4. The change of the Sabbath was unknown to this writer. He kept the Sunday festival, not because it was purer than the sanctified seventh day, but because the seventh day was too pure to keep while the world is so wicked. TESTIMONY OF THE EPISTLE OF PLINY. Pliny was the Roman governor of Bithynia in the years 103 and 104. He wrote a letter to the emperor Trajan, in which he states what he had learned of the Christians as the result of examining them at his tribunal:-- "They affirmed that the whole of their guilt or error was, that they met on a certain stated day [_stato die_], before it was light, and addressed themselves in a form of prayer to Christ, as to some God, binding themselves by a solemn oath, not for the purposes of any wicked design, but never to commit any fraud, theft, or adultery; never to falsify their word, nor deny a trust when they should be called upon to deliver it up; after which it was their custom to separate, and then reassemble to eat in common a harmless meal."--_Coleman's Ancient Christianity_, chap. i. sect. 1. The letter of Pliny is often referred to as though it testified that the Christians of Bithynia celebrated the first day of the week. Yet such is by no means the case, as the reader can plainly see. Coleman says of it (page 528):-- "This statement is evidence that these Christians kept a day as holy time, but whether it was the last, or the first day of the week, does not appear." Such is the judgment of an able, candid, first-day church historian of good repute as a scholar. An anti-Sabbatarian writer of some repute speaks thus:-- "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."--_Obligation of the Sabbath_, p. 300. Every candid person must acknowledge that it is unjust to represent the letter of Pliny as testifying in behalf of the so-called Christian Sabbath. Next in order of time come the reputed epistles of Ignatius. TESTIMONY OF THE EPISTLES OF IGNATIUS. Of the fifteen epistles ascribed to Ignatius, eight are, by universal consent, accounted spurious; and eminent scholars have questioned the genuineness of the remaining seven. There are, however, two forms to these seven, a longer and a shorter, and while some doubt exists as to the shorter form, the longer form is by common consent ascribed to a later age than that of Ignatius. But the epistle to the Magnesians, which exists both in the longer and in the shorter form, is the one from which first-day writers obtain Ignatius' testimony in behalf of Sunday, and they quote for this both these forms. We therefore give both. Here is the shorter:--