N13259:634
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 christian sabbath, in the sense of the fourth command, is as much the seventh day, as the Jewish sabbath; because, it is kept every seventh day, as much as that; it is kept after six days of labour, as well as that; it is the seventh, reckoning from the beginning of our first working day, as well as that was the seventh from the beginning of their first working day. All the difference is, that the seven days formerly began from the day after God's rest from the creation, and now they begin the day after that. It is no matter by what names the days are called: if our nation had, for instance, called Wednesday the first of the week, it would have been all one as to this argument.
THEREFORE, by the institution of the christian sabbath, there is no change from the fourth command; but the change is from another law, which determined ⟨p. 241⟩the beginning and ending of their working days. So that those words of the fourth command viz. Six days shalt thou labour and do all thy work; but the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD thy GOD; afford no objection against that which is called the christian sabbath; for these words remain in full force still. Neither does any just objection arise from these words following, viz. For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day and and hallowed it. These words are not made insignificant to christians, by the institution of the christian sabbath: they still remain in their full force as to that which is principally intended by them. They were designed to give us a reason why we are to work but six days at a time, and then rest on the seventh, because GOD hath set us the example. And taken so, they remain still in as much force as ever they were. This is the reason still, as much as ever it was, why we may work but six days at a time. What is the reason that christians rest every seventh, and not every eighth, or every ninth, or tenth day? It is because GOD worked six days and rested the seventh.