their authority nor their efficacy? In the church of Christ, discipline and various rites must be observed; but every thing of a ritual nature is submitted to the rubrical authority of ecclesiastical governors; and for the wisest reasons, since they ought to be adapted to the diversified habits, dispositions, customs, and circumstances of mankind. While the duty, then, of sanctifying every seventh day is allowed, being proclaimed by the sacred oracles of God, what danger is there in leaving it to every church to decide what part of the hebdomadal cycle should be considered as the seventh day? The duty of consecrating A SEVENTH PORTION OF TIME remains unchanged, the obligation unimpaired, though in one particular, as all moral duties are, in some respects, it may be left to human prudence and discretion.

Yet, satisfactory as this reply appears, it must not be forgotten that the designation of the day is not altogether a matter of arbitrary choice. A SEVENTH DAY must be selected, and SUNDAY was fixed upon by the apostles, no doubt by the suggestion of the Spirit, as it unquestionably was with the approbation of our Lord; and there are not wanting considerations which give it a propriety above any other day of the week. These circumstances, though they do not render its adoption imperative, fairly claim a preference for it;.

and, being so recommended, to change it, without the most urgent reasons, would be an unwarrantable procedure.

If the opinion here advocated, that the numerical day of the Christian sabbath is not definitively established by divine authority, the sabbatarian controversy will be of very easy determination. There have been, and still are, some who still keep the saturday as a Christian festival instead of sunday. The rise of these sectarians, if they can be so called, is not clearly ascertained: in the primitive church, it was the custom of certain individuals to observe both the Lord's day and the saturday, in compliance with the prejudices of the Jewish converts, as is now practised by some members of the Abyssinian and Greek churches; but since the Reformation, there have been, both in this and other countries, some perfect sabbatarians. The historian, Fuller, makes mention of some who held these tenets towards the beginning of the seventeenth century; and the subject was controverted during this age with much heat and asperity, as appears from the publications of Brabourne, Bampfield, and other sabbatarians, as well as from those of White, Prideaux, Wallis, Shepard, Batteley, Chafie, Brere

Fuller, Church History, lib. ii. See also Heylin, Hist. of the Sab. P. 2. cap. viii. Some sectarians in the twelfth century observed the Jewish sabbath. Mosheim, Eccles. Hist. Cent. 12. P. 2. cap. v. §. 14.

wood, Dow, Byfield, Lowe, Twisse, Heylin, &c. Two congregations of them exist now in London; but in England they are few, and chiefly among the baptists, while in America, where sects and schisms multiply with all the rankness of the vegetation of their native prairies, they are, as it seems, far more numerous. Their peculiar tenet, as stated by Mr. Adam, is, that God hath required the observation of the seventh, or last day of the week, to be observed by mankind universally for the weekly sabbath; that this command of God is perpetually binding; and that this sacred rest of the seventh-day sabbath is not changed, by divine authority, from the last to the first day of the week, and, of course, the seventh day, which is still kept by the Jews, is obligatory on Christians. Now, if the view of the subject taken in this section be assented to, the fiercely agitated question, as to the TIME, must be pronounced to belong to the non-essentials of religion. If the sabbatical law does not fix the identical day, the sabbatarians cannot be convicted of a direct violation of it; but they are culpable in deviating, without any just and urgent cause, from the practice of the apostles and the Christian church of all ages. The evidence of Scripture, and the authority of antiquity, are in favour of the Lord's day; and as they produce no reasons for Adam, Religious World Displayed, vol. ii. p. 214, et. seq.

edit. 2d.

a change sufficient to counterbalance this testimony, their views of the subject must be deemed injudicious and erroneous. They are further to be condemned for disturbing the unity of the Church on a point which, as the Scriptures have not given any express decision, all believers are bound to submit to the regulation of ecclesiastical authority in the bonds of peace.

So much for the first of those questions relating to this subject, which, in the beginning of this section, were proposed for discussion: the second question is, whether it be required to devote a whole weekly day, or only a part of it, to religious services. The latter is the opinion of many; for the custom of terminating the sacred rest of sunday early in the afternoon, is general on the continent, and some among ourselves contend, that we have only scriptural warrant for appropriating so much time as is necessary for public worship. "It will be remembered," says Dr. Paley, "that we are contending by these proofs, for no other duty upon the first day of the week, than that of holding and frequenting religious assemblies. 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 c."

That the professors of the Christian faith are not to follow "the common offices of their professions" on the Lord's day, will be shewn in a subsequent chapter; and with regard to the time, the only question with which we are at present concerned, the Scriptures appear very clearly to require the consecration of a complete natural day. At the original institution, God blessed and sanctified the seventh DAY; St. John, in the book of Revelations, speaks of the Lord's-DAY1; and the fourth commandment bids us to remember the sabbath DAY, to keep IT holy; by which phraseology, a whole day, or the period of a diurnal revolution of our globe, seems evidently intended. Had a portion of this period only

• Moral and Political Philosophy, lib. v. cap. 7. See also Towerson, On the Fourth Commandment, P. 2. p. 181. "Denique nullâ aliâ divinâ, quæque conscientiam liget, lege nos teneri temperari eâ die ab operibus servilibus, nisi quatenus illa nos avocare possunt ab exhibendo publico Numini, qui illi debetur, cultu." Capellus, Diss. de Sab. p. 304.

Rev. i. 10.