dispersion of the Jews, the Christian church declared any following of the Mosaic rites a crime deserving of the severest censure. Even before the destruction of the temple the Apostles had decided that the Gentile converts were not to be troubled with the Law; and that it was tempting God to put upon them a yoke which none of the Jews were able to bear (Acts xv. 9,10); and that "the Holy Ghost laid upon them no greater burden than these necessary things: That ye abstain from meats offered to idols, and from blood, and from things strangled, and from fornication: from which if ye keep yourselves, ye shall do well. Fare ye well." Here we have no injunction of the Sabbath, no legal ordinance whatever. And for the Jewish converts to Christianity instructions equally clear are furnished by the Apostle Paul, when referring to the same city, at a time just preceding the above. For Peter had come to Antioch and eaten with the Gentiles, disregarding the Mosaic law; but when some Jewish converts were come he "withdrew, and separated himself, fearing them which were of the circumcision. And the other Jews dissembled likewise with him; insomuch that Barnabas also was carried away with their dissimulation" (Gal. ii. 12). Did Paul reprove Peter for not keeping the Law? Not at all he reproved him for pretending to keep it when he did not-for doing exactly that which many converted Jews of our own time are doing, professing to keep the Law, when their consciences tell them that they do not and cannot keep it. Paul "withstood Peter to the face, because he was to be blamed ;" and these modern Judaizers should be still more strongly withstood, and still more severely blamed for Peter could then have really kept the Law; and the keeping of it was not forbidden in the same positive manner as shortly after it was, in the writings of the Apostles and in the decrees of the church; but the modern Judaizers are obliged to acknowledge that they cannot keep the Law, and they do not really observe those forms which the Jews now call the Law; that they profess to do that which they never care to do; that their pretence, in short, is a mere mockery*. The Law was abolished in the death of Christ,

* We were present, last Spring, at a discussion on keeping the Law, with upwards of twenty inquiring and converted Jews; who began with maintaining the necessity of a Jew, after conversion, still keeping the Law. In the course of discussion they all allowed that they had eaten ham and hares dressed on the Jewish Sabbath; and for thus breaking the Law in so aggravated a manner they pleaded Christian liberty, and said they kept the Law from choice, and not of constraint. They were then required to name any one Mosaic law which the Jews could now keep, to distinguish them from other Christians. The Fifth Commandment was first named, but immediately withdrawn; for all Christians are required to honour father and mother. The precept against mixing woollen and linen in their garments was also abandoned, when it was shewn that it was broken by the woollen garments being sewn or lined with linen, and that the

and taken out of the way (1 Cor. ii. 13; Col. ii. 14); and by the bringing in of the new covenant he hath made the first old. This the Apostles knew; and continually expected that "time of desolation" predicted by the Lord, when "one stone of the temple should not be left upon another," knowing" that which decayeth and waxeth old " to be "ready to vanish away" (Heb. viii. 13). With the last destruction of Jerusalem the Mosaic law did vanish away; and thenceforward the Apostles and succeeding rulers of the church have uniformly declared it to be a sinful dereliction of our Christian standing, an abandonment of our Christian liberty, to come under the old law; in short, to be falling from grace. Barnabas is very frequent and very strong in warning his fellow-countrymen against still cleaving to the Mosaic law; saying, "I beseech you, as one of your own brethren, loving you all beyond my own life, that you look well to yourselves; and be not like to those who add sin to sin, and say that their covenant" (the Mosaic) "is ours also: nay, but it is ours only; for they have for ever lost that which Moses received (Wake, 304). Lastly, he saith unto them; "Your new moons and your Sabbaths, I cannot bear them.' Consider what He means by this: The Sabbaths which ye now keep are not acceptable to me, but those which I have made when resting from all things I shall begin the eighth day, that is, the beginning of the other world. For which cause we observe the eighth day with joy; in which Jesus rose from the dead, and, having manifested himself to his disciples, ascended into heaven (Wake, 327). "Furthermore, it has been made manifest how both the city and the temple and the people of Israel should be given up....and it has come to pass as the Lord hath spoken (Wake, 329). Ignatius is equally strong and clear; saying, "If we still continue to live according to the Jewish law, we do confess ourselves not to have received grace. Wherefore, if they who were brought up in these ancient laws came, nevertheless, to the newness of hope-no longer observing Sabbaths, but keeping the Lord's-day, in which also our life is sprung up by him, &c. &c.-it is absurd to name Jesus Christ and to Judaize" (Wake, 233, 256). The other fathers testify to the same effect: as Justin Martyr (cont. Tryph.); "keeping the Sabbath is not binding." Tertullian (cont. Jud. iv. 6); "the observance of the Sabbath was temporary." Athanasius (de Sabb. et Circ.); “after whole garment, as being manufactured by Gentiles, was unclean by the Law, and could not lawfully be worn, because it could not be purified. It was then gravely and seriously urged, that if a Jew were walking in the fields, and saw a bird sitting on its nest, he could keep that precept of the Law which forbade them to take both the eggs and the dam! This was the only portion of the Law which they were able to maintain they could keep. Thus absurd and ridiculous is the pretence of now being able to obey those precepts exclusively Mosaic.

the resurrection of Christ the old Sabbath ceased to be in force." And so of all the others: as Irenæus (iv. 19, 30, 31), Origen (Hom. 10, in Gen.; Hom. 7, in Ex.; Hom. 23, in Num. xxviii.), Basil (in Isa.), Greg. Naz. (Orat. 19), Greg. Nys. (Orat. 1 de Resur. 186, de Pasch. 867), Ambrose, Jerome, and Augustine, passim. Indeed, so universal was the practice of keeping holy the Lord's-day among the primitive Christians, that it was made use of as evidence against them. They were asked, "Have you kept the Lord's-day?" to which they were wont to answer, "I cannot intermit it, because I am a Christian, and the law of Christ prompts me to the keeping of it "(Act. Mart. ap. Baron. anno 303). But the very circumstance of its general observance prevented discussion; and very little is written, either for or against it, in the first three centuries, because it was not then made a question. Eusebius, in his Oration to Constantine, appeals to it as a proof of Christ being far superior to the Gentile gods and heroes; saying, "Which amongst them hath prescribed to all the inhabitants of the earth one day in every week to be set apart as the Lord's festival?" And Athanasius (Homil. de Semente) says, "The ancients " (the Jews) "had the Sabbath in great esteem; but the Lord translated the Sabbath-day to the Lord's-day; and we, of ourselves" (or by our own authority) "have not despised the Sabbath" (ovK nues copy of a εαυτων του Σαββατου καταφρονησαντες). Augustine also declares, that, the Lord's-day having been consecrated by the resurrection of Christ, the Sabbath and Lord's-day have one and the same Lord: "Dominicus dies, velut octavus, æternus qui Christi resurrectione sacratus est. Per Christum factus est dies Dominicus: et Sabbati et Dominici unus est Dominus "(Civit. Dei xxii. 30). The Council of Laodicea, A. D. 320, declares, that "Christians ought not to Judaize by resting on the Sabbath; but that they should work on that day....but if any be found to Judaize, let them be anathema from Christ." Sabbatians are counted heretics in the Second General Council of Constantinople, A. D. 383; and Judaizing condemned in the Third General Council of Ephesus, A. D. 431; and the doctrine condemned, with their other errors, in the Cerinthians, Ebionites, Hypsistarii, Petrobusiani, and other heretics; and by Luther in Carlostadt, Sternbergh, and the Anabaptists.

Lastly, the Church of England has sufficiently warned us against the error. Cranmer, in his Catechism, 1548, says, "The Jews were commanded to keep the Sabbath-day, and they observed it every seventh day, called Saturday; but we Christian men, in the New Testament, are not bound to keep such commandments of Moses' law: and therefore we now keep no more the Sabbath, or Saturday, as the Jews did, but we observe the Sunday." By the statutes of Edward VI., anno 5, 6, it is

enacted, "That all days hereafter mentioned shall be kept holy days, and no other; that is, all Sundays of the year, the days of the Circumcision of the Lord, Epiphany," &c. And the Homilies of Elizabeth declare, "Rev. i. 10, I was in the Spirit on the Lord's-day; since which time God's people have in all ages, without gainsaying, used to come together upon the Sunday, to celebrate and honour the Lord's blessed name, and carefully to keep that day in holy rest and quietness, both man, woman, child, and servant:" and they also teach, that "We must be careful to keep, not the seventh day which the Jews kept, but the Lord'sday, the day of the Lord's resurrection, the day after the seventh, the first day of the week." By Canon XIII., anno 1603, "All manner of persons within the Church of England shall from henceforth celebrate and keep the Lord's-day, commonly called Sunday, and other holy days," &c. (amongst which, the Saturday of every week is none). And the Seventh Article assumes it as a settled point, no longer controverted, that the Law was annulled by the Gospel, saying, "Although the law given from God by Moses, as touching ceremonies and rites do not bind Christian men," &c., "no Christian man is free from the Commandments which are called moral." Which assuming the point to be already decided, is the reason why so few of the members of our Church have professedly handled it: and we have now been led to discuss it in consequence of a revival of this longexploded error among some Jewish converts, and a large party of devoted followers; and trust that we have been able to set the doctrine in its true light;-that we have made good some new positions, from which the high and paramount claims of the Lord's-day become more conspicuous, and on which the Christian may rest with greater assurance, and take a more confident stand against Jew, Turk, Infidel, or Heretic, in maintaining that the Lord's-day is the true, the only, the Patriarchal, the Creation Sabbath; the commemoration of the REST OF GOD at creation, the earnest of the REST that remaineth for the PEOPLE OF GOD.

And, in conclusion, let us gather in our thoughts, and raise them to a contemplation of that primeval dignity wherewith our nature was invested when God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness; and let them have dominion;" and of that primeval glory wherewith our place of habitation was invested by the Lord God, when HE planted a garden in Eden, and there put the man whom he had formed: that, rising above our present fallen state, above this fallen world, we may from that vantage ground ascend still higher, to a contemplation of the far greater dignity and far surpassing glory reserved for both in the new creation about to be revealed; when, to all the exuberant love displayed in creation, and all the stupendous power and unwearied care of providence, shall be added the superabounding

graces and glories of redeeming love, not only to, but in the church-they not merely the subjects but the administrators of the love of God; the angels of the world to come, fulfilling the will and the providence of God in every region of creation; they then seated with Christ in his throne, as he is now seated with the Father on his throne (Rev. iii. 21; Heb. ii. 5). Let us shake off those degrading ideas, concerning the dignity of man and his future destiny, which the Fall has superinduced; let us rise above selfish considerations; let us pass by mere safety and impunity and recovery, to mount higher than misery and sin, and beyond those regions of knowledge and thought which are occupied in providing means of escape from suffering and of attaining any sublapsarian good. Think then for a moment, what a noble being Adam was the last, the most perfect creature of God: think what the IMAGE OF GOD was; what this description necessarily means, what man at creation could not but have been: : every attribute of GOD was seen in his IMAGE, with that difference and limitation only which a bodily form implies-the noble tabernacle wherein the Father purposed to exhibit the brightness of his glory and the express image of his person (Heb. i. 3); the form of being in which dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily (Col. ii. 9) for ever and ever. Adam was, to his capacity, perfect in knowledge, holiness, and happiness; vested with dominion over all the visible creation; God's vicegerent on the earth. His endowments were capable of continual refreshment and increase by intercourse with the Lord his God, turning the limitation and change, which are the necessary conditions of a creature, into an increase of blessedness perpetually derived from God, who alone is infinite, alone unchangeable. This intercourse was most intimate and most familiar*: more intimate than that of Moses the servant, who talked with the Lord face to face; more familiar than that of Abraham, who was called the friend of God; as direct as when, after his sin, the

* Man lived in Paradise, having his enjoyment in God, who was his familiar friend: "Vivebat homo in Paradiso, fruens Deo, de proximo amicus." Tertul.de Patientia v. So long as he persevered in obedience to his Creator, he rested in the most delightful repose of Divine contemplation: he could feel no spiritual hunger, and of all passion arising from the flesh he was ignorant: "Quamdiu in conditoris sui obedientia perstitit, in suavissimo contemplationis Divinæ lecto requievit: nullam in animo poterat sentire esuriem, et omnem quæ ex carne nascitur ignorabat passionem."(Greg. Mag. in 7 pænit. Psa. 3). "All God's creatures were as living books, to preach to man the majesty and bounty of the Creator. The law of the Fourth Commandment, requiring cessation from toilsome labour, for man, for beast, for man-servant and maid-servant, and for the stranger within the gates, could not be in force or of any use in the state of innocency. In Paradise there were no servants or bondsmen, no creatures needing a weekly Sabbath, or day of rest from toilsome labour; neither was there any necessity of having a set day for spiritual contemplation."