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after-thought, was a matter of Christian expediency only, was the result of their disappoint"ment at discovering that men could not at once "do without something like the provisions of the abolished Jewish law. It was therefore only "intended to be a temporary re-enactment of the spirit of the Fourth Commandment, and was to "endure no longer than men should require such an aid to their Christianity. The re-enactors of course hoped and believed that this would soon "cease to be the case; and doubtless St. Paul, were he to revisit earth at present, would be

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surprised to find that Christians had not yet "learned to dispense with an institution, too

similar, alas! to that which the Jews required." Another writer 25 has gone yet further, and urged that special days for religious duties not merely

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argue a low state of religion, but are, in their

very nature, a serious injury to religion."

The sixth and last view which I have to bring forward, that of Archbishop Bramhall," agrees with what is called the purely Ecclesiastical view in considering the Sabbath to be abrogated; and in disconnecting the Lord's Day from the particular provisions of the Fourth Commandment. The Archbishop has, indeed, an expression which introduces a Sabbatarian element into his system; he considers the weekly festival to be rather changed from one day to another than superseded by a new institution. But apart from this inconsistency, his

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view invests the Sunday with a more imposing origin than does that which is purely Ecclesiastical, or rather bestows upon the word Ecclesiastical itself a deeper significance. "What was the authority by which this change was made? If it was "not made by our Lord's authority, which there is no cause to doubt, at least it was made by that of "the Apostles. It is undeniable that the Lord's Day is an Apostolical tradition, and it is not so "clear that there is no precept for the change in

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Holy Scripture. As for the manner of observing "the Lord's Day, we obtain a guidance for this, "not in set terms, but from considerations of the "law of nature, and of the evangelical law, and "also from the positive law of the old Sabbath ; "not by force of its terms or by preceptive obli"gation, but by its being explanatory of the law of "nature." Thus writes Archbishop Bramhall— and to the extent of holding "the assembling upon "the first day of the week for the purposes of 'public worship and religious instruction to be a "law of Christianity of Divine appointment," Archdeacon Paley 27 supports him. Bishop Prideaux 28 and Bishop Cosin 29 had anticipated him, and avoided that confusion between change and superseding into which he fell. But the venerable author of "The Saint's Rest," I mean Richard Baxter,30 (though he also is partially Sabbatarian, and indeed holds that the Sabbath was communicated to Adam), is perhaps the clearest expositor of the

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main points of this view.

"I believe, (says he),

"1. That Christ did commission His Apostles to "teach us all things which He commanded, and "to settle orders in His Church. 2. And that He gave them His Spirit to enable them to do all "this infallibly, by bringing all His words to “their remembrance, and by leading them into all "truth. 3. And that His Apostles by this Spirit "did de facto separate the Lord's Day for holy "worship, especially in Church assemblies, and "declared the cessation of the Jewish Sabbaths.

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4. And that as this change had the very same "author as the Holy Scriptures, (the Holy Ghost "in the Apostles), so that fact hath the same kind "of proof that we have of the Canon, and of the integrity and uncorruptness of the particular Scripture Books and Texts: and that, if so much Scripture as mentioneth the keeping of the Lord's Day, expounded by the consent and practice of "the Universal Church from the days of the Apostles, (all keeping this day as holy, without "the dissent of any one Sect, or single person, "that I remember to have read of), I say, if all "this history will not fully prove the point of fact, "that this day was kept in the Apostles' times, "and consequently by their appointment, then the "same proof will not serve to evince that any text "of Scripture is Canonical and uncorrupted; nor can we think that anything in the world, that is past, can have historical proof.'

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Of course I have not intended this enumeration to be an exhaustive one.31 I have even purposely omitted such authors as embrace in their systems features belonging to very different schoolsHooker, for instance, and Bishop Stillingfleet. But on the whole, so far as I have been able to classify them, these are the leading opinions upon the relation of Sunday to the Sabbath which have struggled for mastery in England since the Reformation to the present hour. They have caused and are causing great contention, partly indeed by the principles supposed to be involved in them, but more, perhaps, (such is the practical character of the English people), by the results to which one class of them leads, and to which the other is supposed to have a tendency to lead. I say "one" and "the other," for we may reduce the six to two. The no Sabbath or perpetual Sabbath opinion, and that which advocates the Saturday Sabbath, may be omitted from our estimate altogether; they are rarely to be found now, at least in a substantive shape, though the former of them has reappeared as an excrescence of the purely Ecclesiastical view. Of the remainder, the third and fourth may be called-I do not use the word in an invidious sense-the Sabbatarian,32 and the fifth and sixth the Dominical set of opinions. "These Sabbatarians, (say the Dominicals), would introduce Judaism into the Christian Church, revive ordinances which have long since past away, impose

upon consciences burthens which the Jews found too heavy to be borne, call acts by the name of sins which God has not so called; in fact, against the advice of St. Paul, submit to be judged in respect of the Sabbath days.' We find fault with the assumption, (unheard of in the ancient Church), that the Fourth Commandment is the ground of the observance of Sunday; with the Logic which says, because God commanded aforetime that the seventh day should be kept holy by Jews, therefore the first day is to be kept holy by Christians now; and, as practical men, we find fault with the tristesse and rigor which the Sabbatarian theory of Sunday would introduce into the cheerful dispensation of Christianity. Scotland is an instance in point."

"These Dominicals, (thus argue the Sabbatarians on the other hand), evidently cast a slur on the volume of the Old Testament; evidently set at nought the word of God uttered at the Creation and solemnly repeated at the giving of the Decalogue; evidently use dishonestly a prayer which they breathe every time they publicly hear the Fourth Commandment; evidently substitute for a divine foundation of Sunday, one of mere human invention, the authority of the Church. Besides, as practical men, we fear that if we do not adopt and urge for the Lord's Day the divine sanctions and regulations with which Scripture has invested and ordered the seventh day, men will gradually

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