A59693:115
Theses Sabbaticæ, or, The doctrine of the Sabbath wherein the Sabbaths I. Morality, II.…
Theses Sabbaticæ, or, The doctrine of the Sabbath wherein the Sabbaths I. Morality, II. Change, III. Beginning. IV. Sanctification, are clearly discussed, which were first handled more largely in sundry sermons in Cambridge in New-England in opening of the Fourth Commandment : in unfolding whereof many scriptures are cleared, divers cases of conscience resolved, and the moral law as a rule of life to a believer, occasionally and distinctly handled / by Thomas Shepard ...Theses Sabbaticæ, or, The doctrine of the Sabbath wherein the Sabbaths I. Morality, II. Change, III. Beginning. IV. Sanctification, are clearly discussed, which were first handled more largely in sundry sermons in Cambridge in New-England in opening of the Fourth COmmandment : in unfolding whereof many scriptures are cleared, divers cases of conscience resolved, and the morall law as a rule of life to a believer, occasionally and distinctly handled / by Thomas Shepard ...
London: printed by T.R. and E.M. for John Rothwell, 1650
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
Thesis 32.
Some think that those commandments only are morally §32good, which the Gospel hath declared and confirmed to be so: and by this shift they think to avoid the absurdity of flying to the blind guide of corrupt nature to judge of these colours, viz. what is moral and what is not, Mr. Primrose therefore excludes the fourth Commandment from being moral, the other nine being ratified by the light of the Gospel, which this (he saith) is not: but if his meaning be that there must be a general ratification of laws moral by the verdict of the Gospel, then the fourth Commandment cannot be excluded from being moral, because it hath a ratification in general from the Gospel: for therein we read that the moral law is holy, just and good, Rom. 7. and that Christ came not to destroy the least jot or tittle of the law, Matth. 5. much less a whole law of the fourth Commandment. In the Gospel also God promiseth to write his Law upon our hearts, wherein the fourth Commandment is not excepted. But if his meaning be• this, that the Gospel must particularly mention, and so make a particular ratification (as it were) by name of every moral law, then his assertion is unsound; there being many judicial laws of Moses, of which some are wholly ⟨p. 28⟩moral, others containing in them something of common and moral equity, which we have no express mention of in the blessed Gospel: and let him turn over all the leaves of the Gospel, he shall not find that proportion of time which himself affirms to be moral in the fourth Commandment, to be expressly and particularly mentioned in the Gospel; and therefore that also must be excluded from being moral upon his own principles, as well as what we contend for in this Commandment so to be.