other entertainments on Sunday. The same abuse, it is well known, very generally prevails to this day upon the continent of Europe in both Protestant and Roman dum est, eo die, quae sunt maxime votiva, compleri; atque ideo emaacipandi et manumittendi die festo cuncti licentiam habeant." ' Euseb. Vit. Const, iv. 20. - Cod. Tlieod. xv. 5, 2, a. 386 : " Nullus Solis die populo spectaculum praebeat." If the emperor's birthday fell on Sunday, the acknowledgment of it, which was ac- companied by games, was to be postponed. 382 THIRD PERIOD, A.D. 311-590 Catholic countries, and Christian princes and magistrates only too frequently give it the sanction of their example. Ecclesiastical legislation in like manner prohibited needless mechanical and agricultural labor, and the attending of thea- tres and other public places of amusement, also hunting and weddings, on Sunday and on feast days. Besides such negative legislation, to which the state must confine itself, the church at the same time enjoined positive observances for the sacred day, especially the regular attendance of public worship, fre- quent communion, and the payment of free-will oflerings (tithes). Many a council here confounded the legal and the evangelical principles, thinking themselves able to enforce by the threatening of penalties what has moral value only as a voluntary act. The Council of Eliberis, in 305, decreed the sus- pension from communion of any person living in a town who shali absent himself for three Lord's Days from church. In the same legalistic spirit, the council of Sardica,' in 348, and the Trullan council ^ of 692, threatened with dej)Osition the clergy who should unnecessarily omit public worship three Sundays in succession, and prescribed temporary excommunication for similar neglect among the laity. But, on the other hand, the councils, while they turned the Lord's Day itself into a legal ordinance handed down from the apostles, pronounced with all decision against the Jewish Sabbatism. The Apostolic Canons and the council of Gangra (the latter, about 450, in opposition to the Gnostic Manichsean asceticism of the Eusta- thians) condemn fasting on Sunday.' In the Greek church this prohibition is still in force, because Sunday, commemorat- ing the resm-rection of Christ, is a day of spiritual joy. On the same symbolical ground kneeling in prayer was forbidden * Can. xi. appealing to former ordinances, comp. Can. Apost. xiii. and xiv. (xiv. and XV.), and the council of Elvira, can. xxi. Hefele: Conciliengesch. i. p. 570. * Can. Ixxx. ' Can. Apost. liii. (alias lii.) : " Si quis episcopus aut presbyter aut diaconus in diebus festis non sumit carnem aut vinum, deponatur." Comp. can. Ixvi. (Ixv.) and Const. Apost. v. 20. The council of Gangra says in the 18th canon: "If any one, for pretended ascetic reasons, fast on Sunday, let him be anathema." The same council condemns those who despise the house of God and frequent schismatical as- sembUcs. ,^^^^ .T^.^- -^'-^ -^ v<^ <'^ '^"^ .— — _ § 75. THE CIVIL, AND RELIGIOUS SUNDAY. 383