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

§. 37 Of the Command of the Sabbath in the State of Innocency, we have before treated, and vindicated the Testimony given unto it, Gen. 2. 2, 3. It will, God assisting, be farther discoursed and confirmed in our Exposition of the fourth Chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews. The Observation of it by virtue of its Original Law and Command, before the Promulgation of the Decalogue in Sinai, or the first Wilderness Observation of the Sabbath, recorded ⟨p. 173⟩on the occasion of giving Manna, hath also been before confirmed. Many Exceptions I acknowledge are laid in, against the Testimonies insisted on for the proof of these things; but those such, as I suppose, are not able to invalidate them in the minds of men void of Prejudice. And the Pretence of the Obscurity that is in the Command, will be easily removed, by the consideration of another Instance of the same Antiquity. All men acknowledge, that a Promise of Christ, for the Object and Guide of the Faith of the ancient Patriarchs, was given in those Words of God, immediately spoken unto the Serpent, Gen. 3. 15. I will put Enmity between thee and the Woman, and between thy seed and her seed, it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise its heel. The Words in themselves seem obscure unto any such End or Purpose. But yet there is such light given into them, and the mind of God in them, from the circumstances of Time, Place, Persons, Occasions, from the Nature of the things treated of, from the whole ensuing Economy, or dealing of God with men revealed in the Scripture, as that no sober man doubts of the Promissory Nature of those Words, nor of the Intention of them in General, nor of the proper subject of the Promise, nor of the Grace intended in it. This Promise therefore was the immediate Object of the faith of the Patriarchs of old, the great motive and encouragement unto, and of their Obedience. But yet it will be hard, from the Records of Scripture, to prove, that any particular Patriarch did believe in, trust, or plead that Promise, which yet we know that they did all and every one; nor was there any need for ⟨p. 174⟩our Instruction, that any such practice of theirs should be recorded; seeing it is a general Rule, that those Holy men of God did observe and do whatever he did command them; Wherefore from the record of a Command, we may conclude unto a suitable Practice, though it be not recorded;