Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 30.djvu/26

14 fast or law days together; yea, they sometimes divided one and the same day in this manner:

"In modo fastus erat, mune nefastus erat.

"The afternoon was term, the morning holy day. Nor were all their fasti applied to judicature, but some of them to other meetings and consultations of the commonwealth; so that, being divided into three sorts, which they called fastos proprie, fastos endotercisos, and fastos comitiales, containing together one hundred and eighty-four days, through all the months of the year there remained not properly to the prætor, as judicial triverbial days, above twenty-eight."—(Works, from original MS., in Bodleian Library, book ii, p. 74.)

Church historians have been obliged to recognize the purely heathen character of this legislation. Schaff says: "But the Sunday law of Constantine must not be overrated. He enjoined the observance, or rather forbade the public desecration, of Sunday, not under the name of Sabbatum or Dies Domini, but under its old astrological and heathen title, Dies Solis, familiar to all his subjects, so that the law was as applicable to the worshipers of Hercules, Apollo, and Mithras, as to the Christians. There is no reference whatever in his law either to the fourth commandment or to the resurrection of Christ."—("Church History," vol. iii, p. 380.)

Milman says: "The rescript, indeed, for the religious observance of the Sunday, which enjoined the suspension of all public business and private labor, except that of agriculture, was enacted, according to the apparent terms of the decree, for the whole Roman Empire. Yet, unless we had direct proof that the decree set forth the Christian reason for the sanctity of the day, it may be doubted whether the act would not be received by the greater part of the empire as merely adding one more festival to the fasti of the empire, as proceeding entirely from the will of the emperor, or even grounded on his authority as supreme pontiff, by which he had the plenary power of appointing holy-days. In fact, as we have before observed, the day of the sun would be willingly hallowed by almost all the pagan world, especially that part which had admitted any tendency toward the Oriental theology."—("History of Christianity," vol. ii, pp. 396, 397.)

No other legislation concerning Sunday appears for the next sixty-five years. Meanwhile, the Church was becoming paganized, the papacy was developing, the empire was tottering, and all things were getting ready for the dark ages. From the close of the fourth century to the close of the fifth the legislation was enlarged, including scores of other days, most of them pagan festivals, christened by new names, and but slightly modified in the manner of their observance. As church and state became more thoroughly united, the pagan idea that the civil law ought to regulate religious actions and religious belief was so fully developed that the state determined not only what men should do, but what men should believe. Civil law practically