The whole matter is tersely told by a late English writer, who, speaking of the time of the Sunday edict, says:
“At a _later period_, carried away by the current of opinion, he declared himself a convert to the church. Christianity then, or what he was pleased to call by that name, became the law of the land, and the edict of A.D. 321, being unrevoked, was enforced as a Christian ordinance.”[202]
The following words of the learned NIEBUHR, in his lectures on Roman history, are to the same effect:
“Many judge of Constantine by too severe a standard, because they regard him as a Christian; but I cannot look at him in that light. The religion which he had in his head, must have been a strange jumble indeed.... He was a superstitious man, and mixed up his Christian religion with all kinds of absurd and superstitious opinions. When certain oriental writers call him equal to the apostles, they do not know what they are saying, and to speak of him as a saint is a profanation of the word.”[203]
It is a curious and little known fact, that markets were expressly appointed by Constantine to be held on Sunday. This we learn from an inscription on a Slavonian bath rebuilt by him, published in Gruter’s _Inscriptiones Antiquæ Totius Orbis Romani_, clxiv., 2. It is there recorded of the emperor, that “_provisione pietatis suæ nundinas dies solis perpeti anno constituit_”; “by a pious provision he appointed markets to be held on Sunday throughout the year.” His pious object doubtless was to promote the attendance of the country people at churches in towns. “Thus,” says CHARLES JULIUS HARE, “Constantine was the author of the practice of holding markets on Sunday, which, in many parts of Europe, prevailed above a thousand years after, though Charlemagne issued a special law (cap. cxl.) against it.”[204] In “Scotland, this practice was first forbidden on holy days by an Act of James IV., in 1503, and on Sundays in particular by one of James VI., in 1579.”[205]
[194] _Cod. Justin._, lib. iii., tit. xii., l. 3.
[195] _Codex Theod._, lib. xiv., tit. x., l. 1.
[196] _Antiquities of the Christian Church_, book xx., chap. ii., sec. 2.
[197] _History of Christianity_, book iii., chaps. i. and iv.