SUNDAY IN THE FIRST THREE CENTURIES.
By I. E. Kimball
4. THE third step in the introduction of Sunday was the formal proclamation by Pope Sylvester of Sunday as "the Lord's day," although it had been so called for a hundred years. See, for proof, Andrews' "History of the Sabbath," pp. 350, 351. This was near the year A.D. 325. It maintained its natal character in the church as a festival, upon which business should be deferred for attendance upon church. It was a day for "the indulgence of the flesh," surely. None should kneel, or manifest solicitude; let that be for the fast days. Vain discourse, obscenities, and indulgences of the flesh, the "Constitutions" seem almost to license upon the first day of the week, "which was a wild day of joy." See book 5, sec. 2, par. 10. Tertullian's day "for the indulgence of the flesh" bore out all its prime, festive nature as a gala day, but was not at all conducive to spirituality. Work was fully permitted. The valuable testimony of Edward Neale, an English barrister, must be adduced here to show the character of the fasti of Rome. There were, according to Neale, judicial and non-judicial days—days upon which, out of respect to the gods, no trials could take place at Rome. On these days they were required to abstain from various sorts of labor. Rural labor might be continued. They might do what was necessary for health or life, as the cleaning out of channels of old water courses, washing the herd, guard crops from injury by setting snares for birds, or fencing; they might clear away and burn hedges and thorns. Constantine's edict was in exact keeping with this, and for yet two hundred years and more all such works were allowed by the church on Sunday. So Chrysostom dismissed his congregations to their usual occupations on Sunday. (See Kitto.) Markets were ordered to be held in the cities on Sundays for the convenience of those coming in from the country, and Jerome tells of how "Paula, with the women, as soon as they returned home on the Lord's day, they sat down severally to their work, and made clothes for themselves and others." Says Morer, "The entire sanctification of the Lord's day proceeded slowly." And so late as A.D. 538 the Third Council of Orleans permitted the works which, according to Neale, were permitted in the old-time festivals to the gods, although from rural work, plowing, reaping, etc., they "judged it better to abstain, that the people might the more readily come to the churches, and have leisure for prayers." 5. A sabbatical idea began to be evoked for the Sunday in the fourth century, although it was never called the sabbath yet for 900 years. Eusebius is the first to mention the translation and transferral of the Sabbath to the Lord's day. He goes far to exalt it into the place of the Sabbath day, saying: "All things whatsoever that it was duty to do on the Sabbath, these we have transferred to the Lord's day, . . . because it has a precedence and is first in rank, and more honorable than the Jewish Sabbath." "We," mark you, not Christ. No writer during the first 300 years thought of such a thing as that Christ, or the apostles, or the early church, had changed it. 6. In the latter part of the fourth century the doctors of the church, by their declamatory eloquence, and by their pens, gave full feather to Eusebius' notion. Listen to Augustine:— It appears from the sacred Scriptures that this day was a solemn one. It was the first day of the age, that is, of the existence of our world; in it the elements of the world were formed; on it the angels were created; on it Christ arose from the dead; on it the Holy Spirit descended from heaven upon the apostles as manna had done in the wilderness; for these and other such circumstances the Lord's day is distinguished. And therefore the holy doctors of the church have decreed that all the glory of the Jewish Sabbath is transferred to it. Let us, therefore, keep the Lord's day as the ancients were commanded to do the Sabbath. From this forward to prohibition of labor Sunday has remained as we find it in Catholic countries to-day, maintaining something of a festal character still, which it ever must retain. Thus have we noted the steps by which Sunday was exalted into the place of the Sabbath day during the first three hundred years of the Christian era. In the times of the apostles it was unknown; after the lapse of a hundred years, with the church pagan the pagan holiday is made a day of meeting for worship; another fifty years, and it is general, and called the Lord's day; one hundred and twenty-five years later it is formally decreed to be the Lord's day—the day of the Catholic Church—by Pope Sylvester, work curtailed, but yet all sorts of work allowed for yet another hundred years and more; and, lastly, a sabbatic idea given to it by the "holy doctors," who substituted it for the ancient Sabbath. But by the Catholic Church the name Sabbath has never yet been applied to Sunday.