These were weighty reasons indeed for Sunday observance. Nor can it be thought strange that in the Dark Ages a constant succession of such things should eventuate in the universal observance of that day. Even the Jews were to be compelled to desist from Sabbath observance, and to honor Sunday by resting on that day from their labor. The earliest mention of Sunday in English statutes appears to be the following:— A. D. 692. “Ina, king of the west Saxons, by the advice of Cenred his father, and Heddes and Erkenwald his bishops, with all his aldermen and sages, in a great assembly of the servants of God, for the health of their souls, and common preservation of the kingdom, made several constitutions, of which this was the third: ‘If a servant do any work on Sunday by his master’s order, he shall be free, and the master pay thirty shillings; but if he went to work on his own head, he shall be either beaten with stripes, or ransom himself with a price. A freeman, if he works on this day, shall lose his freedom or pay sixty shillings; if he be a priest, double.’”[807] The same year that this law was enacted in England, the sixth general council convened at Constantinople, which decreed that, “If any bishop or other clergyman, or any of the laity, absented himself from the church three Sundays together, except in cases of very great necessity, if a clergyman, he was to be deposed; if a layman, debarred the holy communion.”[808] In the year 747, a council of the English clergy was called under Cuthbert, archbishop of Canterbury, in the reign of Egbert, king of Kent, and this constitution made:— “It is ordered that the Lord’s day be celebrated with due veneration, and wholly devoted to the worship of God. And that all abbots and priests, on this most holy day, remain in their respective monasteries and churches, and there do their duty according to their places.”[809] Another ecclesiastical statute of the eighth century was enacted at Dingosolinum in Bavaria, where a synod met about 772 which decreed that, “If any man shall work his cart on this day, or do any such common business, his team shall be presently forfeited to the public use, and if the party persists in his folly, let him be sold for a bondman.”[810] The English were not behind their neighbors in the good work of establishing the sacredness of Sunday. Thus we read:— A. D. 784. “Egbert, archbishop of York, to show positively what was to be done on Sundays, and what the laws designed by prohibiting ordinary work to be done on such days, made this canon: ‘Let nothing else, saith he, be done on the Lord’s day, but to attend on God in hymns and psalms and spiritual songs. Whoever marries on Sunday, let him do penance for seven days.’”[811] In the conclusion of the eighth century, further efforts were made in behalf of this favored day:—