The Jewish Sabbath was abolished by Christ. “The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath”;[150] “My father worketh [on it] hitherto, and I work.”[151] Jewish converts no doubt continued to observe the Sabbath, but this met with disapproval. In one of the Epistles of Ignatius we find the exhortation not to “sabbatise,” which was expanded by the subsequent paraphraser of these compositions into a warning against keeping the Sabbath, after the manner of the Jews, “as if delighting in idleness.”[152] And in the fourth century a Council of the Church enacted “that the Christians ought not to judaise, and rest on the Sabbath, but ought to work on that day.”[153] On the other hand, it was from early times a recognised custom among the Christians to celebrate the first day of the week in memory of Christ’s resurrection, by holding a form of religious service; but there was no sabbatic regard for it, and it was chiefly looked upon as a day of rejoicing.[154] Tertullian is the first writer who speaks of abstinence from secular care and labour on Sunday as a duty incumbent upon Christians, lest they should “give place to the devil.”[155] But it is extremely doubtful whether the earliest Sunday law really had a Christian origin. In 321 the Emperor Constantine issued an edict to the effect that all judges and all city people and tradesmen should rest on “the venerable Day of the Sun,” whereas those living in the country should have full liberty to attend to the culture of their fields, “since it frequently happens that no other day is so fit for the sowing of grain or the planting of vines.”[156] In this rescript nothing is said of any relation to Christianity, nor do we know that it in any way was due to Christian influence.[157] It seems that Constantine, in his capacity of Pontifex Maximus, only added the day of the sun—whose worship was the characteristic of the new paganism—to those inauspicious days, religiosi dies, which the Romans of old regarded as unsuitable for worldly business and especially for judicial proceedings.[158] But though the obligatory Sunday rest in no case was a continuance of the Jewish Sabbath, it gradually was confounded with it, owing to the recognition of the decalogue, with its injunction of a weekly day of rest, as the code of divine morality. From the sixth century upwards vexatious restrictions were made by civil rulers, councils, and ecclesiastical writers;[159] until in Puritanism the Christian Sunday became a perfect image of the pharisaic Sabbath, or even excelled it in the rigour with which abstinence from every kind of worldly activity was insisted upon. The theory that the keeping holy of one day out of seven is the essence of the Fourth Commandment reconciled people to the fact that the Jewish Sabbath was the seventh day and Sunday the first. In England, in the seventeenth century, persons were punished for carrying coal on Sunday, for hanging out clothes to dry, for travelling on horseback, for rural strolls and walking about.[160] And Scotch clergymen taught their congregations that on that day it was sinful to save a vessel in distress, and that it was proof of religion to leave ship and crew to perish.[161]
[150] St. Mark, ii. 27.
[151] St. John, v. 17.
[152] Ignatius, Epistola ad Magnesios, 9 (Migne, op. cit. Ser. Graeca, v. 768). Neale, Feasts and Fasts, p. 89.
[153] Concilium Laodicenum, can. 29 (Labbe-Mansi, Sacrorum Conciliorum collectio, ii. 580).
[154] Justin Martyr, Apologia I. pro Christianis, 67 (Migne, op. cit. Ser. Graeca, vi. 429). Schaff, History of the Christian Church, ‘Ante-Nicene Christianity,’ p. 202 sqq. Hessey, Sunday, p. 29 sqq.
[155] Tertullian, De oratione, 23 (Migne, op. cit. i. 1191).
[156] Codex Justinianus, iii. 12. 2 (3).
[157] Cf. Lewis, Critical History of Sunday Legislation, p. 18 sqq.; Milman, History of Christianity, ii. 291 sq.
[158] Gellius, Noctes Atticæ, iv. 9. 5; vi. 9. 10. Varro, De lingua Latina, vi. 30. Neale, op. cit. pp. 5, 6, 86, 87, 206. Fowler, Roman Festivals of the Period of the Republic, p. 8 sq. The Greeks, also, had “unblest and inauspicious” days, when no court or assembly was to be held, and work was to be abstained from (Plato, Leges, vii. 800; Karsten, Studies in Primitive Greek Religion, p. 90).