230 SUNDAY LEGISLATION AND ITS OBSERVANCES. 



cumstance that national affairs should be interrupted and suspended 

 by such barren and effete propositions as the Sunday bills; yet, 

 rejected as they have been, and treated with no small share of con- 

 tempt within and without doors, there is not the smallest doubt that 

 the next session will be ushered in by other and more vigorous 

 efforts on the part of the saints, God wot ! to judaize the nation. In 

 the mean time, perhaps, a brief and rapid sketch of Sunday legisla- 

 tion and its observance may not be uninteresting to the general 

 reader. 



" This day," says Mr. Fosbrooke, under {he head SUNDAY, " has 

 always been subject to the extremes of observation or neglect. We 

 find it most religiously observed, and no business to be done upon it. 

 (xv. Script. 380 ; x. Script. 830, 834.) On the contrary we also 

 find markets held (with, indeed, a limitation, except for provisions), 

 and trading and working upon this day. (Dec. Script. 1079. Script. 

 p. Bed. 467. M. Paris, 169, 523.) Battles, &c. were often sus- 

 pended because it was Sunday. (Hawk. Mus. ii. 120; iii. 264, 506.) 

 Dressing well on this day is ancient. Bear and bull-baiting, and all 

 kinds of games were not unusual after church. In the 17th century, 

 the people in almost every house passed the Sunday evening in 

 singing psalms and reading the Book of Martyrs. (Id. ii. 432; 

 iii. 71.")* 



The first compulsory observance of Sunday appears to have been 

 in 321, under Constantine the Great, a recent convert to Christianity, 

 who artfully balanced the hopes and fears of his subjects by pub- 

 lishing in the same year two edicts ; the first of which enjoined the 

 solemn observance of Sunday, and the second directed the regular 

 consultation of Aruspices. In order not to offend the ears of the 

 pagan part of the empire, he styles the Lord's day Dies Solis ; f and 

 he permits agricultural labour to be performed on this day, perhaps 

 in conformity to an ancient opinion that those necessary operations 

 should not be suspended on festival days : 



" Quippe etiam festis qucedam exercere diebus 

 Fas et jura sinunt : rivos deducere nulla 

 Relligio vetuit, segeti prsetendere sepem, 

 Insidias avibus moliri, incendere vepres, 

 Balantumque gregem fluvio mersare 



The Council of Orleans, in 538, prohibited this species of labour ; 

 but, because there were, at that time, many Jews in Gaul, and the 

 people had fallen into many superstitious uses in the celebration of 

 the new sabbath, by imitating or adopting those of the Jews on the 

 old sabbath, the Council declares, that, to hold it unlawful to travel 

 with horses, cattle, and carriages, to prepare food, or to do anything 

 necessary to the cleanliness and decency of houses and persons, sa- 

 vours more of Judaism than Christianity. 



In England, by the laws of Ina, about 688, if a slave work on a 



* Encyclop. Antiquit. Vol. II. p. 698. 



t Gibbon, Decl and Fall, Vol. Ill ch. 20. p. 241. He cites for the first Cod. 

 Theodos. L. ii.Tit.viii. Leg. ] . Cod. Justinian. L. iii.Tit.xii. Leg. 3, and observes 

 that Baronius censures Constantine's profane conduct with truth and asperity 

 note 9. $ Virg . Georg. 1. 268. 



