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

§. 5 Thirdly, The immediate End of the old Covenant, was to bring man by due Obedience unto the Rest of God. This God declared in, and unto his inbred native light, by his Works and his Rest that ensued thereon, and the Day of Rest which he instituted as a pledge thereof, and as a means of attaining it, by that Obedience which was required in the Covenant. This we have before declared, and this was the true original and End of the first Sabbatical Rest. All these things therefore must have place also in the new Covenant, belonging unto the new Creation. The immediate End of it, is our entering into the Rest of God, as the Apostle proves at large, Heb. 4. But herein we are not absolutely to enter into Gods Rest, as a Creator and Rewarder, but into the Rest of God in Christ, the Nature whereof will be fully explained in our Exposition of that Chapter. For Obedience is now to be yielded unto God, not absolutely, but to God in Christ, and with that respect therefore are we to enter into Rest. The foundation hereof must lye in the Works of God in the new Creation, and the complacency with Rest which he took therein. For all our Rest in God, is founded in his own Rest in his Works. For a pledge hereof, a Day of Rest must be given and observed; the reasons and necessity whereof we have explained and confirmed in our preceding Discourses. This, as hath been showed, originally was the Seventh day of the week. But as the Apostle tells us in another case, the Priesthood being changed, there must also of necessity a change of the Law ensue; so the Covenant being changed, and the Rest which was the End of it being changed, and the way of entering into the Rest of God being changed, a ⟨p. 361⟩change of the Day of Rest must of necessity thereon ensue. And no Man can assert the same Day of Rest precisely to abide, as of old, but he must likewise assert the same Law, the same Covenant, the same Rest of God, the same way of entering into it, which yet, as all acknowledge, are changed. The Day first annexed unto the Covenant of works, that is, the seventh Day, was continued under the Old Testament, because the outward administration of that Covenant was continued. A relief indeed was provided against the curse and penalty of it, but in the administration of it, the nature, promises, and threatenings of that Covenant, though with other ends and purposes, were represented unto the people.

§. 5 Thirdly, The immediate End of the old Covenant, was to bring man by due Obedience unto the Rest of God. This God declared in, and unto his inbred native light, by his Works and his Rest that ensued thereon, and the Day of Rest which he instituted as a pledge thereof, and as a means of attaining it, by that Obedience which was required in the Covenant. This we have before declared, and this was the true original and End of the first Sabbatical Rest. All these things therefore must have place also in the new Covenant, belonging unto the new Creation. The immediate End of it, is our entring into the Rest of God, as the Apostle proves at large,