Constantine.-X by Editor

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, Cal. · May 7, 1885

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 11, No. 18.

Constantine.—X.

By Editor

(Concluded.)

His removal to Byzantium was doubtless to glorify himself by building up a strong city to the honor of his own name, calling it Constantinople. Yet the result was so clearly favorable to the interests of the Roman bishop that some have thought the movement had this object in view. Thus Stanley speaks of it:—

"According to the fable of Sylvester, Constantine retired to Greece in order to leave Italy for the pope—'Per cedere al pastor si fece Greco.' So said the legend, and it was undoubtedly the case that, by retiring to the East, he left the field clear for the bishops of Rome. In the absence of the emperors from Rome, the chief Christian magistrate rose to new importance. When the barbarians broke upon Italy, the pope thus became the representative of the ancient republic. It is one of the many senses in which the saying of Hobbs is true, that the papacy is but the ghost of the deceased Roman empire, sitting crowned upon the grave thereof."—Stanley, p. 305.

Stanley calls the bishop of Rome "the chief Christian magistrate." This truthful expression is worthy of careful consideration. He was not only a "magistrate" in the civil acceptation of that term, but "chief" among the highest magistrates in the empire.

He was not content, however, to be above all; he was too arrogant and ambitious to long permit even an approach to his dignity. In 451 the council of Chalcedon elevated the bishop of Constantinople to be next in rank to the bishop of Rome, against which the Roman delegates protested, and appealed to the decision of the council of Nice, 325, in favor of the Roman primacy. The imperial commissioners, who heard the plea, thus decided:—

"From the whole discussion, and from what has been brought forward on either side, we acknowledge that the primacy over all and the most eminent rank are to continue with the archbishop of old Rome."—Schaff, Ch. Hist., vol. 2, p. 281.

This shows that the question of the primacy was settled, not by the judgment of the imperial commissioners, but by an appeal to the decision of the council of Nice. All after action upon that subject was but a confirmation of the decision of that council. But the prophecy of Daniel had spoken of three horns or kingdoms which were to be plucked up before the Roman pontiff to prepare the way for his supremacy. The third kingdom was plucked up when the Ostrogoths were subdued by Justinian. In his letter to the Roman bishop, Justinian recognized and confirmed his primacy. It is true that Justinian did not particularly speak of the civil power, or make a grant in that behalf. Nor was it needed. The bishop was a high civil magistrate under the empire by the authority of Constantine; and it was only needed of Justinian to put down the opposers in Rome, and to continue to hold the imperial court in Constantinople, to open the way for the exercise of independent magistracy by the Roman pontiff.

And he was not slow to improve every opportunity in that direction. He soon claimed a divine warrant to govern, not only his own territory, but all the kingdoms of the world. And such was the power of popular superstition that kings imagined that they could add to the glory of their kingdoms by receiving the blessing of the "universal bishop." Accustomed to the idea of a union of civil and ecclesiastical power, they thought to strengthen themselves by receiving the benediction of the highest ecclesiastical officer; and that which they accorded to him as a privilege he soon demanded as a right. Mighty rulers, by their complaisance to Rome, exalted the power of the bishop over themselves; and what they intended as an act of reverence to his spiritual authority, he used as a precedent to prove his right to reign over all civil governments; and he soon demanded homage of kings and emperors as the condition of their reigning unmolested in their own territories! Truly, "his look was more stout than his fellows." The foundation was laid, and strongly laid, by Constantine. Justinian, by plucking up the third horn, gave efficiency to the decision of the Nicene council, and opened the way before "that wicked," whereby he was enabled to "exalt himself," even "above all that is called God, or that is worshiped."

We have here given what we believe to be the truth in regard to the union of church and State, and the part which Justinian took in fulfilling the prophecy of Daniel; and we think this view is abundantly sustained by history.

Of course we include the observance of the "day of the sun" as a day of rest from manual labor, as an important part of Constantine's legacy to the church; and the part which has had a wider influence than any other. After he professed to embrace Christianity he enforced the day of his tutelary god, the sun, with additional honors as an ordinance to be observed by the church. From a carefully compiled work we quote the following:—

"A recent English writer says of Constantine's Sunday law that it 'would seem to have been rather to promote heathen than Christian worship.' And he shows how this heathen emperor became a Christian, and how this heathen statute became a Christian law. Thus he 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.' Thus it is seen that a law, enacted in support of a heathen institution, after a few years came to be considered a Christian ordinance; and Constantine himself, four years after his Sunday edict, was able to control the church, as represented by the council of Nice, so as to cause the members of the church to establish their annual festival of the passover upon Sunday."—Andrews, Hist. Sab., p. 349.

In this effort Constantine showed his craft, by at once exciting and appealing to their prejudices against the Jews. Although the passover was a yearly festival and affected only one Sunday in the year, yet it was a triumph in the work of honoring that day; and every step in that direction was made a part of the process of suppressing the observance of the seventh day, "the Sabbath of the Lord." It was on this subject that Constantine, in his "Letter to the Churches," used the following language:—

"Let us then have nothing in common with that most hostile rabble, the Jews." "Let us withdraw ourselves from that most odious fellowship." "Use every means that the purity of your minds may not be affected by a conformity in anything with the customs of the vilest of mankind."—Eusebius' Eccl. Hist.

No better reason for exalting the Sunday was ever given,—a reason which stands against any other precept of the decalogue as well as against the fourth; which might have been urged against the marriage institution with as much force as against the Sabbath.

All history attests the truthfulness of the statement, that his first Sunday law was given out of regard for the sun, or, as Dr. Schaff says, "in conformity to his worship of Apollo," the sun-god. His obsequious bishops were but too ready to please the humor of the emperor by constituting "the venerable day of the sun," the chief festival of the church. Eusebius—who has so often been quoted, and even with an ill-timed air of triumph by the devotees of this relic of sun-worship—acknowledges its paternity in his celebrated endorsement, as follows:—

"And all things whatsoever that it was the duty to do on the Sabbath, these we have transferred to the Lord's day, as more appropriately belonging to it, because it has a precedence and is first in rank, and more honorable than the Jewish Sabbath."

Those who have noted the temper of the dignitaries of that day, their servility to the emperor, and their bitter prejudice against the Jews, will not be astonished that they attached more honor to the day of the sun, backed as it was by the imperial decree, than to the day which was observed by the Jews, though it had been honored as Jehovah's rest from the work of creation; it had received the divine blessing; it was hallowed or set apart for religious observance by the Lord himself; its observance had been expressly commanded by the Lord with his own voice; it was written with his own finger in the enduring tables of stone; it was declared to be honorable, and a sign or memorial of the Creator's power; blessings had been promised to all who should keep it; and curses had been pronounced against all who should profane it; each and all of which were lacking for the first day.

Said Eusebius, "We have transferred." We shall not here give the evidence, of which abundance exists, that this transfer of Sabbath duty from the seventh to the first day was, as Eusebius affirms, made by the dignitaries of the church in the fourth century. It was, on their part, only an endorsement of Constantine's decree of 321, and the adoption of his favorite day which was devoted to the worship of his favorite god!

The complete evidence that the Sunday was never observed as a Sabbath, or a rest day of any kind, until after Constantine's law, that it was adopted as a church festival, out of complaisance to the emperor, and as a means of more readily leading the Roman people to profess Christianity by conforming to their customs in regard to the "venerable day of the sun," of the regard for the Sabbath of the fourth commandment, which was, up to that time, observed by Christians, and the steps taken by bishops and councils to cause a discontinuance of the observance of the seventh day; these do not properly belong to the life of Constantine, though the complete erection of the Sunday festival is traceable to his influence. But, influential as he was, it was not without a long struggle that Christians were brought to observe the first day to the exclusion of the original and divinely instituted Sabbath. The bishop of Rome put forth every effort to suppress the observance of the seventh day. And because many churches utterly refused to conform to the rules sent to them from Rome, the aid and authority of councils was invoked, and those who refused to join in this "new solar paganism" were anathematized, and straitly threatened by the dominant party, which threats the Romanists were not slow to fulfill.

Of the principal acts of his life which have a bearing on his character as a pagan and a professed Christian, we give the following summary:—

A. D. 312, professed to have the vision of the cross. 313, issued the edict of Milan, stopping persecution on account of religion. 321, March 7, issued a decree that certain classes abstain from labor "on the venerable day of the sun." 321, March 8, issued the edict for the consultation of haruspices—a practice purely pagan. 323, according to the opinion of Mosheim, made a profession of Christianity. 324, murdered Licinius in violation of his solemn oath. 325, convened the council of Nice, and presided over its deliberations. 325, after the council of Nice, revoked the edict of Milan, and copied the penal regulations under which Diocletian had persecuted the Christians, and employed them in the persec

tion of those who did not accept the Catholic faith. 326, murdered his son Crispus, and his nephew Licinius, and a great number of their friends. 330, May 11, dedicated Constantinople to the virgin Mary. 337, near the close of his life, was baptized into the Christian faith.

And in regard to his legacy to the church, we may enumerate the following as the principal points:—

Investing the officers of the church with authority as judges in secular matters.
Union of church and State; or using the machinery of the civil government to enforce ecclesiastical laws and tenets.
The adoration of the cross, pictures, and images.
The worship of the virgin Mary.
The primacy or pontificate of Rome.
The observance of the day of the sun, the first day of the week, as a rest from manual labor.

They who can confidently decide that Constantine was a genuine Christian at any time in his life—anything but a crafty politician and selfish ruler—must be able to adjust the balances very accurately to show where Christianity predominates over paganism in the scale! For ourselves, we believe that paganism may exist and flourish with any amount of profession of Christianity; but we do not believe that Christianity can exist together with both the profession and practice of paganism. For this reason we cannot admit that, judged by any possible standard found in the Bible, Constantine ever was a Christian.

And here we close our examination of the life and acts of Constantine. We have aimed in every case to give, not only the exact words, but the actual idea of the historian.