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

I speak not of the actual Observance of the thing commanded, which for many causes may occasionally and temporarily be superseded, but of the obliging force and power in the Command it self, which if it be Moral, is perpetual, and not capable of Interruption. Now Testimonies we have that sundry persons not sufficiently instructed in the Liberty of the Gospel; and the Law of its Obedience, observed both the Days, the seventh, and the first; yea, it may be that for a while some observed the one day, and some the other; but that any Christians of old thought themselves de facto set at liberty from the Religious ⟨p. 178⟩Observation of one day in seven, this neither is, nor can be proved. This Practice then was Universal, and that approved of God, as we shall see afterwards, and farther in another Discourse, now more than once directed unto. Now what can any man conceive to be the ground of this unvariableness in the commanded and approved Observation of one day in seven in all states, conditions, and alterations in and of the Church, but that the Command for it, is part of the Moral unchangeable Law? Hereby therefore it is confirmed unto us so to be. And indeed, if every State of the Church be founded in an especial Work of God, and his Rest thereon, and complacency therein, as a Pledge or Testimony of giving his Church Rest in himself, as elsewhere shall be fully confirmed; a Sabbatical Rest must be necessary unto the Church in every state and condition. And although absolutely another Day might have been fixed on under the New Testament, and not one in an Hebdomadal Revolution, because its peculiar works were not precisely finished in six Days; yet that season being before fixed and determined by the Law of Creation, no Innovation nor Alteration would be allowed therein.

I speak not of the actual Observance of the thing commanded, which for many causes may occasionally and temporarily be superseded, but of the obliging force and power in the Command it self, which if it be Moral, is perpetual, and not capable of Interruption. Now Testimonies we have that sundry persons not sufficiently instructed in the Liberty of the Gospel; and the Law of its Obedience, observed both the Dayes, the seventh, and the first; yea, it may be that for a while some observed the one day, and some the other; but that any Christians of old thought themselves de facto set at liberty from the Religious ⟨p. 178⟩