A saint or a brute the certain necessity and excellency of holiness, &c. ...…

Answ. We will not stick with you for the name: We urge you not to call it the Sabbath, (though the Ancients sometimes did so: See our Homilies of the Place and Time of Prayer) if you will call it as Scripture and the Churches did, by the name of the Lords day. And it was then the custom of the Churches, to spend almost all the day in public Worship and Holy Communion, and therefore they had but little time for any private duties that day. And yet (though the private practises of particular persons on that day be little mentioned in Church-history) no man can prove that they used to spend any remaining hours of that day as common time in common business. So that to quarrel against the holy observation of the Lords day, is but to quarrel with the Holy Ghost and the Apostles, and all the Churches of all ages since, and with the happyest season for the worshipping of God, and seeking our own and other mens edification.

Answ. We will not stick with you for the name: We urge you not to call it the Sabbath, (though the Antients sometimes did so: See our Homilies of the Place and Time of Prayer) if you will call it as Scripture and the Churches did, by the name of the Lords day. And it was then the custom of the Churches, to spend almost all the day in publick Worship and Holy Communion, and therefore they had but little time for any private duties that day. And yet (though the private practises of particular persons on that day be little mentioned in Church-history) no man can prove that they used to spend any remaining hours of that day as common time in common business. So that to quarrel against the holy observation of the Lords day, is but to quarrel with the Holy Ghost and the Apostles, and all the Churches of all ages since, and with the happyest season for the worshipping of God, and seeking our own and other mens edification.

7. What is there yet remaining then that you quarrel with as too much preciseness? Is it the strictness of mens lives in forbearing sin, and not doing as their neighbours do, in rioting and vain recreations, and delights? For this I need not stand to justify them, with any impartial sober man. If sin be evil, and displease God, and deserve damnation, he that most fully and carefully avoideth it, is the honestest and the wisest man. You will not blame your child or servant for being loth to offend and disobey you even in the smallest matter. You like not him that offereth you the least abuse, so well as him that offereth you none. You had rather be well then have the least disease. You will not take a little poison; nor would you feel a little of hell: Why then should we not avoid the least sin so far as we are able? If sinning be good, then Devils are the best creatures, and Angels and Christ (in his manhood) the worst. But if sin be the greatest evil, What will you call those men that do not only wilfully commit it, but plead for it, and reproach those that would fain avoid it? Or what if some of those that you reproach, are mistaken in some point, and […]