346 OF THE CAUSES OF THE SABBATH. [ EXERC, IIL
servation do consequentially introduce the whole covenant of works, and are become debtors unto the whole law; for the works of God which preceded the seventh day precisely were those whereby man was initiated into and instructed in the covenant of works, and the day itself was a token and pledge of the righteousness thereof, or a moral and natural sign of it, and of the rest of God therein, and the rest of man with God thereby. And it is no service to the church of God, nor hath any tendency unto the honour of Christ in the gos- pel, to endeavour a reduction of us unto the covenant of nature.
20. Thus was man instructed in the whole notion of a weekly sacred rest, by all the ways and means which God was pleased to use in giving him an acquaintance with his will, and that obedience unto his glory which he expected from him: for this knowledge he had partly by the law of his creation, as innate unto him or con- created with the principles of his nature, being the necessary exsur- gency of his rational constitution; and partly by the works and rest of God, thereon proposed unto his consideration; both firmed by God’s declaration of his sanctification of the seventh day. Hence did he know that it was his duty to express and celebrate the rest of God, or the complacency that he had in the works of his hands, in reference unto their great and proper end, or his glory, in the honour, praise, and obedience of them unto whose contemplation they were proposed for those ends. This followed immediately from’ the tume spent in the creation, and the rest that ensued thereon, which were so ordered for his instruction, and not from any other cause or reason, taken either from the nature of God or of the things themselves, which required neither six days to make the world in, nor any rest to follow thereon; for that rest was not a cessation from working absolutely, much less merely so. Hence did he learn the nature of the covenant that he was taken into, namely, how he was first to work in obedience, and then to enter into God’s rest in blessedness; for so had God appointed, and so did he understand his will, from his own present state and condition. Hence was he instructed to dedicate to God, and to his own more immediate communion with him, one day in a weekly revolution, whereim the whole law of his creation was consummated, as a pledge and means of entering eternally into God’s rest, which from hence he under- stood to be his end and happiness. And for the sanctification of the seventh day of the week precisely, he had it by revelation, or God’s sanctification of it; which had unto him the nature of a posi- tive law, being a determination of the day suited unto the nature and tenor of that covenant wherein he walked with God.
21. And by this superadded command or institution, the mind of man was confirmed in the meaning and intention of his innate prin-
SECT. 20-22.] OF THE CAUSES OF THE SABBATH. 347
ciples, and other instructions to the same purpose in general. All these things, I say, the last only excepted, was he directed unto in and by the innate principles of light and obedience wherewith the faculties of his soul were furnished, every way suited to guide him in the whole of the duty required of him, and by the further in- struction he had from the other works of God, and his rest upon the whole. And although, it may be, we cannot now discern how in’par- ticular his natural light might conduct and guide him to the obser- vance of all these things, yet ought we not therefore to deny that so it did, seeing there is evidence in the things themselves, and we know not well what that light was which was in him; for although we may have some due apprehensions of the substance of it, from its remaining ruins and materials in our lapsed condition, yet we have no acquaintance with that light and glorious lustre, that extent of its directive beams, which it was accompanied withal, when it was in him as he came immediately from the hand of God, created in his image. We have lost more by the fall than the best and wisest in the world can apprehend whilst they are in it,—much more than most will acknowledge, whose principal design seems to be to extenuate the sin and misery of man; which issueth necessarily in an undervaluation of the love and grace of Jesus Christ. But if a na- tural or carnal man cannot discern how the Spirit or grace of the new covenant, which succeeds into the room of our first innate light, as unto the end of our living unto God’s glory in a new way, directs and guides those in whom it is unto the observance of all the duties of it, let us not wonder if we cannot easily and readily comprehend the brightness, and extent, and conduct of that light which was suited unto an estate of things that never was in the world since the fall, but only in the man Christ Jesus; whose wisdom and knowledge in the mind and will of God even thereby, without his superadded peculiar assistance, we may rather admire than think to under- stand.