384 OF THE CAUSES OF THE SABBATH. EXERC. II.
taken off that command, and abolished that institution, it is not in the power of all the churches in the world to take up the religious observance of that day to the same ends and purposes. Itis certain that God did appoint that a Sabbath of rest should be observed unto him, and for the celebration of his solemn worship, on one day in seven. The whole command of God hereof is now pleaded to be dissolved, and all obligation from thence unto its observation to be abolished, in and by Christ. Then say I, it is unlawful for any church or churches in the world to resume this practice, and to im- pose the observance of it on the disciples of Christ. Be it that the church may appoint holy days of its own, that have no foundation in nor relation to the law of Moses, yet doubtless it ought not to dig any of his ceremonies out of their grave, and impose them on the necks of the disciples of Christ; yet so must it be thought to do on this hypothesis, that the religious observance of one day in seven is absolutely abolished by Christ, as a mere part of the law of com- mandments contained in ordinances, which was nailed to his cross and buried with him, by the constant practice and injunction thereof.
(4.) Herewith fall the arguments taken from the apostle’s calling the Sabbath in this place “a shadow ,” for it is said that “nothing which is moral can be a shadow.” It is true, that which is moral, so far as it is moral, cannot be a shadow. We therefore say, that the weekly observation of a day of rest from the foundation of the world, whereunto a general obligation was laid on all men unto its observation, the command whereof was a part of the moral law of God, was no shadow, nor is so called by the apostle, nor did typify good things to come. But that which is in its own nature moral, may, in respect of some peculiar manner of its observance, in such a time or season, and some adjuncts annexed unto it, in respect whereof it becomes a part of ceremonial worship, be so far and in those re- spects esteemed a shadow, and as such pass away. In brief, the command itself, of observing one day in seven as @ holy rest unto God, hath nothing Aaronical or typical in it, but hath its foundation in the light of nature, as directed by the works of God and his rest thereon. [As] for its limitation precisely to the last day of the week, with other directions and injunctions for and in the manner of its observance, they were Mosaical, and as a shadow are departed, as we shall manifest in our ensuing Exercitation.
59, But yet neither can it be absolutely proved, if we would insist thereon, that the weekly Sabbath 1s in any sense intended in these words of the apostle; for he may design the sabbatical years which were instituted among that people, and probably now pressed by the Judaizing teachers on the Gentile proselytes. Nor will the ex-
SECT. 59.] OF THE JUDAICAL SABBATH. 385
ception put in from some of the rabbins, that the sabbatical years were not to be observed out of the land of Canaan, from which Colosse was far enough distant, re-enforce the argument to this pur- pose: for as men in one place may have their consciences exercised and bound with the opinion of what is to be done in another, though they cannot engage in the practice of it whilst they are absent, so our apostle chargeth the Galatians,—as far distant from Canaan as the Colossians,—that when they began to Judaize, they observed years, as well as days, and months, and times; which could respect only the sabbatical years that were instituted by the law of Moses.
EXERCITATION IV. OF THE JUDAICAL SABBATH,
1. The Sabbath, how required by the law of nature as a covenant. 2. Ex- planation of the law of the Sabbath in the fourth precept of the deca- logue. 3. The law of creation and covenant of works renewed in the church of Israel; with what alterations. 4. The Sabbath, why said to be given peculiarly to the Israelites. 5. Change in the covenant introduceth a change in the Sabbath. 6. The whole nature of the Judaical Sabbath, and how it is abolished. 7. Jews’ sense of the original of the Sabbath rejected. 8. The first appropriation of the law of the Sabbath to that people, Exod. xvi. 9. Their mistakes about its observation. 10. The giving of the law on mount Sinai, with the ends of it. 11. Nature of the fourth command- ment thereon; what Mosaical in it. 12. Renovation of the command of the Sabbath, Exod. xxxi. 12-17. 13. Occasion hereof. 14. Appropria- tions made of the Sabbath to the church of Israel in this renovation, 15. The commandment renewed again, Exod. xxxiv. 21—New additions made to it. 16. So also Exod. xxxy, 2,3. 17. The whole matter stated, Deut. vy. 15. 18, 19. The conclusion,
1. WE have declared how the observation of a septenary sacred rest is required by the moral law, or the law of our creation. Now, this is not absolutely and merely as it is a law, but as it contained a covenant between God and man. A law it might have been, and yet not have had the nature of a covenant, which doth not necessarily follow upon either its instructive or preceptive power. Yet it was originally given in the counsel of God to that end, and accompanied with promises and threatenings; whence it had the nature of a covenant. By virtue of this law as a covenant was the observation of a Sabbath prescribed and required, asa token and pledge of God’s rest in that covenant, in the performance of the works whereon it was constituted, and of the interest of man in that rest, as also to be a means of entrance into it, On this ground it should have been ob-