Character and Aims of the Papacy
475
their dogmas, let him see the spirit which Rome manifested toward the
Sabbath and its defenders.
Royal edicts, general councils, and church ordinances sustained
by secular power, were the steps by which the pagan festival attained
its position of honor in the Christian world. The first public measure
enforcing Sunday observance was the law enacted by Constantine. [A.
D. 321.] This edict required townspeople to rest on “the venerable day
of the sun,” but permitted countrymen to continue their agricultural
pursuits. Though virtually a heathen statute, it was enforced by the
emperor after his nominal acceptance of Christianity.
The royal mandate not proving a sufficient substitute for divine
authority, Eusebius, a bishop who sought the favor of princes, and
who was the special friend and flatterer of Constantine, advanced the
claim that Christ had transferred the Sabbath to Sunday. Not a single
testimony of the Scriptures was produced in proof of the new doctrine.
Eusebius himself unwittingly acknowledges its falsity, and points to
the real authors of the change. “All things,” he says, “whatsoever that
it was duty to do on the Sabbath, these we have transferred to the
Lord’s day.” But the Sunday argument, groundless as it was, served to
embolden men in trampling upon the Sabbath of the Lord. All who
desired to be honored by the world accepted the popular festival.
As the papacy became firmly established, the work of Sunday
exaltation was continued. For a time the people engaged in agricultural
labor when not attending church, and the seventh day was still regarded
as the Sabbath. But steadily a change was effected. Those in holy
office were forbidden to pass judgment in any civil controversy on the
Sunday. Soon after, all persons, of whatever rank, were commanded to
refrain from common labor, on pain of a fine for freemen, and stripes
in the case of servants. Later it was decreed, that rich men should be
punished with the loss of half of their estates; and finally, that if still
[575]
obstinate they should be made slaves. The lower classes were to suffer
perpetual banishment.
Miracles also were called into requisition. Among other wonders
it was reported that as a husbandman who was about to plow his field
on Sunday, cleaned his plow with an iron, the iron stuck fast in his
hand, and for two years he carried it about with him, “to his exceeding
great pain and shame.”