While this effort was being made on the side of philosophy to unite all religions, there was at the same time a like effort on the side of politics. It was the ambition of Elagabalus (A.D. 218-222) to make the worship of the sun supersede all other worship in Rome. It is further related of him that a more ambitious scheme even than this was in the emperor’s mind; which was nothing less than the blending of all religions into one, of which “the sun was to be the central object of adoration.” (Milman “History of Christianity”  book 2, chap. 8, par. 22.)

It was the Roman Imperial plan on several occasions, to unite all religions of the Empire into one religion–sun-worship: “The Jewish, the Samaritan, even the Christian, were to be fused and recast into one great system, of which the sun was to be the central object of adoration.” (Henry Hart Milman, The History of Christianity, bk. 2, chap. 8 (Vol. II, p. 175). [Dr. Milman (1791-1868) was an important historian of England and dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London])

“Constantine labored at this time untiringly to unite the worshipers of the old and the new into one religion. All his laws and contrivances are aimed at promoting this amalgamation of religions. He would by all lawful and peaceable means melt together a purified heathenism and a moderated Christianity . . . Of all his blending and melting together of Christianity and heathenism, none is more easy to see through than this making of his Sunday law: The Christians worshiped their Christ, the heathen their Sun-god . . . [so they should now be combined.” (H.G. Heggtveit, “illustreret Kirkehistorie,” 1895, p. 202)

“Modern Christians who talk of keeping Sunday as a ‘holy’ day, as in the still extant ‘Blue Laws,’ of colonial America, should know that as a ‘holy’ day of rest and cessation from labor and amusements Sunday was unknown to Jesus . . . It formed no tenet [teaching] of the primitive Church and became ‘sacred’ only in the course of time. Outside the Church its observance was legalized for the Roman Empire through a series of decrees starting with the famous one of Constantine in 321, an edict due to his political and social ideas.” (W, W. Hyde, “Paganism to Christianity in the Roman Empire,” 1946, p. 257)

Those who forget or neglect the darker portions of recorded history behind us, are doomed to repeat the mistakes thereof.