encouraged hypocrisy and empty formalism. Later emperors declared the profanation of Sunday to be sacrilege, and prohibited also the collecting of taxes and private debts (368 and 386), and even theatrical and circus perform- ances, on Sunday and the high festivals (386 and 425)." But this interdiction of public amusements, on which a council of Carthage (399 or 401) with reason insisted, was probably never rigidly enforced, and was repeatedly supplanted by the op- posite practice, .which gradually prevailed all over Europe.'* * Eus. Yit. Const, iv. 18-20. Comp. Sozom. i. 8. In our times military parades and theatrical exhibitions in Paris, Vienna, Berlin, and other European cities are so frequent on no other day as on the Lord's day ! In France, political elections are usually held on the Sabbath ! ^ Eus. Vit. Const. 1. iv. c. 20. The formulary was prescribed in the Latin lan- guage, as Eusebius says in c. 19. He is speaking of the whole army (comp. c. 18), and it may presumed that many of the soldiers were heathen. ' The second law against opening theatres on Sundays and festivals (a.d. 425) in the Cod. Theodos. 1. xv. tit. 7, 1. 5, says expressly : " Omni theatrorum atque cir- censium voluptate per universas urbes . . dcnegata, tota; Christianorum ac fidelium mentes Dei cultibus occupentur." * As Chrysostom, at the end of the fourth century and the beginning of the fifth, often complains that the theatre is better attended than the church ; so down to this day the same is true in almost all the large cities on the continent of Europe. Only in England and the United States, under the influence of Calvinism and Puritanism, are the theatres closed on Sundav. § 18. IJfTLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY ON LEGISLATION. 107 § 18. Influence of Christia/iiity on Ci/oil Legislation. The Justinian Code. Comp. on this subject particularly the works cited at § 13, sub ii, by Rhoer, Meysexbtieg, and Troplong ; also Gibbon, chap, xliv (an admirable summary of the Roman law), Milman: Lat. Christianity, vol. I. B. iii. chap. 0, and in part the works of Schmidt and Chastel on the influ- ence of Christianity upon society in the Roman empire, quoted in vol. i. § 86. While ill this way the state secured to the church the well- deserved rights of a legal corporation, the church exerted in turn a most beneficent influence on the state, liberating it by degrees from the power of heathen laws and customs, from the spirit of egotism, revenge, and retaliation, and extending its care beyond mere material prosperity to the higher moral in- terests of society. In the previous period we observed the contrast between Christian morality and heathen corruption in the Koman empire.' "We are now to see how the prineii^les of Christian morality gained public recognition, and began at least in some degree to rule the civil and political life. As early as the second century, under the better heathen em- perors,