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

But now that Covenant being absolutely abolished, both as to its nature, use, efficacy and power, no more to be represented nor proposed unto Believers, the whole of it, and its renewed administration under the Old Testament being removed, taken away, and disappearing, Heb. 8 13. the precise Day of Rest belonging unto it, was to be changed also; and so it is come to pass.

§. 6 We must here suppose what hath been before proved and confirmed. There was a Day of holy Rest unto God, necessary to be observed by the Law and Covenant of Nature, or Works; neither was or could either of them be complete without it, looking on them as the rule and means of mans living unto God, and of his coming to the enjoyment of him. That this Day was in the innate right of Nature, as directed by the Works of God, designed and proposed unto it for that purpose to be one Day in seven. This was it to learn, and this it did learn from Gods ⟨p. 362⟩creating the World in six days, and resting on the seventh; for God affirms every where, that because he did so, therefore it was the duty of man to labour on six days, as his occasions do require, and to rest on the seventh. This therefore they were taught by those Works and Rest of God, or it could not be proposed as the reason of their suitable practice; and for this end did God so Work and Rest. The Law therefore of this holy Rest he reneweth in the Decalogue, amongst those other Laws, which being of the same nature and original, namely branches of the Law of our Creation, were to be unto us moral and eternal. For God would no longer entrust his mind and will in that Law unto the depraved nature of man, wherein, if he had not in the best, often guided and directed it by fresh extraordinary revelations, it would have been of little use to his glory; but committed it by vocal revelation to the minds of the people, as the doctrinal object of their consideration, and recorded it in tables of stone. Moreover, the nature of the first Covenant, and the way of Gods instructing man in the condition of it by his Works and Rest, had limited this holy Day unto the seventh Day, the observation whereof was to be commensurate unto that Covenant, and its administration, however the outward forms thereof might be varied.