296 OF THE ORIGINAL OF THE SABBATH, [ EXERC. II
time for’succeeding generations. This is plain in the words, or nothing can be thought to be plainly expressed. And if there be any appear- ance of difficulty in these words, “ God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it,” it is wholly taken away in the explication given of them by himself afterwards in the fourth commandment, where they are plainly declared to intend its setting apart and consecration to be a day.of sacred rest. But yet exceptions are put in to this plain, open sense of the words. Thus it is lately pleaded by Heidegger, Theol. Patriarch. Exerc. iii. sect. 58, “Deus die septimo cessaverat facere opus novum, quia sex diebus omnia consummata erant. i diei benedixit eo ipso quod cessans ab opere suo, ostendit, quod homo in cujus.creatione quievit, factus sit propter nominis sui glorificationem ; quod cum majus fuerit ‘ceteris que hactenus creata sunt, vocatur benedictio; eundem diem cui sic benedixit sanctificayit, quia et illo die, et reliquo toto tempore constituerat se in homine sanctificare tanquam in corona et gloria sui operis. Sanctificare enim est, eum qui sanctus est, sanctum dicere et testari. Dies igitur et tempus sanctum erat et agnoscebatur, non per se, sed per sanetitatem ho- minis, qui in tempore se sanctificat, et cogitationes, et studia, et actiones suas Deo, qui sanctus est, vindicat et consecrat.” I under- stand not how God can be said to bless the seventh day because man, who was created on the sixth day, was made for the glory of his name; for all things, as well as man, were made for the glory of God. He “made all things for himself,” Prov. xvi. 4; and they all “declare his glory,” Ps. xix. 1. Nor is it said that God rested on the seventh day from making of man, but “from all his work which he had made.” Granting man, who was last made, to have been the most eminent part of the visible creation, and most capable of immediate giving of glory to God, yet it is plainly said that the rest of God re- spected “all his work which he had made,” which is twice repeated; besides that the works themselves are summed up into the making of “the heavens and the earth, and all the host of them.” And wherein doth this include the blessing of the seventh day? It may be better applied to the sixth, wherein man was made; for on the-seventh God did no more make man than he did the sun and moon, which were made on the fourth. Nor is there here any distinction supposed between God’s resting on the seventh day and his blessing of it, which yet are plainly distinguished in the text. To say he blessed and sanctified it merely by resting on it, is evidently to confound the things that are not only distinctly proposed in the text, but so proposed as that one is laid down as the cause of the other; for because God rested on the seventh day, therefore he blessed it. Nor is the sanc- tification of the day any better expressed. “God,” saith he, “had appointed on that day, and always, to sanctify himself in man, as the
SECT. 8.] OF THE ORIGINAL OF THE SABBATH. 297-
erown and glory of his work.” I wish this learned man had more clearly expressed himself. What act of God is it that can be here intended? It must be the purpose of his will This, therefore, is given us as the sense of this place: God sanctified the seventh day; that is, God purposed from eternity to sanctify himself always in man, whom on the sixth day he would create for his glory.. These things are so forced as that they scarcely afford a tolerable sense.
8. Neither is the sense given by this author and some others of that expression, “to sanctify,”—that is, to declare or testify any person or thing to be holy,—being spoken by God, and not of him objec- tively, usual, or to be justified. In reference unto God, our sanctify- ing him, or his name, is indeed to testify or declare his holiness, by our giving honour and glory to him in our holy obedience. But as to men and things, to sanctify them, is either really to sanctify them, by making them internally holy, or to separate and dedicate them unto holy uses; the former peculiar to persons, the latter common to them with other things made sacred, by an authoritative separation from profane or common uses, unto a peculiar, sacred, or holy use in the worship of God. Nor are the following words in our author, that “the day is sanctified and made holy, not in itself, but by the holiness of man,” any more to the purpose; for as man was no more created on that day than the beasts of the field,—so that from his holiness no colour can be taken to ascribe holiness unto the day,—so jit'is not consistent with what was before asserted, that the sanctifi- cation intended is the holiness of God himself as declared in his works, for now it is made the holiness of man.
The sense of the words is plain, and is but darkened by these circumlocutions: ink wap» ‘y"2w DYN OVO 29. The Jews do well express the general sense of the words, when they say of the day, that nbn ‘poy Sao, “It was divided” (or “ distinguished”) “ from the common nature of things in the world,” namely, by having a new, - sacred relation added unto it; for that the day itself is the subject spoken of, as the object of God’s blessing and sanctification, nothing but unallowable prejudice will deny. And this to be the sense of the expressions both the words used to declare the acts of God about it do declare.