CONSTANTINE'S SUNDAY LAW, A.D. 321

Constantine, the first Christian emperor of Rome, issued the following edict in A.D. 321: "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." This law applied only to the Roman Empire. At that date there were numerous Christian Churches outside of the Roman jurisdiction, all keeping Sunday. (See Chapters 6 and 7.) This law in no way could affect them. Then where did they get the Lord's Day if this law first introduced it? Adventists claim that this was a pagan law because it does not use a Christian term, as Lord's Day, or Christian Sabbath. The answer is easy: Christians needed no law to compel them to keep the day, for they all kept it already as a Christian duty. But the pagans kept no weekly day. Hence the law was directed to them, and, of course, used pagan terms for that day, "the day of the sun." That is the manifest explanation of why the pagan name was used. Gibbon says: "Constantine styles the Lord's Day Dies Solis, a name which could not offend the ears of his pagan subjects." (History of Rome, Chap. 20, Note 8.) Doctor Schaff says: "So long as Christianity was not recognized and protected by the state, the observance of Sunday was purely religious, a strictly voluntary service." (History of the Church, Vol. III, p. 379) "Constantine is the founder, in part at least, of the civil observance of Sunday." Before this law all Christians had voluntarily kept the Lord's Day as a religious duty. Now the civil law required pagans to respect the Christian rest day. That is the simple truth and the whole of it. Doctor Schaff, page 380, continues: "Christians and pagans had been accustomed to festival rests; Constantine made these rests to synchronize, and gave the preference to Sunday, on which day Christians from the beginning celebrated the resurrection of their Lord and Saviour. This, and no more, was implied in the famous enactment of 321." The pagan festivals were only yearly, not weekly. Now they were required to keep a weekly rest day on Sunday so as to harmonize with Christians. Adventists now voluntarily kept Saturday as a sacred duty though the civil law does not demand it. Just so Christians voluntarily kept the Lord's Day as a religious duty, though there was no civil law requiring it. Now the civil law required pagans also to respect the Christian's day, the day which was then observed by the emperor and all his household. As to the reliability of Doctor Schaff as a historian, Elder J. H. Waggoner says: "Doctor Schaff is justly esteemed as a man of extensive learning, and whose testimony regarding facts no one will call in question." (Replies to Canright, p. 132) Good and true. Doctor Schaff says Christians from the beginning voluntarily kept the resurrection day and Constantine made a civil law requiring the pagans to make their festival days harmonize with the established Christian day. The pagans had to conform to the Christian day, not Christians to the pagan day. As we have abundantly proved in Chapter 5, the pagan Romans had no weekly festivals. These festivals were all yearly, like our Fourth of July, Thanksgiving, etc. But the Christian’s day was weekly, every Sunday. Constantine made these to synchronize. How? "By giving the preference to Sunday," the Christian's day. This is plain enough. Notice carefully one clause in the decree, viz.: "Those in the country" were to have full liberty to attend to the business of agriculture. Doctor Schaff gives the reason thus: "He expressly exempted the country districts where paganism still prevailed." (Church History, 3d period, Par. 75, p. 379). This is true, and it shows that the pagans did not keep Sunday nor did they wish to. Hence, where they were greatly in the majority, they were exempted from obeying this law. But in the cities where Christians largely were, there secular business had to cease. This law was made to protect Christians and the Christian's day, not pagans nor a pagan day. Because Constantine, while yet a pagan with other pagans, reverenced Apollo, the sun-god, Adventists argue that he reverenced Sunday as a sacred day. But this argument is fallacious. Sunday was simply the astrological name of the day, named from the planet, the sun. It had no religious significance whatever, no connection with the worship of Apollo. He was not worshipped on Sunday more than any other weekday. That argument is founded on the jingle of words, but not on facts. (See Chapter 5) The father and mother of Constantine were both Christians, and he venerated them both greatly. His mother was the sainted Helena, one of the most devout Christians of the early centuries. Her influence over her son was always great. Constantine himself thus states the reasons which led him to trust in his father's God, the God of the Christians. "My father revered the Christian God, and uniformly prospered, while the emperors, who worshipped the heathen gods, died a miserable death; therefore, that I may enjoy a happy life and reign, I will imitate the example of my father, and join myself to the cause of the Christians who are growing daily, while the heathen are diminishing." (Schaff, 3d period, Vol. I, Sect. 2, pp. 19, 20). He reasoned thus when made emperor in A.D. 306. Of him Ridpath says: "He perceived the conclusion of the great syllogism in the logic of events. He saw that destiny was about to write Finis at the bottom of the last page of paganism. So, for policy, the emperor began to favor the Christians." (History of the World, Vol. I, Chap. liii , pp. 881, 882) In the year A.D. 312, while on his march towards Rome with his army to meet his enemy, the Emperor Maxentius, he saw, or at least pretended to see, in the heavens, the sign of the cross with the words, "By this conquer." He then adopted that as the banner for his army under which it ever after marched, and always to victory. Here he openly professed conversion to the Christian religion. He immediately issued an edict in favor of the Christians. It has been lost. The "Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia," Article "Constantine," says: "By the second (Milan 313) he granted them not only free religious worship and their recognition by the state, but also reparation of previously incurred losses. ... A series of edicts of 315, 316, 319 and 323 completed the revolution." By these edicts paganism was overthrown and finally outlawed from 323. (See the life of Constantine in any history or encyclopedia.) Adventists unfairly try to place his conversion after his Sunday law in A.D. 321. Thus Mrs. White says: "The first public measure enforcing Sunday observance was the law enacted by Constantine two years before his profession of Christianity." (Great Controversy, edition of 1884, Chap. 30, p. 391). This statement alone destroys her claim to inspiration, for it is nine years too late, made with the evident intent to prove his law was pagan. Elder J. H. Waggoner, after naming the decree of 321, says: "At the time when these decrees were issued he had made no profession of Christianity." (Replies to Canright," p. 29). It is astonishing that a man should put in print a statement so entirely untrue. Nothing is more clearly stated in history than that Constantine openly professed conversion to Christianity nine years before his Sunday edict was issued. (See The Life of Constantine by Eusebius.) For years before this he himself and all his household had piously observed the Lord's Day. (See Eusebius, as above.) The "New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia," Article "Constantine," says: "The impression produced by this apparition (the vision of the cross) found its consummation in a dream by night. It is certain from the sources that the decisive conversion of Constantine to Christianity is to be fixed at the outset of the campaign, or in the spring of 312; also that this conversion rested not upon a single experience, the apparition or the dream, but that preparatory experience cooperated with it. ... Where in passages in Eusebius and elsewhere he speaks of the one religion and belief in one God, he means historical Christianity, and bids, not the Christians, but the pagans, to this doctrine, and in this light alone did his Christian and pagan contemporaries understand him." Here is the clear testimony of an unbiased authority gathered from all the facts in the case which places the professed conversion of the emperor in A.D. 312, just where all reliable historians do. It was nine years before his Sunday law. Dean Stanley (History of the Eastern Church, Lecture 6, pp. 201, 202) places the conversion of Constantine at the same date, 312, right after his vision of the cross. He says: "That some such change, effected by some such means, took place at this crisis, is confirmed not only by the fact of Constantine's adoption of the Christian faith immediately afterwards, but by the specific introduction of the standard of the cross into the army." Gibbon in his "History of Rome," Vol. XI, Chap. XX, p. 184, says: "About five months after the conquest of Italy, the emperor made (A.D. 313) a solemn and authentic declaration of his sentiments by the celebrated edict of Milan which restored peace to the Catholic Church." From this time on he joined himself with Christians, did all he safely could for them and against paganism till in 323 he outlawed paganism entirely. The "Encyclopedia Britannica," Article "Constantine," says: "Rome was naturally the stronghold of paganism to which the great majority of the Senate clung with great devotion. Constantine did not wish to do open violence to this sentiment, and therefore resolved to found a new capital." Stanley relates how the emperor refused to take part in a popular pagan procession in Rome. He openly ridiculed it. Says Stanley, "The Roman people were furious. A riot broke out in the streets." His statue was stoned. This is good proof of his hatred of paganism. His opposition to paganism was his reason for forsaking Rome. He caused his sons to receive a Christian education. Motives of political expediency, however, caused him to delay the full recognition of Christianity as the religion of the state until he became sole ruler of the empire. Adventists are guilty of misconstruing the plainest intent of that law. They assert that this law compelled pagans and Christians alike to cease work on Sunday, except in the country where both were allowed to work. Then they emphasize the fact that this was the first law ever enacted forbidding work on Sunday. Thus Elder Waggoner says: " It has been fully proved that the decree of Constantine was the first authority for Sunday rest." (Replies to Canright, p. 136) Yes, certainly, but to whom did this law apply? To pagans. It was the first civil law by the state after its head had become Christian. Again Waggoner says: " In the country it permitted all to labor, both pagans and Christians." (Replies to Canright, p. 150) On this it is fair to quote: " A half truth is as bad as a lie." Does that law in any way mention Christians? No. Waggoner assumes that it does, and by this false assumption concludes the Christians worked Sunday, when there is not a hint of such a thing in that law. Our law now permits people to do many things which no Christian will do. At that time Christians reverenced the Lord's Day regardless of what the civil law permitted. Because the law permitted farmers to work Sunday, Adventists assert that Christians worked on Sunday up till that time. They have no proof of this. (See this work, Chapter 6.) For three hundred years it had been a sacred day with Christians. They kept it voluntarily, as Doctor Schaff states above, hence the law in no way applied to them, but it did require pagans, especially in cities where Christians mostly were, to cease work on that day. Constantine, his mother Helena, all his children, his household, his servants, and he himself devoutly observed the Lord's Day at the time this edict was issued, 321. Adventists try to ignore all this to carry their theory that this was a pagan law requiring Christians to reverence a pagan day. It is a bad cause that requires such reasoning. Another Seventh-Day advocate, Rev. A. H. Lewis, D.D., says: "This edict makes no reference to the day as a Sabbath, as the Lord's Day, or as any way connected with Christianity. Neither is it an edict addressed to Christians." (Sabbath and Sunday, p. 142) This is a good confession and states the truth exactly. That law was for pagans who had never rested Sundays. This law required them to do what they had never done before-cease work on Sunday. Christians required no such law, for they kept the day as a religious duty without any civil law requiring it. It would have been absurd and useless for Constantine to issue an edict forbidding Christians to work on the Lord's Day when for three hundred years that had been a part of their sacred faith. The very argument Sabbatarians make to prove that this law was addressed to pagans, in pagan terms, is good proof that Christians needed no such law. They kept Sunday voluntarily. Look at the absurdity of the Adventist theory: The pagans were keeping Sunday; Christians were not, but instead were keeping Saturday. Constantine wished all to keep the same day. To whom then would he have addressed this law? To Christians, of course, requiring them to change their day. But he did no such thing; for there was no occasion for it. Elder J. H. Waggoner makes this confession: "Constantine did nothing whatever that can be construed into changing the Sabbath. In his decrees he said not one word either for or against keeping the Sabbath of the Bible. To this he did not refer in any way." (Replies to Canright, pp. 149, 150) Of course not, for his law was addressed only to pagans who kept neither Saturday nor Sunday. But after his professed conversion in 312, did he not keep pagans in high offices? Did he not order sacrifices to be made to pagan gods? Did he not order some pagan rites to be performed for himself? Yes. Why? Out of policy. He had to do so to avoid a rebellion of his pagan subjects who were yet numerous and powerful. He had to bide his time as all wise rulers and reformers do. He could not change the religion and customs of a whole empire in a day. He used common sense, as Lincoln did in abolishing slavery. Lincoln delayed it years after radicals denounced him for his half measures and delay. Now all justify the course he took. Constantine pursued the same wise course in abolishing paganism. So Adventists denounce him as half pagan because he did not play the fool and fanatic and try to do immediately what was impossible. When he first became emperor pagans were in the majority and filled all important offices. He had these to reckon with till he could gradually change all this. By this course he avoided an opposition which would have defeated him. Then he accomplished the religious revolution in a remarkably short time,-ten years. Neither before nor since has the world ever witnessed so tremendous a revolution in so short a period, and his conversion to Christianity did it. I have before me the "Life of Constantine," by Eusebius, Bishop of Caesarea, Palestine. He was often with the emperor, in his palace, at his table, in church, in church councils, etc. He related how the emperor, as rapidly as possible, favored Christians and put down paganism, closed their temples, forbade their worship, and wrote and preached against idols. But Constantine, long after he professed Christianity, retained the heathen title and office of "Pontifix Maximus," or Supreme Pontiff of paganism. Yes, because that still gave him authority to regulate that worship, and he used it to gradually curtail one thing after another in that religion till, in 323, he suppressed it entirely. In this he followed a successful policy, that is all. In the preceding pages we have clearly proved that Christians had kept Sunday as a sacred day centuries before the time of Constantine. Eusebius, who lived with Constantine, repeatedly says that all Christians were keeping Sunday at that time, and before. We have proved positively, back a few pages, that the pagan Romans did not rest on Sunday, and hence had no Sunday rest day to give to Christians. Nothing can be more reasonable and simple than the fact that when Constantine professed Christianity he should, as soon as possible, make a law to protect the Christian rest day, the same as Christian rulers have done ever since. That is just what he did do, and that is the whole of it. Whether he was a really converted man, or a mere professor from policy, has no bearing on the question. He professed to be a Christian, and all his edicts were issued to favor them, the Sunday law with the rest. That the law was enacted specially to protect the Lord's Day for Christian worship is distinctly stated by Eusebius in his "Life of Constantine," Chapter XVIII. Eusebius lived right there where this law was made and when it was made. He was closely associated with Constantine, and has stated clearly why that law was given. Would he not know better than some partisan Adventist sixteen centuries later? Hear Eusebius: "He [Constantine] ordained, too, that one day should be regarded as a special occasion for prayer; I mean that which is truly the first and chief of all, the Day of our Lord and Saviour. The entire care of his household was entrusted to deacons and other ministers consecrated to the service of God, and distinguished for gravity of life and every other virtue; while his trusty body-guard, strong in affection and fidelity to his person, found in their emperor an instructor in the practice of piety, and, like him, held the Lord's salutary day in honor, and performed on that day the devotions which he loved. The same observance was recommended by this blessed prince to all classes of his subjects; his earnest desire being gradually to lead all mankind to the worship of God. Accordingly he enjoined on all the subjects of the Roman Empire to observe the Lord's Day as a day of rest." Notice that all the servants in Constantine's household were Christians, and all kept the Lord's Day with the emperor. He commanded all his subjects to rest that day so that Christians could be free to attend worship on the Lord's Day. Many Christians were slaves to pagan masters, and could not rest unless their owners did. This law compelled these pagan masters to cease work on that day. Then their slaves could keep the Lord's Day. Constantine considered himself called of God to care for the Church in external things as the bishops were to care for the internal matters. He said: "You are bishops whose jurisdiction is within the Church. I also am a bishop, ordained by God to overlook whatever is external to the Church." (Eusebius, "Life of Constantine,” Chap. xxiv) That was why he made his Sunday law—it was to help the Church. Then there is another reliable witness to the fact that Constantine's Sunday law was to protect the Lord's Day, not a pagan day. The historian Sozomen was born in Palestine, the home of the apostles, only about sixty years after the death of Constantine. He was a noted lawyer in Constantinople, the home of Constantine; hence, was familiar with all the laws of the emperor, and knew their object. Of that Sunday law he says: "He also enjoined the observance of the day termed the Lord's Day, which the Jews call the first day of the week. He honored the Lord's Day, because on it Christ arose from the dead." (Eccl. Hist., Chap. ix, p. 22.) This witness by such an authority living right there should be, and is, decisive. That law was to protect the Lord's Day because Christ arose that day, not because it was a pagan festival day. Every candid man must see this. This entirely explodes the Adventists' theory that it was a pagan law enjoining a pagan day. Elder A. T. Jones was once the editor of their church paper, and the best posted historian Seventh-Day Adventists ever had. In his recent book, "The Reformation," published in 1913, he not only admits, but truthfully argues, that Constantine's Sunday law was issued at the request of Christians to help the Church. He says: "The Sunday institution and all that was attached to it was wholly of the Church. And when from the federated Church the State accepted and embodied in the law this exclusively church institution, this, in the very fact of the doing of it, was the union of the Church and the State." "It was only in the furtherance of the grand scheme of the bishops and their church-combine to establish the State as 'the Kingdom of God '" (page 315). Here we have the real truth about that Sunday law. It was issued by a professedly Christian emperor, to favor the Christian Church by protecting their Christian day of worship long held sacred by them. It is readily agreed that the zeal of Constantine to help the Church was unwise and detrimental in its results; but the fact remains just the same. The edict of Constantine was the very first law ever made by any one prohibiting secular business on Sunday. All historians agree in this. This very fact overthrows the Adventists' claim that the day, as a rest day, originated with the pagans. Consider now: If these pagan Romans had been keeping Sunday as a sacred day of worship why did they never before have a law forbidding work on that day? Did all these heathens, for ages, cease their work that day voluntarily without any law requiring it? Even in Christian lands, with strict laws against Sunday business, it is difficult to get people to observe the day. Were the heathens more religious than Christians? The Roman emperor was always the head of the pagan religion, the same as the Pope is the head of the Catholic Church. His edict was law to them. He was "Pontifix Maximus," which authorized him to regulate the pagan worship. If it was part of the pagan religion to regard the day as sacred, why is it that the first law prohibiting work on Sunday was never issued till the Roman emperor professed Christianity? I have asked Adventists this question and they make only an evasive answer. The simple fact is this: Up till the time of Constantine Christians were terribly persecuted and were in the minority, and so could make no civil law forbidding work on Sunday, the day they all kept, as we have seen. The pagans did not observe Sunday, but worked that day, the same as on all other days. Hence, they wanted no law to prohibit the work they were all accustomed to do that day. A Sunday law was just what the pagans did not want; hence, he, by his authority as emperor, issued an edict requiring his pagan subjects to rest on Sunday, the same as Christians did and had done for three hundred years. That law was made to favor Christians, not pagans. That this law was made at the request of Christians is admitted by Adventists. Again Elder Jones, in the Battle Creek Journal, December 11, 1888, says: "It is demonstrated that the first Sunday law that ever was enacted was at the request of the Church; it was in behalf of the Church, and it was expressly to help the Church." This truthful admission overthrows the claim that this law was a pagan law to protect a pagan day. It was exactly the opposite-a law to compel pagans to cease work on the day which Christians kept as a sacred day. Put with this the admission of Waggoner above quoted, viz., that "the idea of the rest from worldly labor in its worship was entirely new to pagans." So it was, but Christians had kept the day for centuries. With whom, then, "originated " the custom of resting from work on Sunday and keeping it as a sacred day of worship? It had its origin with Christians, not with pagans. Next: Chapter 9—THE LORD'S DAY AT THE COUNCILS OF NICE, A.D. 325, AND LAODICEA, A.D. 364