A02178:1686
The works of the reverend and faithful servant of Jesus Christ M. Richard Greenham,…The workes of the reuerend and faithfull seruant af Iesus Christ M. Richard Greenham,…
The works of the reverend and faithful servant of Jesus Christ M. Richard Greenham, minister and preacher of the Word of God collected into one volume: revised, corrected, and published, for the further building of all such as love the truth, and desire to know the power of godliness. By H.H.The workes of the reuerend and faithfull seruant af Iesus Christ M. Richard Greenham, minister and preacher of the Word of God collected into one volume: reuised, corrected, and published, for the further building of all such as loue the truth, and desire to know the power of godlinesse. By H.H.
London: printed by Thomas Snodham and Thomas Creede for William Welby, 1612London: printed by Thomas Snodham and Thomas Creede for VVilliam VVelby, 1612
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
a shadow betokeneth1 a body hereafter to be exhibited: but a sign as it doth sometimes signify a thing afterwards to be looked for; so it doth sometimes assure us of a thing already performed. The figure ceaseth when the trueth cometh: there is no use of the shadow when the body is present: but the sign and the thing signified may be joined together, and both of them serve for a present use. Again, they gather out of the 16. verse of the chapter, which we have in hand, where it is said, The children of Israel shall keep the Sabbath, that they may observe the rest through their generations for an everlasting covenant: that because the Sabbath of God is his covenant for ever, that is, until Christ, it is ceremonial. True it is,2 that the law admitteth this phrase of speech sundry times, to say for ever, that is, until Christ, in whom all things, are fulfilled. But we must observe this general rule as our guide, when we will know what figures and ceremonies end in Christ, and what moral precepts belong unto us. When a thing is urged to the Jews: and hath a peculiar reason made properly to the Jew, and appertaineth nothing to the Christian; then as it begun with the Jews, as they were Jews, it ceased with the Jews: but when the reason of the thing urged is not peculiar to the Jews, but also belongeth to the Christians; then the thing commanded3 is not proper to the Jew, but common to the Jew and Gentile. Wherefore let us square out the reason by the line of this general rule. It is here added, v. 17. For in six days the Lord made the heaven and the earth, and in the seventh day he ceased and rested. Where, if it had been said, they shall observe the rest for an everlasting covenant, because they were brought out of Egypt, I would have granted it to have been peculiar to the Jews: but seeing this is the reason, the Lord rested, which is▪ common, not to the posterity of Abraham alone, but to the whole posterity of Adam, the commandment must be granted general both to Jew and Gentile. For it is a common instruction to all men in all ages to labour six days, wherein the Lord made the heaven and the earth, and to cease from labour the seventh day, because in it the Lord rested. The plain sense then of this place is briefly this, as if the Lord should say: