In 1552 was passed “An act for keeping holy days and feasting days” (5 and 6 Edw. IV., Cap. 2), the preamble of which is an instructive example of the pains taken by all Christians, Catholic and Protestant, prior to the seventeenth century, to deny that Sunday or any other holy or feast day, possessed of itself any sacredness or any higher claim to observance than that of convenience for the purpose of uniformity in worship. It ran thus: “For as much as at all times men be not so mindful to laud and praise God * * * as their bounden duty doth require; therefore, to call men to remembrance of their duty and help their infirmity, it hath been wholesomely provided that there shall be some certain times and days appointed wherein the Christian should cease from all kinds of labors; * * * neither is it to be thought that there is any certain time or definite number of days prescribed in Holy Scripture, but that the appointment, both of time and also of the number of the days, is left by the authority of God’s word to the liberty of Christ’s Church to be determined and assigned orderly in every country by the discretion of the rulers and ministers thereof, as they shall judge most expedient for the true setting forth of God’s glory and the edification of their people; be it therefore enacted, that all the days hereafter mentioned (to wit: Sundays, the Feast of the Circumcision, and twenty-two other feast days that are named, and Mondays and Tuesdays in Easter Week and Whitsun Week) shall be kept and commanded to be kept holy days, and none other.” It was further provided, “That it shall be lawful to every husbandman, laborer, fisherman, * * * upon the holy days aforesaid, in harvest, or at any other time of the year when necessity shall require, to labor, ride, fish, or work any kind of work at their free wills and pleasure.” This Protestant law was repealed the next year by the Catholic government of Mary, and restored in 1604, in the first year of James I. It is strikingly similiar to the decree of Constantine the Great, made in the year 321: “Let all Judges and people of the town rest, and all the various trades be suspended, on the venerable day of the sun. Those who live in the country, however, may freely and without fault attend to the cultivation of their fields * * * lest, with the loss of favorable opportunity, the commodities offered by Divine Providence should be destroyed.” In 1558 (1 Eliz., Cap. 2, Sec. 14,) was passed the first law requiring attendance upon public worship “upon every Sunday, and other days ordained and used to be kept as holy days,” upon pain of church censure and a fine of twelvepence.