3rd. The Sunday is the first day of the week, and not the seventh which was the essential day, for the Jewish Sabbath.

4th. The object of the observation of the Lord's Day is very different from the object of the celebration of the Jewish Sabbath. This last was destined to commemorate the creation of the world, and the deliverance from Egypt. The other is solemnized to preserve the memory of the Resurrection of Christ, as it was by that momentous event, that He was declared the son of God with power;-that His religion was proved to be true,-that His exaltation and reign began;-that we were made certain of his sacrifice having been accepted by God,† and thereby of the full expiation of our sins,‡ and of our resurrection, at the latter day; and that, in short new heavens and a new earth have been created; and the former, (comparatively speaking) is not to be remembered nor come into mind.

Second objection.

It is further said-That the great object of the Jewish Sabbath being to perpetuate as well

*Rom. i. 4.

1 Cor. xv. 17. 22. 1 Thess. iv. 14. Isaiah lxv. 17.

as to celebrate the memory of the creation of the world, it seems natural enough that it should extend to all nations, and to all ages.

The answer to this second objection is this:What we have already remarked, namely, the silence of the Scripture, on the observation of the Sabbath, during two thousand five hundred years, greatly counterbalances, (to say the least of it) that specious objection. Besides, a wise lawgiver does not, in general, enact laws, but in cases of urgent necessity, and when circumstances require those laws. Now, that precaution against idolatry as mentioned in the fourth commandment, was certainly much less needful, when the remembrance of the creation was still fresh, and recent, and could be kept up during several centuries, by the longevity of the Patriarchs who had almost been witnesses of the event; and could transmit it, by oral traditions to their descendants. But it was no longer the case, when that event being obliterated from the memory of men, they begun to worship idols: and if God thought fit to leave the other nations, in the hand of their own counsel, there was nothing more worthy his wisdom and goodness, than to guard his people against adoring false Deities by the institution of the Sabbath, and the bringing to their remembrance, their coming out of Egypt.

Third objection.

The words of Genesis, which recite that God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it, because in it He had rested from all his works; and those too of Exodust in which God's rest is formally alleged as the reason of the institution of the Sabbath, seem to prove likewise, that that law does not regard the Jewish nation more than others.

That objection does not present more difficulty to be answered than the two former ones.

It is certainly said in Genesis that God blessed, that is, that He declared good and right, the Sabbath-day; and that He sanctified it, or distinguished it from the other days: but there is no command to celebrate it: it would be extraordinary, indeed, that the sacred historian should have preserved the memory of the Ordinance which God gave particularly to Adam; and that He should not have mentioned an Ordinance which regarded all mankind. When God punished men, by the flood, we do not find, among the crimes which they were upbraided with, that of the violation of the Sabbath; which however would have been a crime of the blackest die against God, if the command had been given.

That blessing, or consecration of the seventh day immediately after the creation of the world, and in the pristine innocence of man cannot therefore have been of the same nature, as the consecration which was made of it, two thousand five hundred years after, on the Mount of Sinai: that first consecration did not enjoin on Adam, or his descendants, the performance of any particular duty, but served only to recall more on that day than on any other day of the week, the remembrance of the Creation, as a simple act of piety and gratitude to God, without any of those external formalities which were afterwards added, such as religious publick convocations, the nature of the festival, the cessation of all manual work, and other ceremonies for which reason, some memorials of the seventh day are, it is true, to be found in the Scripture, as, for instance, in the History of the Flood; in that of the Patriarch Jacob, and especially in the sixteenth chapter of the Exodus, where, on relating an event which preceded, by some weeks, the publication of the Decalogue; namely, the miraculous feeding of the Israelites, in the wilderness, with manna, the seventh day is mentioned as a day of rest, the rest of the holy Sabbath unto the Lord. But we nowhere find any act or word, which

indicates, or even gives room to the conjecture, that the most pious patriarchs, either before, or after the flood, as Henoch, Noah, Sem, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob ever kept the seventh day as a festival, or a day of religious assembly as the Israelites did, after the law of Sinai was proclaimed.

It is then extremely probable, that in Genesis ii, the sacred Historian (who agreeably to the opinion of the most learned commentators) wrote it as well as the four following books, only when He led the people of God from Egypt into Canaan, spoke there by anticipation of the sanctification of the day of rest in the same manner, as almost all the other Historians have done. Several other instances of such an anticipation are found in the Pentateuch. The History of the Creation itself appears to have been written, not till after the return from Egypt, with the view of deterring the Israelites, from the worship of false divinities: then, Moses teaches them, that it is for that purpose, that God sanctified the seventh day, and instituted that festival, in order that they should henceforth celebrate it with proper solemnity, every week. On that ground the sanctification of the seventh day relates, not to the creation of the world, where that event is mentioned, but to subsequent times.