(2.) For those expressions insisted on, of “work,” “servile work,” “work for six days,” of “servants and handmaids,” of “the stranger within the gates,” they were necessary explications of the command in its application unto that people, and yet such as had a just pro- portion unto what was enjoined at the first giving of this command, occasioned from the outward change of the state of things amongst men from what it was in innocency. For in that state God de- signed man to work, and that in the tilling of the ground, whilst he
_ SECT. 18.] OF THE ORIGINAL OF THE SABBATH. 315
abode in it: Gen. ii. 15, “He put the man in the garden 77289,” “to work in it;” the same word whereby work is enjoined in the deca- logue. And whereas God had sanctified the seventh day to be a day of rest, and thereon put man into the garden MID? , “to till it,” by work and labour, he did virtually say unto him, as in the command, TADNPH PD Dey) TayA OM nvw;—«Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work.” Neither was this in the least inconsistent with the condition wherein he was created; for man being constituted and composed partly of an immortal soul, of a divine extract and heavenly original, and partly of a body made out of the earth, he was a middle creature between those which were purely spiritual, as the angels, and those which were purely terrestrial, as the beasts of the field. Hence when God had made man ")7NT7jD THY, “of dust from out of the earth,” as all the beasts of the field were made, and had given him distinctly 0°3 N23, “a breath of life,” in a dis- tinct substance, answerable to that of the angels above, whose creation was not out of any pre-existing matter, but they were the product of an immediate emanation of divine power, as was the soul of man, there was no meet help to be associated unto him in the whole creation of God. For the angels were not meet for his help and individual converse, on the account of what was terrene and mortal in him; and the beasts were much more unsuited unto him, as having nothing in them to answer his divine and more noble part. And as his nature was thus constituted, that he should con- verse, as it were amphibiously, between the upper and inferior sort of creatures, so he was divided in his works and operations, suitably _ unto the principles of his nature and peculiar constitution; for they were partly to be divine and spiritual, partly terrene and earthly, though under the government of the sovereign divine principle in him. Hence it was required that in this condition, being not abso- lutely fitted, as the angels, for constant contemplation, he should work and labour in the earth whilst he continued in it, and his terrene part not refined or made spiritual and heavenly. This made a certain time of rest necessary unto him, and that upon a double account, flowing from the principles of his own nature. For his earthly constitution could not always hold out to labour with its own satisfaction, and his intellectual and divine part was not to be always diverted, but to be furthered in and unto its own peculiar operations. This made a sacred rest necessary to him. And in that addition of sweat and travail which befell him in his labour afterwards, there was not a new course of life enjoined him, but a curse was mixed with that course and labour which was originally allotted unto him. So, then, although there is a different manner of working more necessary, and supposed in the giving of the law, than was at the first institu-
316 OF THE ORIGINAL OF THE SABBATH. [EXERC. IT.
tion of a sabbatical rest, yet the change is not in the law or com- mand for labour, but in the state or condition of man himself.
The same may be spoken concerning the addition about servants and handmaids; for in the state of innocency there would have been a superiority of some over others, in that government which is eco- nomical or paternal. Hence all duties of persons in subordination are built on the law of nature; and what is not resolved thereinto is force and violence. And herein lies the foundation of what is ordained with reference unto servants and strangers, which is ex- pressed in the fourth commandment, with an especial application to the state of the Judaical church and people. Wherefore, although there should have been no such servants or strangers as are intended in the decalogue in the state of innocency, when we plead that the law of the Sabbath was first given, yet this provesno more but that this precept, in the renovation and repetition of it unto the Jews, was accommodated to the present state of things amongst them, that state being such as had its foundation in the law of creation itself.
The places adjoined of Exod. xvi. 29, xxxi. 17, Ezek. xx. 12, do prove sufficiently and undeniably that in the Mosaical pedagogy, the observation of the seventh day being precisely enjoined, there were additions of signification given unto it, that is, to the seventh day precisely, by divine institution, as amongst them it was to be observed. And therefore unto the utmost extent of the determination of the day of rest unto the seventh day precisely, and all the significancy annexed unto it, to that people, we acknowledge that the Sabbath was absolutely commensurate to the church-state of the Jews, begin- ning and ending with it. But the argument hence educed, namely, that “God gave the Sabbath, that is, the law of it, in a peculiar manner unto the Jews, therefore he had not given the same law for the substance of it before unto all mankind,” is infirm: for God gave the whole law to the Jews in an especial manner, and enforced the observation of it with a reason or motive peculiar to them, namely, “I am the LorpD thy God, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage;” and yet this law was before given unto them who never were in Egypt, nor never thence delivered. And upon the account of this peculiar appropriation of the law unto the Jews, it is spoken of in the Scripture in places innumerable as if it had been given unto them only, and to no others at all. So speaks the psalmist, Ps. exlvii. 19, apy 37 P30 DxTind WBvID YBN. “Declaring his words unto Jacob, his statutes and judgments unto Israel;” where as by 0°77 and DOBY%, the cere- monial and judicial laws are intended, so by 1134, “his words,” are the 00237 ni’y “the ten words,” as Moses calls the decalogue. And of them all the psalmist adds, verse 20, “3 239 1p ney Nd__« He