To strengthen the sacredness of this venerable day in the minds of the people, the doctors of the church were not wanting. Heylyn makes the following statement:—
“It was delivered of the souls in purgatory by Petrus Damiani, who lived A. D. 1056, that every Lord’s day they were manumitted from their pains and fluttered up and down the lake Avernus, in the shape of birds.”[830]
At the same time, another argument of a similar kind was brought forward to render the observance still more strict. Morer informs us respecting that class who in this age were most zealous advocates of Sunday observance:—
“Yet still the others went on in their way; and to induce their proselytes to spend the day with greater exactness and care, they brought in the old argument of compassion and charity to the damned in hell, who during the day, have some respite from their torments, and the ease and liberty they have is more or less according to the zeal and degrees of keeping it well.”[831]
If therefore they would strictly observe this sacred festival, their friends in hell would reap the benefit, in a respite from their torments on that day! In a council at Rome, A. D. 1078, Pope Gregory VII. decreed that as the Sabbath had been long regarded as a fast day, those who desired to be Christians should on that day abstain from eating meat.[832] In the eastern division of the Catholic church, in the eleventh century, the Sabbath was still regarded as a festival, equal in sacredness with Sunday. Heylyn contrasts with this the action of the western division of that church:—
“But it was otherwise of old in the church of Rome, where they did labor and fast.... And this, with little opposition or interruption, save that which had been made in the city of Rome in the beginning of the seventh century, and was soon crushed by Gregory then bishop there, as before we noted. And howsoever Urban of that name the second, did consecrate it to the weekly service of the blessed virgin, and instituted in the council held at Clermont, A. D. 1095, that our lady’s office should be said upon it, and that upon that day all Christian folks should worship her with their best devotion.”[833]
It would seem that this was a crowning indignity to the Most High. The memorial of the great Creator was set apart as a festival on which to worship Mary, under the title of mother of God! In the middle of the twelfth century, the king of England was admonished not to suffer men to work upon Sunday. Henry II. entered on the government about the year 1155.
“Of him it is reported that he had an apparition at Cardiff (... in South Wales) which from St. Peter charged him, that upon Sundays throughout his dominions, there should be no buying or selling, and no servile work done.”[834]
The sacredness of Sunday was not yet sufficiently established, because a divine warrant for its observance was still unprovided. The manner in which this urgent necessity was met is related by Roger Hoveden, a historian of high repute who lived at the very time when this much-needed precept was furnished by the pope. Hoveden informs us that Eustace the abbot of Flaye in Normandy, came into England in the year 1200, to preach the word of the Lord, and that his preaching was attended by many wonderful miracles. He was very earnest in behalf of Sunday. Thus Hoveden says:—