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there are ten, (Deut. x. 4.) He who said Thou shalt not kill, said also, Remember the Sabbath to keep it holy: and any reasoning which would abrogate the Fourth Commandment, as being simply a sign to the Israelites, would also invalidate the remainder of the Decalogue, which is introduced by the notice, "I am the Lord thy God, &c." As Churchmen we do not understand how members of the Establishment can pray to the Lord" to write all these his laws in their hearts," when they believe one of them not to be of his bidding, or the whole to be abrogated. And it is the declaration of our Homily,* that " God has given express command to all to rest upon the Sabbath, now Sunday, as he did upon the seventh day, and to give themselves wholly to the heavenly exercise of God's religion and service."+ If our reasoning be correct, and it appears simple, the Sabbath would be now binding, though the law had been never given to the Israelites, for we must look back to its institution in Paradise ;-it would be binding also upon Christians, from its moral character, if we had no trace of it antecedent to the enactment from Sinai. To the Israelites it was an ordinance which looked both ways; to them it was partly ceremonial, but the ceremonial representation came after the command to rest, and was therefore accidental or accessary; it was their only festival which had a retrospective view; so far forth as it was especially ceremonial or typical to them, it was abolished by the coming of Christ, and ranked with distinctions of meats; but, so far as celebrated in remembrance of the Creator's rest, it could not be abrogated as a type, for it was instituted before the existence of types, ceremonies or shadows, nay it was ordained before the promise was given of the Messiah himself. The perpetuity of the Sabbath is also fairly to be deduced from the consideration of prophecy ;— from our Saviour's injunction§ to the Christians to "pray that their flight might not be upon the Sabbath," when quitting the destruction of Jerusalem, and they themselves thus be deprived of the duties and privileges of the day;-from the distinctions so much dwelt upon by Him || of the works which were lawful to them on the day of rest, which he would not have done were the day to be so soon abrogated; and from the scope of the apostle's argument in the 4th chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews. It remains therefore to be seen what day was appropriated to this end during the Apostólic times. And here we have to encounter the dilemma, proposed in be

*Upon the time and place of prayer.”—Ad init.

+ It would be wrong on this part of the subject to omit mentioning the Fifty-third Article of the Irish Church, which so pointedly marks the obligation to rest. These articles were passed in Convocation in 1615. And whatever opinion may be entertained on the strongly expressed sentiment of Primate Ussher, that these articles continue unrepealed, every one must assent to the following as the doctrine of the Church.-"The first day of the week, which is the Lord's day, is wholly to be dedicated to the service of God, and therefore we are bound therein to rest from our common and daily business, and to bestow that leisure upon holy exercises, both public and in private."

Psalm cxviii. 19-24. || Matt. xii. 8.

Isaiah lvi. 7 & 58, 13. § Matt. xxiv. 20. ¶ Vide Dr. Owen's Commentary on verse 9.

half of Romanists, by Mr. Burgh, (we do not call him Reverend for fear of giving offence.) By him, as by them, Protestants are charged with effecting a change of Sabbath without Scripture authority. To us the case appears different,-for no church dispensation would induce us to change a precept of the divine law; that can be altered by no power less than the one which originally gave it force, no created being in heaven or on earth can confer the authority; and, though we have not the affected horror of tradition which would cause us to reject it as an evidence of the practice of antiquity, we admit it no further than (quantum valeat,) as evidence; the foundation of doctrine must be sought in the sacred record itself, to which source we now look for what was delivered, enjoined and practised in the Church by the Apostles, according as they received it personally from the Saviour, or were guided by his Spirit. We find, then, the first day of the week honoured as the Jewish Sabbath never was; blessed by the Saviour's communion (John xx. 19 & 26.) with his disciples, and sanctified by vouchsafements of his repeated presence, and by the effusion of the Holy Ghost upon the day of Pentecost. And, while sojourning with them, we are told that he instructed them in the things pertaining to the kingdom of God. The day thus marked was subsequently kept by the Apostles in a way in which the Jewish day was not kept; as to the latter, we find no sense of obligation regarding it expressed, but a zealous desire shewn to seize the advantage of an assembled multitude to whom the Saviour might be proclaimed as the Christ foretold. The former day, however, was their day of religious meeting, (Acts xx. 7.)* The injunc

*The Pamphlet of Mr. Burgh is somewhat destitute of Scripture reference for one who would superinduce upou the world the great changes proposed by him, while on the other hand he is too abundaut in assumptions for a man who allows to others no Scripture inference. We find but two texts instanced by him in support of his position, if we except those set forth in the blundering note inserted after his title page; and which his printer has somewhat ludicrously headed errata to desig nate, we suppose, the additional observations forwarded to him by the author. We call them blunders, for he says that the disciples in meeting (John xx. 19 & 26.) were not aware of the Saviour's resurrection, when (setting harmonies aside) the very previous verse assures us that they had been informed of it by Mary, according to the Lord's instructions. And in the next sentence he himself tells us that the passage proves the appointment of the day to commemorate the resurrection. The proposed emendation, also, of Acts ii. 46. "according to Griesbach," shews nothing but our author's taste for promiscuous alterations. It forms no part of Griesbach's text; it is a reading distinguished by him, and rejected as destitute of common authority. Mr. B. moreover, in introducing it, has extracted but one of the two variations given by Griesbach from the same source, and, in so doing, has unfortunately selected that which was not the original reading of the manuscript. As to the assumptions in the two texts upon which he relies; when he calls it absurd (p. 6.). to suppose bread was not broken in the meeting, (1 Cor. xvi. 2.) it is surely at least as illogical in him to infer that it was the sole object of the Church's assembly and to us it appears, in reference to Acts xx. 7. that too much is proved by his own account instead of by the common interpretation; for St. Paul preached to them ready to depart on the morrow; and it is not said that the bread was broken after midnight, on the Monday morning. The exposition seems simple, that the disciples met as usual, had their service unusually protracted, owing to his departure, and that he did depart as he had purposed at day-break on the day following their Sabbath worship. We might notice further the assumptions of the author in his long note, (page 11.) but we forbear.

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tion of St. Paul,-who received his doctrine from Christ, (Gal. i. 12.) and to whom the Apostles added nothing (Gal. ii. 6.) as to duties upon it, amounts to a command for its observance. (1 Cor. xvi. 2.) And, thus observed, we find it characterized (Rev. i. 10.) as the Lord's day, by way of pre-eminence, at a period when no other reason can be assigned for the appellation, save its special dedication to the Lord's service, for in other respects all days are His alike in the Christian's view. In thus hallowing our Sabbath then, if a Sabbath is to be solemnized, (and let those who would desecrate it remember the horrors of the French Revolution,) we do not rest upon human opinion, we take the step upon the authority of inspiration, and after the example of those who acted under the influence of the Holy Ghost. We conceive the solemn change to have been made by Christ himself in his character of Lord of the Sabbath; as in his previous directions (Matt. xii. 8.) he shewed that the Sabbath was made for man, so now he manifested himself Lord of the Sabbath by appointing the rest to another day. We conceive that the first day of the week was thus used, and enjoined for use by the Apostles who had his mind. And surely it is the highest ground upon which man can tread when we say that we will follow them even as they followed Christ.

If our readers have gone with us in our previous reasoning respecting authority for the present Lord's day rest, the few remaining observations which we wish to offer will be readily received-we observe it as a memorial of our Saviour's resurrectionas God rested at the close of the creation, so Christ now rested from his work of affliction and sorrow; the one day was sanctified in respect of the creation, the other in respect of restoration and redemption; Christ arose in the dawn, and thus a difference was fixed between the former and succeeding Sabbaths. The Jews commenced theirs from the part of the day in which the creation was ended, and rest begun the evening; so we, in memory of Christ's resurrection and rest from his special labours in renewing the world, from the time of his resurrection, the commencement of his rest, the morning; it was at the end of the Sabbath, when the first day of the week (Mat. xxviii. 1.) began to dawn that he arose from the dead t; it was in the morning of the feast of Pentecost (our Sunday) that the Holy Ghost was received by the Church as in the first day of the first world, light was commanded to shine out of darkness upon the face of the deep, so in the first day of this new world, the Sun of Righteousness arose, gave light to them that sat in darkness and dispelled the dimness of the Old Testament dispensation; this was the beginning of that spiritual world in which we are made the sons of God.

* Vide Hales' Chronology, vol. i. p. 115. & vol. ii. p. 917.

† Dr. Hales, as the result of most elaborate criticism upon the parallel accounts, says sunrise. Vide Chronology vol. i. p. 121. and vol. ii. p. 1163. See also Marsh's notes to Michaelis, vol. i. p. 240. We the rather labour the point as Mr. B. is peremptory that the time of the resurrection and commencement of Lord's day should synchronize.

We have now, we think, amply discussed the change of the Sabbath day, though we do not profess, in following the command of sanctifying a seventh portion of our time to our Maker, our Preserver and our Redeemer, to attach the degree of importance either to the particular day, or the exact hour of its commencement, which Mr. Burgh would enforce upon our attention; all that we maintain is, that every change must be made by competent athority, which authority we have shown does not exist upon earth- the times and the seasons are in the Almighty's hand.If Mr. Burgh and any fellow stickler for time, will take the trouble to encompass the globe by opposite tracks, leaving us to encounter by ourselves "the two horned beast," and its awkward and everlasting dilemma, (to which we assure him, that without his aid, we feel fully competent, though it "speak as a dragon,") they will, varying in their weekly observance as they proceed, experience a difference of two days upon rejoining at the spot whence they parted: whatever effect this might have upon the Romanist, we cannot but think that it would have freed us from the perusal of the present pamphlet, had our Author performed the experiment previous to its publication.

In the early ages, judaizing Christians paid, more or less, a superstitious attention to the old Sabbath, a circumstance originating both from opportunities of usefulness, and from tenderness to the prejudices of those around them,-it is Augustine, we believe, who remarked that "time was required to bury the old ordinance with decency,"-but the Gentile Churches, on the other hand, always celebrated Sunday: upon this subject we rely not upon the testimony of the Romish but of the universal Church; and the fact of a day, distinguished among the rest as the Lord's day by its appropriation to religious service, being known to the Asian Churches during the lifetime of St. John, would be alone sufficient to assure us that we might search with confidence for traces of its religious observance in the immediately succeeding times. Doubtless much conflicting testimony can be produced also, and upon what subject in the Father's writings is not this the case? We may state broadly, however, that they all speak of the first day, as their rest; that they held, in the Ancient Church, the moral obligation of the Lord's day, it is termed by them, "Dominica dies," "Solis dies," "Sabbatum," "Sabbatum Christianum;" that the Saturday was called Sabbatum also, we do not deny, nor that religious observances took place upon it, those observances, however, were markedly different from those of their Lord's day rest-they were not universally observed, they were not regularly observed, they were differently observed in different Churches, attendance on them was not obligatory, and work was not abstained from when they were over, the contrary to all which was the case upon the following day, their day of rest. When erroneous practices, grafted

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• Vide "Dies Dominica sive Succincta narratio ex S. S. &c." Anonymous, Anno 1639. p. 11-18. But, as we have alluded to conflicting testimony, we cannot do better than refer also to the opinion of Archbishop Ussher, an opinion.

on the Saturday Sabbath worship, had given rise to the charge of judaizing, we find it formally renounced by the Council of Laodicea in the 364, and the rest transferred to its proper day. The fast which had always been held upon it was still retained, and gave rise, we conceive, to the Vigils, in the observation of which consists the proper preparation for the Christian Sabbath, in the Established Church. That that Sabbath originated in the decree of the Emperor Constantine is an assumption perfectly absurd; Christianity was then recognised, a cessation of business upon the Sabbath took effect, and Christians were at liberty to do that which they could before only do under the terror of persecution, they became free "agere Christianum,"-a phrase too well known to need comment,

In conclusion, we would assure our Author that we have performed a painful task of duty in noticing his tract; for the sincere and upright Christian, following the guidance of a conscience however weak, we have every disposition to a fellow-feeling and cordial sympathy; but we do think that such a Christian should be equally tender of the consciences of those around him,-should be a little fixed in his principles ere he ventures to promulgate them to the consideration of those who have been habituated to look up to him for direction and advice. In the present instance the discarding the Christian rest is ominous, when viewed in connexion with the divesture of the ministerial character, at so short a period after being candidate for the spiritual care of a popular Church congregation; we cannot but congratulate that body upon their subjection to more stable guidance. The Author, we presume, like other leaders, is to have a sect of his own, for we are not aware of any party with whom his views will entirely square; "first-day-of-the-week-Christians" seems to us the appellation grasped at throughout his pamphlet, but, like the Unitarian name of Socinians, it is self appropriated and not sufficiently distinct; for the first day of the week is celebrated by ourselves, in common with Reformed Protestants of every denomination; we have, it is true, Burghers, Anti-Burghers, (we mean no disrespect,) and Swedenborgians, then why not William-Burghians also? or, perhaps, "as-near-as-possible-six-o'clock-men" may be found sufficiently marked; the party of course will have their chronometers set to Jerusalem mean time, and, though, in the present disturbed state of the East, the erection of an observatory upon the spot, for the benefit of astronomical regulation, may be attended with considerable difficulty, we have little doubt

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