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strong belief in planetary influences, however vague, it is impossible that Gentile converts should have thrown off the associations which had gathered round the Sun's day. We have seen how the Acts testifies to the difficulty which they found in abjuring magical practices. And while magic was clearly anti-Christian, the same could hardly be said of the planetary week. Some indeed might hold, as in later days many undoubtedly did, that the employment of the planetary names implied worship of the deities to which they were assigned and was therefore idolatrous, but others might put on it a more innocent construction; and a very natural view was that the coincidence of Lord's day and Sun's day was a proof that in this pagan institution the Divine Spirit had been preparing the world for something better. In fact, the devout convert might well rejoice to be able to put a Christian construction on what had been a treasured association of his pagan past. Indeed at a later time we find direct evidence of such a feeling. Eusebius in his Life of Constantine, written very shortly after the death of the Emperor in 337, speaks of 'the day of salvation which coincides with that of light and the sun.'[1] A commentary on the Psalms, which appears in Jerome's works, though it is generally believed to be spurious, on the verse in the 118th Psalm, 'this is the day which the Lord hath made,' has
- ↑ Vita Constantini, IV, 18, 3.
