SECT. 33, 34.] OF THE CAUSES OF THE SABBATH, 357
influenced unto all their stated sacred or religious solemnities, both feasts and abstinences, by the remainders of an innate persuasion that such a rest was to be observed. Besides, we know that the present indications of nature, as corrupt, are no just rule and measure of its’ original abilities, with respect unto living to God. And they do but wofully bewray their ignorance and impudence, who begin to plead that our minds or understandings were no way impaired or worsted by the fall, but that the principles or abilities in them, in reference unto God and ourselves, are the same as originally, and that unimpaired. Either such men design to overthrow the gospel and grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, or they know not what they say, nor whereof they do affirm. But hereof we shall treat else- where, by God’s assistance. At present we know that the light of nature is so defective, or so impotent in giving indications of itself, that many nations left destitute of divine revelation, or wilfully re- jecting it, have lived and approved themselves in open transgres- sion of the law of it, as hath been showed. The apostle gives sundry instances of that kind amongst them who most boasted themselves to attend to the dictates of right reason, Rom.i. All idolaters, polygamists, fornicators, and those who constantly lived on spoil and rapine, approving themselves, or not condemning them- selves in what they did, are testimonies hereof. That alone, then, is not to be pretended to be of the law of nature which all men acknowledge to be a part of it; nor is every thing to be rejected from haying a place therein which some have lived in a secure transgression of, and others say that it gives no indications of itself: but that is to be understood to belong thereunto which, by the dili- gent consideration of all means and advantages of knowledge, may be found to be congruous to all the other known and allowed princi- ples and maxims of it, and to have its foundation in it, being what originally God by any means instructed our nature in, as that which belonged unto our living unto him. And, it may be, a man may sooner learn what is natural duty to God, in and from corrupted nature, by the opposition that it will make unto its practice, as it is corrupted, than by the light and guidance it will give unto it as nature. It is also, as we have observed, more discernible in its
judging and condemning what is done contrary unto it, than in directing unto what it did originally require.
34. Having given evidence unto the morality of the Sabbath from the indications of it and directions unto it in the light and Jaw of nature,—which will be found to be such as not to be by any modest or sober man contemned,—we proceed to add those other consequential confirmations of the same truth, which God hath given us in the following revelations of his will about it. And, first, this
308 OF THE CAUSES OF THE SABBATH. [ EXERC. III.
gives no small countenance unto an apprehension of an unchange- able morality in the law of the Sabbath, that in all estates of the church, from the foundation of the world, under the several cove- nants wherein it hath walked with God, and the various dispensa- tions of them, there is a full evidence that in them all God hath still required of his people the observation of a sacred rest unto him- self in a hebdomadal revolution of time or days. A full confirma- tion hereof, with its proofs and illustrations, the reader will find at large in our exposition of the fourth chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews, so soon as God shall give an opportunity to have it com- municated unto him. At present I shall touch only on the heads of things.
35. That any religious observance hath been required through all estates of the church, having no foundation but only in ar- bitrary institution, cannot be proved by any one single instance. The institutions of the state of innocency, in the matters of the garden, with the trees of life and of the knowledge of good and evil, ceased, as all men confess, with that estate. And although God did not immediately upon the sin of man destroy that garden, —no, nor it may be until the flood, leaving it as a testimony against the wickedness of that apostate generation for whose sins the world was destroyed,—yet was neither it nor the trees of it of any use, or lawful to be used, as to any significancy in the worship of God. And the -reason is, because all institutions are appendixes, and things annexed unto a covenant; and when that covenant ceaseth, or is broken, they are of no use or signification at all.
36. There was a new state of the church erected presently after the fall, and this also attended with sundry new institutions, espe- cially with that concerning sacrifices. In this church-state some alterations were made, and sundry additional institutions given unto it upon the erection of the peculiar church-state of the Israelites in the wilderness; which yet hindered not but that it was in general the same church-state, and the same dispensation of the covenant, that the people of God before and after the giving of the law enjoyed and lived under. Hence it was that sundry institutions of worship were equally in force both before and after the giving of the law on mount Sinai; as is evident in sacrifices, and some other instances may be given. But now, when the state of the church and the dispensation of the covenant came to be wholly altered, as they were by the gospel, not any one of the old institutions was continued, or to be continued, but they were all abolished and taken away. Nothing at all was traduced over from the old church-states, neither from that in innocency nor from that which ensued on the fall in all its variations, with any obligatory power, but what was