set apart one whole day in seven for the immediate worship and service of God. They all held the institution of the Sabbath at the creation of the world, and as a primeval ordinance carrying with it, through all coming ages of the world, an obligation to cease every seventh day from the works proper to the other six days of labor, and to hallow it as a portion of time peculiarly connected with the glory of God. Finally, they held it to be the duty of all sound Christians to use the Lord's day as a Sabbath of rest to him,― withdrawing themselves, not only from sin and vanity, but also from those worldly employments and recreations which belong only to a present life, and yielding themselves wholly to the public exercises of God's worship, and to the private duties of devotion, excepting only in so far as any urgent call of necessity or mercy might come in the way to interrupt them. We avow this to be a fair and faithful representation of the senti ments of those men upon the subject, after a patient consideration of what they have written concerning it. We trust we have furnished materials enough from their writings for enabling the Christian public to concur intelligently in that representation; and they will henceforth know how to estimate the assertions of those, who, after glancing into the works of the reformers, and picking up a few partial and disjointed statements, presently set themselves forth as well acquainted with the whole subject, and as fully entitled to say, that the reformers agree with them in holding men at liberty, if they only went to church, to work, or travel, or enjoy themselves as they please, on other parts of the Sabbath. Such persons may be honest in representing this as the mind of the reformers; but it must not be forgotten that their credit for honesty in this matter rests upon no better ground than that of ignorance and presumption. "There has been a wonderful agreement among all serious and godly men, in every age, regarding the spiritual and devout observance of the Sabbath; and whenever great talents and learning have been combined with genuine and devoted piety, the practical result has been the same, whatever differences may have sometimes existed as to the precise moral import of the fourth commandment. The keeping of the weekly Sabbath as a day of bodily rest from the cares and turmoils of life, and of undistracted application to the public and private duties of God's service, they have ever delighted in as an ordinance of life and refreshment to themselves, and regarded as essential to the very being of vital religion in a community. They have ever identified the neglect or desecration of the Sabbath with the dishonor of God and the decay of piety. Viret, who differed from the majority of his brethren in regard to the fourth commandment, not considering the moral part of it to stand in the obligation to keep holy one day in seven, not only held the existence of such an obligation on other grounds, and gave directions, as we have seen, for its proper discharge, but also deplored the prevailing disregard of the day, as one of the crying evils of the times, and laments its frequent desecration by worldly employments and sinful pleasures. Vitringa (on Isa. lviii. 13) raised the same lamentation in his day. And Cowdrey (in his treatise on the Sabbath, published in 1652, p. 652) tells us that the profanation of the Lord's day was so notorious then among the Lutheran churches, and so much a matter of concern to their best ministers, that they could not help regarding it as one of the great provocations of the wrath that had lately befallen them. In short, what Owen said of the most pious divines of England in his day, may be regarded as of universal application to such divines in all countries: For my part, I must not only say, but plead, whilst I live in this world, and leave this testimony to the present and future ages, that, if ever I have seen any thing of the ways and worship of God, wherein the power of religion or godliness hath been expressed; any thing that hath represented the holiness of the gospel, and the Author of it; any thing that looked like a prelude to the everlasting Sabbath, and rest with God, which we aim through grace to come unto, it hath been there, and with them, where, and among whom, the Lord's day hath been held in highest esteem, and a strict observation of it attended unto, as an ordinance of our Lord Jesus Christ. The remembrance of their ministry, their walking and conversation, their faith and love, who in this nation have most zealously pleaded for, and have been in their persons, families, parishes, or churches, the most strict observers of this day, will be precious with them that fear the Lord, whilst the sun and moon endure. Their doctrine also in this matter, with the blessing that attended it, was that which multitudes now at rest do bless God for, and many that are yet alive do greatly rejoice in. Let these things be despised by those who are otherwise minded; to me they are of great weight and importance.' "It were wrong to bring our remarks on this subject to a close, without pointing to the solemn lesson furnished both to private Christians and to the church at large, by the melan choly consequences which soon manifested themselves as the fruit of that one doctrinal error into which some reformers did certainly fall regarding the Sabbath. For, though there was much in their circumstances to account for their falling into it, and though it left untouched, in their opinion, the obligation resting on all Christians to keep the day of weekly rest holy to the Lord,-yea, though some of them seemed to think that one day in seven was scarcely enough for such a purpose, yet their view about the Sabbath of the fourth commandment as a Jewish ordinance, told most unfavorably upon the interests of religion on the continent. I have no doubt that this was the evil root from which chiefly sprung, so soon afterwards, such a mass of Sabbath desecra tion, and which has rendered it so difficult ever since to restore the day of God to its proper place in the feelings and observances of the people. So long as men of such zeal and piety as the reformers kept the helm of affairs, their lofty principles, and holy lives, and self-denying labors, rendered their error meanwhile comparatively innoxious. But a colder age both for ministers and people succeeded; when men came to have so little relish for the service of God, and were so much less disposed to be influenced by the privileges of grace, than to be awed by the commands and terrors of law, that the loss of the fourth commandment, which may be said to be the only express and formal revelation of law upon the subject, was found to be irreparable. The other considerations, which were sufficient to move such men of faith and piety as the reformers, fell comparatively powerless upon those who wanted their spiritual life. Strict and positive law was what they needed to restrain them, which being now in a manner removed, the religious observance of the day of God no longer pressed upon them as a matter of conscience. The evil, once begun, proceeded rapidly from bad to worse, till it laid fearfully waste the heritage of God, and scarcely left in many places so much as the form of religion. No doubt many other causes were at work in bringing about so disastrous a result; but much was certainly owing to the error in question. And it reads a solemn and impressive warning to both ministers and people, not only to resist, to the utmost, all encroachments upon the sanctity of the Lord's day, but also to beware of weakening any of the foundations on which the obligation to keep that day is made to rest; and here, as well as in other things, to seek with Leighton, that they may saved from the errors of wise men, yea, and of good men." "be |