History of Sunday-Keeping.
By John Nevins Andrews
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. 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., Tertulian, 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." The circumstances of the case render the statement 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. 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 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 spoken the word, that there 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 certan 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." 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." 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." 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 rusties 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." 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. 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." 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." 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 Nice 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 92 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." "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 them throughout the world, and do those things according to the spiritual law, which were decreed for the priests to do on the Sabbath." "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."—J. N. A., in Sabbath History.