A little bit of history for those interested.
THE GREAT EMPIRES OF
PROPHECY
by Alonzo Jones page 391
15. In A.D. 321, to please the bishops of the Catholic Church, he issued an
edict commanding judges, townspeople, and mechanics to rest on Sunday.
Yet in this also his paganism was still manifest, as the edict required rest on
"the venerable day of the sun," and "enjoined the observance, or rather
forbade the public desecration, of Sunday, not under the name of
Sabbatum, or Dies Domini, but under its old astrological and heathen title,
Dies Solis, familiar to all his subjects, so that the law was as applicable to
the worshipers of Hercules, Apollo, and Mithras, as to the Christians." -
Schaff.
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16. "The same tenacious adherence to the ancient god of light has left its
trace, even to our own time, on one of the most sacred and universal of
Christian institutions. The retention of the old pagan name of "Dies Solis,'
or 'Sunday,' for the weekly Christian festival, is in 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.'... It was his mode of
harmonizing the discordant religions of the empire under one common
institution." - Stanley.
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17. The next day after issuing this Sunday law, that is, March 8, A.D. 321,
he published another edict, in which he "expressly ordains that whenever
lightning should strike the imperial palace or any other public building, the
haruspices, according to ancient usage, should be consulted as to what it
might signify, and a careful report of the answer should be drawn up for his
use." And by yet another "law of the same year, he declares also the
employment of heathen magic, for good ends, as for the prevention or
healing of diseases, for the protection of harvests, for the prevention of rain
and of hail, to be permitted, and in such expressions, too, as certainly
betray a faith in the efficacy of these pretended supernatural means, unless
the whole is to be ascribed simply to the legal forms of paganism." -
Neander.
Accordingly, now "his coins bore on the one side the letters of the name of
Christ, on the other the figure of the sun-god, and the inscription, 'Sol
invictus' (the unconquerable sun), as if he could not bear to relinquish the
patronage of the bright luminary which represented to him, as to Augustus
and to Julian, his own guardian deity." - Stanley.
31. "The lingering attachment of Constantine to the favorite superstition of
his earlier days may be traced on still better authority. The Grecian worship
of Apollo had been exalted into the Oriental veneration of the sun, as the
visible representative of the Deity; and of all the statues that were
introduced from different quarters, none were received with greater honor
than those of Apollo. In one part of the city stood the Pythian, in another
the Sminthian deity. The Delphic Tripod, which, according to Zosimus,
contained an image of the god, stood upon the column of three twisted
serpents, supposed to represent the mystic Python. But on a still loftier, the
famous pillar of porphyry, stood an image in which, if we are to credit
modern authority (and the more modern our authority, the less likely is it
to have invented so singular a statement), Constantine dared to mingle
together the attributes of the sun, of Christ, and of himself. According to
one tradition, this pillar was based, as it were, on another superstition. The
venerable Palladium itself, surreptitiously conveyed from Rome, was buried
beneath it, and thus transferred the eternal destiny of the old to the new
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capital. The pillar, formed of marble and of porphyry, rose to the height of
a hundred and twenty feet. The colossal image on the top was that of
Apollo, either from Phrygia or from Athens. But the head of Constantine
had been substituted for that of the god. The scepter proclaimed the
dominion of the world; and it held in its hand the globe, emblematic of
universal empire. Around the head, instead of rays, were fixed the nails of
the true cross. Is this paganism approximating to Christianity, or
Christianity degenerating into paganism?" - Milman.
44. The only result which could possibly come from such proceedings as
these, was, first, that the great mass of the people, of the pagans, in the
empire, with no change either of character or convictions, were drawn into
the Catholic Church. Thus the State and the church became one and the
same thing; and that one thing was simply the embodiment of the second
result; namely, a solid mass of hypocrisy. “The vast numbers who, from
external considerations, without any inward call, joined themselves to the
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Christian communities, served to introduce into the church all the
corruptions of the heathen world. Pagan vices, pagan delusions, pagan
superstition, took the garb and name of Christianity, and were thus enabled
to exert a more corrupting influence of the Christian life.
45. “Such were those who, without any real interest whatever in the
concerns of religion, living half in paganism and half in an outward show of
Christianity, composed the crowds that thronged the churches on the
festivals of the Christians, and the theaters on the festivals of the pagans.
Such were those who accounted themselves Christians if they but attended
church once or twice in a year; while, without a thought of any higher life,
they abandoned themselves to every species of worldly pursuit and
pleasure.” - Neander.
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63. Then came Constantine, the best imperial representative of the new
paganism, and the most devout worshiper of the sun as the supreme and
universal deity, with the avowed purpose, as expressed in his own words,
"First to bring the diverse judgments formed by all nations respecting the
Deity to a condition, as it were, of settled uniformity." In Constantine then new paganism met its ideal, and the New Platonism - the apostate, paganized, sun-worshiping form of Christianity - met its long-wished-for instrument. In him the two streams met. In him the aspiration of Elagabalus, the hope of Ammonius Saccas and Clement, of Plotinus and Origen, and the ambition of the perverse-minded, self-exalted bishops, were all realized and accomplished - a new, imperial, and universal religion was created.
64. Therefore, "the reign of Constantine the Great forms one of the epochs in the history of the world. It is the era of the dissolution of the Roman Empire; the commencement, or rather consolidation, of a kind of Eastern despotism, with a new capital, a new patriciate, a new constitution, a new financial system, a new, though as yet imperfect, jurisprudence, and, finally, a new religion." - Milman.
Bye for now. Y. b. in C. Keith
As long as you keep responding, he doens't have to answer the question. 