the same ground with the early fathers, and shall also quote in continuation of the ancient writers the testimonies of the earliest church historians. The reader can thus discover how nearly the ancients and moderns agree. Of the observance of the Sabbath in the early church, Morer speaks thus:—
“The primitive Christians had a great veneration for the Sabbath, and spent the day in devotion and sermons. And it is not to be doubted but they derived this practice from the apostles themselves, as appears by several scriptures to that purpose; who, keeping both that day and the first of the week, gave occasion to the succeeding ages to join them together, and make it one festival, though there was not the same reason for the continuance of the custom as there was to begin it.”[706]
A learned English first-day writer of the seventeenth century, William Twisse, D. D., thus states the early history of these two days:—
“Yet for some hundred years in the primitive church, not the Lord’s day only, but the seventh day also, was religiously observed, not by Ebion and Cerinthus only, but by pious Christians also, as Baronius writeth, and Gomarus confesseth, and Rivet also, that we are bound in conscience under the gospel, to allow for God’s service a better proportion of time, than the Jews did under the law, rather than a worse.”[707]
That the observance of the Sabbath was not confined to Jewish converts, the learned Giesler explicitly testifies:—
“While the Jewish Christians of Palestine retained the entire Mosaic law, and consequently the Jewish festivals, the Gentile Christians observed also the Sabbath and the passover,[708] with reference to the last scenes of Jesus’ life, but without Jewish superstition. In addition to these, Sunday, as the day of Christ’s resurrection, was devoted to religious services.”[709]
The statement of Mosheim may be thought to contradict that of Giesler. Thus he says:—
“The seventh day of the week was also observed as a festival, not by the Christians in general, but by such churches only as were principally composed of Jewish converts, nor did the other Christians censure this custom as criminal and unlawful.”[710]
It will be observed that Mosheim does not deny that the Jewish converts observed the Sabbath. He denies that this was done by the Gentile Christians. The proof on which he rests this denial is thus stated by him:—
“The churches of Bithynia, of which Pliny speaks, in his letter to Trajan, had only one stated day for the celebration of public worship; and that was undoubtedly the first day of the week, or what we call the Lord’s day.”[711]
The proposition to be proved is this: The Gentile Christians did not observe the Sabbath. The proof is found in the following fact: The churches of Bithynia assembled on a stated day for the celebration of divine worship. It is seen therefore that the conclusion is gratuitous, and wholly unauthorized by the testimony.[712] But this instance shows the dexterity of Mosheim in drawing inferences, and gives us some insight into the kind of evidence which supports some of these sweeping statements in behalf of Sunday. Who can say that this “stated day” was not the very day enjoined in the fourth commandment? Of the Sabbath and first day in the early ages of the church, Coleman speaks as follows:—
“The last day of the week was strictly kept in connection with that of the first day, for a long time after the overthrow of the temple and its worship. Down even to the fifth century the observance of the Jewish Sabbath was continued in the Christian church, but with a rigor and solemnity gradually diminishing until it was wholly discontinued.”[713]
This is a most explicit acknowledgment that the Bible Sabbath was long observed by the body of the Christian church. Coleman is a first-day writer, and therefore not likely to state the case too strongly in behalf of the seventh day. He is a modern writer, but we have already proved his statements true out of the ancients. It is true that Coleman speaks also of the first day of the week, yet his subsequent language shows that it was a long while before this became a sacred day. Thus he says:—
“During the early ages of the church it was never entitled ‘the Sabbath,’ this word being confined to the seventh day of the week, the Jewish Sabbath, which, as we have already said, continued to be observed for several centuries by the converts to Christianity.”[714]
This fact is made still clearer by the following language, in which this historian admits Sunday to be nothing but a human ordinance:—
“No law or precept appears to have been given by Christ or the apostles, either for the abrogation of the Jewish Sabbath, or the institution of the Lord’s day, or the substitution of the first for the seventh day of the week.”[715]
Coleman does not seem to realize that in making this truthful statement he has directly acknowledged that the ancient Sabbath is still in full force as a divine institution, and that first-day observance is only authorized by the traditions of men. He next relates the manner in which this Sunday festival which had been nourished in the bosom of the church usurped the place of the Lord’s Sabbath; a warning to all Christians of the tendency of human institutions, if cherished by the people of God, to destroy those which are divine. Let this important language be carefully pondered. He speaks thus:—
“The observance of the Lord’s day was ordered while yet the Sabbath of the Jews was continued; nor was the latter superseded until the former had acquired the same solemnity and importance, which belonged, at first, to that great day which God originally ordained and blessed.... But in time, after the Lord’s day was fully established, the observance of the Sabbath of the Jews was gradually discontinued, and was finally denounced as heretical.”[716]
Thus is seen the result of cherishing this harmless Sunday festival in the church. It only asked toleration at first; but gaining strength by degrees, it gradually undermined the Sabbath of the Lord, and finally denounced its observance as heretical.
Jeremy Taylor, a distinguished bishop of the Church of England, and a man of great erudition, but a decided opponent of Sabbatic obligation, confirms the testimony of Coleman. He affirms that the Sabbath was observed by the Christians of the first three hundred years, but denies that they did this out of respect to the authority or the law of God. But we have shown from the fathers that those who hallowed the Sabbath did it as an act of obedience to the fourth commandment, and that the decalogue was acknowledged as of perpetual obligation, and as the perfect rule of right. As Bishop T. denies that this was their ground of observance, he should have shown some other, which he has not done. Thus he says:—
“The Lord’s day did not succeed in the place of the Sabbath, but the Sabbath was wholly abrogated, and the Lord’s day was merely an ecclesiastical institution. It was not introduced by virtue of the fourth commandment, because they for almost three hundred years together kept that day which was in that commandment; but they did it also without any opinion of prime obligation, and therefore they did not suppose it moral.”[717]
That such an opinion relative to the obligation of the fourth commandment had gained ground extensively among the leaders of the church, as early at least as the fourth century, and probably in the third, is sufficiently attested by the action of the council of Laodicea, A. D. 364, which anathematized those who should observe the Sabbath, as will be noticed in its place. That this loose view of the morality of the fourth commandment was resisted by many, is shown by the existence of various bodies of steadfast Sabbatarians in that age, whose memory has come down to us; and also by the fact that that council made such a vigorous effort to put down the Sabbath. Coleman has clearly portrayed the gradual depression of the Sabbath, as the first-day festival arose in strength, until Sabbath-keeping became heretical, when, by ecclesiastical authority, the Sabbath was suppressed, and the festival of Sunday became fully established as a new and different institution. The natural consequence of this is seen in the rise of distinct sects, or bodies, who were distinguished for their observance of the seventh day. That they should be denounced as heretical and falsely charged with many errors is not surprising, when we consider that their memory has been handed down to us by their opponents, and that Sabbath-keepers in our own time are not unfrequently treated in this very manner. The first of these ancient Sabbatarian bodies was the Nazarenes. Of these, Morer testifies that,
They “retained the Sabbath; and though they pretended to believe as Christians, yet they practiced as Jews, and so were in reality neither one nor the other.”[718]
And Dr. Francis White, lord bishop of Ely, mentions the Nazarenes as one of the ancient bodies of Sabbath-keepers who were condemned by the church leaders for that heresy; and he classes them with heretics as Morer has done.[719] Yet the Nazarenes have a peculiar claim to our regard, as being in reality the apostolic church of Jerusalem, and its direct successors. Thus Gibbon testifies:—
“The Jewish converts, or, as they were afterwards called, the Nazarenes, who had laid the foundations of the church, soon found themselves overwhelmed by the increasing multitudes, that from all the various religions of polytheism enlisted under the banner of Christ.... The Nazarenes retired from the ruins of Jerusalem to the little town of Pella beyond the Jordan, where that ancient church languished above sixty years in solitude and obscurity.”[720]
It is not strange that that church which fled out of Judea at the word of Christ[721] should long retain the Sabbath, as it appears that they did, even as late as the fourth century. Morer mentions another class of Sabbath-keepers in the following language:—
“About the same time were the Hypsistarii who closed with these as to what concerned the Sabbath, yet would by no means accept circumcision as too plain a testimony of ancient bondage. All these were heretics, and so adjudged to be by the Catholic church. Yet their hypocrisy and industry were such as gained them a considerable footing in the Christian world.”[722]
The bishop of Ely names these also as a body of Sabbath-keepers whose heresy was condemned by the church.[723] The learned Joseph Bingham, M. A., gives the following account of them:—
“There was another sect which called themselves Hypsistarians, that is, worshipers of the most high God, whom they worshiped as the Jews only in one person. And they observed their Sabbaths and used distinction of meats, clean and unclean, though they did not regard circumcision, as Gregory Nazianzen, whose father was once one of this sect, gives the account of them.”[724]
It must ever be remembered that these people, whom the Catholic church adjudged to be heretics, are not speaking for themselves: their enemies who condemned them have transmitted to posterity all that is known of their history. It would be well if heretics, who meet with little mercy at the hand of ecclesiastical writers, could at least secure the impartial justice of a truthful record.
Another class are thus described by Cox in his elaborate work entitled “Sabbath Laws and Sabbath Duties”:—
“In this way [that is, by presenting the testimony of the Bible on the subject] arose the ancient Sabbatarians, a body it is well known of very considerable importance in respect both to numbers and influence, during the greater part of the third and the early part of the next century.”[725]
The close of the third century witnessed the Sabbath much weakened in its hold upon the church in general, and the festival of Sunday, although possessed of no divine authority, steadily gaining in strength and in sacredness. The following historical testimony from a member of the English Church, Edward Brerewood, professor in Gresham College, London, gives a good general view of the matter, though the author’s anti-Sabbatarian views are mixed with it. He says:—
“The ancient Sabbath did remain and was observed together with the celebration of the Lord’s day by the Christians of the east church above three hundred years after our Saviour’s death; and besides that, no other day for more hundreds of years than I spake of before, was known in the church by the name of Sabbath but that: let the collection thereof and conclusion of all be this: The Sabbath of the seventh day as touching the allegations of God’s solemn worship to time was ceremonial; that Sabbath was religiously observed in the east church three hundred years and more after our Saviour’s passion. That church being the great part of Christendom, and having the apostles’ doctrine and example to instruct them, would have restrained it if it had been deadly.”[726]
Such was the case in the eastern churches at the end of the third century; but in such of the western churches as sympathized with the church of Rome, the Sabbath had been treated as a fast from the beginning of that century, to express their opposition toward those who observed it according to the commandment.
In the early part of the fourth century occurred an event which could not have been foreseen, but which threw an immense weight in favor of Sunday into the balances already trembling between the rival institutions, the Sabbath of the Lord and the festival of the sun. This was nothing less than an edict from the throne of the Roman Empire in behalf of “the venerable day of the sun.” It was issued by the emperor Constantine in A. D. 321, and is thus expressed:—
“Let all the judges and town people, and the occupation of all trades rest on the venerable day of the sun; but let those who are situated in the country, freely and at full liberty attend to the business of agriculture; because it often happens that no other day is so fit for sowing corn and planting vines; lest, the critical moment being let slip, men should lose the commodities granted by Heaven. Given the seventh day of March; Crispus and Constantine being consuls, each of them for the second time.”[727]
Of this law, a high authority thus speaks:—
“It was Constantine the Great who first made a law for the proper observance of Sunday; and who, according to Eusebius, appointed it should be regularly celebrated throughout the Roman Empire. Before him, and even in his time, they observed the Jewish Sabbath, as well as Sunday; both to satisfy the law of Moses, and to imitate the apostles who used to meet together on the first day. By Constantine’s law, promulgated in 321, it was decreed that for the future the Sunday should be kept as a day of rest in all cities and towns; but he allowed the country people to follow their work.”[728]
Another eminent authority thus states the purport of this law:—
“Constantine the Great made a law for the whole empire (A. D. 321) that Sunday should be kept as a day of rest in all cities and towns; but he allowed the country people to follow their work on that day.”[729]
Thus the fact is placed beyond all dispute that this decree gave full permission to all kinds of agricultural labor. The following testimony of Mosheim is therefore worthy of strict attention:—
“The first day of the week, which was the ordinary and stated time for the public assemblies of the Christians, was in consequence of a peculiar law enacted by Constantine, observed with greater solemnity than it had formerly been.”[730]
What will the advocates of first-day sacredness say to this? They quote Mosheim respecting Sunday observance in the first century—which testimony has been carefully examined in this work[731]—and they seem to think that his language in support of first-day sacredness is nearly equal in authority to the language of the New Testament; in fact, they regard it as supplying an important omission in that book. Yet Mosheim states respecting Constantine’s Sunday law, promulgated in the fourth century, which restrained merchants and mechanics, but allowed all kinds of agricultural labor on that day, that it caused the day to be “observed with greater solemnity than it had formerly been.” It follows, therefore, on Mosheim’s own showing, that Sunday, during the first three centuries, was not a day of abstinence from labor in the Christian church. On this point, Bishop Taylor thus testifies:—
“The primitive Christians did all manner of works upon the Lord’s day, even in the times of persecution, when they are the strictest observers of all the divine commandments; but in this they knew there was none; and therefore when Constantine the emperor had made an edict against working upon the Lord’s day, yet he excepts and still permitted all agriculture or labors of the husbandman whatsoever.”[732]
Morer tells us respecting the first three centuries, that is to say, the period before Constantine, that
“The Lord’s day had no command that it should be sanctified, but it was left to God’s people to pitch on this or that day for the public worship. And being taken up and made a day of meeting for religious exercises, yet for three hundred years there was no law to bind them to it, and for want of such a law, the day was not wholly kept in abstaining from common business; nor did they any longer rest from their ordinary affairs (such was the necessity of those times) than during the divine service.”[733]
And Sir Wm. Domville says:—
“Centuries of the Christian era passed away before the Sunday was observed by the Christian church as a Sabbath. History does not furnish us with a single proof or indication that it was at any time so observed previous to the Sabbatical edict of Constantine in A. D. 321.”[734]
What these able modern writers set forth as to labor on Sunday before the edict of Constantine was promulgated, we have fully proved in the preceding chapters out of the most ancient ecclesiastical writers. That such an edict could not fail to strengthen the current already strongly set in favor of Sunday, and greatly to weaken the influence of the Sabbath, cannot be doubted. Of this fact, an able writer bears witness:—
“Very shortly after the period when Constantine issued his edict enjoining the general observance of Sunday throughout the Roman Empire, the party that had contended for the observance of the seventh day dwindled into insignificance. The observance of Sunday as a public festival, during which all business, with the exception of rural employments, was intermitted, came to be more and more generally established ever after this time, throughout both the Greek and the Latin churches. There is no evidence however that either at this, or at a period much later, the observance was viewed as deriving any obligation from the fourth commandment; it seems to have been regarded as an institution corresponding in nature with Christmas, Good Friday, and other festivals of the church; and as resting with them on the ground of ecclesiastical authority and tradition.”[735]
This extraordinary edict of Constantine caused Sunday to be observed with greater solemnity than it had formerly been. Yet we have the most indubitable proof that this law was a heathen enactment; that it was put forth in favor of Sunday as a heathen institution and not as a Christian festival; and that Constantine himself not only did not possess the character of a Christian, but was at that time in truth a heathen. It is to be observed that Constantine did not designate the day which he commanded men to keep, as Lord’s day, Christian Sabbath, or the day of Christ’s resurrection; nor does he assign any reason for its observance which would indicate it as a Christian festival. On the contrary, he designates the ancient heathen festival of the sun in language that cannot be mistaken. Dr. Hessey thus sustains this statement:—
“Others have looked at the transaction in a totally different light, and refused to discover in the document, or to suppose in the mind of the enactor, any recognition of the Lord’s day as a matter of divine obligation. They remark, and very truly, that Constantine designates it by its astrological or heathen title, Dies Solis, and insist that the epithet venerabilis with which it is introduced has reference to the rites performed on that day in honor of Hercules, Apollo, and Mithras.”[736]
On this important point, Milman, the learned editor of Gibbon, thus testifies:—
“The rescript commanding the celebration of the Christian Sabbath, bears no allusion to its peculiar sanctity as a Christian institution. It is the day of the sun which is to be observed by the general veneration; the courts were to be closed, and the noise and tumult of public business and legal litigation were no longer to violate the repose of the sacred day. But the believer in the new paganism, of which the solar worship was the characteristic, might acquiesce without scruple in the sanctity of the first day of the week.”[737]
And he adds in a subsequent chapter:—
“In fact, as we have before observed, the day of the sun would be willingly hallowed by almost all the pagan world, especially that part which had admitted any tendency towards the Oriental theology.”[738]
On the seventh day of March, Constantine published his edict commanding the observance of that ancient festival of the heathen, the venerable day of the sun. On the following day, March eighth,[739] he issued a second decree in every respect worthy of its heathen predecessor.[740] The purport of it was this: That if any royal edifice should be struck by lightning, the ancient ceremonies of propitiating the deity should be practiced, and the haruspices were to be consulted to learn the meaning of the awful portent.[741] The haruspices were soothsayers who foretold future events by examining the entrails of beasts slaughtered in sacrifice to the gods![742] The statute of the seventh of March enjoining the observance of the venerable day of the sun, and that of the eighth of the same month commanding the consultation of the haruspices, constitute a noble pair of well-matched heathen edicts. That Constantine himself was a heathen at the time these edicts were issued, is shown not only by the nature of the edicts themselves, but by the fact that his nominal conversion to Christianity is placed by Mosheim two years after his Sunday law. Thus he says:—
“After well considering the subject, I have come to the conclusion, that subsequently to the death of Licinius in the year 323 when Constantine found himself sole emperor, he became an absolute Christian, or one who believes no religion but the Christian to be acceptable to God. He had previously considered the religion of one God as more excellent than the other religions, and believed that Christ ought especially to be worshiped: yet he supposed there were also inferior deities, and that to these some worship might be paid, in the manner of the fathers, without fault or sin. And who does not know, that in those times, many others also combined the worship of Christ with that of the ancient gods, whom they regarded as the ministers of the supreme God in the government of human and earthly affairs.”[743]
As a heathen, Constantine was the worshiper of Apollo or the sun, a fact that sheds much light upon his edict enjoining men to observe the venerable day of the sun. Thus Gibbon testifies:—
“The devotion of Constantine was more peculiarly directed to the genius of the sun, the Apollo of Greek and Roman mythology; and he was pleased to be represented with the symbols of the god of light and poetry.... The altars of Apollo were crowned with the votive offerings of Constantine; and the credulous multitude were taught to believe that the emperor was permitted to behold with mortal eyes the visible majesty of their tutelar deity.... The sun was universally celebrated as the invincible guide and protector of Constantine.”[744]
His character as a professor of Christianity is thus described:—
“The sincerity of the man, who in a short period effected such amazing changes in the religious world, is best known to Him who searches the heart. Certain it is that his subsequent life furnished no evidence of conversion to God. He waded without remorse through seas of blood, and was a most tyrannical prince.”[745]
A few words relative to his character as a man will complete our view of his fitness to legislate for the church. This man, when elevated to the highest place of earthly power, caused his eldest son, Crispus, to be privately murdered, lest the fame of the son should eclipse that of the father. In the same ruin was involved his nephew Licinius, “whose rank was his only crime,” and this was followed by the execution “perhaps of a guilty wife.”[746]
Such was the man who elevated Sunday to the throne of the Roman Empire; and such the nature of the institution which he thus elevated. A recent English writer says of Constantine’s Sunday law that it “would seem to have been rather to promote heathen than Christian worship.” And he shows how this heathen emperor became a Christian, and how this heathen statute became a Christian law. Thus he says:—
“At a later period, carried away by the current of opinion, he declared himself a convert to the church. Christianity, then, or what he was pleased to call by that name, became the law of the land, and the edict of A. D. 321, being unrevoked, was enforced as a Christian ordinance.”[747]
Thus it is seen that a law, enacted in support of a heathen institution, after a few years came to be considered a Christian ordinance; and Constantine himself, four years after his Sunday edict, was able to control the church, as represented in the general council of Nice, so as to cause the members of that council to establish their annual festival of the passover upon Sunday.[748] Paganism had prepared the institution from ancient days, and had now elevated it to supreme power; its work was accomplished.
We have proved that the Sunday festival in the Christian church had no Sabbatical character before the time of Constantine. We have also shown that heathenism, in the person of Constantine, first gave to Sunday its Sabbatical character, and, in the very act of doing it, designated it as a heathen, and not as a Christian, festival, thus establishing a heathen Sabbath. It was now the part of popery authoritatively to effect its transformation into a Christian institution; a work which it was not slow to perform. Sylvester was the bishop of Rome while Constantine was emperor. How faithfully he acted his part in transforming the festival of the sun into a Christian institution is seen in that, by his apostolic authority, he changed the name of the day, giving it the imposing title of Lord’s day.[749] To Constantine and to Sylvester, therefore, the advocates of first-day observance are greatly indebted. The one elevated it as a heathen festival to the throne of the empire, making it a day of rest from most kinds of business; the other changed it into a Christian institution, giving it the dignified appellation of Lord’s day. It is not a sufficient reason for denying that Pope Sylvester, not far from A. D. 325, authoritatively conferred on Sunday the name of Lord’s day, to say that one of the fathers, as early as A. D. 200, calls the day by that name, and that some seven different writers, between A. D. 200 and A. D. 325, viz., Tertullian, Origen, Cyprian, Anatolius, Commodianus, Victorinus, and Peter of Alexandria, can be adduced, who give this name to Sunday.
No one of these fathers ever claims for this title any apostolic authority; and it has been already shown that they could not have believed the day to be the Lord’s day by divine appointment. So far, therefore, is the use of this term by these persons as a name for Sunday from conflicting with the statement that Sylvester, by his apostolic authority, established this name as the rightful title of that day, that it shows the act of Sylvester to be exactly suited to the circumstances of the case. Indeed, Nicephorus asserts that Constantine, who considered himself quite as much the head of the church as was the pope, “directed that the day which the Jews considered the first day of the week, and which the Greeks dedicated to the sun, should be called the Lord’s day.”[750] The circumstances of the case render the statements of Lucius and Nicephorus in the highest degree probable. They certainly do not indicate that the pope would deem such act on his part unnecessary. Take a recent event in papal history as an illustration of this case. Only a few years since, Pius IX. decreed that the virgin Mary was born without sin. This had long been asserted by many distinguished writers in the papal church, but it lacked authority as a dogma of that church until the pope, A. D. 1854, gave it his official sanction.[751] It was the work of Constantine and of Sylvester in the early part of the fourth century to establish the festival of the sun, to be a day of rest, by the authority of the empire, and to render it a Christian institution by the authority of St. Peter.
The following from Dr. Heylyn, a distinguished member of the Church of England, is worthy of particular attention. In most forcible language, he traces the steps by which the Sunday festival arose to power, contrasting it in this respect with the ancient Sabbath of the Lord; and then, with equal truth and candor, he acknowledges that, as the festival of Sunday was set up by the emperor and the church, the same power can take it down whenever it sees fit. Thus he says:—
“Thus do we see upon what grounds the Lord’s day stands; on custom first, and voluntary consecration of it to religious meetings; that custom countenanced by the authority of the church of God, which tacitly approved the same; and finally confirmed and ratified by Christian princes throughout their empires. And as the day for rest from labors and restraint from business upon that day, [it] received its greatest strength from the supreme magistrate as long as he retained that power which to him belongs; as after from the canons and decrees of councils, the decretals of popes and orders of particular prelates, when the sole managing of ecclesiastical affairs was committed to them.
“I hope it was not so with the former Sabbath, which neither took original from custom, that people being not so forward to give God a day; nor required any countenance or authority from the kings of Israel to confirm and ratify it. The Lord had spoke the word, that he would have one day in seven, precisely the seventh day from the world’s creation, to be a day of rest unto all his people; which said, there was no more to do but gladly to submit and obey his pleasure.... But thus it was not done in our present business. The Lord’s day had no such command that it should be sanctified, but was left plainly to God’s people to pitch on this, or any other, for the public use. And being taken up amongst them and made a day of meeting in the congregation for religious exercises; yet for three hundred years there was neither law to bind them to it, nor any rest from labor or from worldly business required upon it.
“And when it seemed good unto Christian princes, the nursing fathers of God’s church, to lay restraints upon their people, yet at the first they were not general; but only thus that certain men in certain places should lay aside their ordinary and daily works, to attend God’s service in the church; those whose employments were most toilsome and most repugnant to the true nature of a Sabbath, being allowed to follow and pursue their labors because most necessary to the commonwealth.
“And in the following times, when as the prince and prelate, in their several places endeavored to restrain them from that also, which formerly they had permitted, and interdicted almost all kinds of bodily labor upon that day; it was not brought about without much struggling and an opposition of the people; more than a thousand years being past, after Christ’s ascension, before the Lord’s day had attained that state in which now it standeth.... And being brought into that state, wherein now it stands, it doth not stand so firmly and on such sure grounds, but that those powers which raised it up may take it lower if they please, yea take it quite away as unto the time, and settle it on any other day as to them seems best.”[752]
Constantine’s edict marks a signal change in the history of the Sunday festival. Dr. Heylyn thus testifies:—
“Hitherto have we spoken of the Lord’s day as taken up by the common consent of the church; not instituted or established by any text of Scripture, or edict of emperor, or decree of council.... In that which followeth, we shall find both emperors and councils very frequent in ordering things about this day and the service of it.”[753]
After his professed conversion to Christianity, Constantine still further exerted his power in behalf of the venerable day of the sun, now happily transformed into the Lord’s day, by the apostolic authority of the Roman bishop. Heylyn thus testifies:—
“So natural a power it is in a Christian prince to order things about religion, that he not only took upon him to command the day, but also to prescribe the service.”[754]
The influence of Constantine powerfully contributed to the aid of those church leaders who were intent upon bringing the forms of pagan worship into the Christian church. Gibbon thus places upon record the motives of these men, and the result of their action:—
“The most respectable bishops had persuaded themselves that the ignorant rustics would more cheerfully renounce the superstition of paganism, if they found some resemblance, some compensation, in the bosom of Christianity. The religion of Constantine achieved in less than a century, the final conquest of the Roman Empire: but the victors themselves were insensibly subdued by the arts of their vanquished rivals.”[755]
The body of nominal Christians, which resulted from this strange union of pagan rites with Christian worship, arrogated to itself the title of Catholic church, while the true people of God, who resisted these dangerous innovations, were branded as heretics, and cast out of the church. It is not strange that the Sabbath should lose ground in such a body, in its struggle with its rival, the festival of the sun. Indeed, after a brief period, the history of the Sabbath will be found only in the almost obliterated records of those whom the Catholic church cast out and stigmatized as heretics. Of the Sabbath in Constantine’s time, Heylyn says:—