A63997:314
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.
All confess that there is a difference between. 1. Time in ⟨p. 290⟩general to be set apart for Gods service. 2. And the proportion of that time. 3. And the particularity of the day in that proportion. The first is generally received to be moral, the other two some had rather call positive, then ceremonial, because they conceive it to have been instituted in Paradise before the fall, when there was no need of any ceremony. They who do most judiciously discourse of ceremony in the fourth Commandment, do not call it ceremonial hand over head, but with reference to the rest of the day. And herein the ceremoniality they apply to the rest on the seventh day. As for the ceremoniality to be found in the proportion of time indefinitely considered, as in one day of seven, I never read nor heard, till now. Yet wherein this ceremoniality doth consist, I mean the thing signified thereby is not explicated at all, neither in respect of the proportion of time, as of one day in seven, nor in reference to the particular day. Yet the Jews rest on the seventh day, is generally conceived to prefigure Christs rest in the grave that day full and whole, and only that day. And as Doctor Andrewes Bishop of Winchester in his Star Chamber speech professeth, that It hath ever been the Churches doctrine that Christ made an end of all Sabbaths by his Sabbath in the grave. That Sabbath was the last of them. So Austin de Gen. ad lit. l. 4. c. 11. Bede in Hexameron on Genesis, Aquin. 2.2. q. 121. art. 4. Piscat. on Luc. 14. And albeit the rest from works may have a ceremonial signification of a rest from sin in the way of grace, as, Ezech. 20.12. and a rest both from sin, and sorrow; (which is also a special work of ours through sin, Jer. 2.17. hast thou not procured this unto thy self because thou hast forsaken the Lord.) and that in the way of glory, Hebr. 4. yet this is no such ceremony as to be abolished upon the fulfilling of the thing signified; for even the Jews under the Law had their rest from sin, (in the way of grace) as we Christians under the Gospel, yet nevertheless observed the Sabbath, and that glorious rest which shall not be accomplished till the end of the World, is commonly called an eternal Sabbath.