“Victor being thus baffled in his attempt, his successors took care not to revive the controversy; so that the Asiatics peaceably followed their ancient practice till the Council of Nice, which out of complaisance to Constantine the Great, ordered the solemnity of Easter to be kept everywhere on the same day, after the custom of Rome.”[573] The victory was not obtained for Sunday in this struggle, as Heylyn testifies, “Till the great Council of Nice [A. D. 325] backed by the authority of as great an emperor [Constantine] settled it better than before; none but some scattered schismatics, now and then appearing, that durst oppose the resolution of that famous synod.”[574] Constantine, by whose powerful influence the Council of Nice was induced to decide this question in favor of the Roman bishop, that is, to fix the passover upon Sunday, urged the following strong reason for the measure:— “Let us then have nothing in common with the most hostile rabble of the Jews.”[575] This sentence is worthy of notice. A determination to have nothing in common with the Jews had very much to do with the suppression of the Sabbath in the Christian church. Those who rejected the Sabbath of the Lord and chose in its stead the more popular and more convenient Sunday festival of the heathen, were so infatuated with the idea of having nothing in common with the Jews, that they never even questioned the propriety of a festival in common with the heathen. This festival was not weekly, but annual; but the removal of it from the fourteenth of the first month to the Sunday following Good Friday was the first legislation attempted in honor of Sunday as a Christian festival; and as Heylyn quaintly expresses it, “The Lord’s day found it no small matter to obtain the victory.”[576] In a brief period after the Council of Nice, by the laws of Theodosius, capital punishment was inflicted upon those who should celebrate the feast of the passover upon any other day than Sunday.[577] The Britons of Wales were long able to maintain their ground against this favorite project of the Roman church, and as late as the sixth century “obstinately resisted the imperious mandates of the Roman pontiffs.”[578]