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

There is nothing therefore in the fourth Commandment, directing unto six days of labour, and requiring a seventh unto Rest, that is inconsistent, or not compliant with the Law of our Creation, and the state of living unto God constituted thereby; although the manner of that work and labour be varied from what originally it was. Likewise in that state of mankind, there was to be a superiority of some over others. This the natural Relation of Parents and Children makes manifest. And these latter were in the Worship of God to be under the Government and Direction of the other. And unto this Natural Equity is all subjection to Magistrates in Subjects, and Masters in Servants, reduced in the fifth Commandment. So then, the outward variations, which are in these things supposed in the fourth Commandment, do not in the least impeach its Morality, or hinder but that for the substance of it, it may be judged a Law Natural and Moral; and a true Representation of a part of the Law of our Creation.

There is nothing therefore in the fourth Commandment, directing unto six dayes of labour, and requiring a seventh unto Rest, that is inconsistent, or not compliant with the Law of our Creation, and the state of living unto God constituted thereby; although the manner of that work and labour be varied from what originally it was. Likewise in that state of mankind, there was to be a superiority of some over others. This the natural Relation of Parents and Children makes manifest. And these latter were in the Worship of God to be under the Government and Direction of the other. And unto this Natural Equity is all subjection to Magistrates in Subjects, and Masters in Servants, reduced in the fifth Commandment. So then, the outward variations, which are in these things supposed in the fourth Commandment, do not in the least impeach its Morality, or hinder but that for the substance of it, it may be judged a Law Natural and Moral; and a true Representation of a part of the Law of our Creation.

§. 3 Seeing therefore that the Moral Law, as a Covenant between God and man, required this Sacred Rest, as we have proved; we must enquire what place, as such, it had in the Mosaical Economy, whereon the true Reason and Notion of the Sabbath as peculiarly Judaical, doth depend. For the Sabbath being originally annexed to the Covenant between God and man, the Renovation of the Covenant doth necessarily require an especial Renovation of the Sabbath, and the Change of the Covenant as to the nature of it, must in like manner introduce a change of the Sabbath. And we shall find, that the Covenant of the Law, or of Works, had a twofold Renovation in the Church of Israel, in the framing and constitution of it. These rendered it their especial Covenant, although it was not absolutely a New Covenant, nor is it so called, but is every where called the Old; and hence the Sabbath became peculiarly theirs.