“The Catholic church for more than six hundred years after Christ, permitted labor, and gave license to many Christian people to work upon the Lord’s day, at such hours as they were not commanded to be present at the public service by the precept of the church.”[795]
But let us trace the several steps by which the festival of Sunday increased in strength until it attained its complete development. These will be found at present mostly in the edicts of emperors, and the decrees of councils. Morer tells us that,
“Under Clodoveus king of France met the bishops in the first council of Orleans [A. D. 507], where they obliged themselves and their successors, to be always at the church on the Lord’s day, except in case of sickness or some great infirmity. And because they, with some other of the clergy in those days, took cognizance of judicial matters, therefore by a council at Arragon, about the year 518 in the reign of Theodorick, king of the Goths, it was decreed that ‘No bishop or other person in holy orders should examine or pass judgment in any civil controversy on the Lord’s day.’”[796]
This shows that civil courts were sometimes held on Sunday by the bishops in those days; otherwise such a prohibition would not have been put forth. Hengstenberg, in his notice of the third council of Orleans, gives us an insight into the then existing state of the Sunday festival:—
“The third council of Orleans, A. D. 538, says in its twenty-ninth canon: ‘The opinion is spreading amongst the people, that it is wrong to ride, or drive, or cook food, or do anything to the house, or the person on the Sunday. But since such opinions are more Jewish than Christian, that shall be lawful in future, which has been so to the present time. On the other hand agricultural labor ought to be laid aside, in order that the people may not be prevented from attending church.’”[797]
Observe the reason assigned. It is not lest they violate the law of the Sabbath, but it is that they may not be kept from church. Another authority states the case thus:—
“Labor in the country [on Sunday] was not prohibited till the council of Orleans, A. D. 538. It was thus an institution of the church, as Dr. Paley has remarked. The earlier Christians met in the morning of that day for prayer and singing hymns in commemoration of Christ’s resurrection, and then went about their usual duties.”[798]
In A. D. 588, another council was holden, the occasion of which is thus stated:—
“And because, notwithstanding all this care, the day was not duly observed, the bishops were again summoned to Mascon, a town in Burgundy, by King Gunthrum, and there they framed this canon: ‘Notice is taken that Christian people, very much neglect and slight the Lord’s day, giving themselves as on other days to common work, to redress which irreverence, for the future, we warn every Christian who bears not that name in vain, to give ear to our advice, knowing we have a concern on us for your good, and a power to hinder you to do evil. Keep then the Lord’s day, the day of our new birth.’”[799]