(3.) This law was yet proposed to that church and people in the manner and form of a covenant, and not only materially as a law or rule. This it had from the promises and threatenings which it was attended withal. There was adjoined unto it, “Do this, and
390 OF THE JUDAICAL SABBATH. [EXERC. IV.
live;” and, “The man that doeth these things shall live in them;” as also, “ Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things written in the law, to do them.” Not that it was hereby absolutely consti- tuted a covenant, which eventually and finally they were to live or die by (for, as we showed before, there was a relief provided against that condition in the promise), but God gave the old covenant an especial revival, though with respect unto other ends than were ori- ginally intended in it. Hence the covenant form given unto it ren- dered the obedience of that people in a great measure servile, for it gendered unto bondage.
(4.) The law, being attended with various explanations and many ordinances of judgment, deduced from the principles of moral right’ and equity contained in it, was made the rule of the polity and go- vernment. of that people, as a holy nation under the rule of God himself, who was their king; for their polity, for the kind of it, was a theocracy, over which God in an especial manner presided, as their governor and king. And hence he affirms, that when they would choose another king over them, after the manner of the nations, they rejected him from reigning over them, though they resolved to adhere to his laws and the manner of government pre- scribed to them. And this was peculiar to that people. Hence the Sabbath amongst them came to have an absolute necessity accom-
_panying it of an outward, carnal observance, the neglect whereof, or acting any thing against the law of it, was to be punished with death.
(5.) Unto this renovation of the covenant, in the manner and for the ends expressed, there was added a typical church-state, with a great number of religious laws and ordinances, in themselves carnal and weak, but mystically significant of spiritual and heavenly things, and instructive how to use the promise that was before given, for their relief from the rigour and curse of the law or covenant now proposed unto them, And in all these things did the covenant of God, made with that people in the wilderness, consist. The founda- tion, matter, manner of administration, promises, and threatenings of it, were the same with the covenant of works; but they were all accommodated to their ecclesiastical and political estate, with espe- cial respect unto their approaching condition in the land of Canaan: only there was, in the promise, new ends and a new use given unto it, with a relief against its rigour and ourse.
4. On the account of the accessions that were thus made to the law, and especially unto the observation of the Sabbath, it is often mentioned in the Scripture as that which God had in a peculiar manner given unto the Israelites, in whose especial worship it had so great a place, many of their principal ordinances having a great
SECT. 4, 5. OF THE JUDAICAL SABBATH. — 391 ? 3
respect unto it, it being also the only means of keeping up the so- lemnity of national worship in their synagogues among the people, Acts xv. 21. Thus God says concerning them, that he gave them his Sabbaths in the wilderness, to be a sign between him and them, Ezek. xx. 10-12; and it is said of the same time, Neh. ix. 14, that he “made known unto them his holy Sabbath,’—that is, in the man- ner and for the ends expressed. Nor is there any need why we should say that “ He gave them” intends no more but that he re- stored the knowledge of the Sabbath amongst them, the memory whereof they had almost lost, although that interpretation of the expression might be justified; for he says nowhere that he then gave his Sabbaths, but that he then peculiarly gave them unto that people, and that for the ends mentioned. For the Sabbath was originally a moral pledge and expression of God’s covenant rest, and of our rest in God; and now was it appointed of God to be a sign of the espe- cial administration of the covenant which was then enacted. Hence ‘it is said that he gave it them as “a perpetual covenant,” Exod. xxx. 16, “that they might know him to be the Lorp that sanctified them,” verse 13,—that is, their God according to the tenor of that covenant, which was to continue throughout their generations; that is, until the new covenant should be brought in and established by Christ. Thus was it peculiarly given unto them; and so far as it was so, as it was a sign of their covenant, as it was then first given, so it is now abolished : for,—
5. The renovation and change of the covenant must and did in- troduce a change in the rest annexed unto it; for a Sabbath, or a holy rest, belongs unto every covenant between God and man. But as for the kind and nature of it, as to its ends, use, and manner of observation, it follows the especial kind or nature of that covenant wherein we at any season walk before God. Now, the original cove- nant of works being, in this representation of it on Sinai, not abso- lutely changed or abolished, but afresh presented unto the people, only with a relief provided for the covenanters against its curse and severity, with a direction how to use it to another end than was first