Sunday Sacredness in the Early Church.—
The noted Roman, Pliny, is sometimes quoted in proof of early Sunday sacredness. He says that the greatest crime of the Christians was meeting together on "a certain day" (we are not told what day) before daylight and singing hymns to Christ as unto God, and covenanting together to do right. On this Dr. Peter Heylyn, a learned member of the Church of England in the seventeenth century, in his "History of the Sabbath" (part 2, chapter 2, paragraph 2) remarks: "Now for the day there meant by Pliny, it must be Saturday or Sunday, if it were not both; both of them being in those times, and in those parts where Pliny lived, in special honor. . . . For demonstration of the which, we must first take notice, how that the world as then, was very full of dangerous fancies, and heretical dotages: whereby the church was much disquieted and God's worship hindered." Heylyn holds that neither day was divinely sacred, that Sunday observance was only by human authority. It certainly was among the dangerous fancies which took possession of the Christian church. We shall again quote from Heylyn.