Taking for granted the very point that should be proved, is no new feature in the evidence thus far examined in support of first-day observance. Although Mosheim relies on this expression of Pliny as a chief support of Sunday, yet he speaks thus of the opinion of another learned man:—
“B. Just. Hen. Boehmer, would indeed have us to understand this day to have been the same with the Jewish Sabbath.”[486]
This testimony of Pliny was written a few years subsequent to the time of the apostles. It relates to a church which probably had been founded by the apostle Peter.[487] It is certainly far more probable that this church, only forty years after the death of Peter, was keeping the fourth commandment, than that it was observing a day never enjoined by divine authority. It must be conceded that this testimony from Pliny proves nothing in support of Sunday observance; for it does not designate what day of the week was thus observed.
The epistles of Ignatius of Antioch so often quoted in behalf of first-day observance, next claim our attention. He is represented as saying:—
“Wherefore if they who are brought up in these ancient laws came nevertheless to the newness of hope; no longer observing sabbaths, but keeping the Lord’s day, in which also our life is sprung up by him, and through his death, whom yet some deny (by which mystery we have been brought to believe, and therefore wait that we may be found the disciples of Jesus Christ, our only master): how shall we be able to live different from him; whose disciples the very prophets themselves being, did by the Spirit expect him as their master.”[488]
Two important facts relative to this quotation are worthy of particular notice: 1. That the epistles of Ignatius are acknowledged to be spurious by first-day writers of high authority; and those epistles which some of them except as possibly genuine, do not include in their number the epistle to the Magnesians from which the above quotation is made, nor do they say anything relative to first-day observance. 2. That the epistle to the Magnesians would say nothing of any day, were it not that the word day had been fraudulently inserted by the translator! In support of the first of these propositions the following testimony is adduced. Dr. Killen speaks as follows:—
“In the sixteenth century, fifteen letters were brought out from beneath the mantle of a hoary antiquity, and offered to the world as the productions of the pastor of Antioch. Scholars refused to receive them on the terms required, and forthwith eight of them were admitted to be forgeries. In the seventeenth century, the seven remaining letters, in a somewhat altered form, again came forth from obscurity, and claimed to be the works of Ignatius. Again discerning critics refused to acknowledge their pretensions; but curiosity was roused by this second apparition, and many expressed an earnest desire to obtain a sight of the real epistles. Greece, Syria, Palestine, and Egypt, were ransacked in search of them, and at length three letters are found. The discovery creates general gratulation; it is confessed that four of the epistles so lately asserted to be genuine, are apocryphal; and it is boldly said that the three now forthcoming are above challenge. But truth still refuses to be compromised, and sternly disowns these claimants for her approbation. The internal evidence of these three epistles abundantly attests that, like the last three books of the Sibyl, they are only the last shifts of a grave imposture.”[489]
The same writer thus states the opinion of Calvin:—
“It is no mean proof of the sagacity of the great Calvin, that, upwards of three hundred years ago, he passed a sweeping sentence of condemnation on these Ignatian epistles.”[490]
Of the three epistles of Ignatius still claimed as genuine, Prof. C. F. Hudson speaks as follows:—