Volume 1

A dictionary of Christian antiquities : being a continuation of the 'Dictionary of the Bible' / edited by William Smith and Samuel Cheetham ; illustrated by engravings on wood.

Date:: [between 1890 and 1899?]

Credit: A dictionary of Christian antiquities : being a continuation of the 'Dictionary of the Bible' / edited by William Smith and Samuel Cheetham ; illustrated by engravings on wood. Source: Wellcome Collection.

1070/1096 (page 1050)

$*.eaching. There is, indeed, a passage in one of the Homilies de Tempore {Horn. 251), attributed to j him, but unhesitatingly rejected by the Bene- j dictine editors, and assigned by them to the 9th century, in which he is made to say that j “the doctors of the church decreed to transfer I all the glory of the Jewish sabbath-keeping to the Lord’s day, so that what they celebrated in figure, we might celebrate in reality” (see vol. V. p. 3101). But this is in direct opposition to St. Augustine’s general teaching ; it clearly breathes the spirit of a later time, and shews traces of a well-known passage of Alcuin. (V.) In these leading representatives of Chris- tian thought, we find, therefore, not only a pre- servation of the older and truer ideas, but, generally speaking, a care (possibly prophetic) to enforce the spirituality of the Lord’s day more cai'efully than ever. It is rather in the enact- ments of councils, embodying the common opinion of the church at large, that we trace the changes of conception which have been described above. The great Council of Nicaea, taking the Lord’s day and its observance for granted, merely di- rects that on the Lord’s day and within the Pentecost, all shall pray standing (Canon 20). Subsequent councils, however, of the 4th, 5th and 6th centuries legislate frequently on the subject. I The first class of enactments is directed to the enforcement of ritual and devotional observances. Thus absence from the church on their Lord’s days is made a ground for excommunication; fasting on the Lord’s day is denounced as savour- ing of Manicheism; the refusal to join the prayers and receive the Holy Eucharist, and the practice of leaving the church during preaching, are censured and punished; all frequenting of ■ the games or the circus on the Lord’s day is strictly forbidden (see Hessey’s Bampton Lee- \ lures, Lect. III.). These enactments have no special significance as to the conception of the day. They simply take for granted its religious celebration after the primitive fashion; their existence only indicates that this celebration was becoming more and more a matter of legal regulation and enforcement. There is, however, another class of enactments intended to secure and guard a quasi-sabbatical rest. To this the well-known canon of Laodicea (a.d. 363) seems certainly to belong. (See Labbe, Concilia, vol. ii. pp. 564, 565.) It de- clares that Christians “are not to Judaize and rest on the sabbath day, but to work on that day, and preferring the Lord’s day in honour, on it, if possible, to rest as Christians (j))v 8e KvpiaKT]v TTpoTifxSivriS, SvvaiuTO, (Txo\a^eiu dis Xpicrriavoi). Obviously there is a marked distinction intended between the Jewish and Christian idea of rest; but still the result is to transfer a sabbatical rest to the Lord’s day, and so to make it a kind of spiritualized and Chris- tianized sabbath. This step being once taken, its necessary consequences follow, accumulating regulations of prohibition or injunction, until the original distinction is obscured or lost. The councils, in fact, were placed between tendencies to extreme observance and to extreme neglect. Thus at the third Council of Orleans (a.d. 538), we see that a oertain public opinion had been growing up (persiuisum est populis) that on th2 Lord’s day no horse or ox or carriage should be used, no food prepared, nothing done for the cleanliness of the house or person. This the council wisely desires to check, and protests that such minute regulations “savour rather of Jewish than Christian observance ” (ad Judaicam magis quam ad Chnstianam observantiam per- tinere). It is accordingly laid down, somewhat vaguely, that the freedom hitherto used on the Lord’s day should be preserved (quod antea fieri licuit, liceat). But in the very same canon abstinence from rural work in general is not only advised, in order that men may have leisure for church-going and prayer, but, in case of neglect, enforced by ecclesiastical censure (see Labbe, vol. ix. p. 10). On the other hand, the second Council of MScon (a.d. 585) declares itself driven to legislation, because “ the people rashly profane the Lord’s day, and as on ordinary days (privatis diebus) devote them.selves to un- ceasing work.” Accordingly the first canon pleads eloquently for the observation of the Lord’s day, “ which has given us the new birth and freedom from all our sins ” (quae nos denu6 peperit et a peccatis omnibus liberavit); on it “ being made free from sin and become servants to righteousness, let us show the service which is perfect freedom ” (liberam servitutem exhibea- mus). “ The day is the day of perpetual rest, which is suggested to us by the type of the seventh day in the law and the prophets.” Hence it is urged that men should abstain from litigation and pleading, and should not even allow themselves on plea of necessity to yoke their oxen. Their whole soul is to be absorbed in hymns and praises; their eyes and hands raised all day to God. Not that there is value in bodily rest (corporal! abstinentia), but in an obedience by which earthly actions may be set aside, and the soul raised to heaven. All this is spiritual exhortation-; but it is significantly added that disobedience will be punished pri- marily by God, secondarily “ by the implacable anger of the priest; ” pleaders shall be non- suited, peasants or slaves severely scourged, clerks or monks suspended for six months from communion with their fellows. (See Labbe, ix. 947.) It will be observed that in this canon there is a vague reference to the seventh day’s rest, laid down in the fourth commandment, as foreshadowing the Lord’s day. But this is a tentative step anticipatory of the future. Every enactment of quasi-sabbatical rest prepared for a Sabbatarian theory ; but it was far from being as yet established. This is clear, if we turn to the writings of Gregory the Great, the foremost man of his day in character as in office, and the unconscious founder of the future papal powei-. He ob- viously followed St. Augustine in his view of the Lord’s day and its .significance, and in some of his references to Old Testament types of its sacredness (see Horn, in Ezek. ii. 4). In a celebrated letter to the Bomans {Epid. xiii. 1), written in reference to some introduction of strict re.st on the sabbath, he declares that it h One is, however, peculiar. On Job i. 5, he contends that in his sanctifying his sons after the seven days, he prefigured the eighth day or Lord’s day. He adds: “ Quia erg-) octavo die offerre septem sacrificia dicitur, plenus septiformis gratiae Spiritu pro spe resurrectionis Domino deservisse perhlbetur.”$