History of the Sabbath and First Day of the Week - John N. Andrews

Lord's holy day.
This is a concise statement of the strongest
argument for first-day sacredness which can be
drawn from ecclesiastical history. It is the
argument by which first day writers prove Sunday
to be the day called by John the Lord’s Day. This
argument rests upon the statement that Lord’s Day
as a name for Sunday can be traced back to the
disciples of John, and that it is the name by which
that day was familiarly known in John's time.
But this entire statement is false. The truth is,
no writer of the first century, and no one of the
second, prior to A.D. 194, who is known to speak
of the first day of the week, ever calls it the Lord’s
Day! Yet the first day is seven times mentioned by
the sacred writers before John's vision upon
Patmos on the Lord’s Day, and is twice mentioned
by John in his gospel which he wrote after his
return from that island, and is mentioned some
sixteen times by ecclesiastical writers of the second
century prior to A.D. 194, and never in a single
instance is it called the Lord’s Day! We give all the
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