Constantine and Sunday by C. G. W.

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Feb 18, 1873

Constantine and Sunday.

By C. G. W.

PROMINENT among the names which church historians delight to honor is that of Constantine, who is reported to have been a convert to Christianity, and entitled to special distinction as an early advocate and defender of Sunday observance.

The researches of Bro. Andrews in his “Sabbath History,” have thrown much light upon the character of this man, who has received such homage at the hands of Eusebius, and historians of a later day, and whose religion seems to have been composed of about equal parts of paganism, papacy, and crafty statesmanship.

Now that the public mind is being directed to the Sabbath question, it seems almost providential that two of the leading magazines should contain articles in which the character of Constantine is freely criticised, and his tampering with church festivals is placed in rather a questionable light. The Galaxy for December, and Harper’s Magazine for January, each contain articles referring directly to this subject, from which we make the following extracts. The former magazine contains an article entitled “The Growth of ‘Giant Pope,’” written with much care, and giving evidence of historical research.

The writer describes Constantine as “a soldier, a statesman, and a Roman Emperor, rather than a saint,” the great purpose of whose life was, “to reunite and tranquillize the empire which Diocletian had divided.” “Up to the age of forty his religious history was that of an idolater. He restored and endowed the temples of the ancient deities; he issued medals impressed with the images and attributes of Jupiter, Apollo, Mars and Hercules; he added his father, Constantius, to the society of the deified Cæsars; he paid especial worship to Apollo as the sun god.”

Thus much for his earlier history. But lest the claim should be made that he atoned for all this by his later acts in behalf of Christianity, the writer proceeds as follows:—

Let us see precisely what he did for the Christian church and for the bishops or pastors of the congregation at Rome. Arriving in the capital at the head of his Gaulish cohorts, over the bodies of the soldiers of Maxentius, his first acts were to accept the office of Pontifex Maximus, to attend the sacred games, to repair various pagan temples, and to authorize the founding of a college of priests in honor of the Flavian family. Then came an edict, now lost, which is reported to us as having favored Christianity,

but which certainly did not establish it as the religion of the State. Somewhat later, signed conjointly by Licinius and Constantine, appeared what may be called the Magna Charta of the liberties of the church, the famous decree of Milan. What was it? It was a grant of toleration; it recognized Christianity as one of the forms in which men might properly and legally worship the divine nature; it restored all ecclesiastical edifices and possessions which had been confiscated under former emperors; it was emancipation, equality, justice and nothing more. The same freedom of worship, the same rights of property, which it accorded to Christianity, it also accorded to all other faiths. It was the edict, not of a convert and devotee, but of a wise statesman and clement prince.

After further testimony of a like character concerning the equivocal nature of the emperor’s Christianity, the writer draws the following conclusion:—

“In truth it would seem that the real purpose of the emperor was to introduce a composite religion, made up of philosophy, Christianity, and sun worship; that he hoped to unite in one pacific hodge-podge the warring faiths of his subjects, as he had re-united the provinces of the distracted empire. If he proclaimed the holiness of Sunday, it was because it was a day sacred to Apollo, as well as commemorative of Jesus. He was a pacifier, a compromiser, a politician, a ruler, rather than a convert. It was not until he lay upon his death-bed that he accepted baptism.”

The history of the church during this period proves conclusively that nothing is so fatal to any cause as compromise. While the church was under the iron heel of persecution, she preserved her principles in comparative purity; but when a compromise was offered, she began to waver, and accepted the compound of heathenism and papacy as a relief from her troubles and persecutions. Hence Sunday began to supplant the Sabbath, step by step, until its observance became well nigh universal.

The article in Harper’s Magazine is entitled “Christmas Throughout Christendom,” and although it makes no direct reference to the change of the Sabbath, it contains several suggestive paragraphs, from which we extract the following, the italics only being our own:—

“When, however, Constantine proclaimed the Christian faith as the predominating religion of the Roman Empire, the Christian church, relieved from persecution throughout both Orient and Occident, began to solemnize, under the ægis of imperial authority, Christmas as the birthday of Christ. One prominent feature, however, of Constantine’s political propaganda of Christianity was the adoption under Christian forms, not only of pagan rites and ceremonies, but also of pagan festivals. In order to reconcile heathen converts to the new faith, these relics of paganism, like antique columns transferred from ancient temples to adorn Christian churches, were freely incorporated into the Christian ceremonial. Thus it was that Christmas, though formerly observed on the 6th of January, was transferred to the 25th of December, the time of the Roman Saturnalia, and became invested with much of the paraphernalia of the heathen festival.”

And we might add, with strict truthfulness, thus it was that the Sabbath was transferred from the day of God’s rest to the first day of the week, “the venerable day of the sun,” on which Constantine and his pagan supporters paid their devotions to Apollo, the sun god.

In view of the foregoing evidence, the fact that Constantine was an advocate of Sunday observance adds no weight to the evidence in its behalf and no luster to its cause.

C. G. W.