A Few Mistakes of Rev. Dr. Newton [pp. 250-255]

A FEW MIS TA KES OF RE v. DR. NEWTON.
A FEW MISTAKES OF REV. DR. NEWTON.
IN the magazine called the Forum, for March, there is an article by Rev. R. H. Newton, D.D., with the catching title, "Is Romanism a Baptized Paganism"? The reverend doctor, whose
views on Biblical inspiration, as published in the daily press, give
grave reasons for suspecting his orthodoxy even to members of his
own sect, probably thinks to preserve a reputation for Protestantism by the use of its slang term to express the Catholic Church,
and by a series of startling assertions calculated to please the prejudice of the ordinary Protestant groundling, while he makes the
judicious Episcopalian grieve. With the usual style of the writers in most of our non-Catholic periodicals, he boldly asserts and
never gives the reader a reference or a foot-note by which to test
his veracity. It is useless to tell him, as it would be to tell men
like Froude or Macaulay, that "quod gratis asseritur gratis negatur"; that historical statements not substantiated by documentary or other proofs are romance and not history.
That, in a small way, Dr. Newton belongs to the class of historical defamers of the church, or rather of Christianity, is an
easy matter to show.
To prove that she-or "Romanism," as the polite Episcopalian
clergyman calls her-is "a baptized paganism," he begins by stating that Sunday "was set apart by the edict of Constantine as a
period of rest on the venerable day of the sun." Now, Dr. Newton ought to know that this does not give the origin of the
Christian observance of the Sunday. He ought to know, for he
is supposed to be a Christian teacher, that from the very beginning the Christians kept the first day of the week holy in honor
of our Redeemer's resurrection, and that long before the decree
of Constantine it was observed. The decree simply confirmed
the Christian usage, of which traces are found in thd Acts of
the Apostles and in the earliest Christian Fathers. The Theodosian Code prescribed its observance because it is properly "designated by our ancestors as the Lord's day." * In honor of
Christ, therefore, and not in honor of the sun, do Christians sanc
Eusebius, Life of Constantine, ch. xviii., Migne's edition, distinctly states that Constantine ordered the state observance of the day which the church had been for centuries keeping as
a holy day-ie., the Lord's Day: "w Ts Kvpl.ciS Tijv ~i,pav... Tcgav."
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[May,