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Though the Ten Commandments may not be popular with everyone in pluralist America, few would go so far in their criticism as the ancient Manicheans, who believed them to be the work of an evil principle. In part because of such extreme views, the church had, by Augustine's day, placed the Decalogue at the heart of the instruction received by catechumens preparing for baptism.

The commandments were always taught in the church, but they took on a weightier authority at several points in history.

for example, in the thirteenth century, the "schoolmen" or scholastics—including the great Thomas Aquinas—picked up the argument of Irenaeus's younger contemporary, Tertullian, that the commandments had been engraved on the hearts of all humanity before they were ever engraved on stone. They treated the Decalogue part of the "natural law"—part of the very nature of things, accessible to the reason of all people. For such teachers (and for most Christians ever since), God gave this central pillar of the Law not as a news flash, but as a reminder of what would be common knowledge, were it not for sin's obscuring influence.

At the sixteenth-century Council of Trent, the Roman Catholic Church made the Decalogue one of the "four pillars of catechesis," (that is, of the church's teaching office) along with the Creed, the liturgy, and the Lord's Prayer. Today's Catechism of the Catholic Church reaffirms its centrality, adding a reaffirmation of Augustine's words: "Every commandment concerns charity [that is, love]."

Among the sixteenth-century Reformers, Luther commented on the commandments fully in his Catechisms. Calvin prescribed their regular reading in worship, in order to "bring our consciences into subjection to his Law." He also insisted, as had few before him, that the fourth commandment—to keep the Sabbath holy—be strictly observed.

It was this heightened Reformation attention to the commandments that influenced Queen Elizabeth to order that the Decalogue be painted over the communion table in all the land's churches—often over existing captionar paintings. During her time, the official sermons appointed to be read from Church of England pulpits included messages on the second, third, seventh, eight, ninth, and tenth commandments.

England soon found itself divided over how much Christians, living in Christ's grace, needed to observe literally all the law's requirements. The Puritans tended to take Calvin's stronger view (though some wondered, in light of their well-known successes in the world of business, whether the Puritans took the eighth commandment as seriously as some of the others).

The accomplished but troubled Calvinist poet William Cowper (making a cameo appearance in our Winter 2004 issue on John Newton) saw the Decalogue as a code handed down in a way calculated to arouse fear, which still held fearful power over hapless humanity:

Marshalling all his terrors as he came;
Thunder, and earthquake, and devouring flame;
From Sinai's top Jehovah gave the law—
Life for obedience—death for ev'ry flaw.
When the great Sov'rein would his will express,
He gives a perfect rule; what can he less? ('Truth,' 547-52)

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