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

§. 6 We come now to the consideration of those different Opinions concerning the Original of the Sabbath which are embraced and contended about amongst Learned men, yea and unlearned of the present Age and Church. And rejecting the conceit of the Jews about the Station in Mara, which very few think to have any probability attending it, there are two Opinions in this matter that are yet pleaded for. The first is, that the Sabbath had its Institution, Precept, or Warranty for its Observation in Paradise before the Fall of man, immediately upon the finishing of the Works of Creation. This is thought by many to be plainly and positively asserted, Gen. 2. 2. and our Apostle seems directly to confirm it, by placing the Blessing of the seventh Day, as the immediate consequent of the finishing of the Works of God from the Foundation of the World, Hebrews, Chap. 4, 5, 6. Others refer the Institution of the Sabbath, to the Precept given about its Observation in the Wilderness of Sin, Exod. 16. 22, 23, 24, 25, 26. For those who deny its Original from the Beginning, or a Morality in its Law, cannot admit that it was first given on Sinai, or had its Spring in the Decalogue, nor can give any peculiar Reason why it should be inserted therein, seeing express mention is made of its Observation some while before the giving of the Law there. These therefore make it a mere Typical Institution given, and that without the solemnity of the giving other solemn Institutions, to the Church of the Hebrews only. And those of this Judgement some of them contend that in those words of Moses, Gen. 2. 3. And God blessed the seventh Day and sanctified it, ⟨p. 54⟩because that in it he had rested from all his works, a Prolepsis is to be admitted; that is, that what is there occasionally inserted in the Narrative, and to be read in a Parenthesis, came not to pass indeed until above two thousand years after, namely in the Wilderness of Sin; where, and when, God first blessed the seventh Day and sanctified it. And the Reason given for the supposed intersertion of the Words in the Story of Moses, is, because when it came to pass indeed, that God so blessed the seventh Day, he did it on the account of what he was then relating of the Works that he made, and the Rest that ensued thereon. Others give such an Interpretation of the Words as that they should contain no Appointment of a Day of Rest;