are the views respecting the Lord's-day which we have always advocated. We ground the original basis of the observance upon the sanctification of the sabbath in Paradise. In the patriarchal ages there are significant traces of a sevenfold division of the week, as in the case of Noah's dove; both the portion of time and the day of the week, doubtless, having reference to the primeval observance. Under the Jewish economy we find the original allotment of a seventh portion of time, and this not as a new ordinance, but in the language of allusion to a settled custom; but with the addition of the deliverance from Egypt to God's resting on the finishing of the creation. In the New Testament, after the resurrection of our Lord, we find sufficient indications that one day in seven was thus honoured, but that the day was changed from the Jewish sabbath to the Lord's-day; the disciples having met for Divine worship on the very first octave after the resurrection; and though tradition is not authority, it bears ample witness to the fact that the Lord's-day was solemnized from the earliest periods of Christianity.

With regard to the fourth commandment, we cannot doubt that, standing among nine other moral injunctions, it is itself moral as to its essence, though the precise day and the special circumstances of observance were affected by successive dispensations. We will not at present digress into an examination of this question; more especially as it was dwelt upon in our pages at considerable length in reference to the statements of Archbishop Whateley; and has been frequently noticed in our remarks upon Heylin, Jeremy Taylor, and others, who maintain that the Old Testament sanction is altogether abolished; that there is no substitute for it in the New; and that the obligation under the Christian ceconomy rests entirely upon ecclesiastical authority.

We could never understand the ground upon which some divines, who acknowledge the other precepts of the decalogue to be of moral obligation, have excepted the fourth. We can understand the doctrine, much as we disapprove it, of the Antinomians, that the Christian has nothing to do with the hand-writing of ordinances, moral or ceremonial; we can also understand what is meant by the Ten Commandments being superseded by the law of love in Christ, though as love is a motive not a rule, even love needs a guide to know what the object of its veneration requires; we can also understand the notion that the Ten Commandments are not binding, but only the repetition and enlargement of them by our Lord; and we could further discern the misguided consistency of some of the Baringite seceders in refusing to read the two tables, on the ground that no man ever prayed in faith to God to incline his heart to keep His law, since no man can keep it. All this is intelligible; but to acknowledge the moral authority of the other nine, and to reject that of the fourth, is altogether inconsistent and untenable. Yet, into this strange mistake some writers of great eminence have fallen. Thus Jeremy Taylor, for example, argues largely in his Ductor Dubitantium, (Book ii. c. 2,) that part of the decalogue is "not obligatory to Christians, and is not a portion of the moral or natural law." He says, "The second commandment is a moral and natural precept in the whole body and He adds also that constitution of it;" but the fourth he maintains is not so. "We are under no divine law or apostolical canon concerning the Lord's-day." "The Lord's-day did not succeed in the place of the sabbath; but the sabbath was wholly abrogated, the Lord's-day was merely of ecclesiastical institution." "They did it also without any opinion of prime obligation, and therefore they did not suppose it moral." "Labour is a natural duty; but to sit still, or not to labour a whole day, is nowhere by God bound upon Christians."

It is no defence of such statements as these that they were intended to repel

the Jewish rigour with which some of the Puritan writers had spoken of the Christian sabbath. The Book of Sports, and the defence of it by Laud and his chaplain Heylin; and especially the doctrine so assiduously put forth, that the Lord's-day derives no authority from Scripture, but is wholly an ecclesiastical regulation; were likely enough to make even more moderate men than Prynne write without due limitation in opposing so delusive a notion, more especially as its tendency was to set up "the church" above the Bible, as the rule of spiritual guidance. So widely and fatally did these notions spread, that Samuel Wright, a clergyman who composed one of the best treatises extant in defence of the moral obligation of the Lord's-day, (our copy is the third edition, 1726) found it necessary to reply to what he tells us "was commonly said," that "The most learned and most considerable part of our English clergy are against the morality of the sabbath, and do not put the observation of it upon being a command of God, but only as acquired by civil and ecclesiastical authority." He denies the truth of the assertion; but the very fact that it was necessary to deny it, shews that the notion which he combats had obtained wide currency. He combats it as follows:

"It is not true to say that the most learned of the clergy are thus minded; because the testimonies I have produced from Hooker, Stillingfleet, and others, universally famed for their learning, have determined one day in seven to be what God's immutable law doth enact for ever; and that the observation of the Lord'sday was not started by sects and parties among us, but the constant sense of the laws and Church of England."

"It is not just to say that the most learned and most considerable of the clergy are for having the fourth commandment looked upon as an abrogated law. For if this was the prevailing opinion, would not the Homilies, and other public offices be altered, that speak of the fourth commandment as a law yet in force? To instance in one particular; can it be thought that upon every occasion of reading the commandments, the people should be required everywhere to pray that God would incline their hearts to keep this law, if it was esteemed a law that is obsolete and out of date. If any of the clergy in their conversation or practice would lead people to make light of this law, I can only say they are to be pitied, and prayed for, but not to be imitated in such prevarications with almighty God. I have it from a very good hand, that when Dr. White, the bishop of Ely, wrote against the morality of the Christian sabbath, Bishop Usher was so exceedingly shocked at it, that, clapping his hand upon his breast, he immediately recited those words of the prophet Jeremy to Hannaniah, Thus saith the Lord, This year thou shalt die, because thou hast taught rebellion against the Lord.'

We feel perfectly convinced that any law for the observance of the sabbath, grounded either upon the Popish doctrine of its being of ecclesiastical authority, or upon the Dissenting plea of mere civil utility, would want the only sanction which can make it the duty of a legislature to enforce it. The moral sanction must be based upon the Old Testament, confirmed and continued in the New. There is much popular ignorance as to what portions of the Old Testament are, and what are not, binding upon Christians. The Old Testament was given by Divine inspiration as much as the New; and had it been lost, the latter would be generally obscure, and often unintelligible. We find among its disclosures the substance of all that we know respecting the creation, the early history of mankind, the deluge, and the patriarchal ages; the moral history of the human race, including the introduction of sin, with its consequent evils, the origin of sacrifices, the rise of the universal church, the character of the human heart, and the entrance of idolatry: the history of Divine providence: moral precepts: the knowledge of God, his attributes, his ways, and his designs: devotional exercises: and lastly, the Jewish ceremony, including types, promises, and prophecies relative to the Messiah. Now of all these the instruction still remains, and many parts are as applicable to us as to the Jews. Such are the historical parts; the

facts and their spiritual moral being unchangeable. The history of the patriarchs and Jews was left on record for our instruction. Prophecy also, fulfilled and unfulfilled, is immutable; and those portions which remain unaccomplished, are to exercise our faith as much as those accomplished to strengthen it. The moral injunctions are not altered; so also the maxims of life, as in the Proverbs, and the devotional parts, as in the Psalms, are not superseded. The portions which are only partially applicable to Christians, are chiefly those which belong to the Jews, in the special relation which they bore to God as a people selected from among the nations for a peculiar purpose, Jehovah being directly and miraculously their civil as well as spiritual governor. They were brought out of Egypt and planted in the promised land by a visible supernatural agency; they were to be kept distinct from all other nations; they were the sole depositories of the oracles of God; and from them was the Messiah to spring. We believe that theologians agree in considering the following particulars abrogated. First, the Jewish ecclesiastical system. It is still an example, but its details do not apply under the Christian dispensation. The Romish church affects to imitate it; it has altars, and sacrificial priests, and propitiatory masses, and the pomp of lamps, and incense, and splendid vestments; but these things were done away in Christ: we have a spiritual worship, with but one sacrificing priest and one sacrifice. The Jewish civil government is also abrogated. We are not bound to the same particular form of legislation; to universal suffrage, or a decimal division of the people, or an unlimited monarchy. The civil magistrate was a theocratical officer, acting under the special, and often supernatural or miraculous, direction of God; and it is only by analogy, and not to the letter, that the platform of either church or state is to be regulated. The military proceedings of the Jews are not a precedent. The conduct of Joshua or David; the destruction of the Canaanites; and various acts of national vengeance or extermination; are isolated facts connected with a peculiar dispensation, in which the Judge of all the earth saw fit to command certain proceedings; but which are no more to be quoted, as the Scotch Covenanters and the Puritans quoted them, than Abraham's preparation to slay his son, or the marriage of a holy prophet with a licentious woman. The whole ceremonial ritual, with its meats, drinks, fasts, and festivals, is abolished. Particular laws and customs are not binding, except where there is just ground from Scripture for retaining them; but they often furnish admirable examples and invaluable suggestions. Some things were allowed at particu lar times, or not expressly forbidden, in consequence of peculiar circumstances, which are utterly unlawful under the law of Christ; as, for instance, polygamy and slavery. The mode prescribed in the Old Testament, of dealing with offences against religion, is not of immutable obligation. Blasphemers, idolaters, and sabbath-breakers, are not to be put to death. The church of Rome, in quoting the Old Testament to sanction the destruction of what it considered heretics, even if they had been heretics, was perverting the Old Testament to sanction a wicked act. All religious persecution comes under the same category; whether it be Archbishop Laud's "harrying" the Puritans, or the Presbyterians demanding of Cromwell that there should be no toleration of any sect but their own, and that all others should be put down by severe pains and penalties; the neglect of which duty, they said, was the most accursed crime he had ever committed. Lastly, the promises and threatenings of temporal rewards and punishments are not always to be considered as literally applicable under the Christian dispensation. It was a special part of the system of a visible theocracy to connect health, wealth, long life, and earthly prosperity, or the opposite calamities, with obedience or disobedience to the commands of God. And so also in the case of na

tions; famine, plague, or sword, or plenty, populousness, and conquest over enemies. The spirit, and often the literal declaration, of such promises and threatenings, is still true; for in keeping the commandments of God there is great rereward; and the New Testament teaches that "Godliness is profitable unto all things, having promise of the life that now is, and of that which is to come." But even under the Old Testament the rule was not universal, as we see in the perplexity of Asaph (Psalm LXXIII.), and in the New Testament, where life and immortality being more clearly brought to light, the full disclosure respecting the day of final account clears up, to the apprehension even of a child, what Asaph was specially taught in the sanctuary of God.

And here, to return from our long digression, we may mention the sanction in the fifth commandment, "that thy days may be long in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee." The commandment to obey parents is moral, and therefore unchanged; but the particular sanction of long life in the land of Canaan is special; though in its spirit, as indicating the favour of God to filial obedience, it is as applicable now as ever. If, in like manner, the fourth commandment had said, Remember that thou keep holy the Sabbath day, for on that day thou camest out of Egypt, the morality might still be binding, though the sanction as given to the Jews was specific; but it is very remarkable that the reason given is not the deliverance from the bondage of Egypt, but the primeval sanctification of the sabbath in Paradise, which applies to all nations as much as to the Jews. The Jews had a new special sanction appended, but this did not invalidate the original and universal obligation.

As Dr. Smith has inadvertently set our pen in motion, we will take the liberty, while the steam is on, of touching upon another particular respecting the observance of the Lord's-day, though it does not lie in the direct line of our railroad. We allude to the outcry that to legislate for the observance of the Lord'sday is a violation of public liberty. It will be remembered, that, in the debates upon Sir Andrew Agnew's Bills, some members of the extreme liberal party took the ground that there is no divine obligation to keep one day in seven holy, the Jewish sabbath being abolished, and the best theologians having shewn that the Lord's-day is only a festival of ecclesiastical appointment, just like Christmasday or Good Friday; and that public liberty requires the absence of all legislative interference to prevent "what is called its desecration." Now we should like to see these liberalists, radicals, patriots, or whatever they style themselves, fairly encountered upon the whole question as bearing upon public liberty; for it is a striking fact in English history, that those who have stood up most zealously for Protestantism and public liberty have been earnest in promoting a godly observance of the day of sacred rest; while those who wished to introduce Popery and arbitrary power have relaxed its sacred obligations. The Hampdens, and Algernon Sydneys, and Russells, who stemmed the tide of civil and religious despotism, were not the men who issued the Book of Sports, or patronised masques at court on the Lord's-day. Liberty is a severe virtue; its greatest enemy is idle frivolity and contempt for sacred things. If the Cameronians had bagpiped dances, instead of listening to sermons, on the Sunday, the chivalry of their opponents had not been so severely taxed upon the Monday. One of the first acts of the Protestant Reformation was to restore the Lord's-day to its due honours; which Popery, for its own wily and despotic purposes, had practically debased beneath the level of the festival of Thomas à Becket or Saint Dunstan. We should like to remind these House-of-Commons liberals of a few historical facts; as to wit, the following. Queen Elizabeth, they will say, was a high-prerogative monarch; but did she shew it in sabbath restrictions? No; she set the

example of laxity, by having sports and theatrical entertainments at court; so that if our play-houses were allowed to be thrown open on Sunday, as certain liberals have proposed, our national liberties would not be one doit more secure. Again: Parliament passed a bill in 1585 for the reverent observation, but Elizabeth rejected it as interfering with her prerogative. Fuller says that the people refused to take the liberty tendered them, "as being jealous of a design to blow up their civil liberties." What say our modern parliamentary liberals

to this?

Pass on to the reign of James I., and how stood parties then? The old Church of England Protestants, as well as the Puritans, wished the public decency of the Lord's-day to be legislatively protected; but the high-prerogative king, by the advice of a semi-Popish faction, set up the Book of Sports. Let the admirers of such legislation see, by the following extracts, what was gained, by this mirth-promoting edict, in favour of civil liberty.

“Our pleasure likewise is, that after the end of Divine service our good people be not disturbed, letted, or discouraged from any lawful recreation, such as dancing, either men or women, archery for men, leaping, vaulting, or any harmless recreation; nor from having of May-games, Whitsun-ales, and Morris-dances, and the setting up of May-poles, and other sports therewith used;" only, it is added, we bar from this benefit and liberty all such known recusants, either men or women, as will abstain from coming to church or Divine service, being therefore unworthy of any lawful recreation after the said service, that will not first come to church and serve God."

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Proceed we next to the arbitrary reign of Charles I. We had then a Popish queen, a daughter of France, who gave masques and plays at court; which Dr. Juxon, Bishop of London, attended. Now as our modern liberals say that the petitions for improved sabbath legislation, are High-church and Tory trickery, just to enslave the people and keep them under the domination of bishops and parsons, we must suppose that Archbishop Laud was stricter than Sir Andrew Agnew, and that Prynne and the anti-court party were for relaxing the cruel fetters of sabbath obligation. Let history speak. Laud and his party, expressly to serve the purposes of civil and ecclesiastical despotism, revived the Book of Sports; and Laud's chaplain, Heylin, published one of the most pernicious books in the English language to dissolve the sacred obligation of the Lord'sday. The historian of the Long Parliament, May, whose statement no liberal can find fault with, seeing Lord Chatham says in his Letters to Lord Camelford that "May's book is much honester and a more instructive book than Lord Clarendon's," gives the following account of the way in which Laud and the high-prerogative party strove to keep down the advocates for civil and religious liberty. "The like unhappy course did they take to depress puritanism, which was to set up irreligion itself against it-the worst weapon which could have been chosen to beat it down ;—which happened especially in point of keeping the Lord's-day, when not only books were written to shake the morality of it—as that of a Sunday no Sabbath'—but sports and pastimes of jollity permitted to the country people." Was this jovial permission intended to promote true liberty?

In the preface to a scarce pamphlet published in 1634, being a translation of a Latin discourse delivered at Oxford by the Regius Professor of Divinity, Dr. Prideaux, afterwards Bishop of Worcester-of course not the celebrated Humphrey-we read, that so horrible was the state of things where Puritans had influence, that "In a town of my acquaintance, the preachers there had brought the people to that pass that neither baked nor roast meat was to be found in all the parish for a Sunday's dinner throughout the year." "These," adds the writer, "are the ordinary fruits of such dangerous doctrines." It was high time that CHRIST. OBSERV. No. 14.

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