Nevertheless, for the more effectual maintenance of its authority, God judged it necessary to publish it to them again, both upon the original grounds, and on other special grounds peculiar to that people. And how did he publish it ? Did he deliver it to Moses in the same manner as he did the ceremonial law ? No : he wrote it with his own finger in tables of stone, and embodied it with the moral law k. Surely this affords a very strong presumption that God himself con- sidered its duties, not as ceremonial, limited, and transient, but as moral, universal, and permanent.]
3. The confirmation of it by the Prophets —
[That its obligations should be sanctioned by the pro- phets, we might well expect ; because they lived under the authority of the Jewish law. The mere circumstance, there- fore, of their insisting on the observation of the Sabbath would prove nothing. But their speaking of the Sabbath, as to be observed under the Christian dispensation, very strongly corroborates the perpetuity of its obligations. Now the prophet Isaiah does speak of the Sabbath in such a connexion, that we cannot doubt of its referring to the times of the Gospel : and he represents the " keeping of the Sabbath" as no less necessary to our happiness, than the laying hold of Christ's righteousness and salvation1. We can scarcely think that the prophet would have so strongly marked the continuance of the Sabbath, if its obligations were to cease with the ceremonial law.]
4. The observation of it by the Apostles —
[The precise day on which the Jews kept their Sabbath, was indeed changed; and the first day of the week was sub- stituted for the seventh. This was done in order to com- memorate the resurrection of our blessed Lord; an event, the most interesting that ever occurred from the foundation of the world ; an event which proved, beyond all doubt, the Messiahship of Jesus, and has served from that time as the corner-stone of all our hopes"1. When Israel was brought out of Egypt, God, in order to commemorate that deliverance, changed the commencement of the year from the Autumn to the Spring n : can we wonder then, that, in remembrance of an infinitely greater deliverance, he should alter the day on which the Sabbath had been observed? It was in the appro- priation of a seventh part of our time to God, that the morality of the Sabbath consisted; and that is preserved under the Christian, as much as under the Jewish economy.
k Deut. x. 3, 4. i Isai. lvi. 1, 2.
m Acts iv. 10 — 12. n Exod. xii. 2.