N13259:613
Sermons, on the following subjects
Sermons, on the following subjects; The manner in which salvation is to be sought. The unreasonableness of indetermination in religion. Unbelievers contemn the glory of Christ. The folly of looking back in fleeing out of Sodom. The warnings of Scripture in the best manner adapted to the awakening and conversion of sinners. Hypocrites deficient in the duty of prayer. The future punishment of the wicked unavoidable and intolerable. The eternity of hell-torments. The peace which Christ gives his true followers. The perpetuity & change of the Sabbath. / By the late Reverend Mr. Jonathan Edwards, president of the College of New-Jersey.
Hartford: printed by Hudson and Goodwin, 1780
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.
THE main objection against the perpetuity of this command is, that the duty required is not moral. Those laws whose obligation arises from the nature of things, and from the general state and nature of mankind, as well as from GOD'S positive revealed will, are called moral laws. Others, whose obligation depends merely upon GOD'S positive and arbitrary institution, are not moral; such as the ceremonial laws, and the precepts of the gospel, about the two sacraments. Now, the objectors say, they will allow all that is moral in the decalogue to be of perpetual obligation. But this command, they say, is not moral.
BUT this objection is weak and insufficient for the purpose, for which it is brought, or to prove that the fourth command, as to the substance of it, is not of perpetual obligation. For,
(1.) If it should be allowed that there is no morality belonging to the command, and that the duty required, is founded merely on arbitrary institution, it cannot therefore be certainly concluded, that the ⟨p. 233⟩command is not perpetual. We know that there may be commands in force under the gospel, and to the end of the world, which are not moral: such are the institutions of the two sacraments. And why may there not be positive commands in force, in all ages of the church? If positive, arbitrary institutions are in force in gospel times, what is there which concludes, that no positive precept, given before the times of the gospel, can yet continue in force? But,