FROM YOUR PASTOR’S DESK:
MITHRAISM, SUNDAY, DECEMBER 25, CHRISTIANITY AND ROMANISM (Part VI)
“So willing were the church leaders to adopt the POPULAR heathen festivals, that even HEATHEN authors reproached them for it. Faustus accused St. Augustine [prominent church father of the Romish church] as follows:
“You celebrate the solemn festivals of the Gentiles,!their calends, and their solstices; and as to their manners, these you have retained WITHOUT any alteration. Nothing DISTINGUISHES you from the pagans except that you hold your assemblies APART from them. – ‘Cited in ‘History of the Intellectual of Europe,’ Dr. J. W. Draper, Vol. 1, p. 310. NY, 1876.
“Similar reproaches has been made earlier, for Tertullian [another prominent church father] answers them, making the following admission:
“Others, with greater regard to good manners, it must be confessed, suppose that the sun is the God of the Christians, because it is a well-known fact that we may PRAY TOWARDS THE EAST, or because we make Sunday a day of FESTIVITY. What then? Do you do less than this? …..It is you, at all events, who have even admitted the sun into the calendar week; and you have selected its day, in preference to the preceding day [Saturday]….You who reproach us with the sun and Sunday should consider your PROXIMITY [nearness, closeness, likeness] to us.” – ‘Ad Nationes,’ Book I, chap. 13; in ‘Anti-Nicene Fathers,’ Vol. III, p. 123, ed. by Drs. Roberts and Donaldson, NY: 1896.
“Tertullian had no other excuse for their Sunday-keeping than that they DID NOT DO WORSE than the heathen! But not only did the Church adopt heathen festivals but Gregory Thaumaturgus allowed their celebration in the DEGRADING manner of the heathen [pagans]:
“When Gregory perceived that the IGNORANT MULTITUDE persisted in their IDOLATRY on account of the pleasures and sensual gratifications which they enjoyed at the pagan festivals, he granted them permission to INDULGE THEMSELVES in the like pleasures, in celebrating the memory of the holy martyrs [?], hoping that, in process of time, they would return of their own accord, to a more VIRTUOUS and regular course of life.’ – ‘Ecclesiastical History,’ J. L. Mosheim, D. D., Vol. I, Second Century, Part II, chap. 4, par. 2, footnote (Dr. A. Maclaine’s 2-vol. ed., p. 66). NY: 1871. (From “Facts of Faith,” Christian Edwardson, pp. 103, 104. Southern Publishing Asso. Nashville TN. 1943.
God bless all today. NMF