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their order and end, is, as was said, included herein. What he might learn from them, or what God taught him by them, was no less his duty, than what his own inbred light directed him to, Rom. i. 18-20. Thus the framing of the world in six days, in six days of work, was intended to be instructive to man, as well as the consideration of the things materially that were made. God could have immediately produced all out of nothing, svatopew, ay ginn aplaus, in the shortest measure of time conceivable. But he not only made all things for himself, or his glory, but disposed also the order of their production unto the same end. And herein consisted part of that covenant instruction which he gave unto man in that condition wherein he was made, that through him he might have glory ascribed unto him, on the account of his works themselves, as also of the order and manner of their creation. For it is vain to imagine, that the world was made in six days, and those closed with a day of rest, without a special respect to the obedience of rational creatures, seeing absolutely with respect to God himself, neither of them was ne cessary. And what he intended to teach them thereby, it was their duty to inquire and know. Hereby then in general, man was taught obedience and working before he entered into rest. For being created in the image of God, he was to conform himself to God. As God wrought before he rested, so was he to work before his rest; his condition rendering working in him obedience, which in God was an effect of sovereignty. And by the rest of God, or his satisfaction and complacency in what he had made and done, he was instructed to seek rest with God, or to enter into that rest of God, by his compliance with the ends intended.

§ 17. And whereas the innate light and principles of his own mind informed him, that some time was to be set apart to the solemn worship of God, as he was a rational creature made to give glory unto him; so the instruction he received by the works and rest of God, as made under a covenant, taught him, that one day in seven was required to that purpose, as also to be a pledge of his resting with God. It may be, it will be said, that man could not know, that the world was made in six days, and that the rest of God ensued on the seventh, without some special revelation. I answer, 1. That I know not. He that knew the nature of all the creatures, and could give them names suited thereto, upon his first sight and view of them, might know more of the order of their creation, than we can well imagine. For we know no more in our lapsed condition, to what the light of nature directed man as walking before God in a covenant, than men merely natural do know of the guidance and conduct of the light and law of grace, in them who are taken into a new covenant.

2. However, what God instructed him in, even by revelation, as to the due consideration and improvement of the things that belonged unto the law of his creation, that is to be esteemed as a part thereof. Institutions of things by special revelation that had no foundation in the law or light of nature, were merely positive; such were the commands concerning the trees of life, and of the knowledge of good and evil. But such as were directive of natural light, and of the order of the creation, were moral, and belonged to the general law of obedience. Such was the special command given to man to till and keep the garden, Gen. ii. 15. or to dress and improve the place of his habitation. For this in general the law of his creation required. Now this God did, both as to his works and his rest. Neither do I know that any one has as yet questioned, whether Adam and the patriarchs that lived before the giving of the law, knew that the world was created in six days. Though some seem to speak doubtfully hereof, and some by direct consequence deny it, yet I suppose that hitherto it passeth as granted. Nor have they, who dispute that the Sabbath was neither instituted, known, nor observed before the people of Israel were in the wilderness, once attempted to confirm their opinion with this supposition, that the patriarchs from the foundation of the world, knew not that the world was made in six days; which yet alone would be effectual unto their purpose. Nor, on the other side, can it be once rationally imagined, that if they had knowledge hereof, and therewithal of the rest which ensued thereon, that they had no regard unto it in the worship of God.

§ 18. And thus the Sabbath, or the observance of one day in seven as a sacred rest, was fixed on the same moral grounds with monogamy, or the marriage of one man to one woman only at the same time; which from the very fact and order of the creation, our Saviour proves to have been an unchangeable part of the law of it. For because God made them two single persons, male and female, fit for individual conjunction, he concludes that this course of life they were everlastingly obliged not to alter, nor transgress. As therefore men may dispute that polygamy is not against the law of nature, because it was allowed and practised by many, or by most of those who of old observed and improved the light and rule of nature to the uttermost, when yet the very factum and order of the creation is sufficient to evince the contrary so, although men should dispute, that the observance of the sacred rest of one day in seven, is not of the light nor law of nature, all whose rules and dictates, they say, are of an easy discovery, and prone to the observation of all men, which this is not; yet the order of the creation, and the rest of God that ensued thereon, is sufficient to evince the contrary. And in the re

newing of the law upon mount Sinai, God taught the people not only by the words that he spake, but also by the works that he wrought. Yea, he instructed them in a moral duty, not only by what he did, but by what he did not. For he declares, that they ought to make no images of, or unto him, because he made no representation of himself unto them, "they saw no manner of similitude, on the day that the Lord spake unto them in Horeb, out of the midst of the fire," Deut. iv. 15, 16.

§ 19. But now, to shut up this discourse; whereas the covenant which man originally was taken into, was a covenant of works, wherein his obtaining rest with God, depended absolutely on his doing all the work he had to do in a way of legal obedience; he was during the dispensation of that covenant, tied up precisely to the observance of the seventh day, or that day which followed the whole work of creation. And the seventh day, as such, is a pledge and token of the rest promised in the covenant of works, and of no other. And those who would advance that day again into a necessary observance, do consequentially introduce the whole covenant of works, and are become debtors unto the whole law. For the works of God which preceded the seventh day precisely, were those whereby man was initiated into and instructed in the covenant of works; and the day itself was a token and pledge of the righteousness thereof; or a moral and natural sign of it, and of the rest of God therein, and of the rest of man with God thereby. And it is no service to the church of God, nor hath any tendency unto the honour of Christ in the gospel, to endeavour a reduction of us unto the covenant of nature.

$20. Thus was man instructed in the whole notion of a weekly sacred rest, by all the ways and means which God was pleased to use in giving him an acquaintance with his will, and with that obedience to his glory which he expected from him. For this knowledge he had partly by the law of his creation as innate unto him, or concreated with the principles of his nature; being the necessary exsurgency of his rational constitution; and partly by the works and rest of God, thereon proposed unto his consideration, both confirmed by God's declaration of his sanctification of the seventh day. Hence did he know, that it was his duty to express and celebrate the rest of God, or the complacency that he had in the works of his hands, in reference unto their great and proper end, or his glory, in the honour, praise and obedience of them, unto whose contemplation they were proposed, for those ends. This followed immediately from the time spent in the creation, and the rest that ensued thereon, which were sò ordered for his instruction; and not from any other cause or reason taken either from the nature of God, or of the things themselves; which required neither six days to make the world in,

nor any rest to follow thereon. For that rest was not a cessation from working absolutely, much less merely so. Hence did he learn the nature of the covenant that he was taken into; namely how he was first to work in obedience, and then to enter into God's rest in blessedness. For so had God appointed, and so did he understand his will, from his own present state and condition. Hence was he instructed to dedicate to God, and to his own more immediate communion with him, one day in a weekly revolution, wherein the whole law of his creation was consummated, as a pledge and means of entering eternally into God's rest, which from hence he understood to be his end and happiness. And for the sanctification of the seventh day of the week precisely, he had it by revelation, or God's sanctification of it, which had unto him the nature of a potitive law, being a determination of the day suited unto the nature and tenor of that covenant wherein he walked with God.

§ 21. And by this superadded command or institution, the mind of man was confirmed in the meaning and intention of his innate principles, and other instructions to the same purpose in general. All these things, I say, the last only excepted, was he directed unto, in and by the innate principles of light and obedience, wherewith the faculties of his soul were furnished, every way suited to guide him in the whole of the duty required of him ; and by the farther instruction he had from the other works of God, and his rest upon the whole. And although, it may be, we cannot now discern, how in particular his natural light might conduct and guide him to the observance of all these things, yet ought we not therefore to deny that so it did, seeing there is evidence in the things themselves, and we know not well what that light was, which was in him. For although we may have some due apprehensions of the substance of it, from its remaining ruins and materials in our lapsed condition, yet we have no acquaintance with that light and glorious lustre, that extent of its directive beams, which it was accompanied withal, when it was in him as he came immediately from the hand of God, created in his image. We have lost more by the fall, than the best and wisest in the world can apprehend, whilst they are in it; much more than most will acknowledge, whose principal design seems to be, to extenuate the sin and misery of man, which issueth necessarily in an undervaluation of the love and grace of Jesus Christ. But if a natural or carnal man cannot discern how the Spirit or grace of the new covenant, which succeeds in the room of our first innate light, as unto the ends of our living unto God's glory in a new way, directs and guides those in whom it is, unto the observance of all the duties of it; let us not wonder if we cannot easily and readily comprehend the brightness and extent, and

guidance of that light, which was suited unto a state of things that never was in the world, since the fall, but only in the man Christ Jesus; whose wisdom and knowledge in the mind and will of God, even thereby, without his superadded peculiar assistances, we may rather admire, than think to understand.

22. Thus then were the foundations of the old world laid, and the covenant of man's obedience established, when all the sons of God sang for joy; even in the first rest of God, and in the expression of it by the sanctification of a sacred rest, to return unto him a revenue of glory, in man's observance of it. And on these grounds, I do affirm, that the weekly observance of a day to God for Sabbath ends, is a duty natural and moral, which we are under a perpetual and indispensable obligation unto; namely, from that command of God, which being a part of the law of our creation, is moral, indispensable and perpetual. And these things, with the different apprehensions of others about them, and oppositions unto them, must now be farther explained and considered. For we now enter upon the consideration of the judgment and opinions of others about these things, with the confirmation of our own.

§ 23. In the inquiry after the causes of the Sabbath, the first question usually insisted on, is concerning the nature of the law, whereby its observance is commanded. This some affirm to be moral, some only positive, as we have shewed before. And many disputes there have been, about the true notion and distinction of laws moral and positive. But whereas these terms are invented to express the conceptions of men's minds, and that of moral at least, includes not any absolute determinate sense in the meaning of the word; those at variance about them, cannot impose their sense and understanding of them upon one another. For seeing this denomination of moral applied unto a law, is taken from the subject-matter of it, which is the manners or duties of them to whom the law is given, if any one will assert that every command of God, which respects the manners of men, that is of all men absolutely as men, is moral, I know not how any one can compel him to speak or think otherwise, for he hath his liberty to use the word in that sense which he judgeth most proper. And if it can be proved, that there is a law, and ever was, binding all men universally to the observance of an hebdomadal sacred rest, I shall not contend with any, how that law ought to be called, whether moral or positive. This contest therefore I shall not engage in, though I have used, and shall yet further use, those terms in their common sense and acceptation. My way shall be plainly to inquire, what force there is in the law of our creation unto the observance of a weekly Sabbath, and what