THE SABBATH AND FIRST-DAY DURING THE FIRST FIVE CENTURIES.
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:—
“As for the Saturday, that retained its wonted credit in the
eastern churches, little inferior to the Lord’s day, if not
plainly equal; not as a Sabbath, think not so; but as a day
designed unto sacred meetings.”[756]
There is no doubt that, after the great flood of worldliness which
entered the church at the time of Constantine’s pretended conversion, and
after all that was done by himself and by Sylvester in behalf of Sunday,
the observance of the Sabbath became, with many, only a nominal thing.
But the action of the council of Laodicea, to which we shall presently
come, proves conclusively that the Sabbath was still observed, not simply
as a festival, as Heylyn would have it, but as a day of abstinence from
labor, as enjoined in the commandment. The work of Constantine, however,
marks an epoch in the history of the Sabbath and of Sunday. Constantine
was hostile to the Sabbath, and his influence told powerfully against it
with all those who sought worldly advancement. The historian Eusebius was
the special friend and eulogist of Constantine. This fact should not be
overlooked in weighing his testimony concerning the Sabbath. He speaks of
it as follows:—
“They [the patriarchs] did not, therefore, regard circumcision,
nor observe the Sabbath, nor do we; neither do we abstain
from certain foods, nor regard other injunctions, which Moses
subsequently delivered to be observed in types and symbols,
because such things as these do not belong to Christians.”[757]
This testimony shows precisely the views of Constantine and the
imperial party relative to the Sabbath. But it does not give the views
of Christians as a whole; for we have seen that the Sabbath had been
extensively retained up to this point, and we shall soon have occasion
to quote other historians, the cotemporaries and successors of Eusebius,
who record its continued observance. Constantine exerted a controlling
influence in the church, and was determined to “have nothing in common
with that most hostile rabble of the Jews.” Happy would it have been had
his aversion been directed against the festivals of the heathen rather
than against the Sabbath of the Lord.
Before Constantine’s time, there is no trace of the doctrine of the
change of the Sabbath. On the contrary, we have decisive evidence that
Sunday was a day on which ordinary labor was considered lawful and
proper. But Constantine, while yet a heathen, commanded that every kind
of business excepting agriculture should be laid aside on that day. His
law designated the day as a heathen festival, which it actually was. But
within four years after its enactment, Constantine had become, not merely
a professed convert to the Christian religion, but, in many respects,
practically the head of the church, as the course of things at the
council of Nicea plainly showed. His heathen Sunday law, being unrevoked,
was thenceforward enforced in behalf of that day as a Christian festival.
This law gave to the Sunday festival, for the first time, something of a
Sabbatic character. It was now a rest-day from most kinds of business by
the law of the Roman Empire. God’s rest-day was thenceforward more in the
way than ever before.
But now we come to a fact of remarkable interest. The way having been
prepared, as we have just seen, for the doctrine of the change of the
Sabbath, and the circumstances of the case demanding its production, it
was at this very point brought forward for the _first time_. Eusebius,
the special friend and flatterer of Constantine, was the man who first
put forth this doctrine. In his “Commentary on the Psalms,” he makes the
following statement on Psalm xcii. respecting the change of the Sabbath:—
“Wherefore as they [the Jews] rejected it [the Sabbath law] the
Word [Christ], by the new covenant, TRANSLATED and TRANSFERRED
the feast of the Sabbath to the morning light, and gave us the
symbol of true rest, viz., the saving Lord’s day, the first
[day] of the light, in which the Saviour of the world, after
all his labors among men, obtained the victory over death, and
passed the portals of Heaven, having achieved a work superior
to the six-days’ creation.”[758]
“On this day, which is the first [day] of light and of the true
Sun, we assemble, after an interval of six days, and celebrate
holy and spiritual Sabbaths, even all nations redeemed by him
throughout the world, and do those things according to the
spiritual law, which were decreed for the priests to do on the
Sabbath.”[759]
“And all things whatsoever that it was duty to do on the
Sabbath, these we have transferred to the Lord’s day, as more
appropriately belonging to it, because it has a precedence
and is first in rank, and more honorable than the Jewish
Sabbath.”[760]
Eusebius was under the strongest temptation to please and even to flatter
Constantine; for he lived in the sunshine of imperial favor. On one
occasion, he went so far as to say that the city of Jerusalem, which
Constantine had rebuilt, might be the New Jerusalem predicted in the
prophecies![761] But perhaps there was no act of Eusebius that could
give Constantine greater pleasure than his publication of such doctrine
as this respecting the change of the Sabbath. The emperor had, by the
civil law, given to Sunday a Sabbatical character. Though he had done
this while yet a heathen, he found it to his interest to maintain this
law after he obtained a commanding position in the Catholic church.
When, therefore, Eusebius came out and declared that Christ transferred
the Sabbath to Sunday, a doctrine never before heard of, and in support
of which he had no Scripture to quote, Constantine could not but feel in
the highest degree flattered that his own Sabbatical edict pertained to
the very day which Christ had ordained to be the Sabbath in place of the
seventh. It was a convincing proof that Constantine was divinely called
to his high position in the Catholic church, that he should thus exactly
identify his work with that of Christ, though he had no knowledge at the
time that Christ had done any work of the kind.
As no writer before Eusebius had ever hinted at the doctrine of the
change of the Sabbath, and as there is the most convincing proof, as we
have shown, that before his time Sunday possessed no Sabbatic character,
and as Eusebius does not claim that this doctrine is asserted in the
Scriptures, nor in any preceding ecclesiastical writer, it is certain
that he was the father of the doctrine. This new doctrine was not put
forth without some motive. That motive could not have been to bring
forward some neglected passages of the Scriptures; for he does not quote
a single text in its support. But the circumstances of the case plainly
reveal the motive. The new doctrine was exactly adapted to the new order
of things introduced by Constantine. It was, moreover, peculiarly suited
to flatter that emperor’s pride, the very thing which Eusebius was under
the strongest temptation to do.
It is remarkable, however, that Eusebius, in the very connection in
which he announces this new doctrine, unwittingly exposes its falsity.
He first asserts that Christ changed the Sabbath, and then virtually
contradicts it by indicating the real authors of the change. Thus he
says:—
“All things whatsoever that it was duty to do on the Sabbath,
these WE have transferred to the Lord’s day.”[762]
The persons here referred to as the authors of this work are the Emperor
Constantine, and such bishops as Eusebius, who loved the favor of
princes, and Sylvester, the pretended successor of Saint Peter. Two facts
refute the assertion of Eusebius that Christ changed the Sabbath: 1. That
Eusebius, who lived three hundred years after the alleged change, is
the first man who mentions such change; 2. That Eusebius testifies that
himself and others made this change, which they could not have done had
Christ made it at the beginning. But though the doctrine of the change
of the Sabbath was thus announced by Eusebius, it was not seconded by
any writer of that age. The doctrine had never been heard of before,
and Eusebius had simply his own assertion, but no passage of the Holy
Scriptures to offer in its support.
But after Constantine, the Sabbath began to recover strength, at least
in the eastern churches. Prof. Stuart, in speaking of the period from
Constantine to the council of Laodicea, A. D. 364, says:—
“The practice of it [the keeping of the Sabbath] was continued
by Christians who were jealous for the honor of the Mosaic law,
and finally became, as we have seen, predominant throughout
Christendom. It was supposed at length that the fourth
commandment did require the observance of the seventh-day
Sabbath (not merely a seventh part of time), and reasoning
as Christians of the present day are wont to do, viz., that
_all_ which belonged to the ten commandments was immutable and
perpetual, the churches in general came gradually to regard the
seventh-day Sabbath as altogether sacred.”[763]
Prof. Stuart, however, connects with this the statement that Sunday
was honored by all parties. But the council of Laodicea struck a heavy
blow at this Sabbath-keeping in the eastern church. Thus Mr. James, in
addressing the University of Oxford, bears witness:—
“When the practice of keeping Saturday Sabbaths, which had
become so general at the close of this century, was evidently
gaining ground in the eastern church, a decree was passed in
the council held at Laodicea [A. D. 364] ‘that members of the
church should not rest from work on the Sabbath like Jews, but
should labor on that day, and preferring in honor the Lord’s
day, then if it be in their power should rest from work as
Christians.’”[764]
This shows conclusively that at that period the observance of the Sabbath
according to the commandment was extensive in the eastern churches. But
the Laodicean council, not only forbade the observance of the Sabbath,
they even pronounced a curse on those who should obey the fourth
commandment! Prynne thus testifies:—
“It is certain that Christ himself, his apostles, and the
primitive Christians for some good space of time, did
constantly observe the seventh-day Sabbath; ... the evangelists
and St. Luke in the Acts ever styling it the Sabbath day, ...
and making mention of its ... solemnization by the apostles
and other Christians, ... it being still solemnized by many
Christians after the apostles’ times, even till the council
of Laodicea [A. D. 364], as ecclesiastical writers and the
twenty-ninth canon of that council testify, which runs
thus:[765] ‘Because Christians ought not to Judaize, and to
rest in the Sabbath, but to work in that day (which many did
refuse at that time to do). But preferring in honor the Lord’s
day (there being then a great controversy among Christians
which of these two days ... should have precedency) if they
desired to rest they should do this as Christians. Wherefore
if they shall be found to Judaize, let them be accursed
from Christ.’... The seventh-day Sabbath was ... solemnized
by Christ, the apostles and primitive Christians, till the
Laodicean council did in a manner quite abolish the observation
of it.... The council of Laodicea [A. D. 364] ... first settled
the observation of the Lord’s day, and prohibited ... the
keeping of the Jewish Sabbath under an anathema.”[766]
The action of this council did not extirpate the Sabbath from the eastern
churches, though it did materially weaken its influence, and cause its
observance to become with many only a nominal thing, while it did most
effectually enhance the sacredness and the authority of the Sunday
festival. That it did not wholly extinguish Sabbath-keeping is thus
certified by an old English writer, John Ley:—
“From the apostles’ time until the council of Laodicea, which
was about the year 364, the holy observation of the Jews’
Sabbath continued, as may be proved out of many authors; yea,
notwithstanding the decree of that council against it.”[767]
And Gregory, Bishop of Nyssa, about A. D. 372, uses this expostulation:—
“With what eyes can you behold the Lord’s day, when you despise
the Sabbath? Do you not perceive that they are sisters, and
that in slighting the one, you affront the other?”[768]
This testimony is valuable in that it marks the progress of apostasy
concerning the Sabbath. The Sunday festival entered the church, not as
a divine institution, but as a voluntary observance. Even as late as A.
D. 200, Tertullian said that it had only tradition and custom in its
support.[769]
But in A. D. 372, this human festival had become the sister and equal
of that day which God hallowed in the beginning and solemnly commanded
in the moral law. How worthy to be called the sister of the Sabbath the
Sunday festival actually was, may be judged from what followed. When this
self-styled sister had gained an acknowledged position in the family, she
expelled the other, and trampled her in the dust. In our days, the Sunday
festival claims to be the very day intended in the fourth commandment.
The following testimonies exhibit the authority of church councils in its
true light. Jortin is quoted by Cox as saying:—
“In such assemblies, the best and the most moderate men seldom
have the ascendant, and they are often led or driven by others
who are far inferior to them in good qualities.”[770]
The same writer gives us Baxter’s opinion of the famous Westminster
Assembly. Baxter says:—
“I have lived to see an assembly of ministers, where three or
four leading men were so prevalent as to form a confession
in the name of the whole party, which had that in it which
particular members did disown. And when about a controverted
article, one man hath charged me deeply with questioning the
words of the church, others, who were at the forming of that
article have laid it all on that same man, the rest being loth
to strive much against him; and so it was he himself was the
church whose authority he so much urged.”[771]
Such has been the nature of councils in all ages; yet they have ever
claimed infallibility, and have largely used that infallibility in the
suppression of the Sabbath and the establishment of the festival of
Sunday. Of first-day sacredness prior to, and as late as, the time of
Chrysostom, Kitto thus testifies:—
“Though in later times we find considerable reference to a sort
of _consecration of the day_, it does not seem at any period
of the ancient church to have assumed the form of such an
observance as some modern religious communities have contended
for. Nor do these writers in any instance pretend to allege
_any divine command, or even apostolic practice_, in support
of it.... Chrysostom (A. D. 360) concludes one of his Homilies
by dismissing his audience to their respective ordinary
occupations.”[772]
It was reserved for modern theologians to discover the divine or
apostolic authority for Sunday observance. The ancient doctors of the
church were unaware that any such authority existed; and hence they
deemed it lawful and proper to engage in usual worldly business on that
day when their religious worship was concluded. Thus, Heylyn bears
witness concerning St. Chrysostom that he
“Confessed it to be lawful for a man to look unto his worldly
business on the Lord’s day, after the congregation was
dismissed.”[773]
St. Jerome, a few years after this, at the opening of the fifth century,
in his commendation of the lady Paula, shows his own opinion of Sunday
labor. Thus he says:—
“Paula, with the women, as soon as they returned home on the
Lord’s day, they sat down severally to their work, and made
clothes for themselves and others.”[774]
Morer justifies this Sunday labor in the following terms:—
“If we read they did any work on the Lord’s day, it is to be
remembered that this application to their daily tasks was
not till their worship was quite over, when they might with
innocency enough resume them, because the length of time or
the number of hours assigned for piety was not then so well
explained as in after ages. The state of the church is vastly
different from what it was in those early days. Christians then
for some centuries of years were under persecution and poverty;
and besides their own wants, they had many of them severe
masters who compelled them to work, and made them bestow less
time in spiritual matters than they otherwise would. In St.
Jerome’s age their condition was better, because Christianity
had got into the throne as well as into the empire. Yet
for all this, the entire sanctification of the Lord’s day
proceeded slowly: and that it was the work of time to bring
it to perfection, appears from the several steps the church
made in her constitutions, and from the decrees of emperors
and other princes, wherein the prohibitions from servile and
civil business advanced by degrees from one species to another,
till the day had got a considerable figure in the world. Now,
therefore, the case being so much altered, the most proper use
of citing those old examples is only, in point of doctrine, to
show that ordinary work, as being a compliance with providence
for the support of natural life, is not sinful even on the
Lord’s day, when necessity is loud, and the laws of that church
and nation where we live are not against it. This is what the
first Christians had to say for themselves, in the works they
did on that day. And if those works had been then judged a
prophanation of the festival, I dare believe, they would have
suffered martyrdom rather than been guilty.”[775]
The bishop of Ely thus testifies:—
“In St Jerome’s days, and in the very place where he was
residing, the devoutest Christians did ordinarily work upon the
Lord’s day, when the service of the church was ended.”[776]
St. Augustine, the cotemporary of Jerome, gives a synopsis of the
argument in that age for Sunday observance, in the following words:—
“It appears from the sacred Scriptures, that this day was a
solemn one; it was the first day of the age, that is of the
existence of our world; in it the elements of the world were
formed; on it the angels were created; on it Christ rose also
from the dead; on it the Holy Spirit descended from Heaven upon
the apostles as manna had done in the wilderness. For these and
other such circumstances the Lord’s day is distinguished; and
therefore the holy doctors of the church have decreed that all
the glory of the Jewish Sabbath is transferred to it. Let us
therefore keep the Lord’s day as the ancients were commanded to
do the Sabbath.”[777]
It is to be observed that Augustine does not assign among his reasons
for first-day observance, the change of the Sabbath by Christ or his
apostles, or that the apostles observed that day, or that John had
given it the name of Lord’s day. These modern first-day arguments were
unknown to Augustine. He gave the credit of the work, not to Christ or
his inspired apostles, but to the holy doctors of the church, who, of
their own accord, had transferred the glory of the ancient Sabbath to the
venerable day of the sun. The first day of the week was considered in
the fifth century the most proper day for giving holy orders, that is,
for ordinations, and about the middle of this century, says Heylyn,
“A law [was] made by Leo then Pope of Rome, and generally since
taken up in the western church, that they should be conferred
upon no day else.”[778]
According to Dr. Justin Edwards, this same pope made also this decree in
behalf of Sunday:—
“WE ORDAIN, according to the true meaning of the Holy Ghost,
and of the apostles as thereby directed, that on the sacred day
wherein our own integrity was restored, all do rest and cease
from labor.”[779]
Soon after this edict of the pope, the emperor Leo, A. D. 469, put forth
the following decree:—
“It is our will and pleasure, that the holy days dedicated to
the most high God, should not be spent in sensual recreations,
or otherwise prophaned by suits of law, especially the Lord’s
day, which we decree to be a venerable day, and therefore
free it of all citations, executions, pleadings, and the
like avocations. Let not the circus or theater be opened,
nor combating with wild beasts be seen on it.... If any will
presume to offend in the premises, if he be a military man, let
him lose his commission; or if other, let his estate or goods
be confiscated.”[780]
And this emperor determined to mend the breach in Constantine’s law, and
thus prohibit agriculture on Sunday. So he adds:—
“We command therefore all, as well husbandmen as others, to
forbear work on this day of our restoration.”[781]
The holy doctors of the church had by this time very effectually
despoiled the Sabbath of its glory, transferring it to the Lord’s day of
Pope Sylvester; as Augustine testifies; yet was not Sabbatical observance
wholly extinguished even in the Catholic church. The historian Socrates,
who wrote about the middle of the fifth century, thus testifies:—
“For although almost all churches throughout the world
celebrate the sacred mysteries on the Sabbath of every week,
yet the Christians of Alexandria and at Rome, on account of
some ancient tradition, refuse to do this. The Egyptians
in the neighborhood of Alexandria, and the inhabitants of
Thebais, hold their religious meetings on the Sabbath, but do
not participate of the mysteries in the manner usual among
Christians in general—for after having eaten and satisfied
themselves with food of all kinds, in the evening, making their
oblations, they partake of the mysteries.”[782]
As the church of Rome had turned the Sabbath into a fast some two hundred
years before this, in order to oppose its observance, it is probable that
this was the ancient tradition referred to by Socrates. And Sozomen, the
cotemporary of Socrates, speaks on the same point as follows:—
“The people of Constantinople, and of several other cities,
assemble together on the Sabbath, as well as on the next day;
which custom is never observed at Rome, or at Alexandria. There
are several cities and villages in Egypt where, contrary to
the usages established elsewhere, the people meet together on
Sabbath evenings; and although they have dined previously,
partake of the mysteries.”[783]
On the statement of these historians, Cox remarks:—
“It was their practice to Sabbatize on Saturday, and to
celebrate Sunday as a day of rejoicing and festivity. While,
however, in some places a respect was thus generally paid
to both of these days, the Judaizing practice of observing
Saturday was by the leading churches expressly condemned,
and all the doctrines connected with it steadfastly
resisted.”—_Sabbath Laws_, p. 280.
The time had now come, when, as stated by Coleman, the observance of
the Sabbath was deemed heretical; and the close of the fifth century
witnessed its effectual suppression in the great body of the Catholic
church.