apostles, and the primitive Christians, gives it only the force of a moral expediency, subject to the regulations of each Christian church, in each following age.

Such is the state of the question: Our opponents proceed on the silence of Scripture during the patriarchal ages: this we shall show to be an unsound argument; and shall prove that it was instituted in Paradise and revived and re-established in the wilderness.* Our opponents insist that it is a ceremonial appointment appended to the Mosaic dispensation: we shall show that it was inserted in the immutable law of the ten commandments before that dispensation; that it was exalted during the course of the Mosaic economy above all merely typical institutions, and was enforced by the prophets as of universal obligation.† Our adversaries say there is no express command for it under the New Testament, whilst the doctrine and conduct of our Lord virtually repealed it: we shall show that no new statute was to have been expected; and that our Savior honored it on all occasions, and only vindicated it from uncommanded austerities. Our opponents consider the change of the day as a proof of its abrogation: we shall maintain, that this was in itself a subordinate point; and was altered upon the authority of the Lord of the Sabbath. Finally, the example of the apostles is reduced by our adversaries to a mere commendation of the observance: we shall show it to have a divine obligation derived from the inspiration under which they acted.§

These topics will оссиру four sermons. We shall in the present one confine ourselves to THE ORIGINAL INSTITUTION OF A WEEKLY SABBATH IN PARADISE, AND ITS CONTINUED AUTHORITY, TILL THE DELIVERY OF THE MORAL LAW.

Our text contains the history of "the first Sabbath." No sooner were the heavens and the earth finished, and Adam placed in the garden of Eden, than God blessed and set apart, as our text asserts, one day in seven for his own immediate service. He "who knew what was in man,' and who had a right to all his obedience and love, was pleased to appoint that six portions of his time should be allowed him for his ordinary labor, and the seventh exclu

* Sermon 1. + Sermon 2. ‡ Sermon 3. § Sermon 4.

sively devoted to religious repose, and the exalted duties of communion with his Maker.

Every circumstance connected with this first institution is calculated to give us the highest idea of its essential and moral character. The whole controversy hinges here. The universal obligation of the Sabbath is not disputed, if it be proved that it had its origin in paradise. And how men of gravity could ever persuade themselves that a narrative so express was merely inserted in the chapter from which our text is taken, by a figure of speech, whilst the Sabbath was never in fact heard of till two thousand five hundred years afterwards; is one of those startling positions for which the perverseness of man's fallen nature can alone account. The notion of an anticipated history seems first to have been broached by the Jewish doctors, in their zeal to magnify the Mosaical ritual.* Their followers in modern times, especially one popular writer,† have failed to establish any satisfactory case.

The absence of any vestiges of the observance of a Sabbath during the brief history of the patriarchal ages, is a species of argument which, if it were ever so well sustained by the supposition on which it proceeds, is wholly without force, as we shall presently show. It will be proper, however, to proceed in order. Let us state,

I. THE DIRECT REASONS why we believe the Sabbath to have been instituted at the time when the sacred narrative begins.

The transactions of the seventh-day immediately follow those of the sixth, precisely as those of the sixth follow the fifth-the history is chronological, unbroken, complete. This is the reason, each day's work comes in order. As on the first day the chaotic mass and the light were called into being; and on the second the firmament was created; and on the third dry land was made to appear; and on the fourth the sun and moon were ordained to shine; and on the fifth the fishes and winged fowl filled their several elements; and on the sixth the terrestrial animals, and man, the Lord of the lower creation, were made; so on the seventh God "ended his work"--"rested from all his work"

* Owen's Exercitations.

+ Dr. Paley. Archbishop Bramhall was the chief supporter of this notion in the century before last.

--and "blessed and sanctified the seventh day, because on it he had rested from all his work which God created and made." These were the transactions of the seventh day, which come as directly in succession after the preceding, as any of the other days. And can we, then, be at liberty, merely because we think subsequent notices of its observation should occur in the history of the patriarchs, to transfer an event thus recorded in a regular series of transactions, to a period two thousand five hundred years distant? We might as well break asunder the links of the history of the creation, at any other period as at this. We might

as well suppose that the heavens and the earth were not created, or that man was not formed on the days which the sacred history records. We might as well imagine that the sun and moon did not begin to shine as soon as they were made, as that the Sabbath was not granted to man at the time which is assigned to it.

The whole foundation of faith is overturned by such a process. If in a plain historical narrative, and especially a series of successive actions, we are not to believe that the events really occurred, as they were affirmed to have occurred, the Bible is no longer a clear and safe guide, but an enigma and a riddle. The plain literal common-sense interpretation of the history of the Scripture is indispensable to faith.

But in the present case we have yet further reasons. The distribution of the work of creation into its parts would be deprived of its object and end, if the institution of the Sabbath is expunged. For why this distribution, but to mark to man the proportion of time allotted him for his usual labor, and the proportion to be assigned to religious exercises? As the narrative stands in the Scripture, all is consistent. The six days' creation, the seventh day's rest, have their relative place. They teach man a great moral and religious lesson. Take away the first Sabbath, and all is left incomplete and detruncated-the object in which it terminates is wanting.

Again, where is the example in Scripture of any instituted commemoration not beginning from the time of its appointment? Did the passover wait two thousand years before it was celebrated, after the deliverance which it was designed to commemorate? Did circumcision under the

Old Testament, or baptism and the Lord's Supper under the New, remain in abeyance for centuries before they were acted upon? And shall the commemoration of the glories of creation be thought to be suspended for more than two thousand years after the occasion on which it was appointed had taken place? And especially as the reason for the celebration existed from the beginning; related to the whole race of mankind more than to the Jews, and was indeed most cogent immediately after the creation-for in the following ages sin had marred the Almighty's work.

One is ashamed to urge more arguments in such a case —but what meaning, I ask, had Moses in his reference to six days' labor and a seventh day's Sabbath, as matters familiarly known, at the time of the miraculous fall of manna before the giving of the law, if there had not been a preceding institution? Or what is intended by the citation of the very language of my text in the fourth commandment, if the reason there assigned had not really reposed on facts-"FOR in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day; wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day, and hallowed it"-where it is to be noted, that the words are not "the Lord blesses and hallows;" or "will bless and hallow;" but, "wherefore the Lord BLESSED the Sabbath day, and HALLOWED it," at the time that "he rested" from his creative work. Add to this the language of the apostle in his epistle to the Hebrews, where he takes for granted that the original rest of the Sabbath began when "the works were finished from the creation of the world;"* and we have the strongest moral certainty that the narrative of the institution of the Sabbath in paradiset is and must be literally interpreted.

But it is further objected, that, allowing this account to be in its natural place, it contains no enactment of a Sabbath-it states merely that God blessed and hallowed the seventh day, but for what purposes it does not affirm.

*Heb. iv. 3.

The opinion of the reformers on this subject is uniform. Luther says, If Adam had continued in innocency; yet he would have had a sacred seventh day. Beza says, that the day of the Sabbath continued from the creation of the world to the resurrection of our Lord, when it was at length changed by the apostles into the Lord's day. I need not go on.

But we ask in reply, for whose use then did the Almighty bless and hallow the seventh day-what is the meaning of God's condescending to say that he "rested and was refreshed after the six days' work"-what instruction do we derive from the division of creation into six portions, followed by a seventh of repose? Were not all these done for the sake of man, the reasonable, intelligent creature of the great artificer? Did the Almighty rest for his own sake, or bless and hallow the seventh day, that he within himself might observe it? Unreasonable, if not impious, are such suppositions. God's working six days, and resting the seventh, were doubtless designed to be of general and universal use in determining the proportion of time to be severally devoted to human and divine duties-by them the conduct of mankind was to be regulated-by them God intended to teach us that we should, after his example, work six days, and then rest and hallow the next following--that we should sanctify every seventh day--that the space between rest and rest, between one hallowed time and another, among his creatures here upon earth, should be six days.* And indeed there is no other sense in which the word "sanctified" is used in the Old Testament, when employed with respect to inanimate things, or to persons fulfilling an office or function. Thus the priests, the tabernacle and all its furniture, days of fasting and penitence, &c. were declared to be sanctified, when they were separated from common employments, and set apart for the especial service of God. This is the uniform import of the terms: when it is said, therefore, that God blessed and sanctified the seventh day, it means that he set it apart and consecrated it for religious rest, and annexed the promise of his special blessing to the discharge of its duties.

And this meaning, which common sense requires, is rendered certain by the exposition of its terms in the fourth commandment, where the minute injunctions with regard to the Sabbath expressly repose upon the words of our text, which it cites and explains.

The objections to the received faith of the church on the institution of the sabbath in paradise, you see, are weak and nugatory. They have not even a shadow of proof. Not

* J. Edwards.