“I will therefore seek the original of our terms only from the Romans, as all other nations that have been subject to their civil and ecclesiastical monarch do, and must. “The ancient Romans, while they were yet heathens, did not, as we at this day, use certain continual portions of the year for a legal decision of controversies, but out of superstitious conceit that some days were ominous and more unlucky than others (according to that of the Egyptians), they made one day to be _fastus_ or term day and another (as an Egyptian day), to be vacation or _nefastus_; seldom two fast days or law days together; yea, they sometimes divided one and the same day in this manner: “_Qui modo fastus erat, mune nefastus erat._ “The afternoon was term, the morning holy day. “Nor were all their _fasti_ applied to judicature, but some of them to other meetings and consultations of the commonwealth; so that being divided into three sorts, which they called _fastos proprie_, _fastos endotercisos_, and _fastos comitiales_, containing together one hundred and eighty-four days through all the months of the year, there remained not properly to the prætor, as judicial or triverbial days, above twenty-eight.”[200] Nothing more is needed to show that the Sunday edict was the product of the heathen cult, as truly as that which was issued in connection with it, relative to the Aruspices. There is an evident connection between the two edicts. Apollo was the patron deity of the soothsayers, as well as of Constantine. At least nine years later than this, Constantine placed his new residence at Byzantium under the protection of the heathen goddess of Fortune; he never gave up the title of high-priest of the heathen religion; he did not formally embrace Christianity until sixteen years later. Whatever he did to favor Christianity, and whatever claims he made to conversion, were the outgrowth of a shrewd policy, rather than of a converted heart. And when the conservative historian can say of him, “The very brightest period of his reign is stained with crimes, which even the spirit of the age, and the policy of an absolute monarch, cannot excuse,” he cannot be called a _Christian_ prince. If he made any general laws against heathenism, they were little executed; for it was not suppressed in the empire until A.D. 390--seventy-nine years after his Sunday edict, and fifty-three years after his death. The few abuses against which he legislated were those which had been condemned before by the laws of the heathen rulers who had preceded him, such as the obscure midnight orgies, etc. Millman says on this point: