A53694:294
Exercitations concerning the name, original, nature, use, and continuance of a day of sacred…
Exercitations concerning the name, original, nature, use, and continuance of a day of sacred rest wherein the original of the Sabbath from the foundation of the world, the morality of the Fourth commandment with the change of the Seventh day are enquired into : together with an assertion of the divine institution of the Lord's Day, and practical directions for its due observation / by John Owen.
London: printed by R.W. for Nath. Ponder, 1671
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
An. It will not be granted, that this is a sufficient Analysis or Distribution of the parts of this Command. The principal subject matter of it is omitted, namely, the Observation of one Day in seven unto the Ends of a Sacred Rest. For we are required in it to sanctify the Sabbath of the Lord our God, which was a seventh Day in an Hebdomadal Revolution of Days. Supply this in the first ⟨p. 211⟩place in the room of the Determination of the seventh Day to be that day, which evidently follows it in the Order of Nature, and this Argument vanisheth. Now it is here only tacitly supposed, not at all proved, that one Day in seven is not required.
An. It will not be granted, that this is a sufficient Analysis or Distribution of the parts of this Command. The principal subject matter of it is omitted, namely, the Observation of one Day in seven unto the Ends of a Sacred Rest. For we are required in it to sanctifie the Sabbath of the Lord our God, which was a seventh Day in an Hebdomadal Revolution of Dayes. Supply this in the first ⟨p. 211⟩place in the room of the Determination of the seventh Day to be that day, which evidently follows it in the Order of Nature, and this Argument vanisheth. Now it is here only tacitly supposed, not at all proved, that one Day in seven is not required.
(2.) Rest, in it self absolutely considered is no part of Divine Worship antecedently unto a Divine Positive Command. But a Rest from our own works, which might be of use and advantage unto us, which by the Law of our Creation we are to attend unto in this world, that we may intend and apply our selves to the Worship of God, and solemnly express our universal Dependence upon him in all things; a Rest representing the Rest of God in his Covenant with us, and observed as a pledge of our entering into his Rest by virtue of that Covenant, and according to the Law of it, such as is the Rest here enjoined, is a part of the Worship of God. This is the Rest which we are directed unto by the Law of our Creation, and which by the Moral Reason of this Command is enjoined unto us, on one Day in seven; and in these things consists the Morality of this Precept, on whose account it hath a place in the Decalogue, which on all the Considerations before mentioned, could not admit of an Association with one that was purely Ceremonial.