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

And therefore as we said, what hath been spoken on this subject, or shall yet farther be added, I humbly submit to the Judgement of the sober and indifferent Readers, only assuring them, that I teach as I have learned, speak because I believe, and declare nothing, but whereof I am fully persuaded in my own mind.

And therefore as we said, what hath been spoken on this subject, or shall yet farther be added, I humbly submit to the Judgement of the sober and indifferent Readers, only assuring them, that I teach as I have learned, speak because I believe, and declare nothing, but whereof I am fully perswaded in my own mind.

§. 45 The Nature of the Decalogue, and the Distinction of its Precepts from all Commands Ceremonial ⟨p. 185⟩or Political, comes now under consideration. The whole Decalogue I acknowledge, as given on Mount Sinai to the Israelites, had a Political Use, as being made the Principal Instrument or Rule of the Polity and Government of their Nation, as peculiarly under the Rule of God. It had a Place also in that Economy or Dispensation of the Covenant, which that Church was then brought under, wherein by Gods dealing with them and Instructing of them, they were taught to look out after a farther and greater good in the Promise, than they were yet come to the Enjoyment of. Hence the Decalogue it self in that Dispensation of it, was a Schoolmaster unto Christ. But in it self, and materially considered, it was wholly and in all the Preceptive parts of it, absolutely Moral. Some indeed of the Precepts of it, as the first, fourth, and fifth have either Prefaces, Enlargements, or Additions, which belonged peculiarly to the then present and future State of that Church in the Land of Canaan; but these especial Applications of it unto them, change not the Nature of its Commands or Precepts which are all Moral, and as far as they are esteemed to belong to the Decalogue are unquestionably acknowledged so to be. Let us therefore consider the Pleas for Morality in the fourth Command upon the account of its Interest in the Decalogue, and the manifest Evidences of that Interest. As therefore the Giving, Writing, Use, and Disposal of the Decalogue were peculiar and distinct from the whole System of the Rest of the Laws and Statutes, which being with it given to the Church of Israel, were either Ceremonial or Judicial; so the Precept concerning the