Work upon the ark. Meditations upon the ark as a type of the church

OBSERVATION. XII.

In the Church of God, a Sabbath will be kept Holy to the Lord. It is a Remarkable passage in Gen. 8.8, 10, 12. Noah sent forth a Dove; and he staid yet other Seven Days; and again he sent forth the Dove; and he staid yet other Seven Days, and sent forth the Dove. Why did Noah keep a period of Seven Days in this matter? Learned Men conceive that he had Respect unto a Sabbath in •t; and a Sabbath too, say some Critical Enquirers, on that very Day of the Week which we count the First. It is thought, •hat on the morrow after the Sabbath he still sent out the Dove. And why not? We are assured in Gen. 2.3. That from the very Creation of the Wo•ld, God sanctified the Seventh Day; that is, He Commanded it to be separated and Dedicated unto Sacred Services among the Children of Men. To say, That at the Creation, God Sanctified the Seventh Day, by ordering that it should be •ept Holy by a little people four & twenty •undred years afterward, is an unaccountable Anticipation, and a cruel Hardship on the Text. No, 'Tis but R••••nable to think, ⟨p. 40⟩That the Patriarchs ▪ long before Israel w•s Encamped at Marah, did use to keep an Holy Sabbath, in the Hebdomadal Revolution. Hence the Apostle at Heb. 4.11. speaking of a Rest, which Unbelievers are excluded from, he plainly enough says, They were not excluded from the Rest (or Sabbath) which was from the Foundations of the world; so that such a Rest (or Sabbath) men then had an Interest in. Indeed the Sacredness of the Number, Seven, together with the Acknowledgement of it, as the measure of Time, among all Nations, except a few barbarous Indians whose Time is denominated only by Sleeps and Moons and Winters, cannot easily be ascribed unto any other Original, but the mark which God at the Beginning did put upon One Day in Seven, as Holy to Himself. A Seventh Day is to be kept as a Sabbath Day, in the Ark of God; tho' it seems to be not THE Seventh Day, but the First which our Sabbath is now translated into. Our Saviour Himself requires even the Church of the New Testament to be solicitous, that nothing may hinder […], from keeping a Sabbath to the Lord. […] Lord advised his Disciples, about the Distresses which even after His Resurrection and Ascension, they should be exposed unto, n