pacific conduct of the Jews, whether believers or unbelievers, who were too strongly attached to the sabbath to have acquiesced quietly in its repeal, had there been any; and also from the existence of Christians who kept it in the age succeeding that of the apostles, whose practice the Fathers never speak of as a novelty, or as a revival of something obsolete. In a word, as conjecture and presumption are not sufficient grounds for the admission of a new law, neither are they sufficient grounds for the abandonment of an old

one.

Such is the summary of the arguments for the continuance and universal obligation of the seventh day sabbath. How can any one justly call it the Jewish sabbath in any sense, except as he uses the phrases Jewish Scriptures and Jewish God, when a Christian sabbath distinct from the Jewish one is unknown to the New Testament, which gives the title of sabbath exclusively to the seventh day? What amazing force would this chain of reasoning add to the enactment of the Legislature relative to sanctifying the first day,

* Jehovah at one time condescended to stand in the rela tion of a king to the Jews. Is he, then, the God of the Jews only? Is he not the God of the Gentiles also? In like manner, the seventh day answered particular purposes to the Jews, without losing its claim to the regard of the Gentiles.

and to the obligation of keeping it according to law, if it applied to the first day as it does to the seventh! Whether any of those who secularize Sunday externally and publicly are transgressors of that which they believe in their consciences to be a divine law, (as they undoubtedly are of a human law, and justly deserving of punishment for it, too,) I shall not say. But I have no hesitation in saying that the heinous guilt and pecu. liar danger attached to sabbath-beaking are unquestionably incurred, whenever the neglect or violation of the seventh day sabbath is persisted in in opposition to light, or to the duty of coming to the light-whether in the case of an individual, or of a society, small or great.

I close the Chapter with reciting a fragment of a prayer which a Sabbatarian was accustomed to offer the evening and the morning of his sabbath :

I would call to mind the Creation, thy great and good work, though now marred, of which I am a part. I bless thee for making me wiser than the beasts that perish, and for all thou hast done for me these many years, praying for the continuance of thy mercies through the remainder of life-in death-and for ever. I would not substitute nature, chance, or human agency, for Thee, who art the only living and true God. I would see thy glory not only in the

Here

upper and better world, but in this lower world -in thy conduct toward man and beast. thou didst accomplish the glorious work of redemption, without which, under the present apostate, guilty, wretched, and helpless circumstances of my nature, my being would inevitably prove a curse to me instead of a blessing. Here thou callest thy people, and fittest them for heaven. Here thou glorifiest thyself in them and by them. Enable me to co-operate knowingly, willingly, zealously, with thee, as the God of nature and providence, and more especially as the God of grace; and when thou shalt be pleased to remove me from this creation, or when it shall be burned, may I form a part of the new creation?

CONCLUSION.

IN the foregoing pages it will, I hope, be seen, that I have confined myself to the subject as much as possible. Though I have declared my sentiments with the freedom that becomes a Protestant and an Englishman, much more a Christian and a Christian minister, yet I have endeavoured to treat with proper respect my opponents

of every description, whether the pious or those of the opposite character-whether Churchmen or Dissenters-whether Christendom or the British Public-(what fearful odds exist!) In particular, I have been very careful to say nothing incompatible with that obedience which I owe to the laws of my country. I have shown that my opinion and practice relative to the weekly sabbath are by no means hostile to that regard which the Legislature demands for Sunday.

There are numbers of people who could bear the inconvenience of paying that regard which all ought to pay to it while the law so stands, and yet keep the seventh day holy as well as I, were they in like manner convinced that it was the sabbath of the Lord their God. Were it otherwise, I am not certain that the Legislature would be unwilling, upon application to it, to let those work six days who thought themselves still required by the Fourth Commandment to sanctify the old sabbath. Though the symmetry of religion's public appearance on the first day might be marred a little by the measure, yet neither religion itself, nor any civil or moral purpose, would suffer any more than as they were injured when the Act of Uniformity and the Schism Bill were liberally and justly exchanged for the Acts of Toleration.

Thus the tendency of the foregoing pages is

not to encourage the non-observance of Sunday in opposition to law, whatever tendency they may have to induce the Legislature to alter the law, so far as the law withholds from the Sabbatarians that liberty which is given to them by the Fourth Commandment. I have strongly and repeatedly inculcated obedience to the law in this particular, so long as the law continues as it is. Independent, however, of the law, the first day observer has no more a right to incommode or to grieve a Sabbatarian by labouring on his day, than the Sabbatarian has to incommode or to grieve the other by labouring on the other's day. The sensibility of the Sabbatarian to offences against the sanctity of his day, is no less acute than that of the first day observer to offences against the sanctity of his; and though it would be wounded in a body of people in an infinitely greater number of instances, were the Sabbatarian to obtain his just rights, than it is now, yet the shocks given to each individual would be infinitely fewer than those which are every week given to him. Important as public opinion, fashion, and general example, are in civil matters, they ought not to have any weight in an affair that lies entirely between God and the soul.*

* The multitude of fellow-sufferers in the case supposed, calculated as it may be to strike the eye of a spectator or a