present day , which undermines faith in the Bible , will prove as successful in preparing the way for the acceptance of the papacy , with its pleasing forms , as did the withholding of knowledge in opening the way for its aggrandizement in the Dark Ages .
In the movements now in progress in the United States to secure for the institutions and usages of the church the support of the state , Protestants are following in the steps of papists . Nay , more , they are opening the door for the papacy to regain in Protestant America the supremacy which she has lost in the Old World . And that which gives greater significance to this movement is the fact that the principal object contemplated is the enforcement of Sunday observance--a custom which originated with Rome , and which she claims as the sign of her authority . It is the spirit of the papacy--the spirit of conformity to worldly customs , the veneration for human traditions above the commandments of God--that is permeating the Protestant churches and leading them on to do the same work of Sunday exaltation which the papacy has done before them .
If the reader would understand the agencies to be employed in the soon-coming contest , he has but to trace the record of the means which Rome employed for the same object in ages past . If he would know how papists and Protestants united will deal with those who reject their dogmas , let him see the spirit which Rome manifested toward the Sabbath and its defenders . Royal edicts , general councils , and church ordinances sustained by secular power were the steps by which the pagan festival attained its position of honor in the Christian world . The first public measure enforcing Sunday observance was the law enacted by Constantine . ( A . D . 321 ; See Appendix .) This edict required townspeople to rest on " the venerable day of the sun ," but permitted countrymen to continue their agricultural pursuits . Though virtually a heathen statute , it was enforced by the emperor after his nominal acceptance of Christianity .
The royal mandate not proving a sufficient substitute for divine authority , Eusebius , a bishop who sought the favor of princes , and who was the special friend and flatterer of Constantine , advanced the claim that Christ had transferred the Sabbath to Sunday . Not a single testimony of the Scriptures was produced in proof of the new doctrine . Eusebius himself unwittingly acknowledges its falsity and points to the real authors of the change . " All things ," he says , " whatever that it was duty to do on the Sabbath , these we have transferred to the Lord ' s Day ." --Robert Cox , Sabbath Laws and Sabbath Duties , page 538 . But the Sunday argument , groundless as it was , served to embolden men in trampling upon the Sabbath of the Lord . All who desired to be honored by the world accepted the popular festival .
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