A37046:748
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.
9. It is specially and singularly ushered in with a Memento, or Remember, which is not expressed in any other Command; and, Shall we think, that where God saith Remember, there is nothing to be taken notice of; or, shall we think, that it saith not Remember now as well as then; and if so, Who can warrantably forget that which he biddeth remember? which is, not to keep the Seventh day, but the Sabbath holy unto the Lord: And may not all these Characters, put together in one Command (so many not being to be found in all the other Commands if put together); May not all these, I say, convince us that it is the Lords purpose to have this Command standing obligatory in its substance to the end of the world? Which is so pressed, that if there be little help from Natures light, to determine the day, or to press its observation, it may be strongly born in, by the more clear and weighty reasons.
And so we come to the fourth way proposed for making out the morality of this Command, which is by adducing some Arguments drawn from Scripture.
The first whereof is, If the Law bind under the New Testament, not only in respect of its matter, as its natural; nor only as it is repeated in the New Testament, but also by virtue of the Authority enacting it: then this Law of the fourth Command, though not explicitly determined by nature, and though it were not mentioned particularly in the New Testament, must be binding also, for it hath that same Authority: But the first is true, and is acknowledged generally by Divines (excepting a few) and is clear by Christ and his Apostles their citing of it, as supposing it to be binding: Therefore the last must be true also.
The first whereof is, If the Law bind under the New Testament, not only in respect of its matter, as its natural; nor only as it is repeated in the New Testament, but also by vertue of the Authority enacting it: then this Law of the fourth Command, though not explicitly determined by nature, and though it were not mentioned particularly in the New Testament, must be binding also, for it hath that same Authority: But the first is true, and is acknowledged generally by Divines (excepting a few) and is clear by Christ and his Apostles their citing of it, as supposing it to be binding: Therefore the last must be true also.