SECT, 45.] OF THE CAUSES OF THE SABBATH. 367
time unto one day in seven; for this it requires, or nothing at all which should be peculiar unto a distinct precept is required in it, as we have before manifested. And this one consideration alone is sufficient to evince its morality.
(2.) This command, as all the rest of the decalogue, was written twice by the finger of God in tables of stone. And hereof there was a double reason:—First, That it was a stable renovation and objective representation of that law, which being implanted on the heart of man, and communicated unto him in his creation, was vari- ously defaced ;—partly by the corruption and loss of that light, through the entrance of sin, which should have guided us in the right apprehension and understanding of its dictates, and of the obedi- ence that it required; partly through a long course of a corrupt con- versation, which the world had, in the pursuit of the first apostasy, and according to the principles of it, plunged itself into. God now again fixed that law objectively, in a way of durable preservation, which in its primitive seat and subject was so impaired and defaced. And hereof the additions mentioned, with peculiar respect unto the application of the whole, or any part of it, unto that people, were no impeachment, as is acknowledged in the preface given unto them all containing a motive unto their dutiful observance of the whole. And hence this law must necessarily be esteemed a part of the ante- cedent law of nature; neither can any other reason be given why God wrote it himself with those and only those that are so, in tables of stone. Secondly, This was done as an emblem that the whole decalogue was a representation of that law which, by his Spirit, he would write in the fleshy tables of the hearts of his elect. And this is well observed by the church of England, which, after the reading of the whole decalogue, the fourth command among the rest, directs the people to pray that God would write all these laws in their hearts. Now, this concerneth only the moral law; for although obedience unto all God’s ceremonial and typical institutions, whilst they were in force, was moral, and a part of the law written in the heart, or required in general in the precepts of the first table of the decalogue, yet those laws themselves had no place in the promise of the covenant that they should be written in our hearts; for if it -
should be so, especial grace would be yet administered for the obser-
vation of those laws now they are abolished, which would not only be vain and useless, but contradictory to the whole design of the grace bestowed upon us, which is to be improved in a due and genuine exercise of it. Neither doth God bestow any grace upon
men but withal he requires the exercise of it at their hands. If,
then, this law was written in tables of stone together with the other nine, that we might pray and endeavour to have it written in our
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368 OF THE CAUSES OF THE SABBATH. ~— [EXERC III.
hearts, according to the promise of the covenant, it is, and must be, of the nature of the rest,—that is, moral, and everlaeHpery obli- gatory.
(3.) As all the rest of the moral precepts, it was preserved in the ark, whereas, the law of ceremonial ordinances, written by Moses, was placed in a book by the side of the ark, separable from it, or whence it might be removed. The ark on many accounts was called “the ark of the covenant ;’ whereof, God assisting, I shall treat elsewhere. One of them was, that it contained in it nothing but that moral law which was the rule of the covenant. And this was placed therein to manifest that it was to have its accomplishment in Him who was “the end of the law,” Rom. x. 3,4; for the ark with the propitia- tory was a type of Jesus Christ, chap. ii. 25. And the reason of the different disposal, of the moral law in the ark, and of the cere- monial in a book by the side of it, was to manifest, as the insepar- ableness of the law from the covenant, so the establishing, accom- plishment, and answering of the one law in Christ, with the removal and abolishing of the other by him. As for the law kept in the ark, the type of him, he was to fulfil it in obedience, to answer its curse, and to restore it unto its proper use in the new covenant,—not that which it had originally, when it was itself the whole of the covenant, but that which the nature of it requires, in the moral obedience of rational creatures, whereof it is a complete and adequate rule-—when the other law was utterly removed and taken away. And if that had been the end whereunto the law of the Sabbath had been de- signed, had it been absolutely capable of abolition in this world, it had not been safeguarded in the ark with the other nine, which are inseparable from man’s covenant obedience unto God, but had been left with other ceremonial ordinances at the side of the ark, in a readiness to be removed, when the appointed time should come.