A37046:721
The law unsealed
The law unsealed: or, A practical exposition of the Ten Commandments With a resolution of several momentous questions and cases of conscience. By the learned, laborious, faithful servant of Jesus Christ, Mr. James Durham, late minister of the Gospel at Glasgow.
Glasgow: printed by Robert Sanders, 1676
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.
Hitherto there is no difficulty, the pinch will lye in this, If the Scriptures speak of it as belonging to the days of the Gospel, In which (for making of it out) 1. We have these hints, Acts 20 7. 1. Cor. 16. 2. Where Christians going abou• the Moral Duties of the Sabbath, is especially observed to be upon one day peculiarly. 2. That Title of the direct appropriating of a Day to the Lord, Rev. 1. 1• ▪ Which places will fall in to be considered particularly when we come to the la•• question; Besides these we may produce three places to prove a Sabbath as belonging to the New Testament; though not the very Day used or observed for the Sabbath in the Old; and this will be enough to make out the Assertion, two of them are Prophesies, the third of them is in the Gospel. The first prophecy is it the 66. Chap. of Isaiah verse 23. The second is in Ezekiels Description of the Ne• Temple, Chap. 43. 44 45 46, &c. Where 1. It is clear that these places relate to the Days of the Gospel, as none can deny but they do so eminently. 2. It is clear that though they Prophesy of the Services of the Gospel under the names of Sacrifices, &c. proper to the Old Testament Administration, and of the Sanctified and set a part time of the Gospel, under the Name of Sabbath which the• was determined, and whereto men were then bound by the fourth Command as they were to Sacrifices by the second: yet these Prophesies infer not by virtue of the fourth Command the very same Day to be under the Gospel, which was under the Law, more then the same Services by virtue of the second; which none wi•• deny to be in force, notwithstanding of the change of Services: and there is as little reason to deny the fourth to be still in force as to its substance notwithstanding o• ⟨p. 123⟩the change of the particular day. Yet Thirdly, it is clear that from the mentioning of these services this will follow, that there should be set and fixed Ordinances, and a way of worship in the New Testament, as well as in the Old, and that there should be a solemn chief set-time for the Sabbath which men ought to sanctify, and that they should no more admit any other times, not so set apart into a parity with it, then they were to admit any service or Worship not allowed by God, or that was contrary to the second Command: