of the obligation of its observance. Its obligation has been represented as standing upon the ground of inference only, and therefore of human opinion; and thus the opinion against Sabbatical Institutions has been held up as equally weighty with the opinion in their favour; and the liberty which has been claimed has been too often hastily concluded to be Christian liberty. This however is travelling much too fast; for if the case were as much a matter of inference, as such persons would have it, it does not follow that every inference is alike good, or that the opposing inferences have an equal force of truth, any more than of piety.

The question respects the will of God as to this particular point, Whether one day in seven is to be wholly devoted to religion, exclusive of worldly business and worldly pleasures. Now there are but two ways in which the will of God can be collected from his word; either by some explicit injunction upon all, or by incidental circumstances; or the absence of all such circumstances, and the existence of others of a

contrary indication. Let us then allow, for a moment, that we have no such explicit injunction; yet we have certainly none to the contrary; let us allow that we have only for our guidance, in inferring the will of God in this particular, certain circumstances declarative of his will; yet this important conclusion is inevitable, that all such indicative circumstances are in favour of a Sabbatical institution, and that there is not one which exhibits an indication contrary to it. The seventh day was hallowed at the close of the creation; its sanctity was afterwards marked by the withholding of the fall of manna on that day, and the provision of a double supply on the sixth, and that previous to the giving of the law from Sinai: it was then made a part of that great epitome of religious and moral duty, which God wrote with his own finger on tables of stone; it was a part of the public political law of the only people to whom Almighty God ever made himself a political Head and Ruler; its ob

servance is connected throughout the prophetic age with the highest promises, its violations with the severest maledictions; it was among the Jews in our Lord's time a day of solemn religious assembling, and was so observed by him; when changed to the first day of the week, it was the day on which the first Christians assembled; it was called, by way of eminence," the Lord's Day; "and we have inspired authority to say, that, both under the Old and New Testament dispensations, it is used as an expressive type of the heavenly and eternal rest. Now, against all these circumstances, so strongly declarative of the will of God, as to the observance of a Sabbatical institu

tion, what circumstance or passage of Scripture can be opposed, as bearing upon it a contrary indication ? Truly not one; except those passages in St. Paul, in which he speaks of Jewish Sabbaths, with their Levitical rites, and of that distinction of days, both of which marked a weak or a criminal adherence to the abolished ceremonial dispensation; but which touch not the Sabbath as a branch of the moral law, or as it was changed, by the authority of the Apostles, to the first day of the week.

If, then, we were left to determine the point by inference merely, it is obvious how powerful is the inference as to what is the will of God with respect to the keeping of a Sabbath on the one hand, and how totally unsupported an opposite inference must be on the other.

It may also be observed, that those who will so strenuously insist upon the absence of an express command as to the Sabbath, in the writings of the Evangelists and Apostles, as explicit as that in the Decalogue, assume, that the will of God is only obligatory, when manifested in some one mode, which they judge to be most fit. But this is a monstrous hypothesis; for however the will of God may be manifested, if it is with such clearness as to exclude all reasonable doubt, it is equally obligatory, as when it assumes the formality of legal promulgation. Thus the Bible is not all in the form of express and authoritative command:

it teaches by examples, by proverbs, by songs, by incidental allusions and occurrences; and yet is, throughout, a inanifestation of the will of God, as to morals and religion in their various branches, and if disregarded, will be so at every man's peril.

But strong as this ground is, we quit it for a still stronger. It is wholly a mistake, that the Sabbath, because not re-enacted with the formality of the Decalogue, is not explicitly enjoined upon Christians, and that the testimony of Scripture to such an injunction is not unequivocal and irrefragable. We shall soon introduce our author, to prove that the Sabbath was appointed at the creation of the world, and consequently for all men; and therefore for Christians; since there was never any repeal of the original institution. To this we add, that if the moral law be the law of Christians, then is the Sabbath as explicitly enjoined upon them as upon the Jews. But that the moral law is our law, as well as the law of the Jews, all but Antinomians must acknowledge; and few we suppose will be inclined to run into the fearful mazes of that error, in order to support lax notions as to the obligation of the Sabbath; into which, however, they must be plunged, if they deny the law of the Decalogue to be binding upon us. That it is so bound upon us, a few passages of Scripture will prove, as well as many; and these we shall adduce.. Our Lord declares, that he came not to destroy the Law and the Prophets, but to fulfil. Take it, that by the "Law," he meant both the moral and the ceremonial law; ceremonial law could only be fulfilled in him, by realizing its types, and moral law, by upholding its authority. For "the Prophets," they admit of a similar distinction; they either enjoin morality, or utter prophecies of Christ; the latter of which were fulfilled in the sense of accomplishment, the former by being sanctioned and enjoined. That the observance of the Sabbath is a part of the moral law, is clear from its being found in the Decalogue, the doctrine of which our Lord sums up in the moral duties of loving God and our neighbour;

and for this reason the injunctions of the Prophets on the subject of the Sabbath are to be regarded as a part of their moral teaching. Some Divines have, it is true, called the observance of the Sabbath a positive and not a moral precept. If it were so, its obligation is precisely the same, in all cases where God himself has not relaxed it; and if a positive precept only, it has surely a special eminence given to it by being placed in the list of the Ten Commandments, and being capable, with them, of an epitome which resolves them into the love of God and our neighbour. The truth seems to be, that it is a mixed precept, not wholly positive, but intimately, perhaps essentially, connected with several moral principles, of homage to God, and mercy to men; of the obligation of religious worship, of public religi ous worship, and of undistracted public worship; and this will account for its collocation in the Decalogue, with the highest duties of religion, and the leading rules of personal and social morality.

The passage from our Lord's Sermon on the Mount, with its context, is a sufficiently explicit enforcement of the moral law, generally, upon his followers; but when he says, "the Sabbath was made for man, he clearly refers to its original institution, as a universal law, and not to its obligation upon the Jews only, in consequence of the enactments of the law of Moses. It was made for man," not as he may be a Jew, or a Christian; but as man, a creature bound to love, worship, and obey his God and Maker, and on his trial for eternity.

Another explicit proof that the law of the Ten Commandments, and, consequently, the law of the Sabbath, is obligatory upon Christians, is. found in the answer of the Apostle to an objection to the doctrine of justification by faith. (Rom. iii. 31.). "Do we then make void the law through faith?" Which is equivalent to asking, Does Christianity teach, that the law is no longer obligatory upon Christians, because it teaches that no man can be justified by it? To this he answers in

that

"In the original institution it is stated in general terms, that God blessed and sanctified the seventh day, which must undoubtedly imply the sanctity of every seventh day; but not that it is to be subsequently reckoned from the first demiurgic day. Had this been included in the command of the Almighty, something, it is probable, would have been added declaratory of the intention; whereas expressions the most undefined are employed; not a syllable is uttered concerning the order and number of the days; and it cannot reasonably be disputed that the command is truly obeyed by the separation of every seventh day, from common to sacred purposes, at whatever given time the cycle may commence. The difference in the mode of expression here from that which the sacred historian has used in the first chapter, is very remarkable. At the conclusion of each division of the work of creation, he says, The evening and the morning were the first day, and so on; but at the termination of the whole he merely calls it the seventh day; a diversity of phrase, which, as it would be inconsistent with every idea of inspiration to suppose it undesigned, must have been intended to denote a day, leaving it to each people as to what manner it is to be reckoned. The term obviously imports the period of the earth's rotation' round its axis, while it is left undetermined, whether it shall be counted from evening or morning, from noon or midnight. The terms of the law are, Remember the Sabbath-day, to

keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work; but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God.-For in six days the Lord all that in them is, and rested the made heaven and earth, the sea, and seventh day; wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day, and hallowed it." With respect to time, it is here mentioned in the same indefinite manner as at its primæval institution, nothing more being expressly required than to observe a day of sacred rest after every six days of labour. The seventh day is to be kept holy, but not a word is said as to what epoch the commencement of the series is to be referred, nor could the Hebrews have determined from the

Decalogue what day of the week was to be kept as their Sabbath. The precept is not, Remember the seventh day of the week to keep it holy, but Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy; and in the following explication of these expressions it is not said that the seventh day of the week is the Sabbath, but without restriction, seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God;' not the seventh according to any particular method of computing the septenary cycle, but, in reference to the six before mentioned, every seventh day in rotation after six of labour." (pp. 252–254.)

the

Thus that part of the Jewish law, the Decalogue, which, on the authority of the New Testament, we have shown to be obligatory upon Christians, leaves the computation of the hebdomadal cycle undetermined; and, after six days of labour, enjoins the seventh as the Sabbath, to which the Christian practice as exactly conforms as the Jewish. It is not howdetermine which day should be his ever to be left to every individual to Sabbath, though he should fulfil the law so far as to abstract the seventh part of his time from labour. It was ordained for worship, for public worship; and for this end it is necessary that the Sabbath should be uniformly observed by a whole community at the same time. The Divine Legislator. of the Jews here interposed, by special direction, as to this people. The first Sabbath kept in the wilderness was calculated from the first day in which the manna fell; and with no apparent reference to the creation of the world. By apostolic authority, it is

fixed for us, on the first day of the week; and thus one of the great ends for which it was established, that it should be a day “ of höly convocation," is securèit.

agree

From these preliminary remarks, we turn more immediately to the Work before us, on which we must bestow very warm commendation, for its, clear and satisfactory discussion of this important subject, in its various bearings; though in one or two particulars we must take the liberty to offer some exceptions. After some just and forcible observations on the political advantages of Sabbatical appointments, the author proceeds to prove the perpetual obligation of the Sabbath from its first institution. This is an able and well-argued chapter. It is known that among some Divines of the English Church, of considerable name, the appointment of the Sabbath at the creation of the world has been denied. All the Churches of the Reformation did not indeed in their views of the Sabbath. But the Reformers of England and Scotland generally adopted the strict and scriptural view; and after them the Puritans. The opponents of the Puritans, in their controversy with them, and especially after the Restoration, associated the strict keeping of the Sabbath day with hypocrisy and disaffection, and no small degree of ingenuity and learning was em→ ployed to prove, that, in the intervals of public worship, pleasure or business might be lawfully purst.cd; and that this Christian festival stood on entirely different grounds from that of the Jewish Sabbath, The appointment of the Sabbath for man, at the close of the creation, was unfriendly to this notion, and the effort there fore was to explain away the testimony of Moses in the book of Genesis, by alleging that the Sabbath is there mentioned by prolepsis or anticipation. Of the arguments of this class of Divines, Paley availed himself in his "Moral Philosophy," and has become the most popular authority on this side of the question; our author, therefore, very properly addresses himself to refute his crude and dangerous positions.

From the second chapter we give the following extract :

“Among those who have held thất the Pentateuchal record, above cited, is proleptical; and that the Sabbath is to be considered a part of the peculiar laws of the Jewish polity, no one has displayed more ability than Dr. Paley. Others on the same side have exhibited far more extensive learning, and have exercised much more patient research; but for acuteness of intellect, for coolness of judgment, and a habit of perspicacious reasoning he has been rarely, if ever, excelled. The arguments which he has approved must be allowed to be the chief strength of the cause; and, as he is at once the most judicious and most popular of its advocates, all that he has advanced demahús á careful and candid examination. The doctrine which he maintains is, that the Sabbath was not instituted at the creation; that it was designed for the Jews only; that the assembling upon the first day of the week for the purpose of public worship, is a law of Christianity, of divine appointment; but that the resting on it longer than is necessary for attendance on these assemblies, is an ordinance of human institution; binding nevertheless upon the conscience of every individual of a country in which a weekly Sabbath is established, for the sake of the beneficial purposes which the public and regular observance of it promotes, and recommended perhaps in some degree semblance it bears to what God was to the divine approbation, by the repleased to make a solemn part of the law which he delivered to the people of Israel, and by its subserviency to many of the same uses. Such is the doctrine of this very able writer in his Moral and Political Philosophy; a doctrine which places the Sabbath on the footing of civil laws, recommended by their expediency, and which, being probably given great encouragement to sanctioned by so high an authority, has the lax notions concerning the Sabbath which unhappily prevail.

"Dr. Paley's principal argument is, that the first institution of the Sabbath took place during the sojourning of the Jews in the wilderness. Upon the complaint of the people for want of food, God was pleased to provide for their relief by a miraculous supply of ing upon the ground about the camp : manna, which was found every morn' and they gathered it every morning, every man according to his eating: and when the sun waxed hot, it melted.