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

§. 38 Under the Law, that is, after the giving of it in the Wilderness, it is granted, that the portion of Time insisted on, was precisely required to be dedicate unto God; although it may be for some Ages, it will be hard to meet with a recorded Instance of its Observation. But yet none dares take any countenance from thence, to question whether it were so observed or no.

All therefore is secure unto the great alteration ⟨p. 175⟩that was made in Instituted Worship under the Gospel. And to proceed unto that season, there is no Practice in any part of Gods Public Worship, that appears earlier in the Records of the New Testament, as to what was peculiar thereunto, than the Observation of one Day in seven for the Celebration of it. Hereof more must be spoken afterwards. Some say indeed, that the Appointment of one Day in seven, and that the first Day of the Week, for the Worship of God, was only a voluntary Agreement, or a matter consented unto by the Apostolical or first Churches, meerly [Greek or Hebrew] gratia, or to keep good Order and decorum amongst them, without respect unto any Moral Command of God to that purpose. This they say directly with respect to the first Day of the Week, or the Lords Day, and its Religious Observation. But those who appoint the first Day of every Week to be so observed, do without doubt appoint that that should be the Condition of one Day in seven. Now I could incline to this Apprehension, if besides sundry other invincible Reasons that lye against it, I did not find that God had always before in all States of the Church from the foundation of the world, invariably required the Observation of one Day in seven; and I know no Reason why what had been observed all along so far upon his own Authority, he would have observed still, but no longer on his Command, but on the Invention and Consent of men. Had the Religious Observance of one Day in seven been utterly laid aside and abolished, it would and ought to to have been concluded, that the Law of it was expired in the Cross of Christ, as were those of Circumcision, ⟨p. 176⟩the Sacrifices, and the whole Temple-Worship. But to have this Observance continued by the whole Church, in and under the Approbation of God, whereof none ever doubted, by a Reassumption of it through the Authority of the Church, after God had taken off his own from it, is a most vain Imagination.