The Christian Sabbath defended against a crying evil in these times of the antisabitarians…

The Preface of the Translator to the Christian Reader.¹

1. 1Preface.

1 OF all the Controversies which have exercised Sect. 1 the Church of Christ, there is none more ancient than that of the Sabbath. So ancient, that it took beginning even in the Infancy of the Church, and grew up with it. For as we read in the Acts, There rose up certain of the Sect of the Pharisees which believed, saying, That it was needful to circumcise the people, and to command them to keep the Law of Moses, whereof the Sabbath was a part: which in the general, as the Apostles laboured to suppress in the first general Council holden in Jerusalem. 2. So did Saint Paul Sect. 2 (upon occasion of whose ministry this controversy first began) endeavour what he could against this particular; sharply reproving those, which allowed yet the Jews Sabbath, ¹or observed days, and months, and times, as if he had bestowed his labour in vain upon them. But more particularly in his Epistle ⟨p. 2⟩to the Colossians, Let no man judge you in respect of an holy day, or of the new Moon, or of the Sabbath days, which were a shadow of things to come, but the body was of Christ. Both which expressions of Saint Paul are in this following discourse produced to this very purpose. Yet notwithstanding all this care, both generally of the Apostles, and more especially of Saint Paul to suppress this error, it grew up still and had its patrons Sect. 3 and abettors. 3. Ebion and Cerinthus, two of the wretchedest Heretics of the Primitive times,² and after them Apollinaris, are said to countenance and defend it, which doubtless made the Ancient Fathers declare themselves fully in it, as a dangerous point: which seemed to confirm the Jews in their incredulity, and might occasion others to make question of our Sect. 4 Saviours coming in the flesh. 4. Hence was it that Irenaeus, Justin Martyr, Tertullian and Eusebius, men of renown for learning in the primitive times (three of which are cited in the text of this following discourse, and the fourth quoted in the margin) affirm for certain, that never any of the Patriarchs before Moses Law did observe the Sabbath: which questionless they must have done, had that Law been moral, and dictated Sect. 5 by nature, as now some teach us 5. Afterwards by the opposition made by Epiphanius, in his Confutation of the heresies of the Ebionites; and by the resolutions of Theodoret on the 20. of Ezech. Procopius Gazaeus on the 2. of Gen.