man can reprove it or undervalue it, but he that knows neither spiritual arts nor spiritual necessities. But by the doctors of the church it is called the nourishment of prayer, the restraint of lust, the wings of the soul, the diet of angels, the instrument of humility and self-denial, the purification of the spirit and the paleness and meagreness of visage which is consequent to the daily fast of great mortifiers, is by St. Basil said to be the mark in the forehead which the angel observed when he signed the saints in the forehead to escape the wrath of God. [*The soul that is greatly vexed, which goeth stooping and feeble, and the eyes that fail, and the hungry soul, shall give thee praise and righteousness, O Lord.] SECT. VI. Of keeping Festivals, and Days Holy to the Lord: particularly the Lord's-Day. TRUE natural religion, that which was common to all nations and ages, did principally rely upon four great propositions: 1. That there is one God; 2. That God is nothing of those things which we see ; 3. That God takes care of all things below, and governs all the world; 4. That he is the great Creator of all things without himself: and according to these were framed the first four precepts of the decalogue. In the first, the unity of the godhead is expressly affirmed. In the second, his invisibility and immate *Baruch. ii. 18. riality. In the third is affirmed God's government and providence, by avenging them that swear falsely by his name; by which also his omniscience is declared. In the fourth commandment he proclaims himself the maker of heaven and earth; for in memory of God's rest from the work of six days, the seventh was hallowed into a sabbath; and the keeping it was a confessing God to be the great Maker of heaven and earth, and consequently to this, it also was a confession of his goodness, his omnipotence, and his wisdom, all which were written with a sun-beam in the great book of the creature. So long as the law of the sabbath was bound upon God's people, so long God would have that to be the solemn manner of confessing these attributes: but when, the priesthood being changed, there was a change also of the law, the great duty remained unalterable in changed circumstances. We are eternally bound to confess God Almighty to be the maker of heaven and earth; but the manner of confessing it is changed from a rest, or a doing nothing, to a speaking something; from a day to a symbol, from a ceremony to a substance, from a Jewish rite to a Christian duty: we profess it in our creed, we confess it in our lives, we describe it by every line of our life, by every action of duty; by faith and trust, and obedience: and we do also upon great reason comply with the Jewish. manner of confessing the creation, so far as it is instrumental to a real duty. We keep one day in seven, and so confess the manner and circumstance of the creation; and we rest also that we may tend holy duties: so imitating God's rest better than the Jew in Synesius, who lay upon his face from evening to evening, and could not by stripes or wounds be raised up to steer the ship in a great storm. God's rest was not a natural cessation; he who could not labour, could not be said to rest: but God's rest is to be understood to be a beholding and a rejoicing in his work finished; and therefore we truly represent God's rest, when we confess and rejoice in God's works and God's glory. This the Christian church does upon every day, but especially upon the Lord's-day, which she hath set apart for this and all other offices of religion, being determined to this day by the resurrection of her dearest Lord, it being the first day of joy the church ever had. And now upon the Lord's-day we are not tied to the rest of the sabbath, but to all the work of the sabbath and we are to abstain from bodily labour, not because it is a direct duty to us as it was to the Jews, but because it is necessary in order to our duty that we attend to the offices of religion. The observation of the Lord's-day differs nothing from the observation of the sabbath in the matter of religion, but in the manner. They differ in the ceremony and external rite: rest with them was the principal; with us it is the accessory. They differ in the office or forms of worship: for they were then to worship God as a Creator and a gentle Father; we are to add to that, our Redeemer, and all his other excellencies and mercies. And though we have more natural and proper reason to keep the Lord's-day than the sabbath, yet the Jews had a divine commandment for their day, which we have not for ours: but we have many commandments to do all that honour to God which was intended in the fourth commandment, and the Apostles appointed the first day of the week for doing it in solemn assemblies. And the manner of worshipping God, and doing him solemn honour and service upon this day, we may best observe in the following measures. Rules for keeping the Lord's-Day and other 1. When you go about to distinguish festival-days from common, do it not by lessening the devotions of ordinary days, that the common devotion may seem bigger upon festivals: but on every day keep your ordinary devotions entire, and enlarge upon the holy-day. 2. Upon the Lord's-day we must abstain from all servile and laborious works, except such which are matters of necessity, of common life, or of great charity for these are permitted by that authority which hath separated the day for holy uses. The sabbath of the Jews, though consisting principally in rest, and established by God, did yield to these. The labour of love and the labours of religion were not against the reason and the spirit of the commandment, for which the letter was decreed, and to which it ought to minister. And therefore much more is it so on the Lord's-day, where the letter is wholly turned into spirit, and there is no commandment of God but of spiritual and holy actions. The priests might kill their beasts and dress them for sacrifice; and Christ, though born under the law, might heal a sick man, and the sick man might carry his bed to witness his recovery, and confess the mercy, and leap and dance to God for joy; and an ox might be led to water, and an ass be hauled out of a ditch; and a man may take physic, and he may eat meat, and therefore there were of necessity some to prepare and minister it and the performing these labours did not consist in minutes and just determining stages, but they had, even then, a reasonable latitude; so only as to exclude unnecessary labour, or such as did not minister to charity or religion. And therefore this is to be enlarged in the gospel, whose sabbath or rest is but a circumstance, and accessory to the principal and spiritual duties. Upon the Christian sabbath necessity is to be served first, then charity, and then religion; for this is to give place to charity in great instances, and the second to the first in all; and in all cases, God is to be worshipped in spirit and in truth. 3. The Lord's-day, being the remembrance of a great blessing, must be a day of joy; festivity, spiritual rejoicing, and thanksgiving: and therefore it is a proper work of the day to let your devotions spend themselves in singing or reading psalms, in recounting the great works of God, in remembering his mercies, in worshipping his excellencies, in celebrating his attributes, in admiring his person, in sending portions of pleasant meat to them for whom nothing is provided, and in all the arts and instruments of advancing God's glory and the reputation of religion, in which it |