“As the Sabbath day appears to have been quite as commonly observed at this date as the sun’s day (if not even more so), it is just as probable that this ‘stated day’ referred to by Pliny was the seventh day, as that it was the first day; though the latter is generally _taken for granted_.”[485] 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:—