Exercitations concerning the name, original, nature, use, and continuance of a day of sacred…

And what he intended to teach them thereby, it was their duty to enquire and know. Hereby then man in general was taught Obedience and Working before he entered into Rest. For being created in the Image of God, he was to conform himself unto God. As God wrought before he rested, so was he to work before his Rest; his condition rendering that working in him Obedience, as it was in God, an Effect of Sovereignty. And by the Rest of God, or his Satisfaction and Complacency in what he had made and ⟨p. 146⟩done, he was instructed to seek Rest with God, or to enter into that Rest of God, by his compliance with the Ends intended.

And what he intended to teach them thereby, it was their duty to enquire and know. Hereby then man in general was taught Obedience and Working before he entred into Rest. For being created in the Image of God, he was to conform himself unto God. As God wrought before he rested, so was he to work before his Rest; his condition rendring that working in him Obedience, as it was in God, an Effect of Soveraignty. And by the Rest of God, or his Satisfaction and Complacency in what he had made and ⟨p. 146⟩done, he was instructed to feek Rest with God, or to enter into that Rest of God, by his complyance with the Ends intended.

§. 17 And whereas the innate Light and Principles of his own mind informed him, that some time was to be set apart to the solemn Worship of God, as he was a rational creature made to give glory unto him; so the Instruction he received by the Works and Rest of God, as made under a Covenant, taught him, that one day in seven was required unto that purpose, as also to be a pledge of his resting with God. It may be, it will be said, that man could not know, that the world was made in six days, and that the Rest of God ensued on the seventh, without some especial Revelation. I answer (1.) That I know not. He that knew the nature of all the creatures, and could give them names suited thereunto upon his first sight and view of them, might know more of the Order of their creation, than we can well imagine. For we know no more in our lapsed condition, what the Light of Nature directed man unto as walking before God in a Covenant, than men merely natural do know of the Guidance and Conduct of the Light and Law of Grace, in them who are taken into a New Covenant. (2.) However, what God instructed him in, even by Revelation, as to the due Consideration and improvement of the things that belonged unto the Law of his Creation, that is to be esteemed as a part thereof. Institutions of things by especial Revelation that had no Foundatiin the Law or Light of Nature, were merely positive; such were the Commands concerning the