It is perhaps difficult to determine exactly the relative importance attached to the seventh and first days of the week at this time. Sufficient may be found, however, to assure us, that the Sabbath was observed, and that no one regarded Sunday as having taken its place. This is shown by the provision of the Council of Laodicea, A. D. 365, that the Gospels should be read on that day. It is shown by the action of a Council in 517, (mentioned in _Robinson's History of Baptism_,) which regulated and enforced the observance of the Sabbath. It is shown by the expostulation of _Gregory of Nyssa_, "How can you look upon the Lord's day, if you neglect the Sabbath? Do you not know that they are sisters, and that in despising the one you affront the other?" And as sisters we find them hand in hand in the ecclesiastical canons. Penalties were inflicted by the council; both of Laodicea and Trullo, on clergymen who did not observe both days as festivals. How the first day of the week, or Lord's day, was observed in the early part of the fifth century, we may learn from the words of _St. Jerome_. In a funeral oration for the Lady _Paula_, he says: "She, with all her virgins and widows who lived at Bethlehem in a cloister with her, upon the Lord's day, repaired duly to the church, or house of God, which was nigh to her cell; and after her return from thence to her own lodgings, she herself and all her company _fell to work_, and they all performed their task, which was the making of clothes and garments for themselves and for others, as they were appointed." _St. Chrysostom_, patriarch of Constantinople, "recommended to his audience, after impressing upon themselves and their families what they had heard on the Lord's day, to return to their daily employments and trades." _Dr. Francis White_, Lord Bishop of Ely, speaking of this matter, says, "The Catholic Church, for more than six hundred years after Christ, permitted labor, and gave license to many Christian people to work upon the Lord's day, at such hours as they were not commanded to be present at the public service by the precepts of the church."