66 from hence, that had the fourth commandment been merely moral, it had no less concerned the Gentiles than it did the Israelites. Tell me," saith Tertullian, "What is there in the decalogue, except the observation of the Sabbath-day, which is not carefully to be observed by a Christian man?” Eusebius tells us, that Moses was the first lawgiver amongst the Jews, who did appoint them to observe a certain Sabbath in memory of God's rest from the world's creation. Athanasius lets us know that in the book of Exodus, we have the institution of the passover, &c. what time the Sabbath took beginning, and the law was published by Moses on Mount Sinai. Macarius doth affirm as much: viz. that in the law that was given by Moses, it was commanded as in a figure or a shadow, that every man should rest on the Sabbathday from the works of labour. St. Hierom, also, lets us know that the observation of the Sabbath, amongst other ordinances, was given by God unto his people in the wilderness. Then Epiphanius: "God," saith he, "rested on "the seventh day from all his labours, which 66 day he blessed and sanctified, and by his "angel made known the same to his servant "Moses." Where the Jews used, on other days, to wear their Phylacteries on their arms or foreheads, to be a sign or token to them, as the Lord commanded, they laid them by upon the Sabbaths; because, say they, the Sabbath was itself a sign. C On what motives God was pleased to prescribe a sabbath to the Jews, more at this time than any of the former ages, the Fathers severally have told us; yea, and the Scriptures too, in several places. Justin Martyr, as before we noted, gives this general reason; "because of their hard-heartedness, and irregular courses;" wherein St. Austin closeth with him. Particularly Gregory Nyssen, makes the special motive to be this;-"to restrain the people from the love of money. For coming out of Egypt very poor and bare, and having almost nothing but what they borrowed of the Egyptians, they gave themselves, saith he, unto continual and incessant labour, the sooner to obtain riches. Therefore said God that they should labour six days and rest the seventh." Damascen somewhat to this purpose:-"God," saith he, "seeing the carnal and the covetous disposition of the Israelites, appointed them to keep a Sabbath, that so their servants and their cattle might partake of rest." These seem to ground themselves on the 5th of Deuteronomy, where God commands his people to observe his Sabbaths, "that thy man-servant and thy maid-servant may rest as well as thou." And then it followeth, "Remember that thou wast a servant in the land of Egypt, and that the Lord thy God brought thee out thence through a mighty hand and by a stretched out arm; therefore the Lord thy God commanded thee to keep the Sabbath-day." The force A Deut. v. 14, 15. of which illation is no more than this ;that as God brought them out of Egypt, wherein they were servants, so he commands them to take pity on their servants, and let them rest upon the Sabbath, considering that they themselves would willingly have had some time of rest, had they been permitted. A second motive might be this;-to make them always mindful of that spiritual rest, which they were to keep from the acts of sin; and that eternal rest that they did expect from all toil and misery. In reference unto this eternal rest, St. Augustine tells us, that the Sabbath was commanded to the Jews, as a shadow of things to come," (in St. Paul's language) which God doth promise unto those that do the works of righteousness. And in relation to the other, the Lord himself hath told us that he had given his Sabbath unto the Jews, to be a sign between him and them, that they might know that he was the Lord that sanctified them;-(Exodus xxxi. 13.) which is again repeated by Ezekiel (xx. 12), That they might know that I am the Lord that sanctify them." 66 The Gentiles were so far from sanctifying the Sabbath or seventh day themselves, that they derided those that kept it. The circumcision of the Jews was not more ridiculous amongst the heathens than their Sabbaths were; nor were they more extremely scoffed at for the one than for the other, by all sorts of writers. Seneca lays it to their charge, that by occasion of their Sabbaths, they spent the seventh part of their lives in sloth and idleness; and Tacitus, that not the seventh day, but the seventh year also was as unprofitably wasted. And Ovid makes them a peculiar mark of the Jewish religion. The prophet Jeremiah, in his lamentations, (i. 7,) made on the death of king Josiah, saith, ‹ The adversaries saw her, and did mock at her Sabbaths." The Jews must needs be singular in this observation; all nations else, both Grecian and Barbarian, had never so agreed together to deride them for it. What should move the Jews to prefer circumcision before the Sabbath, unless it were because that circumcision were the older ceremony, I would gladly learn; especially considering the resemblance that was between them in all manner of circumstances. Was circumcision made to be a token of the covenant between the Lord of heaven and the seed of Abraham? So was the Sabbath between God and the house of Israel.2 Was circumcision a perpetual covenant with the seed of Abraham in their generations?3 So was the Sabbath to be kept throughout their generations for a perpetual covenant also.* Was circumcision so exacted, that whosoever was not circumcised, that soul should be cut off from the people of God? So God hath said it of his Sabbath, that whosoever breaks it, or doth any manner of work therein, that soul shall be cut off from among the people. 1 Gen. xvii. 11. 2 Exod. xxxi. 17. 3 Gen. xvii. 7. In all these points there was a just and plain equality between them; but had the Sabbath been a part of the moral law, it must have infinitely gone before circumcision. When the Jews were grown so strict, that it was thought unlawful either to give or take an alms on the Sabbath-day, Augustus, for his part, was willing not to break them of it; yet so to order and dispose his bounties, that they might be no losers by so fond a strictness. For whereas he did use to distribute monthly, a certain donative, either in money or in corn, this distribution sometimes happened on the Sabbath-days, whereon the Jews might neither give nor take. Therefore, it was provided that their proportion should be given them on the next day after, that so they might be made partakers of the public benefit. Their superstition sure was now very vehement; seeing it would not suffer men to do the works of mercy on the day of mercy. And therefore it was more than time they should be sent to school again, to learn this lesson-" I will have mercy and not sacrifice."1 And so indeed they were sent unto school to Him, who himself was both the Teacher and the Truth. For at this time our Saviour came into the world. And had there been no other business for him to do, this only might have seemed to require his presence: viz. to rectify those dangerous errors, which had been spread abroad in these latter times, about the Sabbath. The service of the Sab 1 Matt. ix. 13. |