Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker volume 3.djvu/85

72 more completely to get rid of the Jewish superstition which consecrated that day; but on Sunday there maust be no fast. He would be a heretic who should fast on Sunday. It is strictly forbidden in the "canons of the apostles;" a clergyman must be degraded and a layman excommunicated for the offence. Says St Ignatius, in the second century, if the epistle be genuine, "Every lover of Christ feasts on the Lord's day." "We deem it wicked," says Tertullian in the third century," to fast on the Sunday, or to pray on our knees." "Oh," says St Jerome, "that we could fast on the Sunday, as Paul did and they that were with him." St Ambrose says, the "Manichees were damned for fasting on the Lord's day." At this day the Catholic church allows no fasting on Sunday, save the Sunday before the crucifixion; even Lent ceases on that day.

It does not appear that labour ceased on Sunday, in the earliest age of Christianity. But when Sunday became the regular and most important day for holding religious meetings, less labour must of course be performed on that day. At length it became common in some places to abstain from ordinary work on the Sunday. It is not easy to say how early this was brought about. But after Christianity had become "respectable," and found its way to the ranks of the wealthy, cultivated, and powerful, laws got enacted in its favour. Now the Romans, like all other ancient nations, had certain festal days in which it was not thought proper to labour unless work was pressing. It was disreputable to continue common labour on such days without an urgent reason; they were pretty numerous in the Roman calendar. Courts did not sit on those days; no public business was transacted. They were observed as Christmas and the more important saints' days in Catholic countries; as Thanksgiving day and the Fourth of July with us. In the year three hundred and twenty-one, Constantine, the first Christian emperor of Rome, placed Sunday among their ferial days. This was perhaps the first legislative action concerning the day. The statute forbids labour in towns, but expressly excludes all prohibition of field-labour in the country. About three hundred and sixty-six or seven the Council of Laodicea decreed that Christians