Review and Herald, Vol. 54, No. 20. (11/6/1879)

Review and Herald

Nov 6, 1879

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Nov 6, 1879

THE RELIGION OF CONSTANTINE.

By Alonzo T. Jones

BY ELD. A. T. JONES.

TEXT: “For the mystery of iniquity doth already work; only he who now letteth will let, until he be taken out of the way.” 2 Thess. 2:7.

ILLUSTRATION: “The religion of Constantine achieved in less than a century the final conquest of the Roman empire.”—Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, chap. 28, sec. 16.

I propose this evening, my friends, to give you a brief course of history illustrative of the prophecy of Paul in 2 Thessalonians, second chapter, where he speaks of the “mystery of iniquity,” the “man of sin,” “the son of perdition,” etc. This prophecy, as we all know, has undoubted reference to the papacy; and there is one man whose name and work cannot be separated from the history of the development of that power, and that man is Constantine. Therefore I have chosen as an illustration of the text the words which I have read in your hearing.

Whether it was intentional or not on the part of the historian, it is peculiarly appropriate that he used the expression “religion of Constantine” instead of the religion of Christ, for most assuredly the religion of Constantine was not the religion of Christ; but it plainly appears from the history of the man and his times that the religion of Constantine was that of paganism, with, however, some considerable respect for Christianity; and it is equally clear that whatever step was taken by him in favor of the profession of the Christian religion, he adopted that religion only so far as it might be made to conform to the established worship. The history from which I shall quote most largely is Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, which the English essayist Allison calls “the greatest monument of historical industry and ability that there is in the world.” I quote:—

“According to the strictness of ecclesiastical language, the first of the Christian emperors was unworthy of that name till the moment of his death; since it was only during his last illness [A. D. 337] that he received, as a catechumen, the imposition of hands, and was afterward admitted by the initiatory rites of baptism into the number of the faithful. The Christianity of Constantine must be allowed in a much more vague and qualified sense; and the nicest accuracy is required in tracing the slow and almost imperceptible gradations by which the monarch declared himself the protector, and at length the proselyte, of the church. It was an arduous task to eradicate the habits and prejudices of his education, to acknowledge the divine power of Christ, and to understand that the truth of his revelation was incompatible with the worship of the gods; . . . and he insensibly discovered his new opinions, as far as he could enforce them with safety and effect.”—Decline and Fall, chap. 20, sec. 2. “Whatever symptoms of Christian piety might transpire in the discourses or actions of Constantine, he persevered till he was near forty years of age in the practice of the established religion; and the same conduct which in the court of Nicomedia might be imputed to his fear, could be ascribed only to the inclination or policy of the sovereign of Gaul. His liberality restored and enriched the temples of the gods; the medals which issued from his imperial mint are impressed with the figures and attributes of Jupiter and Apollo, of Mars and Hercules; and his filial piety increased the council of Olympus by the solemn apotheosis of his father, Constantius. . . . He artfully balanced the hopes and fears of his subjects, by publishing in the same year [A. D. 321] two edicts; the first of which enjoined the solemn observance of Sunday, and the second directed the regular consultation of the Aruspices.”—Id., chap. 20, secs. 2, 3.

It was he “who seated Christianity on the throne of the Roman world.”—Id., chap. 20, sec. 17. Eugene Lawrence says of this move: “Constantine became emperor, and the bishops of Rome emerged from the Catacombs to become one of the ruling powers of the world. This sudden change was followed by an almost total loss of the simplicity and purity of the days of persecution. Magnificent churches were erected by the emperor in Rome, adorned with images and pictures, where the bishop sat on a lofty throne, encircled by inferior priests, and performing rites borrowed from the splendid ceremonial of the pagan temple. The bishop of Rome became a prince of the empire, and lived in a style of luxury and pomp that awakened the envy or the just indignation of the heathen writer Marcellinus. The church was now enriched by the gifts and bequests of the pious and the timid; the bishop drew great revenues from his farms in the Campagna and his rich plantations in Sicily; he rode through the streets of Rome in a stately chariot and clothed in gorgeous attire; his table was supplied with a profusion more than imperial; the proudest women of Rome loaded him with lavish donations, and followed him with their flatteries and attentions; and his haughty bearing and profuse luxury were remarked upon by both pagans and Christians, as strangely inconsistent with the humility and simplicity enjoined by the faith which he professed. The bishopric of Rome now became a splendid prize, for which the ambitious and unprincipled contended by force or fraud.”—Historical Studies, article Bishops of Rome.

“The luxury and pride of the princely caste had risen almost to madness. Instead of healing the wounded conscience or ministering to the sick and the poor, the fashionable presbyter or deacon passed his time in visiting wealthy widows, and extracting rich gifts and legacies from his superstitious admirers. A clerical fop of the time of Pope Damasus is thus described by the priestly Juvenal, St. Jerome: ‘His chief care is to see that his dress is well perfumed, that his sandals fit close to his feet; his hair is crimped with a curling-pin; his fingers glitter with rings; he walks on tiptoe through the streets lest he may splash himself with the wet soil, and when you see him abroad you would think him a bridegroom rather than a priest. “Both deacons and presbyters,” exclaims the Monastic Jerome, “strive for the favor of women;” and they were, no doubt, in search of wealthy and high-born wives among the greatest families of Rome. The first era of successful Christianity, indeed, was more luxurious and corrupt than had been that of Augustus or Tiberius. The bishop lived in imperial pomp, the lower orders of the clergy imitated his license and his example; the people were sunk in superstition and vice.’”—Ibid.

When the bishopric of Rome had thus become such a splendid prize to be contended for by the ambitious and the unprincipled, by force or fraud, of course any step would be taken by such persons to increase their influence. Therefore it was by an easy gradation that they arrived at the condition described by Gibbon as follows:—

“The most respectable bishops had persuaded themselves that the ignorant rustics would more cheerfully renounce the superstitions of paganism, if they found some resemblance, some compensation, in the bosom of Christianity. It must ingenuously be confessed that the ministers of the Catholic church imitated the profane model, which they were impatient to destroy.”—Decline and Fall, chap. 28, sec. 16.

With this light it is easy to discover the leading characteristics of the religion of Constantine. Ambitious to gain the influence that attached to Christianity and at the same time retain that of his pagan subjects, the first characteristic is the introduction of a symbolic worship into the church.

“The first introduction of a symbolic worship was in the veneration of the cross and of relics.”—Decline and Fall, chap. 49, sec. 2. And the first introduction of the cross as a visible symbol was by Constantine. It is true that the sign of the cross was made as early as the days of Tertullian, but it was only a sign, made with a motion of the hand upon the forehead or breast, but Constantine enlarged upon this by the introduction of the visible cross itself. He erected in Rome his own statue, “bearing a cross in its right hand, with an inscription which referred the victory of his arms and the deliverance of Rome to that salutary sign, the true symbol of force and courage. The same symbol sanctified the arms of the soldiers of Constantine; the cross glittered on their helmets, was engraved on their shields, was interwoven into their banners; and the consecrated emblems which adorned the person of the emperor himself were distinguished only by richer materials and more exquisite workmanship. But the principal standard which displayed the triumph of the cross was styled the labarum. . . . It is described as a long pike intersected by a transversal beam. The silken veil which hung down from the beam was curiously inwrought with the images of the reigning monarch and his children. The summit of the pike supported a crown of gold which enclosed the mysterious monogram, at once expressive of the figure of the cross, and the initial letters of the name of Christ. The safety of the labarum was entrusted to fifty guards of approved valor and fidelity; their station was marked by honors and emoluments; and some fortunate accidents soon introduced an opinion that as long as the guards of the labarum were engaged in the execution of their office, they were secure and invulnerable amidst the darts of the enemy.”—Decline and Fall, chap. 20, sec. 11.

The reason of all this, as reported by Constantine himself, was that in one of his marches “he saw with his own eyes the luminous trophy of the cross, placed above the meridian sun, and inscribed with the following words: BY THIS CONQUER.” And on the succeeding night he had a vision. Christ appeared before his eyes, displayed the sign of the cross, and directed him to frame a similar standard, and to march, with an assurance of victory, against Maxentius and all his enemies. See the discussion of the whole matter in “Decline and Fall,” chap. 20, secs. 11–15. And from this, “the Catholic church, both of the East and of the West, has adopted a prodigy which favors, or seems to favor, the popular worship of the cross.”—Id., chap. 20, sec. 13.

Another phase of this symbolic worship was the introduction of images. I refer again to my first quotation from “Historical Studies.” “Magnificent churches were erected by the emperor in Rome, adorned with images and pictures, where the bishop sat on a lofty throne,” etc.

“At first the experiment was made with caution and scruple; and the venerable pictures were discreetly allowed to instruct the ignorant, to awaken the cold, and to gratify the prejudices of the heathen proselytes. By a slow though inevitable progression, the honors of the original were transferred to the copy; the devout Christian prayed before the image of a saint; and the pagan rites of genuflection, luminaries, and incense again stole into the Catholic church. The scruples of reason or piety were silenced by the strong evidence of visions and miracles; and the pictures which speak, and move, and bleed must be endowed with a divine energy, and may be considered as the proper objects of religious adoration. The most audacious pencil might tremble in the rash attempt of defining by forms and colors the infinite Spirit, the eternal Father, who pervades and sustains the universe. But the superstitious mind was more easily reconciled to paint and to worship the angels, and, above all, the Son of God, under the human shape, which, on earth, they had condescended to assume. A similar indulgence was requisite, and propitious, for the Virgin Mary. . . . The use and even the worship of images was firmly established before the end of the sixth century; they were fondly cherished by the warm imagination of the Greeks and Asiatics; the Pantheon and Vatican were adorned with the emblems of a new superstition. . . . The style and sentiments of a Byzantine hymn will declare how far their worship was removed from the grossest idolatry: ‘How can we with mortal eyes contemplate this image, whose celestial splendor the host of Heaven presumes not to behold? He who dwells in Heaven condescends this day to visit us by his venerable image; He who is seated on the cherubim visits us this day by a picture which the Father has delineated with his immaculate hand, which he has formed in an ineffable manner, and which we sanctify by adoring it with fear and love.’”—Decline and Fall, chap. 49, secs. 2, 3.

“The example of Rome and Constantinople confirmed the faith and discipline of the Catholic world. The honors of the saints and martyrs, after a feeble and ineffectual murmur of profane reason, were universally established. . . . In the long period of twelve hundred years, which elapsed between the reign of Constantine and the reformation of Luther, the worship of saints and relics corrupted the pure and perfect simplicity of the Christian model.”—Id., chap. 28, secs. 11, 12. “The throne of the Almighty was darkened by a cloud of martyrs, and saints, and angels, the objects of popular veneration; and the Collyridian heretics, who flourished in the fruitful soil of Arabia, invested the Virgin Mary with the name and honors of a goddess.”—Id., chap. 50, sec. 13.

Thus the pagan worship, though under the abused name of Christianity, had resumed its place in the Roman world, when the Mohammedans, with equal contempt for the images and their worshipers, swarmed up from the deserts of Arabia; and under the influence of the charge of idolatry, which they incessantly urged against the Christians, some began to awake to the thought that perhaps they were guilty. Again I read:—

“The worship of images had stolen into the church by insensible degrees, and each petty step was pleasing to the superstitious mind, as productive of comfort and innocent of sin. But in the beginning of the eighth century, in the full magnitude of the abuse,

the more timorous of the Greeks were awakened by an apprehension that under the mask of Christianity they had restored the religion of their fathers: they heard, with grief and impatience, the name of idolaters; the incessant charge of the Jews and Mohammedans, who derived from the law and the Koran an immortal hatred to graven images and all the relative worship. The servitude of the Jews might curb their zeal and depreciate their authority; but the triumphant Mussulmans, who reigned at Damascus and threatened Constantinople, cast into the scale of reproach the accumulated weight of truth and victory. The cities of Syria, Palestine, and Egypt had been fortified with the images of Christ, his mother, and his saints; and each city presumed on the hope or promise of miraculous defense. In the rapid conquest of ten years, the Arabs subdued those cities and these images; and, in their opinion, the Lord of hosts pronounced a decisive judgment between the adoration and contempt of these mute and inanimate idols.”—Decline and Fall, chap. 49, sec. 4.

“In this season of distress and dismay, the eloquence of the monks was exercised in the defense of images. But they were now opposed by the murmurs of many simple or rational Christians, who appealed to the evidence of texts, of facts, and of the primitive times, and secretly desired the reformation of the church.”—Id., 49, 4. Here and now began the famous “Iconoclastic” controversy, between the worshipers and the breakers of the images, which continued with such bloody and unabated fury for one hundred and twenty years, from A. D. 726 to 846, and which finally resulted in the triumph of the images and the “religion of Constantine.”

In A. D. 726 Leo the Third, as emperor, ascended the throne of the East. “He was ignorant of sacred and profane letters; but his education, his reason, perhaps his intercourse with the Jews and Arabs, had inspired the martial peasant with a hatred of images; and it was held to be the duty of a prince to impose on his subjects the dictates of his own conscience. . . . In the reformation of religion, his first steps were moderate and cautious; he assembled a great council of senators and bishops, and enacted, with their consent, that all images should be removed from the sanctuary and altar to a proper height in the churches, where they might be visible to the eyes and inaccessible to the superstition of the people. But it was impossible on either side to check the rapid though adverse impulse of veneration and abhorrence; in their lofty position the sacred images still edified their votaries and reproached the tyrant. He was himself provoked by resistance and invective; and his own party accused him of an imperfect discharge of his duty, and urged, for his imitation, the example of the Jewish king who had broken without scruple the brazen serpent of the temple. By a second edict he proscribed the existence as well as the use of religious pictures; the churches of Constantinople and the provinces were cleansed from idolatry; the images of Christ, the Virgin, and the saints were demolished, or a smooth surface of plaster was spread over the walls of the edifice. The first hostilities of Leo were directed against a lofty Christ on the vestibule and above the gate of the palace.”—Id., 49, 5, 6.

Eugene Lawrence gives a fuller view of the attempt to destroy this image than does Gibbon, so I will quote his description of it. He says:—

“While Christendom was filled with idolatry, the cultivated Arabs aspired to the purest conception of the Divine nature. The contrast became so startling as to awaken a sense of shame in the breast of Leo, the Isaurian, Emperor of the East. He began in 727–30 the famous iconoclastic reform; he ordered the images to be broken to pieces, the walls of the churches to be whitewashed, and prosecuted with honest but imprudent vigor his design of extirpating idolatry. But a fierce dissension at once raged throughout all Christendom; the monks and the people rose in defense of their images and pictures, and the emperor, even in his own capital, was denounced as a heretic and a tyrant. There was an image of the Saviour, renowned for its miraculous powers, over the gate of the imperial palace called the Brazen Gate from the rich tiles of gilt bronze that covered its magnificent vestibule. The emperor ordered the sacred figure to be taken down and broken to pieces. But the people from all parts of the city flew to the defense of their favorite idol, fell upon the officers, and put many of them to death. The women were even more violent than the men; like furies they rushed to the spot, and, finding one of the soldiers engaged in the unhallowed labor at the top of the ladder, they pulled it down and tore him to pieces as he lay bruised upon the ground. ‘Thus,’ exclaims the pious annalist, ‘did the minister of the emperor’s injustice fall at once from the top of a ladder to the bottom of hell.’ The women next flew to the great church, and finding the iconoclastic patriarch officiating at the altar, overwhelmed him with a shower of stones and a thousand opprobrious names. He escaped, bruised and fainting, from the building. The guards were now called out, and the female insurrection suppressed, but not until several of the women had perished in the fray.”—Historical Studies, art. Bishops of Rome.

“The execution of the imperial edicts was resisted by frequent tumults in Constantinople and the provinces; the person of Leo was endangered, his officers were massacred, and the popular enthusiasm was quelled by the strongest efforts of the civil and military power. The son of Leo (Constantine V.), in the first year of his reign, had undertaken an expedition against the Saracens; during his absence, the capital, the palace, and the purple were occupied by his kinsman Artavasdes, the ambitious champion of the orthodox faith. The worship of images was triumphantly restored, . . . and the righteous claim of the usurper was acknowledged, both in the new and the ancient Rome. Constantine flew for refuge to his paternal mountains; but he descended at the head of the bold and affectionate Isaurians; and his final victory confounded the arms and predictions of the fanatics. His long reign was distracted with clamors, sedition, conspiracy, and mutual hatred and sanguinary revenge; the persecution of images was the motive, or pretence, of his adversaries.”

“It was the design of Leo the Isaurian to pronounce the condemnation of images, as an article of faith, and by the authority of a general council; but the convocation of such an assembly was reserved for his son Constantine; and though it is stigmatized by triumphant bigotry as a meeting of fools and atheists, their own partial and mutilated acts betray many symptoms of reason and piety. The . . . general council, which met (A. D. 754) in the suburbs of Constantinople, was composed of the respectable number of three hundred and thirty-eight bishops of Europe and Anatolia. . . . This Byzantine synod assumed the rank and powers of the seventh general council; yet even this title was a recognition of the six preceding assemblies, which had laboriously built the structure of the Catholic faith. After a serious deliberation of six months, the three hundred and thirty-eight bishops pronounced and subscribed a unanimous decree, that all visible symbols of Christ, except in the eucharist, were either blasphemous or heretical; that image-worship was a corruption of Christianity and a renewal of paganism; that all such monuments of idolatry should be broken or erased; and that those who should refuse to deliver the objects of their private superstition were guilty of disobedience to the authority of the church and of the emperor.” “The patient East abjured, with reluctance, her sacred images; they were fondly cherished and vigorously defended by the independent zeal of the Italians.”—Decline and Fall, chap. 49, secs. 5–7.

“The pope Gregory II. assumed the defense of image-worship. The Italian provinces of the Greek emperor, known as the Exarchate, threw off the imperial authority rather than part with their images.”—Historical Studies, art. Bishops of Rome.

“Two original epistles from Gregory the Second to the emperor Leo (A. D. 727), are still extant; and if they cannot be praised as the most perfect models of eloquence and logic, they exhibit the portrait, or at least the mask, of the founder of the papal monarchy. ‘During ten pure and fortunate years,’ says Gregory to the emperor, ‘we have tasted the annual comfort of your royal letters, subscribed in purple ink, with your own hand, the sacred pledges of your attachment to the orthodox creed of your fathers. How deplorable is the change! how tremendous the scandal! You now accuse the Catholics of idolatry; and, by the accusation, you betray your own impiety and ignorance.’ . . . After this decent salutation, the pope attempts the usual distinction between the idols of antiquity and the Christian images. The former were the fanciful representations of phantoms or demons, at a time when the true God had not manifested his person in any visible likeness. The latter are the genuine forms of Christ, his mother, and his saints, who had approved, by a crowd of miracles, the innocence and merit of this relative worship. He must, indeed, have trusted to the ignorance of Leo, since he could assert the perpetual use of images from the apostolic age, and their venerable presence in the six synods of the Catholic church. Gregory continues: ‘The eyes of the nations are fixed on our humility; and they revere, as a God upon earth, the apostle St. Peter, whose image you threaten to destroy. The remote and interior nations of the West present their homage to Christ and his vicar.’

“The first assault (A. D. 728) of Leo against the images of Constantinople had been witnessed by a crowd of strangers from Italy and the West, who related with grief and indignation the sacrilege of the emperor. But on the reception of his proscription edict, they trembled for their domestic deities; the images of Christ and the Virgin, of the angels, martyrs, and saints, were abolished in all the churches in Italy; and a strong alternative was proposed to the Roman pontiff, the royal favor as the price of his compliance, degradation and exile as the penalty of his disobedience. Without depending on prayers or miracles, Gregory boldly armed against the public enemy, and his pastoral letters admonished the Italians of their danger and their duty. At this signal, Ravenna, Venice, and the cities of the Exarchate and Pentapolis, adhered to the cause of religious images; their military force by sea and land consisted, for the most part, of the natives; and the spirit of patriotism and zeal was transfused into the mercenary strangers. The Italians swore to live and die in defense of the pope and the holy images. . . . The Greeks were overthrown and massacred, their leaders suffered an ignominious death, and the popes, however inclined to mercy, refused to intercede for these guilty victims.

“At Ravenna, the several quarters of the city had long exercised a bloody and hereditary feud; in religious controversy they found a new aliment of faction; but the votaries of images were superior in numbers or spirit, and the exarch, who attempted to stem the torrent, lost his life in the popular sedition. To punish this flagitious deed, and restore his dominion in Italy, the emperor sent a fleet and army into the Adriatic gulf. After suffering from the winds and waves much loss and delay, the Greeks made their descent in the neighborhood of Ravenna. . . . In a hard-fought day, as the two armies alternately yielded and advanced, a phantom was seen, a voice was heard, and Ravenna was victorious by the assurance of victory. The strangers retreated to their ships, but the populous sea-coast poured forth a multitude of boats; the waters of the Po were so deeply infected with blood, that during six years the public prejudice abstained from the fish of the river; and the institution of an annual feast perpetuated the worship of images, and the abhorrence of the Greek tyrant. Amidst the triumph of the Catholic arms, the Roman pontiff convened a synod of ninety-three bishops against the heresy of the Iconoclasts. With their consent he pronounced a general excommunication against all who by word or deed should attack the traditions of the fathers and the images of the saints.”

“While the popes established in Italy their freedom and dominion, the images, the first cause of their revolt, were restored in the Eastern empire. Under the reign of Constantine the fifth, the union of civil and ecclesiastical power had overthrown the tree, without extirpating the root, of superstition. The idols, for such they were now (A. D. 780, etc.), held, were secretly cherished by the order and the sex most prone to devotion; and the fond alliance of the monks and females obtained a final victory over the reason and authority of man. Leo the Fourth maintained with less rigor the religion of his father and grandfather; but his wife, the fair and ambitious Irene, had imbibed the zeal of the Athenians, the heirs of the idolatry, rather than the philosophy, of their ancestors. During the life of her husband, these sentiments were inflamed by danger and dissimulation, and she could only labor to protect and promote some favorite monks whom she drew from their caverns and seated on the metropolitan thrones of the East. But as soon as she reigned in her own name and in the name of her son, Irene more seriously undertook the ruin of the Iconoclasts; and the first step of her future persecution was a general edict for liberty of conscience. In the restoration of the monks, a thousand images were exposed to the public veneration; a thousand legends were invented of their sufferings and miracles.

“But the decrees of a general council could only be repealed by a similar assembly; the Iconoclasts, whom she convened, were bold in possession, and averse to debate, and the feeble voice of the bishops was re-echoed by the more formidable clamor of the soldiers and people of Constantinople. The delay and intrigues of a year, the separation of the disaffected troops, and the choice (A. D. 787, Sept. 24–Oct. 23) of Nice for a second orthodox synod, removed these obstacles; and the episcopal conscience was again, after the Greek fashion, in the hands of the prince. No more than eighteen days were allowed for the consummation of this important work. The Iconoclasts appeared, not as judges, but as criminals or penitents; the scene was decorated by the legates of Pope Adrian, and the Eastern patriarchs; the decrees were framed by the president, Tarasius, and ratified by the acclamations and subscriptions of three hundred and fifty bishops. They unanimously pronounced that the worship of images is agreeable to Scripture and reason, to the fathers and councils of the church. . . . Of this second Nicene council, the acts are still extant, a curious monument of superstition and ignorance, of falsehood and folly. I shall only notice the judgment of the bishops on the comparative merit of image-worship and morality. A monk had concluded a truce with the demon of fornication, on condition of interrupting his daily prayers to a picture that hung in his cell. His scruples prompted him to consult the abbot. ‘Rather than abstain from adoring Christ and his mother in their holy images, it would be better for you,’ replied the casuist, ‘to enter every brothel in the city.’ . . . In the West, Pope Adrian the First accepted and announced the decrees of the Nicene assembly, which is now revered by the Catholics as the seventh in order of the general councils. . . . For the honor of orthodoxy, at least the orthodoxy of the Roman church, it is somewhat unfortunate that the two princes who convened the two councils of Nice, are both stained with the blood of their sons.”—Decline and Fall, chap. 49, secs. 8, 9, 17, 18.

Constantine the First, the subject of this discourse, and Irene, were these two. Constantine is stained with the murder of his son, Crispus, the same year in which he convened the first council of Nice; and Irene, who convened the second, put out the eyes of her son, Constantine the Sixth.—Id., 20, 16 and 48, 15. “During the five succeeding reigns, a period of thirty-eight years, the contest was maintained with unabated rage and various success, between the worshipers and the breakers of the images.”—Id., 49, 18. But the worship of the images, and the “religion of Constantine,” finally prevailed, and was ratified by the council of Trent, A. D. 1562, when by it “images were declared sacred, when the whole Jewish and Christian theology had denounced their use.”—Historical Studies, art. Ecumenical Councils.

This much, however, of the religion of Constantine the Christian world has renounced and escaped. Yet there is one phase of this religion of Constantine which I have yet to notice, and which has almost a universal hold upon the Christian world, as well as an entire hold upon the Catholic church, and which, from the important part it is yet to play in the politics of our national government, is of vastly greater importance to us than either or all of the others; and that is, the popular institution of religious worship on the DAY OF THE SUN.

“But the devotion of Constantine was peculiarly directed to the genius of the sun, the Apollo of Greek and Roman mythology; and he was pleased to be represented with the symbols of the god of light and poetry. The unerring shafts of that deity, the brightness of his eyes, his laurel wreath, immortal beauty, and elegant accomplishments, seem to point him out as the patron of a young hero. The altars of Apollo were crowned with the votive offerings of Constantine; and the credulous multitude were taught to believe that the emperor was permitted to behold with mortal eyes the visible majesty of their tutelar deity; and that, either waking or in vision, he was blessed with the auspicious omens of a long and victorious reign. The sun was universally celebrated as the invincible guide and protector of Constantine.”—Decline and Fall, 20, 3.

What wonder, then, that we should find him issuing an edict in honor of his invincible “guide and protector”? So that is the next step; and here is his edict:—

“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 or planting vines; lest, the critical moment being let slip, men should lose the commodities granted by Heaven. Given the seventh day of March; Crispus and Constantine being consuls, each of them for the second time.”—Andrews’ History of the Sabbath, p. 342.

It will be seen by this that it is not the Lord’s day, nor yet the Christian Sabbath, but the venerable day of the sun, that is honored, and for the very good reason that Constantine was yet a heathen, and it was only as a heathen institution that it was honored, which is proved not only by the language of

the edict itself, but by the fact that on the very next day, March 8, he issued an edict for the consultation of the Aruspices, which was a species of divination by examination of the entrails of beasts slaughtered in sacrifice to the gods. Eze. 21:21: “For the king of Babylon stood at the parting of the way, at the head of the two ways, to use divination; he made his arrows bright, he consulted with images, he looked in the liver.” This is what Constantine ordered by his edict for the consultation of the Aruspices, and the Lord says that all who do these things are an abomination. Deut. 18:10–12. But although this was first issued as a heathen edict in favor of Sunday, yet afterward, when Constantine had finally adopted what they at that time were pleased to call Christianity, it was enforced in favor of Sunday as a Christian institution; for says an English writer:—

“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 321 A. D., being unrevoked, was enforced as a Christian ordinance.”—History of the Sabbath, p. 349. And the ambitious priesthood were only too glad of this as the means of increasing their authority, for, as we have before shown, the most respectable bishops had persuaded themselves that the ignorant rustics would more cheerfully renounce the superstitions of paganism if they found some resemblance, some compensation, in the bosom of Christianity.” And in carrying out this idea they had, to some considerable extent, adopted the Sunday, as stated by Morer: “Sunday being the day on which the Gentiles solemnly adored that planet, and called it Sunday, . . . the Christians thought fit to keep the same day and the same name of it, that they might not appear causelessly peevish, and by that means hinder the conversion of the Gentiles.”—Dialogues on the Lord’s Day, p. 23.

So, on the same principle, to convert thieves we should steal with them, to convert gamblers we should play cards with them, and to convert drunkards we should drink with them. But instead of converting them by this means, and making Christians of them, it would, as all will admit, make thieves, gamblers, and drunkards of the Christians. Just so with these; by adopting the images and the Sunday of the pagans they thought to Christianize them, but instead of Christianizing the pagans they paganized the Christians. Even as early as the days of Tertullian, A. D. 200, the Christians were taunted by the pagans with being worshipers of the sun, and the only defense which they could make was one the substance of which was, you do the same, and we have as good a right to do it as you have. Says Tertullian: “Others, with a greater regard to good manners, it must be confessed, suppose the sun is the God of the Christians, because it is a well-known fact that we pray toward the east, or because we make Sunday a day of festivity. What then? Do you do less than this? Do not many among you, with an affectation of sometimes worshiping the heavenly bodies likewise, move your lips in the direction of the sunrise?”—Tertullian, Ad Nationes, book i. chap. xiii.

But there were those who would neither adopt the images nor the Sunday, and this move on the part of Constantine was the splendid opportunity of their enemies, of which they were not slow to take advantage.

“Sylvester was the bishop of Rome while Constantine was emperor. . . . By his apostolic authority he changed the name of the day, giving it the imposing title of Lord’s day.”—History of the Sabbath, p. 350. The author sustains this statement by the following Latin quotation from Lucius’ Eccles. History, p. 739: “Metaphrastes vero, nomina dierum Hebraeis usitata retinuisse eum, tradit; solis prima die appellatione mutata, quem Dominicum dixit.”

And in less than forty years from this time, the church, in her arrogance, presumed to curse all those who should keep the Sabbath. “The council at Laodicea [A. D. 364] . . . first settled the observation of the Lord’s day and prohibited . . . the keeping of the Jewish Sabbath under an anathema.”—Prynne, in History of the Sabbath, p. 361.

Thus it appears that the accession of the pagans was one reason of the adoption of Sunday, and hatred toward the Jews was another. Constantine was at the head of this also, for in his letter to the Eastern churches, which was written to try to induce them always to keep the passover on Sunday, he uses the following significant words: “Let us then have nothing in common with that most hostile rabble the Jews.” Again: “Let us withdraw ourselves from that most odious fellowship.” And yet again: “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’s Ecclesiastical History, Constantine’s Letter to the Churches.

To have nothing in common with the Jews, they rejected the Sabbath; and to be in conformity with them in nothing, they adopted the Sunday and the image-worship of their heathen neighbors. Surely they made a success of having nothing in common with the Jews. And now the church and the empire were united; and consequently by the church, the very embodiment of “pride and arrogance,” with the immense weight of the influence of the emperor, the empire, and the law in her favor, the observance of the Sabbath of the Lord was finally crushed out, and the heathen festival of the sun exalted to its place, and there it stands to this day. While image-worship and a number of other superstitions of the papal church have been rejected, this plant of heathen planting is nourished and protected by the Christianity of the present day as though it were the most precious growth of heavenly planting. But it is a plant which our Heavenly Father has not planted, and it must be rooted up. Matt. 15:13.

True it is that its friends are already crying that it “cannot be preserved in the face of the persistent assaults that are made upon it, unless it is shielded by the nation’s fundamental law.”—Christian Statesman. But this very cry betrays and admits its earthly origin; for it is an historical fact that the authority for the Sunday institution originated in the nation’s law, the edict of the emperor, and the nation’s law is the only refuge and protection that can consistently be claimed for it, now that the law of God is asserting itself.

Constantine has been called the first “Christian emperor,” but there is a difference wide as eternity between the religion of Christ and the religion of Constantine. History is also asserting itself; and, stripped of the hypocritical garb with which he has been clothed by ambitious priests and courtly bishops, Constantine stands revealed as one of the chiefest instrumentalities in the development of the “mystery of iniquity.” I shall conclude this discourse with a quotation that I have seen somewhere, I think in the History of the Reformation, but I cannot recall the name of the author: “O Constantine, what evil was engendered, I will not say by thy conversion, but by the rich gifts that the Romish bishop received from thee.”

And now, knowing the times, the men, and the manners, it is high time to awake out of sleep, to cast off every vestige of the religion of Constantine, and to put on in all its fullness the religion of Christ; to abandon the works of men and remember the wonderful works of God, keeping the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus.

Continue reading: INVOCATION

THE RELIGION OF CONSTANTINE.*

THE RELIGION OF CONSTANTINE.