With respect to the second objection, that inasmuch as the other nine commandments are confessedly of moral, and universal obligation, it may reasonably be presumed that this is of the same; we answer, that this argument will have less weight when it is considered, that the distinction between positive and natural duties, like other distinctions of modern ethics, was unknown to the simplicity of ancient language; and that there are various passages of scripture, in which duties of a political, or ceremonial, or positive nature, and confessedly of partial obligation, are enumerated, and without any mark of discrimination, along with others which are natural and universal. Of this Ezek. xviii. 5, 9, is an incontestable example. The same thing may be observed of the apostolic decree recorded in the 15th chapter of the Acts. The practice of holding religious assemblies upon the first day of the week, was so early and universal in the Christian Church, that 't carries with it considerable proof of having originated from some precept of Christ, or of his Apostles, though none such be now extant. A cessation upon that day from labour beyond the time of attendance upon public worship, is not intimated in any passage of the New Testament; nor did Christ or his Apostles deliver, that we know of, any command to their disciples for a discontinuance, upon that day, of the common offices of their professions; a reserve which none will see reason to wonder at, or to blame as a defect in the institution, who consider that, in the primitive condition of Christianity, the observance of a new Sabbath would have been useless, or inconvenient, or impracticable. During Christ's personal ministry, his religion was preached to the Jews alone. They already had a Sabbath, which, as citizens and subjects of that economy, they were obliged to keep; and did keep. It was not therefore probable that Christ would enjoin another day of rest in conjunction with this. When the new religion came forth into the Gentile world, converts to it were, for the most part, made from those classes of society who have not their time and labour at their own disposal; and it was scarcely to be expected, that unbelieving masters and magistrates, and they who directed the employment of others, would permit their slaves and labourers to rest from their work every seventh day or that civil government, indeed, would have submitted to the loss of the seventh part of the public industry, and that, too, in addition to the numerous festivals which the national religions indulged to the people; at least, this would have been an encumbrance, which might have greatly retarded the reception of Christianity in the world. In reality, the institution of a weekly Sabbath is so connected with the functions of civil life, and requires so much of the concurrence of civil law, in its regulation and support, that it cannot, perhaps, properly be made the ordinance of any religion, till that religion be received as the religion of the state. The opinion that Christ and his apostles meant to retain the duties of the Jewish Sabbath, shifting only the day from the seventh to the first, seems to prevail without sufficient proof: nor does any evidence remain in Scripture (of what, however, is not improbable,) that the first day of the week was thus distinguished in commemoration of our Lord's resurrection. The conclusion from the whole enquiry (for it is our business to follow. the arguments to whatever probability they conduct us,) is this: The assembling upon the first day of the week for the purpose of public worship and religious instruction, is a law of Christianity, of Divine appointment; the resting on that day from our employments longer than we are detained from them by attendance upon these assemblies, is to Christians an ordinance of human institution; binding nevertheless upon the conscience of every individual of a country in which a weekly Sabbath is established, for the sake of the beneficial purposes which the public and regular observance of it promotes, and recommended perhaps in some degree to the Divine approbation, by the resemblance it bears to what God was pleased to make a solemn part of the law which he delivered to the people of Israel, and by its subserviency to many of the same uses. EXTRACTS 66 FROM TRUTH ADVOCATED," IN LETTERS ADDRESSED TO THE PRESBYTERIANS, By "VINDEX," (Philadelphia, 1823.) IN your Confession of Faith, chap. xxi. § 7, we are told that the fourth commandment is perpetually binding upon all men in all ages. Where your theologians have found data for this assertion, I am at a loss to discover; certainly not in the Bible, as I shall proceed to show: 1. The command to observe a Sabbath is met with no where but in the law of Moses, and this command was limited to the Jews. "Wherefore the children of Israel shall keep the Sabbath, to observe the Sabbath throughout their generations, for a perpetual covenant. It is a sign between me and the children of Israel for ever.", Here the children of Israel are expressly mentioned, and they only. There is no evidence on record, that the keeping of a Sabbath was ever enjoined upon any other nation or people. 2. This institution ended with the Jewish polity; there is neither precept nor command 1 Exodus xxxi. 16, 17. in the New Testament, making the observance of a Sabbath obligatory under the Christian dispensation. For proof of this I need only refer to the book itself. It is never once mentioned, neither by Christ, nor his apostles; and the only testimony brought forward to support it is barely presumptive. Thus it is said: 1. That Christ appeared to his disciples after his resurrection, on the first day of the week; and this circumstance constituted it a Sabbath. Now what connexion is there between our Lord's thus appearing, and the institution of a Sabbath? Or ought this event to be deemed tantamount to instituting the first day as one to be for ever kept holy unto the Lord, without a word being said by Christ on the subject? But our Saviour appeared but once on this day, and that to two of his disciples only, as they journeyed to Emmaus. On the evening of that day he did appear to the eleven; but according to the Jewish division of time, this was the beginning of the second day of the week. Eight days after this, he appeared again— i. e. on the third day of the week—and thus, if our Lord's appearance is to constitute a holy day, or Sabbath, there are at least three which have an equal claim to that preemi nence. 2. That the disciples were used to meet on the first day of the week: -- The resorting to such feeble arguments to support this institution, demonstrates the sandy foundation on |