Chapter 7 Pagan Sun-Worship | Chapter 8 Sunday Observance Unknown to Christianity Before the Middle of the Second Century | Chapter 9 State Religion a Pagan Institution | Chapter 10 The Control of Christianity By the State Under Constantine and his Successors | Chapter 11 Constantine's Legislation Concerning the Pagan Sunday | Chapter 12 Other Forms of Pagan Residuum in Christianity | Chapter 13 Same Subject Continued | Chapter 14 Conclusions. The Fundamental Principles of Protestantism Involved in Present Issues | Endnotes Part 2 | Back to Part 1
Paganism Surviving in Christianity
PART II
PAGAN SUN-WORSHIP
Sun-Worship the Oldest and Most Widely Diffused Form of Paganism Gnostic Antinomianism or Lawlessness Anti-Judaism, Mainly of Pagan Origin Anti-Sabbathism and Sunday Observance Synchronous Anti-Lawism and Anti-Sabbathism Unscriptural Christ's Teachings Concerning the Law of God; Paul's Teachings on the Same Destructive Effect of Pagan Lawlessness on Christianity.
THE sun-god, under various names, Mithras, Baal, Apollo, etc., was the chief god of the heathen pantheon. A direct conflict between him and Jehovah appears wherever paganism and revealed religion came in contact. As "Baal", "Lord" of the universe and of the productive forces in nature and in man, this sun-god was the pre-eminent divinity in ancient Palestine and throughout Phoenicia. The chosen people of God were assailed and corrupted by this cult, even while they were in the desert,(1) being led away by the women of Moab. During the period of the Judges, Baal-worship was the besetting sin of Israel, which the most vigorous measures could not eradicate.(2)
A reformation came under Saul and David, only to be followed by a relapse under Solomon, which culminated in the exclusion of Jehovah-worship under Ahab.(3) Jehu broke the power of the cult, for a time, but the people soon returned to it.(4) It also spread like a virus through Judah; repressed by Hezekiah, but continued by Manasseh.(5)
This worship of the sun-god was a sign of disloyalty to Jehovah, and formed the certain road to wickedness and impurity.(6)
In its lowest forms it was so closely allied to sex-worship, Phallicism, that it lent great power to that debasing licentiousness, which sanctified lust, and made prostitution of virtue a religious duty. Sun-worship was both powerful and popular in the Roman Empire when Christianity came into contact with Western thought. It furnished abundant material for the corrupting process. We have seen in a former chapter that several minor elements of sun-worship mingled with pagan water-worship: such as turning to the west to renounce evil, and turning to the east to promise allegiance to Christ and Light, before baptism; "Orientation" building churches with the altar so that men should worship toward the east was another element, while the extinguishing of a torch or a candle in the font, in the preparation of holy water, was a direct importation from this cult. But these were of little account in extent or influence, when compared with the corruption which came through the introduction of Baal's and Apollo's day, "Sunday," in place of the Sabbath, which had always represented, and yet represents, Jehovah, maker of heaven and earth. The introduction of Sunday into Christianity was a continuation of the old-time conflict between Baal and Jehovah.
The definite and systematic manner in which the corrupting process was carried forward is clearly seen by the preparatory steps which opened the way for paganism to thrust the sun's day upon Christianity. We have seen how the foundation of God's authority was undermined by the gnostic opposition to the Old Testament, and by the allegorizing of both Old and New; how a false "baptismal-regeneration" theory filled the church with baptized but unconverted heathens. These were not enough to complete the corrupting process. While men still had regard for the Sabbath, they could not entirely give up the law of Jehovah on which it was based, and thus the fundamental doctrines of paganism were still held in check.
The Simultaneous Development of Anti-Sabbathism and of Sunday Observance
Gnosticism was antinomian from the core. All knowledge, and hence all authority, was in the heart of the "true Gnostic." The "initiated" were divinely enlightened, were a law unto themselves. This was doubly true when they came into contact with a law promulgated by the "inferior God of the Jews," the weak Creator of matter, and hence a God in league with evil. Such opposition was natural, was unavoidable, from the Gnostic standpoint. Coupled with the allegorical method of interpretation, it was an easy task for this opposition to create a violent anti-Jewish prejudice, and a combined no-lawism, and no-Sabbathism, which became the main factor in sundering the Jewish and Gentile churches, and introducing the reign of "lawlessness," of which Paul wrote in the second chapter of Thessalonians. This anti-lawism and anti-Sabbathism appear in JUSTIN, the first pagano-Christian writer of whom we have sufficient definite knowledge to gain a picture of the incipient results of pagan influence on Christianity. He accepted Christianity after reaching mature life, but retained his "philosopher's cloak" as he did many of his pagan ideas. His theories are a compound of pagan philosophy and Christianity. He was furiously opposed to all that savored of Judaism. His interpretations of Scripture and his religious opinions are all strongly colored by this anti-Jewish spirit. His Dialogue with Trypho the Jew, whether Trypho were a real or an imaginary character, is the special exponent of anti-Judaism. The following examples show how he confounded the moral laws and the ceremonial code of the Jews, and set forth baneful no-lawism and no-Sabbathism, which grew in virulence and destroyed the authority of the Old Testament wherever his influence was felt. His special anti-Jewish treatise is entitled, Dialogue of Justin, Philosopher and Martyr, with Trypho a Jew. It opens as follows:
"While I was going about one morning in the walks of the Xystus, a certain man, with others in his company, having met me said, 'Hail, O Philosopher!' And immediately after saying this, he turned round and walked along with me; his friends likewise followed him. And I, in turn having addressed him, said, 'What is there important?'
"And he replied: 'I was instructed,' says he, 'by Corinthus, the Socratic in Argos, that I ought not to despise or treat with indifference those who array themselves in this dress, but to show them all kindness, and to associate with them, as perhaps some advantage would spring from the intercourse either to some such man or to myself. It is good, moreover, for both, if either the one or the other be benefited.'
"On this account, therefore, when ever I see any one in, such costume, I gladly approach him, and now, for the same reason, have I willingly accosted you; and these accompany me, in the expectation of hearing for themselves something profitable from you."
This opening shows Justin in his true character, as a philosopher who has united certain elements of Christianity (see Dialogue, ch. viii.) wit his pagan theories, and is now to defend this product as Christianity. In chapter x., Trypho states his case against Christians in the following words:
"Moreover I am aware that your precepts in the so-called Gospel are so wonderful and so great, that I suspect no one can keep them; for I have carefully read them. But this is what we are most at a loss about; that you professing to be pious, and supposing yourselves better than others, are not in any particular separated from them and do not alter your mode of living from the nations, in that you observe no festivals or Sabbaths, and do not have the rite of circumcision: and further, resting, your hopes on a man that was crucified, you yet expect to obtain some good thing from God, while you do not obey His commandments. Have you not read, that that soul shall be cut off from his people who shall not have been circumcised on the eighth day? And this has been ordained for strangers and for slaves equally. But you, despising this covenant rashly, reject the consequent duties, and attempt to persuade yourselves that you know God, when, however, you perform none of those things which they do who fear God. If, therefore, you can defend yourself on these points, and make it manifest in what way you hope for any thing whatsoever, even though you do not observe the law, this we would very gladly hear from you, and we shall make other similar investigations."(7)
Justin answers Trypho in the next chapter, (chapter xi), which is entitled: "The Law Abrogated; The New Testament Promised and Given of God."
Note the following from this, and subsequent chapters:
"For the law promulgated on Horeb is now old, and belongs to yourselves alone; but this is for all universally. Now law placed against law has abrogated that which is before it, and a covenant which comes after in like manner has put an end to the previous one; and an eternal and final law namely Christ has been given to us and the covenant is trustworthy, after which there shall be no law, no commandment, no ordinance."(8)
"You have now need of a second circumcision, though you glory greatly in the flesh. The new law requires you to keep perpetual Sabbath, and you, because you are idle for one day, suppose you are pious, not discerning why this has been commanded you; and if you eat unleavened bread, you say the will of God has been fulfilled. The Lord our God does not take pleasure in such observances; if there is any perjured person, or a thief among you, let him cease to be so; if any adulterer, let him repent; then he has kept the sweet and true Sabbaths of God. If any one has impure hands, let him wash and be pure.(9)
"For we too would observe the fleshly circumcision, and the Sabbaths, and in short all the feasts, if we did not know for what reason they were enjoined you namely on account of your transgressions and the hardness of your hearts. For if we patiently endure all things contrived against us by wicked men and demons, so that even amid cruelties unutterable, death and torments, we pray for mercy to those who inflict such things upon us, and do not wish to give the least retort to any one even as the new Lawgiver commanded us; how is it, Trypho, that we would not observe those rites which do not harm us I speak of fleshly circumcision, and Sabbaths and feasts?"(10)
In many different forms Justin Martyr repeats his theory, that the ten commandments and the ceremonial economy of the Jews were abrogated, and that there is no written law regulating conduct on the part of the Christians.
TERTULLIAN also taught the temporary character of the Decalogue, and no-lawism, as the following shows:
"Whence we understand that God's law was anterior even to Moses, and was not first [given] in Horeb, or in Sinai, and in the desert, but was more ancient; [existing] first in paradise, subsequently reformed for the patriarchs, and so again for the Jews, at definite periods; so that we are not to give heed to Moses' law as to the primitive law, but to a subsequent, which at a definite period, God has set forth to the Gentiles too, and, after repeatedly promising so to do, through the prophets, has re-formed for the better; and has premonished [men] that it should come to pass that, 'just as the law was given through Moses,' at a definite time, so it should be believed to have been temporarily observed and kept, And let us not annul this power which God has, which reforms the law's precepts answerably to the circumstances of the times, with a view to man's salvation. In fine, let him who contends that the Sabbath is still to be observed as a balm of salvation, and circumcision on the eighth day because of the threat of death, teach us that, for the time past, righteous men kept the Sabbath, or practised circumcision, and were thus rendered 'friends of God.' For if circumcision purges a man, since God made Adam uncircumcised, why did he not circumcise him, even after his sinning, if circumcision purges? At all events, in settling him in paradise, He appointed one uncircumcised as colonist of paradise. Therefore since God originated Adam uncircumcised, and inobservant of the Sabbath, consequently his offspring also, Abel, offering Him sacrifices, uncircumcised and inobservant of the Sabbath, was by Him commended; while He accepted what he was offering in simplicity of heart, and reprobated the sacrifice of his brother Cain, who was not rightly dividing what he was offering. Noah, also, uncircumcised, yes, and inobservant of the Sabbath God freed from the deluge. For Enoch, too, most righteous man, uncircumcised and inobservant of the Sabbath, He translated from this world; [Enoch] who did not first taste death, in order that, being a candidate for eternal life, he might by this time show us that we also may, without the burden of the law of Moses, please God. Melchizedek, also, 'the priest of the most high God,' uncircumcised and inobservant of the Sabbath, was chosen to the priesthood of God. Lot, withal, the brother of Abraham, proves that it was for the merits of righteousness, without observance of the law, that he was freed from the conflagration of the Sodomites. . . .
"Therefore, since it is manifest that a Sabbath temporal was shown and a Sabbath eternal foretold, and a circumcision carnal foretold and a circumcision spiritual pre-indicated; a law temporal and a law eternal formally declared; sacrifices carnal and sacrifices spiritual fore shown; it follows that, after all these precepts had been given carnally, in time preceding, to the people of Israel there was to supervene a time whereat the precepts of the ancient law, and of the old ceremonies would cease and the promise of the new law, and the recognition of spiritual sacrifices, and the promise of the New Testament, supervene; while the light from on high would beam upon us who were sitting in darkness, and were being detained in the shadow of death. And so there is incumbent on us a necessity, binding us, since we have premised that a new law was predicted by the prophets, and that not such as had been already given to their fathers, at the time when He led them forth from the land of Egypt, to show and prove, on the one hand that that old law has ceased, and on the other, that the promised new law is now in operation."(11)
These examples must suffice, since all who are familiar with Patristic literature know that its general trend, and its openly avowed opposition to Judaism and all things connected with the Old Testament and the Decalogue, place it beyond controversy, that the prevailing type of Christianity during the third, fourth, and succeeding centuries, was anti-Sabbatic, and antinomian. There were practical exceptions among the more common people, but the prevailing thought, and hence the strong tendency, was away from the Sabbath, and from Sabbathism. He who questions this shows himself ignorant in the premises. This growing disregard for the authority of the Sabbath law, and the steady development of anti-Sabbathism, prepared the way for a vast system of semi-religious pagan days, with the Sun's day at their head.
Antinomianism and Anti-Sabbathism Unscriptural
Before we inquire how Sunday was introduced, it will be well to consider the unscriptural and destructive nature of the theories by which the Decalogue and the Sabbath were dethroned, through false teachings.
Christ is the central figure in both dispensations. If new expressions of the Father's will are to be made in connection with the work of Christ on earth, they must be made by the "Immanuel," who is thus "reconciling the world unto himself." Did Christ teach the abrogation of the Decalogue, of which the Sabbath law is a part? Let His own words answer:
"Think not that I came to destroy the law or the prophets. I came not to destroy, but to fulfil. For verily I say unto you, till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass away from the law, till all things be accomplished. Whosoever, therefore, shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whosoever shall do and teach them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven."(12)
When Christ speaks of the law (ton nomon) in these emphatic words, He cannot mean the ceremonial code, for these ceremonies were typical of Him and must pass away with His death. Besides this, the word fulfil (plerosai) means the opposite of destruction (katalusai). Christ fulfilled the law by perfect obedience to it. He corrected false interpretations, and intensified its claims. He taught obedience to it in the spirit as well as the letter, and urged obedience from love rather than fear. Such a work could not have been done in connection with the dying ceremonies of the Jewish system. Such a work Christ did do with reference to the Decalogue. In connection with the passage above quoted Christ immediately refers to two laws from the Decalogue, explains and enforces their meaning in a way far more broad and deep than those who listened to Him were wont to conceive of them.
On another occasion(13) a certain shrewd lawyer sought to entrap the Saviour by asking "which is the greatest commandment in the law." The question has no meaning unless it be applied to the Decalogue. Christ's answer includes all the cornmandments of the Decalogue, and thus avoids the trap designed by the questioner, who sought to lead Him into some distinction between laws known to be equal in their nature and extent.
In the sixteenth chapter of Luke,(14) Christ again affirms in the strongest language, that "It is easier for heaven and earth to pass, than one tittle of the law to fail." Language could not be plainer than that which is used in these statements.
These sentiments accord fully with the practice of Christ relative to the Sabbath. He boldly condemned the unjust requirements which the Jews had attached to the observance of it, and taught that works of mercy were to be freely done on that day; that it was made for man's good, and not his injury. But He never taught that because it was "made for man" therefore it was to be abrogated, or unsanctified. Neither did He delegate to His disciples any power to teach the abrogation of the law, or of the Sabbath. On the contrary, their representative writings contain the same clear testimony in favor of the perpetuity of the law, and show the same practical observance of the Sabbath. Paul, the great reasoner among the Apostles, after an exhaustive discussion concerning the relations between the law and the Gospel, concludes the whole matter in these words:
"Do we then make the law of none effect through faith? God forbid! Nay, we establish the law."(15)
Again in the same epistle(16) he presents a conclusive argument, starting from the axiom that "where there is no law there is no sin." Showing that since death, which came by sin, reigned from Adam to Moses, therefore the law then existed, and, by the same reasoning that if there be no law under the Gospel dispensation, there can be no sin; if no sin, then no Saviour from sin, and Christ died in vain, if by His death he destroyed the law. In another place Paul contrasts the Decalogue with the ceremonial code, and declares the worthlessness of the one and the binding character of the other, in these words :
"Circumcision is nothing, and uncircumcision is nothing, but the keeping of the commandments of God."(17)
Thus, in a plain and unequivocal way, Paul teaches as his Master taught.
In view of Christ's words, and Paul's sharp logic, the following conclusions are unavoidable. They annihilate the no-law theory.
1. If the Decalogue was abolished by the death of Christ, then Christ by His death prevented the possibility of sin, to redeem man from which He died.
2. "Sin is not imputed where there is no law,"(18) hence the consciousness of sin which men feel under the claims of the Gospel is a mockery, and all faith in Christ is a farce. It only increases the difficulty to say that the law is written in the hearts of believers. If that be true, then:
3. None but believers in Christ can be convicted of sin, for no others can know the law which convicts of sin. Therefore those who reject Christ become, at least negatively, righteous by refusing to come where they can be convicted of sin. Thus does the no-Sabbath theory make infidelity better than belief, and rejection of Christ the only means of salvation. It leads to endless absurdities, and the overthrow of all moral government. It contradicts the plain words of God, and puts darkness for light. Its fruitage in human life has been only bitterness and ashes.
SUNDAY OBSERVANCE UNKNOWN TO CHRISTIANITY
BEFORE THE MIDDLE OF THE SECOND CENTURY
Mistaken Notions Concerning the Beginning of Sunday Observance No Sunday Observance in the New Testament Sunday Directly Referred to but Three Times It is Never Spoken of as a Sabbath, nor as Commemorative of Christ's Resurrection The Bible does not State that Christ Rose on Sunday Christ and His Disciples Always Observed the Sabbath The "Change of the Sabbath" Unknown in the New Testament The Sabbath Never Called "Jewish" in the Scriptures, nor by Any Writer until after Paganism had Invaded the Church -Origin of Sunday Observance Found in Paganism First Reference to Sunday Observance about 150 A.D. No Writer of the Early Centuries Claimed Scriptural Reasons for Its Observance Pagan Reasons and Arguments Adduced in Its Support; a Day of "Indulgence to the Flesh" Pretended Scriptural Reasons, ex post facto.
THERE are few if any questions concerning which popular notions and ultimate facts are more at variance than the question of the early observance of Sunday. It is not uncommon for men to assert that "Sunday has been observed as the Christian Sabbath ever since the resurrection of Christ"; while the fact is, that the first authentic and definite statement concerning Sunday observance was made by Justin Martyr as late as 150 A.D. 'Even if we accept the passage quoted from the Didache, the portion of that document in which the reference occurs cannot be placed earlier than 150, and it is probably much later. Since the facts as they appear in the New Testament can be easily obtained, I shall take only space enough to state them briefly.
"The first day of the week," Sunday, is definitely referred to but three times in the New Testament. Each of the Evangelists speaks of the day on which Christ's resurrection was made known to his disciples. These references are all to the same day.(19) The book of Acts has but one reference to Sunday(20); and there is but one in all the Epistles.(21) Three other passages are quoted in favor of Sunday observance.(22)
It is so easy for the reader to examine these passages, and to compare them with popular notions and with what is said here, that I shall be content with the following summary of facts touching Sunday observance in the New Testament:
Six passages are quoted in favor of such observance. Only three of these passages mention the first day of the week in any manner. Neither of them speaks of it as sabbatic, or as commemorative of any event, or sacred, or to be regarded above other days, and it is only by vague and illogical inferences that either of them is made to produce a shadow of proof for such a change. Concerning the other three, it is only supposed by the advocates of the popular theory, that they in some way refer to the first day. To this, therefore, does the "argument from example "come, when carefully examined. The New Testament never speaks of, or hints at, a change of the Sabbath; it contains no notice of any commemorative or sabbatic observance of Sunday. It does tell of the repeated and continued observance of the Sabbath by Christ and His Apostles. Will the reader please examine the Bible to see whether these things are so. Sunday is a myth, as far as the Bible is concerned, and the theory of a "change of the Sabbath by divine authority," had its birth with English Puritanism less than three hundred years ago.
Christ's Resurrection and Sunday
Another popular notion is equally unsupported by New Testament history. The Bible never associates the observance of Sunday, or of any other day, with the resurrection of Christ. The Bible does not state that Christ rose from the grave on Sunday. The most that can be said on this point is, that when the friends of Christ first came to the tomb it was empty. He had risen and gone. Matthew xxviii., i, shows that the first visit was made 'late on the Sabbath," i.e. on Saturday afternoon before sunset, at which time the tomb was empty.(23)
All references to Sunday are fully accounted for on other considerations than that it was a sacred or a commemorative day. New Testament arguments in favor of Sunday observance are all ex post facto; they were developed after the practice had been initiated for other reasons.
The Sabbath in the New Testament
The history of the Sabbath in the New Testament is as much at variance with popular notions as is the history of Sunday. The statement sometimes made that "The Sabbath was never observed after the resurrection of Christ," contains as much error as can be put into that number of words. Since the facts are in the hands of every reader of the New Testament, only a general summary of them is given here.
Collating the facts, and summing up the case as regards the example of Christ and His Apostles, it stands as follows :
1. During the life of Christ, the Sabbath was always observed by Him and by His followers. He corrected the errors and false notions which were held concerning it, but gave no hint that it was to be abrogated.
2. The book of Acts gives a connected history of the recognition and observance of the Sabbath by the Apostles while they were organizing many of the churches spoken of in the New Testament. These references extend over a period of eight or nine years, the last of them being at least twenty years after the resurrection.
3. In all the history of the doings and teachings of the Apostles, there is not the remotest reference to the abrogation of the Sabbath.
Had there been any change made or beginning to be made, or any authority for the abrogation of the Sabbath law, the Apostles must have known it. To claim that there was is therefore to charge them with studiously concealing the truth. And also, with recognizing and calling a day the Sabbath which was not the Sabbath.
Add to these considerations the following facts (a) The latest books of the New Testament, including the Gospel of John, were written about the year ninety-five or later. In none of these is there any trace of the change of the Sabbath, nor is the abrogation of the Sabbath law taught in them.
(b) The Sabbath is mentioned in the New Testament sixty times, and always in its appropriate character.
Thus the law and the gospel are in harmony, an teach that "the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God."
But some will say, "Christ and His Apostles did all this as Jews, simply." If this be true, then Christ lived and taught simply as a Jew and not as the Saviour of the world. On the contrary, He was at war with the false and extravagant notions of Judaism concerning questions of truth and duty. If Christ were not a "Christian," but a "Jew," what becomes of the system which He taught? If His first followers, who perilled all for Him and sealed their faith with their blood, were only Jews, or worse, were dissemblers, doing that which Christians ought not to do, for sake of policy, where shall Christians be found? The assumption dies of its own inconsistency. More than this, New Testament history repeatedly states that the Greeks were taught on the Sabbath the same as the Jews; and in those churches where the Greek element predominated there is no trace of any different teaching or custom on this point. The Jewish Christians kept up their national institutions, for a time, such as circumcision and the passover, while all Christians accepted the Sabbath as a part of the law of God. The popular outcry against the Sabbath as "Jewish" is unscriptural. Christ was in all respects, as regards nationality, a Jew. So were all the writers of the Old Testament, and all the writers of the New Testament. God has given the world no word of inspiration in the Bible from Gentile pen, or Gentile lips. Is the Bible therefore "Jewish"? The Sabbath, if possible, is less Jewish than the Bible. It had its beginning long before a Jew was born. It is God's day marked by His own example, and sanctified by His blessing, for the race of man, beginning when the race began, and can end only when the race shall cease to exist. Christ recognized it under the Gospel as He recognized each of the other eternal laws with which it is associated in the Decalogue; recognize them as the everlasting words of His Father, whose law He came to magnify and fulfil. It is manifestly unjust and unchristian to attempt to thrust out and stigmatize any part of God's truth as "Jewish," when all of God's promises and all Bible truths have come to us through the Hebrew nation.(24)
As we were compelled to go outside the Bible to find the influences which undermined the Decalogue and the Sabbath, so we must seek for the origin of Sunday observance outside of that book.
We find the first mention of such observance, and of reasons therefor, in the same author, Justin, who we have seen was the first to formulate the anti-law and anti-Sabbath doctrines which have already been examined.(25)
This earliest reference to Sunday observance is found in Justin's Apology as follows:
"On the day called Sunday, all who live in cities or in the Country, gather together to one place, and the memoirs of the apostles or the writings of the prophets are read as long as time permits; then when the reader has ceased, the president verbally instructs and exhorts to the imitation of these good things. Then we all rise together and pray, and, as we before said, when our prayer is ended, bread, and wine, and water are brought, and the president in like manner offers prayers and thanksgivings, according to his ability, and the people assent saying Amen; and there is a distribution to each, and a participation of that over which thanks have been given, and to those who are absent a portion is sent by the deacons. And they who are well to do, and willing, give what each thinks fit; and what is collected is deposited with the president, who succours the orphans and widows, and those who, through sickness or any other cause, are in want, and those who are in bonds, and the strangers sojourning among us, and in a word takes care of all who are in need. But Sunday is the day on which we all hold our common assembly, because it is the first day on which God, having wrought a change in the darkness and matter, made the world; and Jesus Christ our Saviour on the same day rose from the dead. For He was crucified on the day before that of Saturn (Saturday); and on the day after that of Saturn which is the day of the Sun, having appeared to His apostles and disciples, He taught them these things, which we have submitted to you also for your consideration."(26)
There is nothing scriptural in the reasons given by Justin; the first is purely fanciful, and is in accord with the prevailing gnostic speculations of those times. His statement that Christ was crucified on Friday is the beginning of a popular error, which has come down, not unchallenged, but largely uninvestigated. Some writers claim that the last clause intends to state that Christ taught His disciples when He first appeared to them, what Justin had written concerning the Sunday; but one has only to read Justin's words to see how entirely unfounded such a claim is. At all events, there is not a word in Scripture to support the reasons adduced by Justin for Sunday observance.
It is important that the reader note carefully what sort of Sunday observance Justin describes. Laying aside all "suppositions," and "inferences," and ex post facto conclusions, we learn from him that at the middle of the second century a form of religious service was held on Sunday. But it is equally evident that there was no sabbatic regard for the day. Sir WILLIAM DOMVILLE summarizes the case as follows:
"This inference appears irresistible when we further consider that Justin, in this part of his Apology, is professedly intending to describe the mode in which Christians observed the Sunday. . . . He evidently intends to give all information requisite to an accurate knowledge of the subject he treats upon. He is even so particular as to tell the Emperor why the Sunday was observed; and he does, in fact, specify every active duty belonging to the day, the Scripture reading, the exhortation, the public prayer, the Sacrament, and the almsgiving: why then should he not also inform the Emperor of the one inactive duty of the day, the duty of abstaining from doing in it any manner of work? The Emperor well knew that such abstinence was the custom of all his Jewish subjects on the Saturday (die Saturni), and could readily have understood it to be the custom of his Christian subjects on the Sunday (die Solis, as Justin calls it in his Apology), and, therefore, if such was the custom of Christians in Justin's time, his description of their Sunday duties was essentially defective. It is not, however, at all probable that he would intend to omit noticing so important a characteristic of the day, as the Sabbatical observance of it, if it was in fact Sabbatically observed. But even were it probable he should intend to omit all mention of it in his Apology to the Emperor, it would be impossible to imagine any sufficient cause for his remaining silent on the subject in his Dialogue with Trypho the Jew; and this whether the Dialogue was real or imaginary, for if the latter, Justin would still, as Dr. Lardner has observed, 'choose to write in character.' . . . The testimony of Justin, therefore, proves most clearly two facts of great importance in the Sabbath controversy: the one, that the Christians in his time observed the Sunday as a prayer day; the other, that they did not observe it as a Sabbath day."(27)
Such is the summary of the case at the year 150 A.D. No-Sabbathism and a form of Sunday observance were born at the same time. Trained in heathen philosophies until manhood, Justin accepted Christianity as a better philosophy than he had before found. Such a man and those like him could scarcely do other than build a system quite unlike apostolic Christianity. That which they did build was a paganized rather than an apostolic type.
Pagan Reasons for Observing Sunday
Pagan philosophy as a source of argument in favor of the observance of Sunday is made still more prominent by CLEMENT of Alexandria, as follows:
"And the Lord's day Plato prophetically speaks of in the tenth book of the Republic, in these words: 'And when seven days have passed to each of them in the meadow, on the eighth they are to set out and arrive in four days.' By the meadow is to be understood the fixed sphere, as being a mild and genial spot, and the locality of the pious; and by the seven days each motion of the seven planets, and the whole practical art which speeds to the end of rest. But after the wandering orbs the journey leads to heaven, that is, to the eighth motion and day. And he says that souls are one on the fourth day, pointing out the passage through the four elements. But the seventh day is recognized as sacred, not by the Hebrews only, but also by the Greeks; according to which the whole world of all animals and plants revolve. Hesiod says of it:
"'The first, and fourth, and seventh day were held sacred.'
"And again:
"'And on the seventh the sun's resplendent orb.'
"And Homer:
"'And on the seventh, then came the sacred day.'
"And:
"'The seventh was sacred.'
"And again:
"'It was the seventh day, and all things were accomplished.'
"And again:
"'And on the seventh morn we leave the stream of Acheron.'
"Callimachus the poet also writes:
"'It was the seventh morn, and they had all things done.'
"And again:
"'Among good days is the seventh day, and the seventh race.'
"And:
"'The seventh is among the prime, and the seventh is perfect.'
"And:
"'Now all the seven were made in starry heaven, In circles shining as the years appear.'
"The Elegies of Solon, too, intensely deify the seventh day. And how? Is it not similar to Scripture when it says, 'Let us remove the righteous man from us, because he is troublesome to us?' When Plato, all but predicting in the economy of salvation, says in the second book of the Republic, as follows: 'Thus he who is constituted just shall be scourged, shall be stretched on the rack, shall be bound, have his eyes put out; and, at last, having suffered all evils, shall be crucified'."(28)
A similar combination of pagan error and wild speculation is found in another of Clement's works, where he discusses reasons for fasting on Wednesday and on Friday, and also considers how one may keep Sunday. Writing of the "True Gnostic," Clement says:
"He knows also the enigmas of the fasting of those days I mean the Fourth and the Preparation. For the one has its name from Hermes, and the other from Aphrodite. He fasts in his life, in respect of covetousness and voluptuousness, from which all the vices grow. For we have already often above shown the three varieties of fornication, according to the apostle love of pleasure, love of money, idolatry. He fasts then, according to the law, abstaining from bad deeds, and according to the perfection of the Gospel, from evil thoughts. Temptations are applied to him, not for his purification, but, as we have said, for the good of his neighbors, if, making trial of toils and pains, he has despised and passed them by.
"The same holds of pleasure. For it is the highest achievement for one who has had trial of it, afterwards to abstain. For what great thing is it, if a man restrains himself in what he knows not? He, in fulfilment of the precept according to the Gospel, keeps the Lord's day, when he abandons an evil disposition, and assumes that of the Gnostic, glorifying the Lord's resurrection in himself. Further also when he has received the comprehension of scientific speculation, he deems that he sees the Lord, directing his eyes towards things invisible, although he seems to look on what he does not wish to look on; chastising the faculty of vision, when he perceives himself pleasurably affected by the application of his eyes; since he wishes to see and hear that alone which concerns him."(29)
Clement on the Sabbath Law
Prominent examples of paganism are found in Clement's Gnostic Exposition of the Decalogue. Discoursing, upon the Fourth Commandment, he says:
"Having reached this point, we must mention these things by the way, since the discourse has turned on the seventh and the eighth. For the eighth may possibly turn out to be properly the seventh, and the seventh manifestly the sixth, and the latter properly the Sabbath, and the seventh a day of work. For the creation of the world was concluded in six days. For the motion of the sun from solstice to solstice is completed in six months, in the course of which, at one time the leaves fall, and at another plants bud and seeds come to maturity. And they say that the embryo is perfected exactly in the sixth month, that is, in one hundred and eighty days in addition to the two and a half, as Polybus the physician relates in his book On the Eight Month, and Aristotle the philosopher in his book On Nature. Hence the Pythagoreans, as I think, reckon six the perfect number, from the creation of the world, according to the prophet, and call it Meseuthys and Marriage, from its being the middle of the even numbers, that is, of ten and two. For it is manifestly at an equal distance from both."(30)
The next paragraph is too gross to appear in this place. Toward the close of this learned (?) "exposition," Clement gives birth to the following curious argument from the Psalms:
"And the blessed David delivers clearly to those who know the mystic account of seven and eight, praising thus: 'Our years were exercised like a spider. The days of our years in them are seventy years; but if in strength, eighty years. And that will be to reign.' That, then, we may be taught that the world was originated, and not suppose that God made it in time, prophecy adds: 'This is the book of the generation, also of the things in them, when they were created in the day that God made heaven and earth.' For the expression, 'when they were created' intimates an indefinite and dateless production. But the expression 'in the day that God made,' that is, in and by which God made 'all things," and 'without which not even one thing was made,' points out the activity exerted by the Son. As David says, 'This is the day which the Lord hath made; let us be glad and rejoice in it'; that is, in consequence of the knowledge imparted by Him, let us celebrate the divine festival: for the Word that throws light on things hidden, and by whom each created thing came into life and being, is called day. And in fine, the Decalogue, by the letter Iota, signifies the blessed name, presenting Jesus, who is the Word."(31)
Pagan nonsense could scarcely go further, and yet this man wielded a prominent influence in developing the doctrine of Sunday Observance.
Tertullian on the Sabbath
TERTULLIAN was a prolific writer, and one not noted for consistency. He taught the abolition of the Sabbath (see Against The Jews, chapter iv.), and refers to the observance of Sunday without giving formal reasons therefore. But incidental references which he makes show how the Sunday, although it had then come to be called the "Lord's Day," still bore the heathen characteristics. Witness the following:
"The Holy Spirit upbraids the Jews with their holydays. 'Your Sabbaths, and new moons, and ceremonies,' says He, 'My soul hateth.' By us, to whom Sabbaths are strange, and the new moons and festivals formerly beloved by God, the Saturnalia and New Years and Midwinter's festivals and Matronalia are frequented presents come and go New-Year's Gifts games join their noise banquets join their din! Oh, better fidelity of the nations to their own sect, which claims no solemnity of the Christians for itself! Not the Lord's day, not Pentecost, even if they had known them, would they have shared with us: for they would not fear lest they would seem to be Christians. We are not apprehensive least we seem to be heathens! If any indulgence is to be granted to the flesh, you have it. I will not say your own days, but more too; for to the heathens, each festive day occurs but once annually; you have a festive day every eighth day. Call out the individual solemnities of the nations and set them out into a row, they will not be able to make up a Pentecost."(32)
Here we have the native character of the Sunday truly set forth; a day of "indulgence to the flesh." Such was the legitimate, the unavoidable fruitage of this semi-pagan festivalism, a fruitage which poisoned the Church rapidly and almost fatally.
It is enough to add under this head, that no writer of the first three hundred years gives, or attempts to give, a scriptural reason for observing Sunday. There are no such reasons to give.
STATE RELIGION A PAGAN INSTITUTION
Christ's Attitude toward the State The Roman Conception of Religion as a Department of the State Roman Civil Law Created and Regulated All Religious Duties Effect of the Pagan Doctrine of Religious Syncretism on Christianity The Emperor a Demi-God, Entitled to Worship, and, ex officio, the Supreme Authority in Religion The Deep Corruption of Roman Morals and Social Life under Pagan State Religion.
THREE fundamental points at which Christianity was corrupted by heathenism have been examined. It remains to consider another which was not less fundamental, and has not been less persistent viz., the Union of Christianity with the State.
Christ's Attitude Toward the State
Christ taught the infinite worth of man as an individual. The divine priesthood of every believer in Christ, and his absolute spiritual kingship over himself, under God, is a fundamental doctrine of the Gospel. On such a platform, Christ proclaimed the absolute separation of Church and State. "My kingdom is not of this world" was the keynote in His proclamation. His kingdom knew neither Jew nor Greek, Roman nor Egyptian, bondman nor freeman. Ethnic distinctions and lines of caste were unknown to the world's Redeemer. Wherever a heart bowed in simple faith and loyal obedience, there Christ's kingdom was set up. Placed alongside the state-church theory of Rome, the doctrine of Christ's kingdom was noonday by the side of midnight. It was a diamond among pebbles. It was the proclamation of a brotherhood all-embracing and eternal. This kingdom rendered unto Caesar the little that was due him, and demanded the fullest and highest allegiance to the invisible but not unknown God. It sought only simple protection from the civil power, and patiently suffered wrong, even unto death, when this was denied. Such a kingdom found its first adherents among those who were least entangled in the meshes of the state religions, and whose hearts opened most loyal to the one God, and His Son, the Christ. These were naturally the common people, who heard gladly, and entered joyfully into the heavenly citizenship. Thus the Church of Christ, like Himself, was born among the lowly, and wholly independent of the state. Such a spiritual kingdom could not be brought under the control of the civil power, and that a pagan power, without being corrupted, if not destroyed.
Roman Conception of Religion
The reader will be better prepared to understand how Christianity became corrupted along this line, by considering the genius of the Roman nation, and its conception of religion. The idea of law as the embodiment of absolute power pervaded the Roman mind. Men were important only as citizens. Separate from the state, man was nothing. "To be a Roman, was greater than a king."
Every personal right, every interest was subservient to the state. This conception of power was the source of Roman greatness, prowess, and success. It conscripted the legions, conquered the world, and made all roads lead to Rome. Previous to Christianity, all religion was ethnic. To the Roman, religion was a part of the civil code. It was a system of contracts between men and the gods, through the civil law. The head of the State was, ex officio, the head of the Department of Religion. There was no place in heathen theories for the Gospel idea of the Church.
Speaking on this point, Dr. SCHAFF says:
"Of a separation of religion and politics, of the spiritual power from the temporal, heathen antiquity knew nothing, because it regarded religion itself only from a natural point of view, and subjected it to the purposes of the all ruling state, the highest known form of human society.
"The Egyptian kings, as Plutarch tells us, were at the same time priests, or were received into the priesthood at their election. In Greece the civil magistrate had supervision of the priests and sanctuaries. In Rome, after the time of Numa, this supervision was intrusted to a senator, and afterward united with the imperial office. All the pagan emperors, from Augustus to Julian the Apostate, were at the same time supreme pontiffs (Pontifices Maximi), the heads of the state religion, emperor-popes. As such they could not only perform all priestly functions, even to offering sacrifices, when superstition or policy prompted them to do so, but they also stood at the head of the highest sacerdotal college (of fifteen or more Pontifices), which in turn regulated and superintended the three lower classes of priests (the Epulones, Quindecemviri, and Augures), the temples and altars, the sacrifices, divinations, feasts and ceremonies, the exposition of the Sibylline books, the calendar, in short, all public worship, and in part even the affairs of marriage and inheritance."(33)
That Christianity must needs become paganized if it became a religion of the state, is shown further by the following, from an editor of Justinian's Institutes:
"What was most peculiar in the religion of Rome was its intimate connection with the civil polity. The heads of religion were not a priestly caste, but were citizens, in all other respects like their fellows, except that they were invested with peculiar sacred offices. The king was at the head of the religious body, and beneath him were augurs and other functionaries of the ceremonies of religion. The whole body of the populus had a place in the religious system of the state. The mere fact of birth in one of the familiae forming part of a gens gave admittance to a sacred circle which was closed to all besides. Those in this circle were surrounded by religious ceremonies from their cradle to their grave. Every important act of their life was sanctioned by solemn rites. Every division and subdivision of the state to which they belonged had its own peculiar ceremonies. The individual, the family, the gens, were all under the guardianship of their respective tutelar deities. Every locality with which they were familiar was sacred to some patron god. The calendar was marked out by the services of religion. The pleasure of the gods arranged the times of business and leisure; and a constantly superintending Providence watched over the councils of the state, and showed, by signs which the wise could understand, approval or displeasure of all that was undertaken."(34)
The fundamental difference between New Testament Christianity and the Roman idea of religion is further shown by the following from Reville and Tiele:
REVILLE says:
"In Rome religious tradition was an affair of the state, like the priesthood itself. The senate was by right its guardian. That body legislated for religion as for everything else; and when the Greco-Roman paganism persecuted, it did so from essentially political motives."(35)
TIELE says :
"Much greater weight was attached by the practical Roman to the cultus than to the doctrines of religion. This was the one point of supreme importance; in his view the truly devout man was he who punctually performed his religious obligations, who was pious according to law. There was a debt to be paid to the gods, which must be discharged, but it was settled if the letter of the contract was fulfilled, and the symbol was given in place of the reality. The animistic conception that the gods might be employed as instruments for securing practical advantages, lies at the basis of the whole Roman cultus. In the earliest times, therefore, it was quite simple, so far as regards the absence of images or temples, but it was at the same time exceedingly complicated and burdened with all kinds of ceremonies and symbolic actions, and the least neglect destroyed the efficacy of the sacrifice. This necessitated the assistance of priests acquainted with the whole ritual, not to serve as mediators, for the approach to the deity was open to all, but to see that pious action failed in no essential element. . . . Everything was regulated with precision by the government, and the fact that the highest of the priests was always under the control of the state, prevented the rise of a priestly supremacy, the absence of which in Greece was due to other causes; but the consequence was that the Roman religion remained dry and formal and was external rather than inward. Even the purity (castitas) on which great stress was laid, was only sacerdotal, and was attained by lustration, sprinkling, and fumigation, and the great value attached to prayer, so that a single error had to be atoned for as a neglect, had its basis in the superstitious belief that it possessed a high magic power."(36)
Religious Syncretism
The prevailing tendency to religious syncretism in the Roman empire paved the way for corrupting Christianity by union with the State.
The doctrine of courtesy in religious matters had risen in the Roman mind, to a theory of religious syncretism, which offered recognition to other religions outside the Roman. The religions of the Orient and of Egypt already had a place and protection at Rome. These, like the citizens of the lands whence they came, were taken in charge by the laws of the Mistress of the World. By the opening of the fourth century, Christianity had gained such influence and standing that, although it had no claims as an ethnic religion, it was too promising a waif to be longer unnoticed. The great empire was conscious of present decline and coming decay. New blood was an imperative necessity; perhaps this new religion, that had given such power of endurance to its votaries, would furnish the needful help.
This recognition, at first, was not in any true sense toleration, nor a full recognition of the freedom of conscience. It was rather such recognition as the foreman gives to the apprentice: "Come in and show what you can do." In this recognition Rome adopted no new policy, neither gave evidence of any genuine faith in Apostolic Christianity. As late as 321 A.D., not more than one-twentieth part of the people were Christians; and Constantine erroneously called "The first Christian emperor, did not make an open confession of Christianity until he lay on his death-bed in 337 A.D. Christianity was taken under the protection of the empire, to be cared for and controlled according to the genius of Roman history and Roman law. The "Christian emperors," from Constantine to Gratian (312-383), retained the title of "Pontifex Maximus." The visiting of heathen temple for religious purposes, and the performance of heathen rites in private, were not prohibited by imperial law until 391-393 A.D. by Theodosius. No were these laws then enforced where the heathen element was in the ascendancy. Theodosius himself was not deemed an enemy of the old religion; he stood in such favor that the senate enrolled him among the gods, after his death, in 395 A.D.
Instead of developing normally, after the simple New Testament model, the Roman church was modelled largely after the Roman empire. The union once begun, political intrigue and religious degeneracy followed in rapid succession. All civil legislation in matters of religion pushes the divine authority aside, and substitutes the human. This creates conscience, if at all, toward the state alone, and so remains on heathen ground.
Thus, by descending from the high ground of the Apostolic period, from the immediate control and direction of the Holy Spirit, to the control of a heathen state-system, and being already weakened by the false philosophies which had driven out the authority of the Word, Christianity was turned far away from its true status and character. The legislation which followed, concerning festivals, ceremonies, and doctrines, was a medley of paganism and Christianity, truth and error, widely removed from the Sermon on the Mount, and the epistles of Paul. The kernel of Papal error, and the fountain which was the source of the Dark Ages, are both involved in the fundamental perversions of Apostolic Christianity.
Since the emperor was, ex officio, the head of the Department of Religion, it was comparatively easy to accomplish the amalgamation of the different systems. Gibbon gives an outline picture of this tendency as it prevailed during the third century. It was the more destructive to Christianity because of the degraded character of the emperors and those who controlled the public life of the empire. The emperor of whom Gibbon writes below, is described by Schaff as follows:
"The abandoned youth El-Gabal, or Heliogabalus (218-222), who polluted the throne by the blackest vices and follies, tolerated all the religions in the hope of at last merging them in his favorite Syrian worship of the sun, with its abominable excesses. He himself was a priest of the god of the sun, and thence took his name.
"His far more worthy cousin and successor, Alexander Severus (222-235), was addicted to a higher kind of religious eclecticism and syncretism, a pantheistic hero-worship. He placed the busts of Abraham and Christ in his domestic chapel, with those of Orpheus, Apollonius of Tyana, and the better Roman emperors, and had the Gospel rule, 'As ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them,' engraven on the walls of his palace and on public monuments. His mother, Julia Mammaea, was a patroness of Origen."(37)
GIBBON says of this period:
"The sun was worshipped at Emesa, under the name of Elagabalus, and under the form of a black conical stone, which, as it was universally believed, had fallen from heaven on that sacred place. To this protecting deity Antoninus, not without some reason, ascribed his elevation to the throne. The display of superstitious gratitude was the only serious business of his reign. The triumph of the god of Emesa over all the religions of the earth, was the great object of his zeal and vanity; and the appellation of Elagabalus (for he presumed, as pontiff and favorite to adopt that sacred name) was dearer to him than all the titles of Imperial greatness. In a solemn procession through the streets of Rome, the way was strewed with gold-dust; the black stone, set in precious gems, was placed on a chariot, drawn by six milk-white horses, richly caparisoned. The pious emperor held the reins, and supported by his ministers, moved slowly backwards, that he might perpetually enjoy the felicity of the divine presence. In a magnificent temple raised on the Palatine Mount, the sacrifices of the god Elagabalus were celebrated with every circumstance of cost and solemnity. The richest wines, the most extraordinary victims, and the rarest aromatics, were profusely consumed on his altar. Around the altar, a chorus of Syrian damsels performed their lascivious dances to the sound of barbarian music, whilst the gravest personages of the state and army, clothed in long Phoenician tunics, officiated in the meanest functions, with affected zeal and secret indignation.
"To this temple, as to the common center of religious worship, the Imperial fanatic attempted to remove the Ancilia, the Palladium, and all the sacred pledges of the faith of Numa. A crowd of inferior deities attended in various stations the majesty of the god of Emesa; but his court was still imperfect, till a female of distinguished rank was admitted to his bed. Pallas had been first chosen for his consort; but, as it was dreaded lest her warlike terrors might affright the soft delicacy of a Syrian deity, the Moon, adored by the Africans under the name of Astarte, was deemed a more suitable companion for the Sun. Her image, with the rich offerings of her temple as a marriage portion, was transported with solemn pomp from Carthage to Rome, and the day of these mystic nuptials was a general festival in the capital and throughout the empire."(38)
Elagabalus reigned from 218 to 222 A.D. The foregoing facts show that the empire was practically prostituted, and given over to the lowest forms of sun-worship during his reign. It was the triumph of Orientalism in the West. The same devotion to sun-worship appears in other emperors, toward the close of the third century.
Aurelian reigned from 270 to 276 A.D. Speaking of the magnificent "Triumph" of this emperor in 274 A.D., Gibbon says:
"So long and so various was the pomp of Aurelian's triumph, that, although it opened with the dawn of day, the slow majesty of the procession ascended not the Capitol before the ninth hour; and it was already dark when the emperor returned to the palace. The festival was protracted by theatrical representations, the games of the circus, the hunting of wild beasts, combats of gladiators, and naval engagements. Liberal donatives were distributed to the army, and people, and several institutions agreeable or beneficial to the city, contributed to perpetuate the glory of Aurelian.
"A considerable portion of his oriental spoils was consecrated to the gods of Rome; the Capitol, and every other temple, glittered with the offerings of his ostentatious piety; and the temple of the Sun alone received above fifteen thousand pounds of gold. This last was a magnificent structure, erected by the emperor on the side of the Quirinal hill, and dedicated, soon after the triumph, to that deity whom Aurelian adored as the parent of his life and fortunes. His mother had been an inferior priestess in a chapel of the Sun; a peculiar devotion to the god of Light was a sentiment which the fortunate peasant imbibed in his infancy; and every step of his elevation, every victory of his reign, fortified superstition by gratitude."(39)
Speaking of Diocletian, who reigned from 284 to 305, MILMAN says:
"Diocletian himself, though he paid so much deference to the older faith as to assume the title of Jovius, as belonging to the Lord of the world, yet, on his accession, when he would exculpate himself from all concern in the murder of his predecessor Numerian, appealed in the face of the army to the all-seeing deity of the sun. It is the oracle of Apollo of Miletus, consulted by the hesitating emperor, which is to decide the fate of Christianity. The metaphorical language of Christianity had unconsciously lent strength to this new adversary; and, in adoring the visible orb, some, no doubt, supposed that they were not departing far from the worship of the 'Sun of Righteousness'."
In a footnote, Milman quotes:
"Hermogenes, one of the older heresiarchs, applied the text, 'He has placed his tabernacle in the sun,' to Christ, and asserted that Christ had put off his body in the sun."(40)
Dr. GEIKIE touches the point, and shows in a few words how Christianity yielded to paganism and its corrupting results; he says:
"Helios the sun, was the great object of worship, and so deep-rooted was this idolatry that the early Christian missionaries knew no other way of overthrowing it than by changing it into the name of Elias, and turning the temples into churches dedicated to him."(41)
Two important factors touching the union of Christianity and the state are now before the reader.
1. Under the Roman empire all recognized religions were controlled by the civil law. The persecution of Christians was based upon the idea that their worship was illegal; or rather that their refusal to worship the national gods, according to the legal cultus, was an offence against the commonwealth.
2. Sun-worship in its higher and lower forms was the prevailing and popular cult at Rome in the third and fourth centuries of Christian history.
The emperors were devotees of this cult. It was therefore a foregone necessity that when Christianity grew strong enough to be entitled to recognition rather than persecution, it should be adopted by the state, and further commingled with the prevailing sun-worship. The next chapter will show how this was accomplished.
THE CONTROL OF CHRISTIANITY BY THE STATE
UNDER CONSTANTINE AND HIS SUCCESSORS
A New Epoch in the Paganizing of Christianity Paganism Seeking a New God, Strong enough to Save the Empire Constantine not a "Christian Emperor," but Superstitious, Time-Serving, and Ambitious Murdering his Kindred while Promoting Christianity as a rising Political Influence Seeking Christianity mainly for Ambitious Ends Professing Christianity only on his Death-Bed Making the Most of Both Worlds Constantine Corrupted and Perverted Christianity More than he Aided it.
THE opening of the fourth century marks a new era in the process by which paganism poisoned Christianity, by applying to it the pagan theory set forth in the last chapter. Though sadly weakened and corrupted by these influences, Christianity was a growing power in the empire. On the other hand, paganism was declining, and the fortunes of the disintegrating empire seemed to be going down with the national religious cult. Pagan superstition looked upon all the fortunes of the empire as the direct work of the gods, and as misfortunes piled up around the empire, it was natural to think that the old gods were deserting it, and that new gods must be sought. When the empire became subdivided under different rulers, the rivalry between them, and the varying success which attended the efforts of each, naturally associated success and failure with the gods to whom each was devoted. The firmness of the Christians under persecution was looked upon by the pagans as evidence that the Christian's God had great power to help those who worshipped him. In this way many were brought to consider the idea of adding this God to the catalogue of those whom they already worshipped.
The severe edicts of Diocletian against the Christians, issued in 303 A.D., spread desolation far and wide. In Gaul, Britain, and Spain, where Constantius Chlorus and Constantine his son reigned, the edict was tamely enforced, they preferring to favor the Christians. The bitterness of the persecutions in other parts of the empire inflamed the zeal of Christians, and martyrdom was sought by many, not so much from calm faith as from fanatical zeal.(42) This cruel persecution was the last direct effort of paganism to destroy Christianity by the sword. The fortunes which befell the leaders in the persecution increased superstitious regard for the God of the martyrs, who was thought to be like the gods of the pagans, only more powerful.
Galerius, who was the leader in the horrid work, being striken by a terrible disease, was overcome with fear, and, in connection with Constantine and Licinius, ordered the persecutions to cease, by an edict in 311 A.D. This edict was to the effect that: since punishment had not reclaimed the Christians, they might now hold their assemblies, providing they did not disturb the order of the state. The real animus of the edict is seen in its closing words, in which Galerius suggested that "after this manifestation of grace, Christians ought to pray to their God for the welfare of the Emperors and of the State." Constantine attributed the military success which finally made him sole ruler in 323 A.D. to the help of the Christians' God. All parties looked upon the issue as a political struggle between Jupiter and Jehovah, in which the latter was victorious.
BOISSIER, a late, learned French writer, says:
"Constantine recalled that of all the princes that he had known, the only one who had lived prosperously, without eclipse, was his father Constance, who had protected the Christians; while nearly all those who had persecuted them had ended their lives miserably."(43)
Character of Constantine
Constantine has been called the "first Christian Emperor"; how unjustly will be seen in what follows. In a certain sense, Christianity ascended the throne of the Caesars with Constantine. It was a political triumph, but a spiritual defeat. That we may the better understand the case, the reader needs to look carefully into the character of this first representative of the pagan state church policy, and of the subordinating of Christianity to the political power. The reader will be permitted to make this survey mainly through the eyes of other writers, which I think will be more satisfactory than any picture that I might draw.
KILLEN thus summarizes the character of Constantine:
"The personal conduct of Constantine in advanced life did not exhibit Christianity as a religion fitted to effect a marked improvement in the spirit and character. In A.D. 326, he put to death his son Crispus, a youth of the highest promise, who had in some way disturbed his suspicious temper. His nephew Licinius and his own wife Fausta shared the same fate. His growing passion for gaudy dress betrayed pitiable vanity in an old man of sixty; and towards the end of his reign, the general extravagance of his expenditure led to an increase of taxation of which his subjects complained. He desired to be a dictator of the Church, rather than a disciple; and with a view to share its privileges without submitting to its discipline, deferred his baptism until the near approach of death. He then received the ordinance from the Arian bishop of Nicomedia.
"The defects in the religious character of Constantine greatly impaired his moral influence. Though he did much to promote the extension of the visible Church, his reign forms an era in the history of ecclesiastical corruption. His own Christianity was so loose and accommodating that it seemed to consist chiefly in the admiration of a new ritual; and the courtiers who surrounded him and who complimented him by the adoption of his creed, seldom seemed to feel that it taught the necessity of personal reformation. All at once, the profession of the Gospel became fashionable; crowds of merely nominal converts presented themselves at the baptismal font; and many even entered the clerical office who had no higher object in view than an honorable or a lucrative position. Ecclesiastical discipline was relaxed; and that the heathen might be induced to conform to the religion of the emperor, many of their ceremonies were introduced into the worship of the Church. The manner in which Constantine intermeddled with ecclesiastical affairs was extremely objectionable. He undertook not only to preach, but also to dictate to aged and learned ministers. Had any other individual who had never been baptized appeared in the Nicene synod, and ventured to give counsel to the assembled fathers, he would have been speedily rebuked for his presumption; but all were so delighted to see a great prince among them, that there was a general unwillingness to challenge his intrusion. He sometimes indeed declared, that he left spiritual matters to Church courts; but his conduct demonstrated how little he observed such an arrangement. He convened synods by his own authority; took a personal share in their discussions; required their members to appear before him, and submit their proceedings to his review; and inflicted on them civil penalties when their official acts did not meet his approval. Had Constantine given his sanction and encouragement to the Church, and yet permitted her to pursue her noble mission in the full enjoyment of the right of self government, he might have contributed greatly to promote her safe and vigorous development; but by usurping the place of her chief ruler, and bearing down with the weight of the civil power on all who refused to do his pleasure, he secularized her spirit, robbed her of her freedom, and converted her divine framework into a piece of political machinery."(44)
Rev. E. EDWIN HALL, who was for many years chaplain of the American Legation at Rome, Italy, also chaplain of the American Church at Florence, made a careful study of the early history and of the modern characteristics of Roman Catholicism. In July, 1889, a paper from his pen was published in the Outlook, a Sabbath quarterly from which the following is taken:
"Soon after the so-called conversion of Constantine, when he became sole emperor, the Church entered on its apostasy from the primitive simplicity and purity which marked its earlier history. Pagans in vast multitudes pressed into the Christian fold, bringing with them old practices and customs, and filling the places of Christian worship with the pageantry and the ornaments which characterized the worship of the gods in heathen temples. These unconverted millions became only nominally Christian, impressing their character together with the doctrines, rites and forms of pagan religion upon the Christian Church. Gibbon, speaking of these innovations, shows that: 'Rites and ceremonies were introduced which seemed most powerfully to affect the senses of the people. If in the beginning of the 5th century Tertullian or Lactantius had been suddenly raised from the dead, to assist at the festival of some popular saint or martyr, they would have gazed with astonishment and indignation on the profane spectacle which had succeeded the pure and spiritual worship of a Christian congregation. As soon as the doors of the church were thrown open, they must have been offended at the smoke of incense, the perfume of flowers, the glare of lamps and tapers which diffused at noonday, in their opinions, a gaudy, superfluous, and sacrilegious light. They would see a prostrate crowd of worshipers devoutly kissing the walls and pavement of the sacred edifice, their fervent prayers directed to the bones, the blood, or ashes of the saints, the walls covered with votive offerings, representing the favors received from saints in answer to their prayers and illustrating the abuse of indiscreet or idolatrous devotion, in recognition of the image, the attributes, and the miracles of the tutelar saint, which had the same value to their mind as a local divinity in the pagan religion. The ministers of various names in the Catholic Church imitated the profane model which they should have been impatient to destroy. So 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 acts of their vanquished rivals'.(45)
"From that time the worship of the Roman Catholic Church, in its forms and ceremonies, has been more clearly identified with the paganism of ancient Rome than with the religion of the New Testament. The customs of pagan religion were only baptized with Christian names. Gregory the Great in the latter part of the 6th century, ignoring the sovereignty of the Holy Spirit and the power of the Gospel, directed the Monk Augustine, whom he sent to convert the idolaters of England, 'not to suspend or abolish the pagan festivals, nor the customs of their worship, but rather retain them, contenting himself with substituting for the names of false gods, the names of saints borne by their temples, and whose relics were deposited in them'."(46)
F.W. MAURICE aptly describes the Christianity of Constantine's time as follows:
"And to the gloss of civilisation had been added the gloss of Christianity. The Emperor had believed, when other help was failing, that in the might of the Cross he might still conquer. The sign was indeed there, but it was marked upon the standard, not written upon the hearts, of those rulers of the world. They saw not what it meant; how it interpreted and crowned all that had been great in their history hitherto; how it separated the real great from the real little; how it sanctified all those feelings of obedience, duty, reverence for unseen law, self-devotion, by which the city had risen from nothing; how it poured contempt upon dominion, except as an instrument by which the highest might serve the lowest, upon glory, except as it grew out of humiliation, and was the exaltation of man above himself. The civilised Christian Roman had lost the heart, the reverence, the faith which belonged to his rude Pagan ancestors; that Christianity and civilisation might be victorious, the miserable patron of both were swept away."(47)
Speaking of the effect of Constantine's attitude in favoring Christianity as a rising influence in the nation, MERIVALE says:
"We may suppose, indeed, that the favor thus unexpectedly showered on the new faith by the Imperial government would tend inevitably to reverse the proportion of the two persuasions, or rather of the two parties, which now divided the Roman world. Powerful as the example of rulers has always been in such matters, it would never, perhaps, be more so than at the moment when paganism, corrupt and effete, had lost all the spirit of a real faith, and when, as we shall see, Christianity was only too ready to accept overtures to the easy compromise which its rivals soon began to offer it. Nevertheless, the progress of the Church of Christ was really slower and less complete than might have been expected. Some allowance, as we have seen, must be made for the spirit of pique and the wounded pride of a class so deeply prejudiced on all matters of sentiment as the magnates of Roman society. But paganism, it must be. added, developed at her last gasp a new principle of vitality, and nerved herself for a desperate conflict along her whole line."(48)
Concerning the overthrow of paganism, as late as the time of Gratian, 375-383 A.D., Merivale says:
"It seems clear that, as might indeed be expected, the earliest edicts for the confiscation of the temple-endowments under Gratian, big and stern as they look in the codes or statute-book, were practically of little effect. If many temples were really closed, as we may readily believe, though certainly by no means all or the greater number of them, we must suppose that the lordly holders of their property contrived to retain the enjoyment of the funds, while they, not unwillingly perhaps, relieved themselves from the services for which these funds had been originally given. Theodosius found the pagan priesthood despoiled of their wealth in name only, and however earnest he might be in his Christian profession, he long abstained, both in policy and mercy, from asserting the full authority of previous enactments."(49)
ALZOG, a modern Roman Catholic Church historian, though laboring hard to set forth Constantine as the first Christian emperor, and a "saint" of the Roman Catholic Church, is forced to say:
"The law said to have been published by Constantine, A.D. 335, prohibiting all pagan sacrifices, is of doubtful authenticity, and, if authentic, is of very little importance, for like a great many others of a similar nature, it was never enforced. The execution of such laws met with a determined resistance in many places, and particularly at Rome. Constantine, although professing to be a Christian, lived pretty much the same sort of life he had lived while a pagan, and even stained his reputation by the commission of deeds of murder.
"Licinius was executed A.D. 324, and Licinianus, his son, who appears to have excited the fears of Constantine, shortly afterward met the fate of his father. Constantine also had Crispus, his son by his first wife, Minervina, apprehended in the midst of a solemn festival and exiled him to the shore of Istria, where he perished by an obscure death. Learning afterward, as it is supposed, that Fausta, his second wife, the daughter of Maximianus Herculeus, had been instrumental in causing the death of his brave and illustrious son Crispus, he had her strangled in a bath of warm water heated to an insupportable temperature. It may be that these murders, in which the designing policy of Fausta played so conspicuous a part, prompted Constantine to delay his entrance into the Church, and to put off his baptism till the hour of his death. He was, moreover, influenced by the prevailing prejudice relative to the sacrament of baptism, and also wished to be baptized in the river Jordan, which, however, 'God did not permit'."(50)
Dr. SCHAFF describes Constantine's relation to Christianity as follows:
"Constantine adopted Christianity first as a superstition, and put it by the side of his heathen superstition, till finally, in his conviction, the Christian vanquished the pagan, though without itself developing into a pure and enlightened faith.
"At first Constantine, like his father, in the spirit of the Neo-Platonic syncretism of dying heathendom, reverenced all the Gods as mysterious powers; especially Apollo, the god of the sun, to whom in the year 308 he presented munificent gifts. Nay, so late as the year 321 he enjoined regular consultation of the soothsayers in public misfortunes, according to ancient heathen usage; even later, he placed his new residence, Byzantium, under the protection of the God of the Martyrs and the heathen goddess of Fortune; and down to the end of his life he retained the title and the dignity of a Pontifex Maximus, or high-priest of the heathen hierarchy. His coins bore on the one side the letters of the name of Christ, on the other the figure of the Sun-God, and the inscription "Sol invictus." Of course these inconsistencies maybe referred also to policy and accommodation to the toleration edict in 313. Nor is it difficult to adduce parallels of persons who in passing from Judaism to Christianity, or from Romanism to Protestantism have so wavered between their old and their new position that they might be claimed by both. With his every victory over his pagan rivals, Galerius, Maxentius, and Licinius, his personal leaning to Christianity and his confidence in the magic power of the sign of the cross increased; yet he did not formally renounce heathenism and did not receive baptism until in 337 he was laid upon the bed of death. . . .
"He was far from being so pure and so venerable as Eusebius, blinded by his favor to the Church, depicts him in his bombastic and almost dishonestly eulogistic biography, with the evident intention of setting him up as a model for all future Christian princes. It must, with all regret, be conceded that his progress in the knowledge of Christianity was not a progress in the practice of its virtues. His love of display and his prodigality, his suspiciousness and his despotism, increased with his power.
"The very brightest period of his reign is stained with gross crimes, which even the spirit of the age and the policy of an absolute monarch cannot excuse. After having reached upon the bloody path of war the goal of his ambition, the sole possession of the empire, yea, in the very year in which he summoned the great council Nicaea he ordered the execution of his conquered rival and brother-in-law Licinius, in breach of a solemn promise of mercy. (324). Not satisfied with this he caused soon afterwards, from political suspicion, the death of the young Licinius, his nephew, a boy of hardly eleven years. But the worst of all is the murder of his eldest son, Crispus, in 326, who had incurred suspicion of political conspiracy and of adulterous and incestuous purposes towards his step-mother, Fausta, but is generally regarded as innocent. . . .
"At all events, Christianity did not produce in Constantine a thorough moral transformation. He was concerned more to advance the outward social position of the Christian religion than to further its inward mission. He was praised and censured in turn by the Christians and pagans, the orthodox and the Arians, as they successively experienced his favor or dislike. He bears some resemblance to Peter the Great both in his public acts and his private character, by combining great virtues and merits with monstrous crimes, and he probably died with the same consolation as Peter whose last words were: 'I trust that in respect of the good I have striven to do my people (the Church), God will pardon my sins.' It is quite characteristic of his piety that he turned the sacred nails of the Saviour's cross, which Helena brought from Jerusalem, the one into the bit of his war horse, the other into an ornament of his helmet. Not a decided, pure, and consistent character, he stands on the line of transition between two ages and two religions; and his life bears plain marks of both. When at last on his deathbed he submitted to baptism with the remark: 'Now let us cast away all duplicity,' he honestly admitted the conflict of two antagonistic principles which swayed his private character and public life."(51)
After such an array of testimony, which might be extended much farther if space would permit, it seems unnecessary to say more than this: the personal character and the political attitude of Constantine make it impossible to think of him as a "Christian Emperor." He adopted and used the paganized Christianity of his time for personal ends, rather than because of true piety. The political aid which he gave it was overbalanced many times by the destruction of its best spiritual interests. Judged from the standpoint of the Bible and the facts of history, Constantine was the corrupter of Christianity, not its defender.
CONSTANTINE'S LEGISLATION CONCERNING THE PAGAN SUNDAY
All his Tolerative Legislation Essentially Pagan Christians did not Seek for Sunday Laws The first Sunday Law, 321 A.D., Pagan in Every Particular Essentially Identical with Existing Laws Concerning Other Days Legislation against Heathen Religions Feeble and Unenforced Constantine not a " Christian Prince."
THE representative legislation of Constantine, with reference to Christianity, was pagan both as to its genius and form. The various edicts in favor of Christians contained little or nothing of true liberty of conscience. They were the steps by which Christianity, already paganized, was recognized, and gradually raised to a dominant place among the legal religions. This accorded with the prevailing syncretism, and the policy which Rome had always exercised toward foreign religions. On the other hand, the Emperor, still acting as Pontifex Maximus, and long before he was baptized into the fellowship of the Church, became its dictator. He convened and controlled the famous council at Nice (325 A.D.) while his hands were red with the blood of his kindred, whom he slew lest they might come between him and his ambition to be sole emperor.
The decisions of the Council of Nice mark the beginning of centuries in which imperial law determined what should be called Christianity, what orthodoxy, and what heterodoxy. The Bible was not the standard of faith, or practice. Traditions, imperial decrees, the decisions of councils called and dictated by the imperial power, determined the practice of the Church, and formulated her faith. This will be shown more in detail farther on. Meanwhile we pause to examine the character of one of Constantine's earliest laws, which has left a lasting influence on all Christian history his "Sunday Edict" of 321 A.D. It is the more important to do this, since the question of Sunday laws and their enforcement is now at the front, and it is well that the reader understand the source from which Sunday legislation sprung. This edict of Constantine is the beginning of Sunday legislation, and it is not difficult to determine the influences which gave it birth. There is no evidence that such legislation was either sought or desired by Christians. They formed but a small fragment of the population of the empire, and in so far as the principles of New Testament Christianity remained, they forbade all such legislation.
The power to appoint holy days rested in the Emperor. His voice was supreme in all such matters. Although history has been carefully searched, there is no trace that any influence was brought to bear upon Constantine, by any person, any event, any custom which represented the Christians, or in which they were interested, to induce him to enact a Sunday law. There is every evidence that he acted in his proper capacity as Pontifex Maximus, and whatever notions may have entered into his determination to promulgate the edict, they could not have been Christian. On the other hand, there were abundant reasons why he should begin legislation in favor of Sunday. It was Apollo's day. Apollo was the patron deity of Constantine. He was the beautiful Sun-god, and Constantine was proud of his own personal beauty, because of which his fawning courtiers were accustomed to liken him to Apollo. The sun-worship cult had been popular for a long time. Any favor shown to it would strengthen his influence with the "first families" of the empire. It was the settled policy of the emperors to overcome the discontent of the masses, under increasing taxation and burdens, by increasing holidays, games, and enjoyments. To exalt the day of the Sun at such a time was a stroke of policy wholly in keeping with the universal practice of Constantine. The general character of the man, his personal devotion to the Sun-god, and the surrounding demands, furnish all needful reasons for an act of legislation which was pagan, as we shall see, from centre to circumference. This famous edict runs as follows:
"Let all judges, and all city people, and all tradesmen, rest upon the Venerable Day of the Sun. But let those dwelling in the country freely and with full liberty attend to the culture of their fields; since it frequently happens that no other day is so fit for the sowing of grain, or the planting of vines; hence the favorable time should not be allowed to pass, lest the provisions of heaven be lost."(52)
This was issued on the seventh of March, A.D. 321. In June of the same year it was modified so as to allow the manumission of slaves on Sunday. The reader will notice that this edict makes no reference to the day as a Sabbath, as the Lord's day, or as in any way connected with Christianity. Neither is it an edict addressed to Christians. Nor is the idea of any moral obligation or Christian duty found in it. It is merely the edict of a heathen emperor, addressed to all his subjects, Christian and heathen, who dwelt in cities, and were tradesmen, or officers of justice, commanding them to refrain from their business on the "venerable day" of the god whom Constantine most adored, and to whom he loved in his pride to be compared. There are several distinct lines of argument which prove that this edict was a pagan rather than a Christian document.
On the following day Constantine issued an edict with reference to consulting the pagan soothsayers in case of public misfortune, which, like the Sunday edict, is so purely heathen that no "Christian Emperor" could have conceived or issued it. It runs as follows:
Edict Concerning Aruspices
"The August Emperor Constantine to Maximus:
"If any part of the palace or other public works shall be struck by lightning, let the soothsayers, following old usages, inquire into the meaning of the portent, and let their written words, very carefully collected, be reported to our knowledge; and also let the liberty of making use of this custom be accorded to others, provided they abstain from private sacrifices, which are specially prohibited.
"Moreover, that declaration and exposition written in respect to the amphitheater being struck by lightning, concerning which you had written to Heraclianus, the tribune, and master of offices, you may know has been reported to us.
"Dated the 16th, before the calends of January, at Serdica (320) Acc. the 8th, before the Ides of March, in the consulship of Crispus II. and Constantine III., Caesars Coss. (321)."(53)
There is abundant evidence, beyond the above, that the Sunday-law was the product of paganism.
The language used speaks of the day only as the "Venerable Day of the Sun," a title purely heathen. There is not even a hint at any connection between the day and Christianity, or the practices of Christians.
Similar laws concerning many other heathen festivals were common. JOSEPH BINGHAM bears, the following testimony, when speaking of the edict under consideration:
"This was the same respect as the old Roman laws had paid to their feriae, or festivals, in times of idolatry and superstition . . . . Now, as the old Roman laws exempted the festivals of the heathen from all judicial business, and suspended all processes and pleadings, except in the fore-mentioned cases, so Constantine ordered that the same respect should be paid to the Lord's day, that it should be a day of perfect vacation from all prosecutions, and pleadings, and business of law, except where any case of great necessity or charity required a juridical process and public transaction."(54)
Bingham states correctly that such prohibitions were made by the Roman laws in favor of pagan festivals, but adds, incorrectly, that Constantine made the same in favor of the Lord's day. It was not the Lord's day, but the "Venerable Day the Sun," which the edict mentions; and it is impossible to suppose that a law, made by a Christian prince, in favor of a Christian institution, should not in any way mention that institution, or hint that the law was designed to apply to it.
MILLMAN corroborates this idea as follows:
"The earlier laws of Constantine, though in their effect favorable to Christianity, claimed some deference, as it were, to the ancient religion, in the ambiguity of their language, and the cautious terms in which they interfered with paganism. 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. . . ." The rescript, indeed, for the religious observance of the Sunday, which enjoined the suspension of all public business and private labor, except that of agriculture, was enacted, according to the apparent terms of the decree, for the whole Roman Empire. Yet, unless we had direct proof that the decree set forth the Christian reason for the sanctity of the day, it may be doubted whether the act would not be received by the greater part of the empire as merely adding one more festival to the fasti of the empire, as proceeding entirely from the will of the emperor, or even grounded on his authority as supreme pontiff, by which he had the plenary power of appointing holy days. 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 toward the oriental theology."(55)
Millman hints at some "direct proof." There is none; hence the correctness of his conclusion, that the people looked upon the new holiday, "as merely adding one more festival to the fasti of the empire." It was not only non-Christian but eminently unchristian.
Stronger still is the testimony of an English barrister, EDWARD V. NEALE. These are his words: "That the division of days into juridici et feriati, judicial and non-judicial, did not arise out of the modes of thought peculiar to the Christian world must be known to every classical scholar. Before the age of Augustus, the number of days upon which out of reverence to the gods to whom they were consecrated, no trials could take place at Rome, had become a resource upon which a wealthy criminal could speculate as a means of evading justice; and Suetonius enumerates among the praiseworthy acts of that emperor, the cutting off from the number, thirty days, in order that crime might not go unpunished nor business be impeded."(56)
After enumerating certain kinds of business which were allowed under these general laws, Mr. Neale adds: "Such was the state of the laws with respect to judicial proceedings, while the empire was still heathen." Concerning the suspension of labor, we learn from the same author that: "The practice of abstaining from various sorts of labor upon days consecrated by religious observance, like that of suspending at such seasons judicial proceedings, was familiar to the Roman world before the introduction of Christian ideas. Virgil enumerates the rural labors, which might on festal days be carried on, without entrenching upon the prohibitions of religion and right; and the enumeration shows that many works were considered as forbidden. Thus it appears that it was permitted to clean out the channels of an old water course, but not to make a new one; to wash the herd or flock, if such washing was needful for their health, but not otherwise; to guard the crop from injury by setting snares for birds, or fencing in the grain; and to burn unproductive thorns."(57)
SIR HENRY SPELMAN, who is recognized as high authority, in discussing the origin of practices in the English courts, says that all ancient nations prohibited legal proceedings on sacred days. His words are: "To be short, it was so common a thing in those days of old to exempt the times of exercise of religion from all worldly business, that the barbarous nations, even our Angli, while they were yet in Germany, the Suevians themselves, and others in those Northern parts would in no wise violate or interrupt it. Tacitus says of them that during this time of holy rites, non bellum ineunt, non arma sumunt. Clausum omne ferrum. Pax et quies tunc tantum nota, tunc tantum amat."
Speaking of the origin of the English "court terms," Spelman says:
"I will therefore seek the original of our terms only from the Romans, as all other nations that have been subject to their civil and ecclesiastical monarch do, and must.
"The ancient Romans, while they were yet heathens, did not, as we at this day, use certain continual portions of the year for a legal decision of controversies, but out of superstitious conceit that some days were ominous and more unlucky than others (according to that of the Egyptians), they made one day to be fastus or term day and another (as an Egyptian day), to be vacation or nefastus; seldom two fast days or law days together; yea, they sometimes divided one and the same day in this manner: "Qui modo fastus erat, mune nefastus erat.
"The afternoon was term, the morning holy day."Nor were all their fasti applied to judicature, but some of them to other meetings and consultations of the commonwealth; so that being divided into three sorts, which they called fastos proprie, fastos endotercisos, and fastos comitiales, containing together one hundred and eighty-four days through all the months of the year, there remained not properly to the praetor, as judicial or triverbial days, above twenty-eight."(58)
Nothing more is needed to show that the Sunday edict was the product of the heathen cult, as truly as that which was issued in connection with it, relative to the Aruspices. There is an evident connection between the two edicts. Apollo was the patron deity of the soothsayers, as well as of Constantine. At least nine years later than this, Constantine placed his new residence at Byzantium under the protection of the heathen goddess of Fortune; he never gave up the title of high priest of the heathen religion; he did not formally embrace Christianity until sixteen years later.
Whatever he did to favor Christianity, and whatever claims he made to conversion, were the outgrowth of a shrewd policy, rather than of a converted heart. And when the conservative historian can say of him, "The very brightest period of his reign is stained with crimes, which even the spirit of the age, and the policy of an absolute monarch, cannot excuse, he cannot be called a Christian prince.
If he made any general laws against heathenism, they were little executed; for it was not suppressed in the empire until A.D. 390 seventy-nine years after his Sunday edict, and fifty-three years after his death. The few abuses against which he legislated were those which had been condemned before by the laws of the heathen rulers who had preceded him, such as the obscure midnight orgies, etc. Millman says on this point: "If it be difficult to determine the extent to which Constantine proceeded in the establishment of Christianity it is even more perplexing to estimate how far he exerted the imperial authority in the abolition of paganism . . . . The pagan writers, who are not scrupulous in their charges against the memory of Constantine and dwell with bitter resentment on all his overt acts of hostility to the ancient religion, do not accuse him of these direct encroachments on paganism. Neither Julian nor Zosimus lay this to his charge. Libanius distinctly asserts that the temples were left open and undisturbed during his reign, and that paganism remained unchanged. Though Constantine advanced many Christians to offices of trust, and no doubt many who were ambitious of such offices conformed to the religion of the emperor, probably most of the high dignities of the State were held by the pagans . . . . In the capitol there can be little doubt that sacrifices were offered in the name of the senate and the people of Rome till a much later period."(59)
The whole matter is tersely told by a late English writer, who, speaking of the time of the Sunday edict, 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."(60)
The following words of the learned NIEBUHR, in his lectures on Roman history, are to the same effect: "Many judge of Constantine by too severe a standard, because they regard him as a Christian; but I cannot look at him in that light. The religion which he had in his head, must have been a strange jumble indeed . . . . He was a superstitious man, and mixed up his Christian religion with all kinds of absurd and superstitious opinions. When certain oriental writers call him equal to the apostles, they do not know what they are saying, and to speak of him as a saint is a profanation of the word."(61)
It is a curious and little known fact, that markets were expressly appointed by Constantine to be held on Sunday. This we learn from an inscription on a Slavonian bath rebuilt by him, published in Gruter's Inscriptiones Antiquae Totius Orbis Romani, clxiv., 2. It is there recorded of the emperor, that "provisione pietatis suae nundinas dies solis perpeti anno constituit"; "by a pious provision he appointed markets to be held on Sunday throughout the year." His pious object doubtless was to promote the attendance of the country people at churches in towns. "Thus," says CHARLES JULIUS HARE, "Constantine was the author of the practice of holding markets on Sunday, which, in many parts of Europe, prevailed above a thousand years after, though Charlemagne issued a special law (cap. cxl.) against it."(62) In "Scotland, this practice was first forbidden on holy days by an Act of James IV, in 1503, and on Sundays in particular by one of James VI, in 1579."(63)
OTHER FORMS OF PAGAN RESIDUUM IN CHRISTIANITY
A Low Standard of Religious Life Faith in Relics The Cross an Ancient Pagan (Phallic) Symbol, A "Charm" Borrowed from Paganism Constantine's use of the Composite Symbol as a Military Standard Prevalence of Faith in "Charms" Sign of the Cross in Baptism Baptism and Holy Water as "Charms" Stupendous Miracles, like Pagan Prodigies, through Baptism Delayed Baptism Orientation at Baptism, etc.
THOSE who have made a study of paganism as it appeared in Christianity during and after the third century know that many other forms of it were prominent besides those fundamental errors which have been discussed in the preceding pages. Some of these have attracted more attention than the fundamental ones, since they lie more plainly on the surface of history. We shall glance at several, that the reader may see the field yet more fully.
A Low Standard of Christian Life
That the standard of individual character in the Church was brought far below that of the New Testament, and much below what would be accepted at the present day, appears in the history of morals and social life, and in many ways in the Church.
The degenerate character of his time is thus set forth by CHRYSOSTOM:
"Plagues too, teeming with untold mischiefs, have lighted upon the Churches. The chief offices have become saleable. Hence numberless evils are springing, and there is no one to redress, no one to reprove them. Nay the disorder has assumed a sort of method and consistency. Has a man done wrong and been arraigned for it? His effort is not to prove himself guiltless, but to find if possible accomplices in his crimes. What is to become of us? since hell is our threatened portion. Believe me, had not God stored up punishment for us there, ye would see every day tragedies deeper than the disasters of the Jews. What then? However, let no one take offence, for I mention no names; suppose some one were to come into this church to present you that are here at this moment, those that are now with me, and to make inquisition of them; or rather not now, but suppose on Easter day any one endued with such a spirit, as to have such a thorough knowledge of the things they had been doing, should narrowly examine all that came to Communion and were being washed [in baptism] after they had attended the mysteries; many things would be discovered more shocking than the Jewish horrors. He would find persons who practise augury, who make use of charms, and omens, and incantations, and who have committed fornication, adulterers, drunkards, and revilers, - covetous I am unwilling to add, lest I should hurt the feelings of any of those who are standing here. What more? Suppose anyone should make scrutiny into all the communicants in the world, what kind of transgression is there which he would not detect? And what if he examined those in authority? Would he not find them eagerly bent upon gain? making traffic of high places? envious, malignant, vainglorious, gluttonous and slaves to money?"(64)
A similar vivid description, under the figure of a burning building, representing the Church as consumed with evil, is found in Homily 10, On Ephesians. Another description of the effect of heathenism upon those who professed to be Christians is sharply set forth in a Treatise Attributed to Cyprian, on the "Public Shows."(65) He says: "Believers, and men who claim for themselves the authority of the Christian name, are not ashamed are not, I repeat, ashamed to find a defence in the heavenly Scriptures for the vain superstitions associated with the public exhibitions of the heathens, and thus to attribute