N13259:654
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.
7. IT is no more than just to suppose, that GOD intended to intimate to us, that the sabbath ought by christians to be kept in commemoration of CHRIST'S redemption, in that the Israelites were commanded to keep it in remembrance of their deliverance out of Egypt; because, that deliverance out of Egypt is an evident, known and allowed type of it. It was contrived and ordered of GOD, on purpose to represent it; every thing about that deliverance was typical of this redemption, and much is made of it principally for this reason, because it is so remarkable a type of CHRIST'S redemption. And it was but a shadow, the work in itself, was nothing in comparison with the work of redemption. What is a petty redemption of one nation from a temporal bondage, to the eternal salvation of the whole church of the elect in all ages and nations, from eternal damnation, and the introduction of them, not into a temporal Canaan, but into heaven, into eternal glory and blessedness? Was that shadow so much to be commemorated, as that a day once a week, was to be kept on the account of it; and shall not we much more commemorate that great and glorious work, of which it was designed on purpose to be a shadow?
BESIDES, the words in the fourth commandment, which speak of the deliverance out of Egypt, can be of no significancy unto us, unless they are to be interpreted of the gospel redemption: but the words of the decalogue are spoken to all nations and ages. Therefore, as the words were spoken to the Jews they referred to the type or shadow; as they are spoken to us they are to be interpreted of the antitype and substance. For the Egypt from which we under the gospel are redeemed, is the spiritual Egypt; the house of bondage from which we are redeemed, is a state of spiritual bondage.—Therefore the words as spoken to us, are to be thus interpreted, Remember, thou wast a servant to sin and satan, and the LORD thy GOD delivered thee from this bondage with a mighty hand and outstretched arm; therefore the LORD thy GOD commanded thee to keep the sabbath day.