Nor was this all. The western churches also, with the church of Rome at their head, were strenuous observers of the Passover festival. They also traced the festival to the apostles. Thus Socrates says of them: “The Romans and those in the western parts assure us that their usage originated with the apostles Peter and Paul.”[461] But he says these parties cannot prove this by written testimony. Sozomen says of the Romans, with respect to the Passover festival, that they “have never deviated from their original usage in this particular; the custom having been handed down to them by the holy apostles Peter and Paul.”[462] If the Sunday-Lord’s day could be traced to a man who claimed to have celebrated it with John and other of the apostles, how confidently would this be cited as proving positively that it is an apostolic institution! And yet this can be done in the case of the Passover festival! Nevertheless, a single fact in the case of this very festival is sufficient to teach us the folly of trusting in tradition. Polycarp claimed that John and other of the apostles taught him to observe the festival on the fourteenth day of the first month, whatever day of the week it might be; while the elders of the Roman church asserted that Peter and Paul taught them that it must be observed on the Sunday following Good Friday![463] The Lord’s day of the Catholic church can be traced no nearer to John than A. D. 194, or perhaps in strict truth to A. D. 200, and those who then use the name show plainly that they did not believe it to be the Lord’s day by apostolic appointment. To hide these fatal facts by seeming to trace the title back to Ignatius the disciple of John, and thus to identify Sunday with the Lord’s day of that apostle, a series of remarkable frauds has been committed which we have had occasion to examine. But even could the Sunday-Lord’s day be traced to Ignatius, the disciple of John, it would then come no nearer being an apostolic institution than does the Catholic festival of the Passover, which can be traced to Polycarp, another of John’s disciples, who claimed to have received it from John himself! CHAPTER XIV. THE FIRST WITNESSES FOR SUNDAY. Origin of Sunday observance the subject of present inquiry—Contradictory statements of Mosheim and Neander—The question between them stated, and the true data for deciding that question—The New Testament furnishes no support for Mosheim’s statement—Epistle of Barnabas a forgery—The testimony of Pliny determines nothing in the case—The epistle of Ignatius probably spurious, and certainly interpolated so far as it is made to sustain Sunday—Decision of the question.