Appendix
General Notes
Note 1. Page 53—Constantine’s Sunday law, issued A.D. 321,
was as follows:—
“Let all the judges and town people, and the occupation of all
trades rest on the venerable day of the sun; but let those who are
situated in the country, freely and at full liberty attend to the business
of agriculture; because it often happens that no other day is so fit for
sowing corn and planting vines; lest, the critical moment being let slip,
men should lose the commodities granted by heaven.”
Of this law, so high an authority as the “Encyclopedia Brittannica”
plainly says: “It was Constantine the Great who first made a law for
the proper observance of Sunday; and who, according to Eusebius,
appointed that it should be regularly celebrated throughout the Roman
empire. Before him, and even in his time, they observed the Jewish
Sabbath, as well as Sunday.” As to the degree of reverence with which
Sunday was regarded, and the manner of its observance, Mosheim
says that in consequence of the law enacted by Constantine, the first
day of the week was “observed with greater solemnity than it had
formerly been.” [Eccl. Hist. Cent. 4, part 2, chap. 4, sec. 5.
] Yet
Constantine permitted all kinds of agricultural labor to be performed
on Sunday! Bishop Taylor declares that “the primitive Christians did
all manner of works upon the Lord’s day.” [
Duct. Dubitant., part 1,
book 2, chap. 2, rule 6, sec. 59.
] The same statement is made by Morer:
“The day [
Sunday
] was not wholly kept in abstaining form common
business; nor did they [
Christians
] any longer rest from their ordinary
affairs (such was the necessity of those times) than during the divine
service.” [
Dialogues on the Lord’s Day, p. 233.
] Says Cox: “There is
no evidence that either at this [
the time of Constantine
], or at a period
much later, the observance was viewed as deriving any obligation
from the fourth commandment; it seems to have been regarded as an
562