A63997:13
The Christian Sabbath defended against a crying evil in these times of the antisabitarians…
The Christian Sabbath defended against a crying evil in these times of the antisabitarians of our age: wherein is showed that the morality of the fourth Commandment is still in force to bind Christians unto the sanctification of the Sabbath day. Written by that learned assertor of the truth, William Twice D.D. late prolocutor to the Assembly of Divines.The Christian Sabbath defended against a crying evil in these times of the antisabitarians of our age: wherein is shewed that the morality of the fourth Commandement is still in force to bind Christians unto the sanctification of the Sabbath day. Written by that learned assertor of the truth, William Twisse D.D. late prolocutor to the Assembly of Divines.
London: printed for Thomas Pierrepont, 1652
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.
The Preface.
I Have now a long time taken notice of much difference and contention about the morality of the fourth Commandment, but I never gave my self to look into the bottom of it till now. I ever conceived it for the substance to be Moral; otherwise, what should it make among the ten Commandments, which all account the Law moral, in distinction both from the law judicial, and the law ceremonial given by Moses unto the Jews. These ten Commandments the Lord spake from the top of mount Sinai, in the hearing of all the people; and by way of preparation to so notable a service, as to meet with God, and to hear him speak unto them,1 two days were given them to sanctify themselves and to wash their clothes; 2that they might be ready on the third day: for the third day the Lord would come down on mount Sinai. And so it came to pass. For when Moses brought forth the people out of the Camp to meet with God, 3and they stood at the nether part of the Mount: 4Mount Sinai was altogether on a smoke, because the Lord descended upon it in fire: and the smoke thereof ascended as the smoke of a furnace, and the whole mount quaked greatly. And all the people saw the thunderings and the lightnings, and the noise of the trumpet, 5and the mountain smoking: and when the people saw it, they removed and stood a far off. In such heavenly state was this Law delivered, and remember the Sabbath ⟨image 6⟩day to keep it holy, amongst the rest, without all example of the like, in all the generations that went before. And the Lord thought it fit, to mind them hereof by his servant Moses: