diminish their reverence for it, and eventually either throw off all restraint upon it, or, a few perfunctory services got through, spend the remainder of it, if not in licentiousness, at least in frivolity. The Continent may furnish a warning in this matter."

Which of these two antagonistic opinions has greater reason on its side-whether either of them is entirely free from objection or to be admitted without qualification—whether they have any, and if so, what elements in common, I now invite you to inquire, not indeed directly, but indirectly, by examination, that is, into the origin, history, and present obligation of that Holy Day which we have every interest in honoring, but which is very likely to be dishonored, if advocated on grounds inconsistent with Scripture, and with the facts of the world without and within. We live in an age in which the titles, so to speak, of our ordinances are examined into with most exact and juridical strictness. Men, rightly or wrongly, (for my own part I believe rightly), demand that no weaker evidence should be given of the right of the Lord's Day to succeed, in whatever degree, to the honors of the Sabbath, than of the right of a family to possess the temporal honors or the estates of a family which has preceded it. And, let me add, if they find it laying claim to a sanction which cannot be satisfactorily substantiated, they are inclined to look incredulously upon, or not to examine at all,

the sanctions which it really possesses. So true are those words of Aristotle:33 Οἱ γὰρ περὶ τῶν ἐν τοῖς πάθεσι καὶ ταῖς πράξεσι λόγοι ἧττόν εἰσι πιστοὶ τῶν ἔργων. Οταν οὖν διαφωνῶσι τοῖς κατὰ τὴν αἴσθησιν καταφρονούμενοι καὶ τἀληθὲς προσαναιροῦσιν. I propose, under God's blessing, to conduct my inquiry by illustrating in succession a certain number of positions which appear to embrace the whole subject. With a statement of these positions I shall occupy the remainder of this day's Lecture.

That the Lord's Day,34 (a festival on the first day in each week in memory of our Lord's Resurrection), is of Divine institution and peculiarly Christian in its character, as being indicated in the New Testament, and having been acknowledged and observed by the Apostles and their immediate followers as distinct from the Sabbath, (a Jewish festival on the seventh day in each week), the obligation to observe which is denied, both expressly and by implication, in the New Testament.

That in the two centuries $5 after the death of St. John the Lord's Day was never confounded with the Sabbath, but carefully distinguished from it, as an institution under the law of liberty, as observed on a different day and with different feelings; and moreover, that, as a matter of fact, it was exempt from the severity of the provisions which had been the characteristic of the Sabbath in theory, or in practice, or in both.

That after the first three centuries," a new era in the history of the Lord's Day commenced ; tendencies towards Sabbatarianism, or confusion of the Christian with the Jewish institution, beginning to manifest themselves. These, however, were slight, until the end of the Fifth Century, and are traceable chiefly to and in the civil legislation of the period. Afterwards they37 developed themselves more decidedly; Sabbatarianism became at length systematized, in one of its phases, in the ante-Reformation Church both in England and on the Continent by the later Schoolmen, probably in their desire to lay down exact rules for consciences, and under a fancied necessity of urging the precedent of Jewish enactments in support of Christian Holy-Days.

That Sabbatarianism, of every phase,38 was expressly repudiated by the chief reformers of almost every country, (even by Calvin, the friend of Knox, and by Knox himself," who is supposed, though incorrectly, to have introduced it into Scotland), and in particular that it does not appear in the fully authorized documents of the Church of England.

40

That Sabbatarianism, as a dogma, sprang up in England in this way. Men had been educated to reverence the Lord's Day, and happily retained their early prepossessions. But, in the reaction from the bondage of tradition which was the result of the Reformation, they determined,

rightly enough, to believe nothing except what could be proved by Scripture. Unfortunately they went on to demand from Scripture, in reference to the Lord's Day, more than, as a law of liberty, it could be expected to supply, i.e. exact rules for the observance of the day, and passages in which the day, (or something like it, for the age was not a critical one), seemed to be legislatively enjoined. Accordingly, (defending themselves, if assailed, by a false method of spiritualizing, or, unintentionally of course, by a transparent fallacy of an ambiguous term), they took a good deal of what is said in Scripture of the Sabbath, and unhesitatingly applied it to the Lord's Day. To this period, by the way, must be assigned the common use of the phrase Christian Sabbath, which had hitherto been quite rare, if indeed it had been at all known in the Church.

That Sabbatarianism, as a practical tenet," was rendered acceptable to earnest men in England as a refuge, they may have thought it the only refuge, from the laxity with which the Lord's Day was observed even after the Reformation had fairly set in; such laxity being a remnant of Rome, whose practice differed much from the theory of her Schoolmen. But that it was not introduced as a dogma without attracting immediate notice from writers, generally of a sounder character, but inclined to advance too far in the opposite direction; or as a practical tenet without provoking

that almost systematic lowering in the tone of the Lord's Day which was evidenced in that strongest and strangest development of Dominicalism, the Book of Sports.

That meanwhile," through all the fluctuations of opinion within and about the English Church, and though her Prayer-book was frequently revised, Sabbatarianism never succeeded in establishing itself formally in any of her fully authorized docu

ments.

That this assertion 3 is quite compatible with the introduction into the Liturgy of the Fourth Commandment and the accompanying responsive petition, (in the Second Book of King Edward the Sixth), which may be understood and used without either volatilizing that particular Commandment or impairing the authority of the Decalogue as in general moral.

That the position" that the Fourth Commandment is binding in the very letter, and is par excellence the ground for the observance of our weekly festival, proves too much, for it would drive us either to the observance of Saturday, (as the advanced and more consistent Sabbatarians urged), or, at the very least, to a Judaic observance of the Lord's Day.

That Sabbatarianism," the strange varieties of which really demand serious notice, is a return not merely to Judaism but to theoretic Romanism.

46

That the mention of God's rest after the Crea