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

§. 1 How the Creation of all things was finished. and the Rest of God and Man that ensued thereon, hath been declared. It hath also in part, and sufficiently as unto our present purpose, been evidenced, how the great Ends of the Creation of All, in the Glory of God, and the Blessedness of Man in him, with the pledge thereof in a Sabbatical Rest, were for a season as it were defeated and disappointed by the entrance of Sin, which brake the Covenant that was founded in the Law of Creation, and rendered it useless unto those ends. For the Law became Weak through sin, and the flesh, or the corruption of our Nature that ensued thereon, ⟨p. 355⟩Rom. 8. 5. Hence it could no more bring Man to Rest in God. But yet a continuation of the Obligatory force of that Law and Covenant, with the direction of it unto other ends and purposes, than at first given unto them, was under the Old Testament designed of God, and hath been declared also. Hence was the continuation of the original Sabbatical Rest, in the Church of Israel, with the especial application of its command unto that people, insisted on in the preceding Discourse. In this state of things, God had of old determined the Renovation of All by a new Creation; a new Law of that Creation, a new Covenant, and a new Sabbatical Rest, unto his own Glory by Jesus Christ; and these things are now to be discussed.

§. 1 HOw the Creation of all things was finished. and the Rest of God and Man that ensued thereon, hath been declared. It hath also in part, and sufficiently as unto our present purpose, been evidenced, how the great Ends of the Creation of All, in the Glory of God, and the Blessedness of Man in him, with the pledge thereof in a Sabbatical Rest, were for a season as it were defeated and disappointed by the entrance of Sin, which brake the Covenant that was founded in the Law of Creation, and rendred it useless unto those ends. For the Law became Weak through sin, and the flesh, or the corruption of our Nature that ensued thereon, ⟨p. 355⟩Rom. 8. 5. Hence it could no more bring Man to Rest in God. But yet a continuation of the Obligatory force of that Law and Covenant, with the direction of it unto other ends and purposes, than at first given unto them, was under the Old Testament designed of God, and hath been declared also. Hence was the continuation of the original Sabbatical Rest, in the Church of Israel, with the especial application of its command unto that people, insisted on in the preceding Discourse. In this state of things, God had of old determined the Renovation of All by a new Creation; a new Law of that Creation, a new Covenant, and a new Sabbatical Rest, unto his own Glory by Jesus Christ; and these things are now to be discussed.