N00406:251
The principles of the Protestant religion maintained, and churches of New-England, in the profession…
The principles of the Protestant religion maintained, and churches of New-England, in the profession and exercise thereof defended, against all the calumnies of one George Keith, a Quaker, in a book lately published at Pennsylvania [sic], to undermine them both. / By the minsters of the Gospel in Boston, ; [Nine lines of Scripture texts]The principles of the Protestant religion maintained, and churches of New-England, in the profession and exercise thereof defended, against all the calumnies of one George Keith, a Quaker, in a book lately published at Pensilvania [sic], to undermine them both. / By the minsters of the Gospel in Boston, ; [Nine lines of Scripture texts]
printed by Richard Pierce, 1690
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.
That all outward Eating and Drinking is a natural and necessary sign of the Inward, we utterly deny; that it is accommodable to it by way of resemblance, we acknowledge, else Christ would not have chosen it for this end: but we use them for figures upon the account of His institution, and not because of a natural Analogy; else we might multiply Sacraments at Pleasure; and yet we grant it to be as much a natural sign, as the outward world is a figure of the inward, which he saith Paul expressly calls it. I. Cor. 7. 31. when there is not one syllable expressly or consequentially intimating any such thing.
That all outward Eating and Drinking is a natural and necessary sign of the Inward, we utterly deny; that it is accommodable to it by way of resemblance, we acknowledge, else Christ would not have chosen it for this end: but we use them for figures upon the account of His institution, and not because of a natural Analogy; else we might multiply Sacraments at Pleasure; and yet we grant it to be as much a natural sign, as the outward world is a figure of the inward, which he saith Paul expresly calls it. I. Cor. 7. 31. when there is not one syllable expresly or consequentially intimating any such thing.
Sect. 5. But if the Sabbath may but be cashiered, the other Ordinances will fall. Here then, his first cavil is against the first day of the week, but if he decries any outward Sabbath at all (as he calls it) the First day needs no more Vindication than any other: touching the Change of the Sabbath, such as acknowledge the Sabbath to be moral & perpetual ⟨p. 146⟩by divine precept, may find it made good by many, Sheppard, Owen and others. His Cavil also against Rev. 1. 10. hath been fully answered by the fore-cited Authors, and he seems himself to grant the cause, for he tells us (p. 103.) It is commendable in Christians to set apart the first day of the week for rest from Employments and to help the mind in its spiritual exercises: now, they must set this day apart rather than any other, either because the day it self hath some Betterness in it, or because Christ hath put an Excellency upon it; the former cannot be proved, the latter can be only by His sanctifying of it; to be a Day of Rest.