First, then, that interval of relaxation which Sun day affords to the laborious part of mankind, contributes greatly to the comfort and fatisfaction of their lives, both as it refreshes them for the time, and as it relieves their fix day's labour by the prof pect of a day of reft always approaching; which could not be faid of cafual indulgences of leifure and rest, even were they more frequent than there is reafon to expect they would be, if left to the difcretion or humanity of interested task-mafters. To this difference it may be added, that holidays, which come feldom and unexpected, are unprovided, when they do come, with any duty or employment; and the manner of fpending them being regulated by no public decency or established ufage, they are commonly confumed in rude, if not criminal paftimes, in ftupid floth or brutifh intemperance. Whoever confiders how much fabbatical inftitutions conduce, in this refpect, to the happiness and civilization of the labouring claffes of mankind, and reflects how great a majority of the human fpecies thefe claffes compofe, will acknowledge the utility, whatever he may believe of the origin, of this distinction; and will, confequently, perceive it to be every man's duty to uphold the obfervation of Sunday, when once established, let the establishment have proceeded from whom or from what authority it will.

Nor is there any thing loft to the community by the intermiffion of public industry one day in the week. For in countries tolerably advanced in population and the arts of civil life, there is always enough of human labour, and to fpare. The difficulty is not fo much to procure, as to employ it. The addition of the feventh day's labour to that of the other fix would have no other effect than to reduce the price. The labourer himself, who deserved and suffered moft by the change, would gain nothing.

2. Sunday, by fufpending many public diverfions, and the ordinary rotation of employment, leaves to men of all ranks and profeffions fufficient leifure, and

not more than what is fufficient, both for the external offices of Christianity, and the retired, but equally neceffary duties of religious meditation and inquiry. It is true, that many do not convert their leifure to this purpose; but it is of moment, and is all which a public conftitution can effect, that to ev ery one be allowed the opportunity.

3. They whofe humanity embraces the whole fenfitive creation, will efteem it no inconsiderable recommendation of a weekly return of public reft, that it affords a refpite to the toil of brutes. Nor can we omit to recount this amongst the ufes, which the divine Founder of the Jewish fabbath exprefsly appointed a law of the inftitution.

We admit, that none of these reasons fhow why Sunday fhould be preferred to any other day in the week, or one day in feven to one day in fix or eight: but these points, which in their nature are of arbitrary determination, being established to our hands, our obligation applies to the fubfifting establishment, fo long as we confefs, that fome fuch inftitution is neceffary, and are neither able, nor attempt to fub stitute any other in its place.

Chapter VII.

OF THE SCRIPTURE ACCOUNT OF SABBATICAL INSTITUTIONS.

THE fubject, fo far as it makes any part of Christian morality, is contained in two queftions: I. Whether the command, by which the Jewish fabbath was inftituted, extend to Chriflians?

II. Whether any new command was delivered by Chrift; or any other day fubftituted in the place of the Jewish fabbath by the authority or example of his Apoftles?

In treating of the firft queftion, it will be neceffary to collect the accounts, which are preferved of the inftitution in the Jewish hiftory; for the feeing thefe

accounts together, and in one point of view, will be the beft preparation for the difcuffing or judging of any arguments on one fide or the other.

In the fecond chapter of Genefis, the hiftorian having concluded his account of the fix day's creation, proceeds thus: "And on the feventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made; and God bleffed the feventh day, and fanctified it, becaufe that in it he had refted from all his work which God created and made." After this we hear no more of the fabbath, or of the feventh day, as in any manner diftinguished from the other fix, until the history brings us down to the fojourning of the Jews in the wildernefs, when the following remarkable paffage occurs. Upon the complaint of the people for want of food, God was pleased to provide for their relief by a miraculous fupply of manna, which was found every morning upon the ground about the camp; "and they gathered it every morning, every man according to his eating; and when the fun waxed hot, it melted and it came to pafs, that on the fixth day they gathered twice as much bread, two omers for one man and all the rulers of the congregation came and told Mofes; and he faid unto them, this is that which the Lord hath faid, to-morrow is the rest of the holy fabbath unto the Lord; bake that which ye will bake to-day, and feethe that ye will feethe, and that which remaineth over lay up for you, to be kept until the morning; and they laid it up till the morning, as Mofes bade, and it did not ftink" (as it had done before, when fome of them left it till the morning) "neither was there any worm therein. And Mejes faid, Eat that to-day; for to-day is a fabbath. unto the Lord: to-day ye shall not find it in the field. Six days ye fhall gather it, but on the feventh day, which is the fabbath, in it there fhall be none. And it came to pass that there went out fome of the people on the feventh day for to gather, and they found none. And the Lord faid unto Mofes, how long refufe ye to keep my commandments and my laws? See, for that

the Lord hath given you the fabbath, therefore he giveth you on the fixth day the bread of two days; abide ye every man in his place; let no man go out of his place on the feventh day: fo the people refted on the feventh day." Exodus xvi.

Not long after this, the fabbath, as is well known, was established with great folemnity in the fourth commandment.

Now, in my opinion, the tranfaction in the wildernefs, above recited, was the firft actual inftitution of the fabbath. For, if the fabbath had been inftituted at the time of the creation, as the words in Genefis may seem at first fight to import, and if it had been obferved all along, from that time to the departure of the Jews out of Egypt, a period of about two thoufand five hundred years, it appears unaccountable, that no mention of it, no occafion of even the obfcureft allufion to it, fhould occur either in the general hiftory of the world before the call of Abraham, which contains, we admit, only a few memoirs of its early ages, and thofe extremely abridged; or, which is more to be wondered at, in that of the lives of the three first Jewish patriarchs, which, in many parts of the account, is fufficiently circumftantial and domeftic. Nor is there, in the paffage above quoted from the fixteenth chapter of Exodus, any intimation that the fabbath, then appointed to be obferved, was only the revival of an ancient inftitution, which had been neglected, forgotten, or fufpended; nor is any fuch neglect imputed either to the inhabitants of the old world, or to any part of the family of Noah; nor, laftly, is any permiffion recorded to difpenfe with the inftitution during the captivity of the Jews in Egypt, or on any other public emergency.

The paffage in the second chapter of Genefis, which creates the whole controverfy upon the fubject, is not inconfiftent with this opinion; for as the feventh day was erected into a fabbath, on account of God's refting that day from the work of the creation, it was natural enough for the historian, when he had related the history of the creation, and of God's ceafing from

upon

it on the seventh day, to add, "and God blessed the feventh day, and fanctified it, because that on it he had refted from all his work which God created and made;" although the bleffing and fanctification, i.e. the religious diftinction and appropriation of that day, were not actually made till many ages afterwards. The words do not affert, that God then "bleffed" and "fanctified" the feventh day, but that he bleffed and fanctified it for that reafon; and if any ask why the fabbath, or fanctification of the feventh day, was then mentioned, if it was not then appointed, the answer is at hand; the order of connexion, and not of time, introduced the mention of the fabbath, in the history of the fubject which it was ordained to commemorate.

This interpretation is ftrongly fupported by a paffage in the prophet Ezekiel, where the fabbath is plainly fpoken of as given, and what else can that mean, but as first inftituted, in the wilderness?" Wherefore I caufed them to go forth out of the land of Egypt, and brought them into the wildernefs; and I gave them my statutes, and fhewed them my judgments, which if a man do, he shall even live in them: moreover alfo I gave them my fabbaths, to be a fign between me and them, that they might know that I am the Lord that fanctify them." Ezek. xx. 10, 11, 12.

Nehemiah alfo recounts the promulgation of the fabbatic law amongst the tranfactions in the wilderncfs; which fupplies another confiderable argument in aid of our opinion: "Moreover thou leddeft them in the day by a cloudy pillar, and in the night by a pillar of fire to give them light in the way wherein they fhould go. Thou cameft down alfo upon Mount Sinai, and Ipaked with them from heaven, and gavest them right judgments and true laws, good statutes and commandments, and madeft known unto them thy holy fabbath, and commandedft them precepts, ftatutes and laws, by the hand of Mofes thy fervant, and gaveft them bread from heaven for their hunger, and broughtest forth water for them out of the rock."* Neb.ix. 12.

From the mention of the fabbath in fo close a connexion with the defcent of God upon Mount Sinai, and the delivery of the law from thence, one would