)"--_Schaff, "History of the Christian
Church," Vol. III, chap. 5, sec. 75._
Commenting on this law, Prof. Hutton Webster, of the University of
Nebraska, says:
"This legislation by Constantine probably bore no relation to
Christianity; it appears, on the contrary, that the emperor, in
his capacity of Pontifex Maximus, was only adding the day of
the sun, the worship of which was then firmly established in
the Roman Empire, to the other ferial days of the sacred
calendar."
"What began, however, as a pagan ordinance, ended as a
Christian regulation; and a long series of imperial decrees,
during the fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries, enjoined with
increasing stringency abstinence from labor on Sunday."--_"Rest
Days," pp. 122, 270._
Dean Stanley (Church of England) writes:
"The retention of the old pagan name _Dies Solis_, or Sunday,
for the weekly Christian festival, is, in a great measure,
owing to the union of pagan and Christian sentiment with which
the first day of the week was recommended by Constantine to his
subjects, pagan and Christian alike, as the 'venerable day of
the sun.
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