the Deities, and they themselves had adored them. It was necessary to institute a day which should constantly bring down to their mind, the truth of the history of the creation and none could be more appropriate to that purpose, than the seventh day for the reason above recited.

Besides, they were coming out of a country, where they had been forced to uninterrupted labours; and consequently it was right, that the rest of that entire day should be a perpetual symbol of the rest which God had procured them; and that it should be wholly consecrated to Him. Secondly-It is not a crime to gather sticks. The Lord did not punish other offences however heinous, with the pain of death,-a punishment which He inflicted on those who were guilty of that act on that day: But it would have been a mark of the greatest ingratitude, a profanation, and even an impiety, on the part of the Israelites, if they had not restrained themselves one day from violating so easy a command as not to gather sticks; and from not depriving God of a single moment of the day which He had entirely reserved for Himself.

4thly-If the law of the Sabbath bound all men and all the nations of the world, it would never have been abolished, as it has been; and

the Christians would have observed it, in all ages, as they did at first from mere condescension to the Jews. Moreover, Christ would never have said of such a law, that the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath-day, and can observe it, or not observe it; that is, that, if necessity could, in several occasions, dispense with the law of the Sabbath, in that which concerned the ceremonial of that law, (as there is a strong instance in 1 Maccab.) a fortiori, the Son of Man, that is, Himself who was to abrogate all the Mosaic economy,‡ could, in the present case, when He uttered those words, dispense his disciples from the rigid observance of the Sabbath. Nay, He would never have said, that the Sabbath was made for man; and not man for the Sabbath. For there are three very remarkable things in the answer which he gives to the Pharisees, on his disciples, being hungry, and plucking the ears of corn, on a Sabbath-day.

1st. The Saviour puts in a parallel, the ceremony of the Sabbath, with the law which prohibited every one, but the priests, to eat the shew bread.

2nd. He marks, that the service of Christ who is Greater than the temple, dispenses with the ceremonial worship of the law, and drives away the sabbath, as the Jews used to say.

3rd. By adding, that the Sabbath was made for man; and not man, for the Sabbath, Jesus has considered the Sabbath under no other light than that of a ceremony instituted, not with the view that man should suffer from it, by turning the law to his prejudice, by a too severe explanation of it; but for his own use, advantage and benefit; that is, that God requires not absolutely the ceremonial, and purely external duties, such as the Sabbath; and that those duties ought to yield to those prescribed by virtue, because man was made, or created for these latter which are not of mere institution, but are commanded by reason alone, as well as by the law.

Such remarks from the Saviour, placed then, beyond any question, the Sabbath among Jewish ceremonies. Other particulars also in the fourth commandment evince, that it is a ceremonial commandment.

In six days, the Lord made heaven and earth, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore, the Lord blessed the sabbathday, and hallowed it. God, by these words,

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gives the Israelites clearly to understand, that the pretended Deities which the Pagans worshipped, were all the work of his hands; and that consequently, they would act the part of an insane people, if they looked up to those Deities, for that protection and assistance which they should expect only from Him, the Creator of every thing.

The additional reason for the celebration of the sacred day, viz., the deliverance from the fetters of Egyptian bondage-the prohibition, as to doing any sort of work, extended to the strangers within the gates of his people, in order that the Israelites might not be tempted, prone as they were to fall into idolatry, to have, if unrestrained, a dangerous intercourse with those strangers who might live with them-The injunction that all members of families, slaves of both sexes, and even the cattle, should share the rest prescribed; all these prove to demonstration, that the fourth commandment is entirely ceremonial.

First objection.

Yet, it is true, that it may be said that the Sabbath of the Sunday having suceeded to the Saturday's Sabbath, the law respecting the. sabbath seems not to have been abolished.

Answer.

It cannot surely be denied that there is a sort of resemblance between the Jewish sabbath, and the Christian sabbath; and even that the intention of the primitive Christian Church has been to make, by degrees, the one to succeed to the other in that which may be considered as moral, in the institution of the Jewish Sabbath. But, many and weighty are the reasons which ought to prevent the two Sabbaths from being confounded.

1st. The observation of the Christian Sabbath is not a ceremony: it is a duty, as we shall soon show; and a duty which ought to be performed with this twofold design; the one to consecrate particularly to God's service, a day in the week: The other, to take, and to give relaxation from the labours of the preceding days.

2nd. We do not remark in the Gospel, nor in the Ecclesiastical History, any obligation to spend the Sunday in absolute idleness, which idleness was however one of the principal features of the Jewish sabbath. If we abstain from working on the Sunday, it is merely that we may not be deterred from those exercises of piety, and from the meditation of those holy and spiritual objects to which that day is dedicated,