294 OF THE ORIGINAL OF THE SABBATH. [EXERC. II.
tend that in these words of Moses, Gen. ii. 8, “ And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it, because that in it he had rested from all his work,” a prolepsis is to be admitted; that is, that what is there occasionally inserted in the narrative, and to be read in a parenthesis, came not to pass indeed until above two thousand years after, namely, in the wilderness of Sin, where and when God first blessed the seventh day and sanctified it. And the reason given for the supposed intersertion of the words in the story of Moses is, be- cause when it came to pass indeed that God so blessed the seventh day, he did it on the account of what he was then relating of the works that he made, and the rest that ensued thereon. Others give such an interpretation of the words as that they should contain no appointment of a day of rest, as we shall see. Those who assert the former opinion deny that the precept, or rather directions, about the observation of the Sabbath given unto the people of Israel in the wilderness of Sin, Exod. xvi, was its first original institution ; but affirm that it was either a new declaration of the law and usage of it unto them, who in their long bondage had lost both its doctrine and practice, with a renewed re-enforcement of it, by an especial cir- cumstance of the manna not falling on that day, or rather a particular application of a catholic moral command unto the economy of that church unto whose state the people were then under a preludium, in the occasional.institution of sundry particular ordinances, as hath been declared in our former Exercitations. This is the plain state of the present controversy about the original of the Sabbath as to time and place, wherein what is according unto truth is now to be in- quired: after.
7. The opinion of the ¢nstitution of the Sabbath from the begin- ning of the world is founded principally on a double testimony, one in the Old Testament, and the other in the New. And both of them seem to me of so uncontrollable an evidence that I have often wondered how ever any sober and learned persons undertook to evade their force or efficacy in this cause. The first is that of Gen. i, 1-8, “ Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. And God blessed the seventh day, and sanc- tified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made.” There is, indeed, somewhat in this text which hath given difficulty unto the Jews, and somewhat that the heathen took offence at. That which troubles the Jews is, that God is said to have finished his work on the seventh day; for they fear that somewhat might be hence drawn to the prejudice of their ab- solute rest on the seventh day, whereon it seems God himself wrought
SECT. 7.] OF THE ORIGINAL OF THE SABBATH. 295
in the finishing of his work. And Jerome judged that they might be justly charged with this consideration. “ Arctabimus,” saith he, “ Judzeos, qui de otio sabbati gloriantur, quod jam tunc in principio Sabbatum dissolutum sit; dum Deus operatur in Sabbato complens opera sua in eo, et benedicens ipsi diei, quia in illo universa com- plevit ;’—“ We will urge the Jews with this, who glory of their sab- batical rest, in that the Sabbath was broken” (or “ dissolved”) “ from the beginning, whilst God wrought in it, finishing his work, and blessing the day, because in it he finished all things.’ Hence the LXX. read the words, by an open corruption, év rj jutpa rH Exrn, “on the sixth day;”’ wherein they are followed by the Syriac and Samaritan versions. And the rabbins grant that this was done on purpose that it might not be thought that God made any thing on the seventh day. But this scruple was every way needless; for, do but suppose that 22", which expresseth the time past, doth intend the preterpluperfect tense,—as the preterperfect in the Hebrew must do where occasion requires, seeing they have no other to express that which at any time is past by,—and it is plain that God had perfected his work before the beginning of the seventh day’s rest. And so are the words well rendered by Junius, “ Quum autem per- fecisset Deus die septimo, opus suum quod fecerat.” Or we may say, “ Compleverat die septimo.”
That which the heathen took offence at, was the rest here ascribed unto God, as though he had been wearied with his work. Hence was that of Rutilius in his Itinerary:—
“ Septima queeque dies turpi damnata veterno, Ut delassati mollis imago Dei.” The sense of this expression we shall afterwards explain. In the meantime, it is certain that the word here used doth often signify only to cease, or give over, without respect either to weariness or rest, as Job xxxii. 1; 1 Sam. xxv. 9: so that no just cause of offence was given in the application of it to God himself. However, Philo, lib. de Opific. Mund., refers this of God’s rest to his contemplation of the works of his hands, and that not unmeetly, as we shall see. But set aside prejudices and preconceived opinions, and any man, would think that the institution of the Sabbath is here as plainly expressed as in the fourth commandment. The words are the continuation of a plain historical narration. Having finished the account of the creation of the world in the first chapter, and given a recapitulation of it in the first verse of this, Moses declares what immediately en- sued thereon,—namely, the rest of God on the seventh day, and his blessing and sanctifying that day whereon he so rested. That day on which he rested he blessed and sanctified, even that individual day in the first place, and a day in the revolution of the same space of