c. That some Gentiles were thereto bound the pellucid fountain of verity sheweth plainly Let not the sonne of the stranger that hath joyned himself to the Lord speak saying God hath utterly separated me from his people If you say that these were Israelites by covenant though not by seed then why may not the Christian Gentiles who are covenantees as well as the Jews who are also the seed of Abraham and heirs according to the promise and united in Christ Jesus why may not they observe it also will you say because the day is abrogated and annulled and can you demonstratively prove it so The Jewish Sabbath was questionlesse indeed abolished but was the Sabbath of the fourth commandment so If you say Yea for they were both one I reply it is with greater facility said then proved And now we arive at the last circumstance considerable in the precept Quid. Of this it is controverted what day the precept enjoyneth whether the Jewish Sabbath the Saturday or any other particular and expresse day Most hold the Jewish seventh from the creation to be the day directly prescribed there but I think it no hard task to beat them or from that hold or in it For first I would gladly know where in expresse terms the Saturday-Sabbath or seventh from the creation is commanded in this precept examine and dissect it throughly Remember thou sanctifie the Sabbath day The Sabbath day it is you see not the seventh from the creation Therfore a Zanchie hath set a nota bene upon it That God not without cause said not Remember thou sanctifie the seventh day but the day of rest that is saith he b The day consecrated to rest by God either immediately by himself or mediately by the Church directed by the holy Ghost whatsoever day it be Thus he more circumspectly then what he delivered three columnes before where he saith that the word Sabbath here comprehendeth all the Jewish festivalls What hath moved him and other learned men to this fantasie it much amuseth me God telleth us distinctly what Sabbath he here meaneth the weekly of any other there is altum silentium not a word He saith Sanctifie the Sabbath in the singular not Sabbaths in the plurall number c The observation not of many festivals but of one onely is there enjoyned And what necessity of bringing these feasts within the compasse and obligation of this precept which have commands proper and peculiar to themselves As therefore ancient Canons d said to pragmaticall Bishops which invaded their jurisdiction so I to these Jewish feasts Let them keep their own home their own stations they have nothing to do here Well the Sabbath must be sanctified but what day that should be is not yet explained in the subsequent words indeed there is some hint of it six dayes shalt thou labour there is one character by which we may know it Six dayes are at our own dispose but we must not hold over our term The seventh is the Sabbath it is as Philosophers say Terminus minimus quod sic the least proposition of time we must allow God in a narrower limitation his worship will not subsist a seventh day he will have The seventh is the Sabbath The seventh what seventh he saith not the seventh from the creation he nameth no day if he had it would have restrained the Law to that day but because he meant the day should change and yet the Law continue he saith onely the seventh that is the seventh after six or one in a week e For f To depute one day in a week is formally to depute the seventh day though materially one and the same day be not alwayes deputed Well but will one in a week serve the turn is there nothing else required is the determination of this one in seven in our power No there is a proviso for that it must be the Sabbath of the Lord thy God that is which he hath already or should declare to his Church to be his Sabbath and this is another character of the Sabbath It must be of Gods own choice But still not one word of the Jewish Sabbath no discovery of it yet but we have not done with the precept perhaps we shall find it in what remaineth It followeth then For in six dayes the Lord made Heaven and Earth and all that therein is and rested the seventh day wherefore the Lord blessed the seventh day and hallowed it Here I confesse the precept seemeth very apposite very full so full as we are accused for no lesse then high treason against the holy Ghost in daring to affirm the contrary f These Dogmatists saith one are not affraid to make the holy Ghost a liar who teacheth in most clear and expresse terms That God Almightie blessed the very seventh day on which himself rested An heavie charge did we not plead not guiltie That God blessed the very seventh day whereon he rested we not deny but whether he did expresly command the observation of that day by this or any other member of the fourth precept that is the thing whereof we demand clear demonstration Nor yet should we call this into dispute had we not just cause to appeal from the old Translation which hath herein imbraced a strange singularitie for where it readeth God blessed the seventh day the Geneva Spanish that of Hierome all that I have perused the Septuagint onely excepted render it God blessed the Sabbath day as our most correct and new translation hath it indeed the very fountain it self the Hebrew giveth it so which being true can what we have said deserve so loud an outcry as hath been made let any neutrally affected judge Secondly the defect of direct and expresse command is not the onely the principall motive it is I grant which allureth us to think the Jewish Sabbath in especiall manner not injoyned here another argument there is accessory to it For if God had here expresly commanded the observation of the seventh from the Creation or Jewish Sabbath the fourth precept would have been in relation to that particular ceremoniall and by consequent changeable but I think it was and is in all parts intirely morall and perpetuall and my opinion is founded upon two not very defeasable reasons First it is marshalled in the Decalogue amongst the morall and immutable laws which were notably distinguished from the ceremoniall by many circumstances The Morall uttered by God himself proved page 39. in the presence of the whole multitude written by Gods own finger given without restraint to time how long or place where Contrarywise the Ceremoniall given to Moses onely and by him declared to the people called Ceremonies Judgements Ordinances and limited onely to the land of g Jury Now it could not be agreeable to the wisdome of the God of Order to shuffle and misplace a Ceremoniall amongst his Morall laws Secondly if you cast your eye upon the Sabbath of
application thereunto Nay doth not preparation imply application are they not coordinate and coincident together Examine the places quoted and see if they will not confesse as much Moses was commanded to sanctifie the Israelites the third day that is to prepare them as you say To prepare them how nothing but to have them in a readinesse that they lasily wait the time or so no there is more in it yet application to holinesse you shall meet with positive Let them wash their clothes vers. 10. negative Come not at your wives vers. 15. A thing so clear as the very Heathen were enlightned with it and not onely in the generall decorum of it which they couched under their Ite missa est or Procul ô procul este profani Hence all prophane before their sacrifices but some glimpse they had even of those externall Mosaicall ceremonies I now mentioned Preparatory lotions they had before they durst approch their sacred mysteries Aeneas would not so much as touch his Tutelary Gods till he might rinse himself in fountain water Abstinence also from the Nuptiall bed was at least for one night interdicted Discedite ab aris Queis tulit hesterna gaudia nocte Venus Casta placent superis And though we reade in this Text onely of externall preparatory rites enjoyned yet must we know that they were but as significant Emblemes of that spirituall preparation which should truly dispose the soul in a sanctified frame for the approching near that God which is clothed in majestie and honour Apply that which I have now said for illustration of this portion of Exodus to those parallel places of Joshua and there will onely remain that of Jeremie unanswered where the Prophet is said to be sanctified in his mothers womb which I confesse could no otherwayes be then in the preordination of God But what because the word signifieth Destination in Jeremy must it needs inferre as much in Genesis I see no such law imposed upon Interpreters That of Jeremy could not without extreme violence be wrested to any other sense then that of Destination which out of Gen. 2. is neither necessarily nor probably emergent I see no necessitie that the Institution Genesis 2. must suppose it to be in Paradise and before the fall for it is not improbable I determine nothing that Adam sinned and was expelled out of Paradise the very day he was formed as the Fathers almost universally have thought from whose full consent in this point proceeded that Greek saying {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} The same day he was created he fell Neither was Paradise in my opinion compounded of any such ingredients as would in no wise incorporate with a Sabbath it was indeed a place exempted from the works both of toil and sinne and therefore no otium to refresh the body no Sabbath to sanctifie the soul in respect either of the one or the other necessary And though the whole tract of time spent in that innocent condition might worthily seem a continued Sabbath yet some parts and portion even of that time should I conceive have been allotted to a more solemn worship then others For God imposed upon man a calling of husbandry should he so incessantly have intended his tillage as never to intermit never to give over should he have spared no time to exercise himself in the contemplation of his Creatour the truest object of perfect beatitude or could he simul semel at one instant intend both his vocation and Gods worship God created in him the naturall appetite of food and sleep Is it likely that Adam would have applied himself either to repast or repose without some more then ordinary thanksgiving It is by all confessed that in Adams heart the Law of nature was most perfectly implanted and imprinted and as unanimously agreed that to consecrate some time to the worship of God was and is a member of that Law nay more then so it must be certum aliquod tempus some certain and determinate time as the very Atlas of the Prolepsis Tostatus assureth us which being granted it followeth that the state of innocency was no barre or obstacle to the seposing times not onely occasionall and pro renata but set and constant to the service of God That God framed Eve upon the seventh day is a most horrible and grosse untruth and giveth the lie to Moses or rather to the holy Ghost who saith Thus the heavens and the earth were finished and all the host of them that is all things visible and invisible according to the Nicene Creed and this was before Gods rest on the seventh day and evident it is that the hole second Chapter of Genesis from the fourth verse to the twenty fifth is but a larger narration by way of {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} or postscript of what was most remarkable in the third and sixth dayes work and was for brevity sake omitted in the first chapter but upon weighty cause mentioned in the second For as S. a Basil excellently If Moses had onely said that God made man thou mightest have thought that he made him after the same manner that he created brutes plants and herbs therefore to denote to thee that thou oughtest to have nothing common with unreasonable creatures the Scripture hath mentioned a peculiar and distinct work of God in framing thee Besides it is most evident out of Genesis 1.27 that Adam and Eve were both created on the sixth day Male and female created he them not by Prolepsis as they fancy but really truly upon that very day That wherewith they would palliate this errour is the second verse of Genesis 2. On the seventh day God ended his work whence they collect that he wrought upon part of it which meaning a learned Commentatour b acknowledgeth the Text will bear and because Eve is the last work of creation whereof the Scripture maketh mention they inferre that she must have been formed on the seventh day But to uncase this foul errour and to shew it in its proper deformities is no hard task What meaning the Text will bear is many times not so considerable as what the Context c {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} or contradiction is for the Spirit of Truth no companion nor will he own that sense which maketh him speak things repugnant If in the end of the sixth day God beheld all that he had made c. 1.31 and had finished the heavens and the earth and all the host of them c. 2.1 what could be left for him to finish and actually to perfect on the seventh day Well but then there is an interfering a jarring betwixt Scripture and Scripture how shall they be reconciled I answer It is not amisse to acquaint you that whereas the Hebrew readeth it And on the seventh day God ended his work the Septuagint and Samaritanes a render it On the sixth
d Hence forward he must know his distance Comparisons Gentle Sir the Proverb saith are odious therefore this excursion might no disparagement to your discretion have been spared Yet hath your luxuriancy erred not more in civilitie then moralitie you impute this opinion to Beza as a device of his own which were it true yet your presumption exceedeth your knowledge for how I pray is it possible for you to be assured of this unlesse Beza had either mediately or immediately revealed it to you and if he did not you were very rash very ill advised to father it on him when as I have proved he might probably enough have derived the opinion from Origen or R. Abraham if not from others Junius e God gave Testimony of the Institution of the Sabbath by his own exemplary Rest and by Instituting it in the Church that Adam and Eve then living might acknowledge that day to be holy by the Ordinance of God Pareus f God sanctified the Sabbath in the very prime Creation and doubtlesse that sanctification was observed in the Patriarchall families I could tire both the Reader and my self should I amasse all foreiners whose suffrage hath been given for this Patriarchall Sabbath if any desireth further authorities I transmit him to Rivet or Waleus who can furnish him completely To come home and encounter Tostatus with one of our own in dignitie of Order a Bishop in that his Match and for learning so beyond him as if I might use your libertie of comparison I might say he is but another Didymus a mere scribbler to this man The beginning of the Sabbath saith he was in Paradise before there was any sinne and so before there needed any Saviour and so before there was any ceremony or figure of a Saviour I could produce Perkins Willet Babington Amesius c. all famous lights of our Church and that most incomparable piece the Practice of Pietie but because it will perhaps be thought that their affection was better then their judgement I forbear them and the rather because also our most Rationall adversaries begin to reel towards us Brerewood confesseth it to be instituted in Paradise which is as much as any ever affirmed for according to the Canonists Leges instituuntur cùm promulgantur Laws are then instituted when they are promulgated and though he explaineth himself afterward denying the commandment to be then instituted yet this he acknowledgeth that Gods resting from Creation his Sabbath and resting in himself the sanctification of it might be exemplary though not obligatory to men to observe the Sabbath then Nor doth a Prideaux vary much from him which is enough for if it be granted that Adam or the Patriarchs observed it we shall soon discover a command Having thus laid down the Arguments which support the Prolepsis and to every one fitted the proper solution having also set before you those reasons which most seem to advantage the Grammaticall sense and having with Authoritie encountred Authoritie I desire now nothing more then a neutrall Judge and that this difference may have the same decision which Aristippus b advised in another case Mitte ambas ad ignotos Let disinteressed Arbitratours end it And thus I have finished my first stage Gods Sabbath under the Law THe precedent discourse was spent in the discovery of a Sabbath before the Law a time for so much as concerneth Gods externall worship nearest allied to Varro's {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} or uncertain time before the Ogygian flood Our next station must be under the Law a time more enlightned with the ray of divine Story then the former yet is not the light even of this time so uniform so evenly diffused but that some opake parts are therein discerned For though we are not now as before at a losse for a Sabbath yet doth not the Sabbath we discern shew it self in so perfect lineaments and just proportion as excludeth all diversitie of opinion concerning it The questions indeed which relate to it are neither very numerous nor absolutely necessary to be discussed yet as they are by accident subservient to my ensuing tract an elucidation I must and will afford them according to that order wherein method disposeth them which I take to be this Some result from the precept some again from the practice from the precept Quis Quibus Quid. Quis Who gave the precept Who promulgated it And this question is not peculiar to the fourth precept distinctly taken but onely as it is a member of the decalogue whereof the question is especially made for controverted it is whether the ten Commandments were on mount Sinai promulgated by Gods immediate voyce or the ministery of his Angels or one or more And not unworthily for Moses seemeth to attribute it to God himself but Stephen Acts 7. vers. 38.53 and Paul Gal. 3.19 and Heb. 2.2 to the Angels in regard of which specious opposition eminent and famous men have been diversly inclined some to Moses are propense for these reasons First it is said Dixit Jehova Elohim God spake these words not an Angel create and though the word Elohim is once and but once applied to the Angels in the plurall but never in the singular number as Psalm 8. yet here it can have no such signification for the verb is Dixit and the pronoun Ego both singular Secondly the person speaking saith I am the Lord thy God which brought thee out of the land of Egypt but an Angel create did not deliver them out of Egypt Lastly Saint Paul himself saith that it was the voyce of Christ which shook the earth Heb. 12 26. Therefore where it is said Acts 7.38 that Moses was with the Angel in the wildernesse the word Angel must not be understood of an Angel create but of Christ who is often called both an Angel and God in similary places as Gen. 31. vers. 11 13. and 48.15 Exod. 3.2 in all which places the word Angel can mean no other person then Christ Thus farre a Zanchy but short still of the full solution For though Acts 7.38 the word is Angel in the singular number yet in the other place it is Angels in the plurall excluding utterly the application of it to Christ or any single person Where Zanchy brake off the explication is continued and supplied by the thrice-excellent b Junius who resolveth it thus At the delivering of the Law on Mount Sinai God was attended with many Millions of Angels so both the state and service of their Lord and the great businesse in hand required and from amidst this glorious host he spake unto the people {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} inter Angelos amidst the c Angels all the Angels being witnesses to the Covenant God proclaimed the Law so he interpreteth it a glosse rather new then absurd Others incline to Stephen and Paul and conceive that God did not utter the
Pentateuch Secondly It appeareth not by any relation of sacred History that before the Babylonish captivitie there was any weekly reading or expounding the Law upon the Sabbath Lastly it is a thing to be admired that if the reading of the Law had been in continuall use among the Jews every Sabbath day there should be found in the dayes of King Josiah one copy onely or book of the Law and that Hilkiah should present this book to the King as a great raritie 2. King 22.8 9. But the unsoundnesse of the foundation argueth the assertion erroneous for First will nothing but expresse Text satisfie you suppose we find it not {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} not verbatim commanded thus Reade the Law publickly every Sabbath day is not I pray you necessary and inevitable deduction out of Text Scripture with you if yea then we need not travel farre for a command no farther then the fourth precept and not farre into that but to Remember thou keep holy or sanctifie the Sabbath day I told you before that things are then said to be sanctified when they are applied to holy worship now holy worship is the exhibiting to God his due and just honour and that is performed two wayes either by reverent attention to what he offereth us in his word or an humble presentment of what we preferre to him in our prayers For Hearing of the word Adoration are the two hands of religion the one we extend to receive what God communicateth to us the other to represent what in mercy he accepteth from us so as they are indeed the proper instruments of mutuall commerce betwixt him and us and though I allow them a parity of honour yet hath the one a precedency of order before the other and this belongeth to hearing of the word For the first of religious offices wherewith we publickly honour God on earth saith that worthy m Hooker is the receiving that knowledge which he imparteth to us in his word The reason is evident for prius est nosse Deum consequens n colere or rather according to that golden chain How o shall men invoke him in whom they have not believed how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard and how shall they heare without a preacher Hence it is that the Primitive Church had ever the Sermon before the Service to intimate that none ought to be admitted to pray with the Church before they have been inlightned in saving doctrine All tag and rag had free accesse to the Sermon to the service onely the faithfull and Catechumeni p Let the Bishop interdict none neither Gentile nor Heretick nor Jew to enter into the Church and heare the word of God untill the Service of the Catechumeni saith the Councel of Carthage For the clear understanding of which Canon you must know that Missa Catechumenorum signifieth here not the dismission of the Catechumeni but the service so called which began at the introitus and ended at the offertory If then the sanctification of the Sabbath be the application of it to Gods worship the consequence must and will be That all sacred actions tending to this worship as parts thereof but the hearing of the Law read most especially it being of the essence of that worship were commanded in and under the word sanctifie But you 'l say that many Doctours of note maintain that the letter of the fourth commandment imposed upon the Jews no other externall form of sanctifying the weekly Sabbath but resting from bodily labour I answer The literall sense of the fourth Commandment imposed upon the Jews the sanctification of the Sabbath viz. by all such religious actions as are proper to holy worship the specialties whereof it not determineth least it should be thought to exclude any It also imposed rest and cessation from secular businesse but that it commanded it as any at all much lesse the onely externall form of sanctifying the Sabbath pardon me I cannot believe For what honour could accrue to God through an idle and lazie rest what worship could man perform waking more then a sleep How could the day be lesse sanctified by beasts then men Rest was injoyned as necessary indeed necessitate medii as a fit means but not necessitate causae as a necessary cause constituting sacred worship Against these Doctours of note I will oppose a Doctour of note too and of such note as his Dictates never any of the Primitive Church durst call into question a Athanasius the Great who in refutation of this Jewish fancie hath amongst others this invincible argument b If rest sanctifieth then by consequence labour polluteth for Contrariorum eadem est ratio yea the Father maketh the knowledge of God to be the chief end of the Sabbath Because knowledge is more necessary then rest c And therefore the beam of truth hath extorted from them this confession That some other religious actions were intended by God as the end of the precept but no other were formally commanded d What I pray did God intend those religious actions as the end of the precept how come you to know Gods intention hath he anywhere revealed it if yea then tell me is not that overture that declaration of his intendment equipollent to a command Besides when and where did God open this his mind in this precept and at the giving of the Law If now and here then these religious actions and rest were coordinate together both imposed at one and the same time the thing you deny If after then God imposed and man observed rest to no end and purpose all that while untill the manifestation of his intentions concerning the end of that rest came forth But God and nature do nothing in vain e even Philosophy could tell you so and sure Divinity much more Their second Argument is upon the old haunt still The want of expresse narration which were it true yet is it no {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} no demonstration of what they affirm as I have proved before pag. 5. Besides the contrary may be probably collected without detorting Scripture against reason For first when the Shunamite desired to go to the Prophet Elisha to acquaint him with the death of her sonne and to see if he could afford her any comfort her husband expostulated with her saying Why wilt thou go to day it is neither New-moon nor Sabbath day which had been an impertinent question if they had not accustomed to resort to the Prophets on those dayes to heare the word expounded That this was their practice scarce any Expositour upon the place but assureth us Though here is onely mention of the New-moon and Sabbath yet as we need not doubt but that they practiced the same upon other festivalls also so I conceive it to be implyed in both or either words which are often in Scripture taken in a generall notion not denoting