A64661:78
The judgement of the late Arch-Bishop of Armagh and Primate of Ireland 1. Of…
The judgement of the late Arch-Bishop of Armagh and Primate of Ireland 1. Of the extent of Christs death and satisfaction &c, 2. Of the Sabbath, and observation of the Lords day, 3. Of the ordination in other reformed churches : with a vindication of him from a pretended change of opinion in the first, some advertisements upon the latter, and in prevention of further injuries, a declaration of his judgement in several other subjects / by N. Bernard.
London: printed for John Crook, 1658
Title page typeset from the transcription.
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.
Worthy Sir,
Your Letter of the first of February came unto my hands the seventh of April, but, my journey to Dublin following thereupon, and my long stay in the City, (where the multiplicity of my public and private employments would scarce afford me a breathing time) was such; that I was forced to defer my Answer thereunto, ⟨p. 67⟩until this short time of my retiring into the Country: Where, being now absent also from my Library: I can rather signify unto you, how fully I concur in judgement with those grounds, which you have so judiciously laid in that question of the Sabbath, than afford any great help unto you in the building, which you intend to raise thereupon. For when I gave my self unto the reading of the Fathers, I took no heed unto any thing that concerned this argument: as little dreaming that any such controversy would have arisen among us. Yet generally I do remember that the word Sabbatum in their writings doth denote our Saturday: although by Analogy from the manner of speech used by the Jews, the term be sometimes transferred to denote our Christian festivities also, as Sirmondus the Jesuit observeth, out of Sidonius Apollinaris, (lib. 1. Epist. 2.) where, describing the moderation of the Table of Theodoric, King of the Goths ⟨p. 68⟩upon the Eves, and the excess on the Holy day following; he writeth of the one, that his convivium diebus profestis simile privato est, but of the other. De luxu autem illo Sabbatario narrationi meae supersedendum est, qui nec latentes potest latere personas. And because the [Greek or Hebrew] of the fourth Commandment pointeth at the Sabbath, as it was in the first institution, the seventh day from the Creation: therefore they held that Christians were not tied to the observance thereof. Whereupon you may observe, that S. Augustine in his speculum (in operum tomo 3o.) purposely selecting those things which appertained unto us Christians; doth wholly pretermit that precept, in the recital of the Commandments of the Decalogue; Not because the substance of the precept was absolutely abolished: but because it was in some parts held to be