how true soever of the infant settlement, was true only by accommodation of Rome in its maturer days. Still piety, or poetry, or both, tenaciously clung to the old name.

But I speak not of edifices or cities, except so far as the popular handling of their legends may illustrate certain points which are my more immediate concern. I dismiss them with the further remarks, that inquiry into the real state of their case is never objected to in the archæologist; that he is allowed, if he does it with candour, to sift their annals to the uttermost; and that nothing of real value is ever destroyed by his investigations.

And now I pass on to observe that this tendency of the human mind to invest comparatively modern things with the sanctions and associations of the past, is discoverable in its treatment of institutions; in its treatment especially of that Divine and Apostolical Institution, I mean "the Lord's Day," which, (I trust not rashly, but rather as one treading on holy ground), I have undertaken to examine in such a place and before such an assembly. My excuse for doing so will be found in the following considerations. I believe that great confusion of thought exists on this deeply important subject, and that the institution in question, though sufficiently venerable in itself, has been regarded as identical with, instead of at the most analogous to, one of greater antiquity indeed, but of more limited application, the Sabbath

of the Fourth Commandment. I believe that from this confusion have arisen not merely misapprehensions of a speculative nature, but errors affecting practice, and productive of misunderstandings among brethren. I see that the result has been, on the part of the more learned Clergy, an avoidance of a topic which they cannot treat of logically and historically without being exposed to obloquy, and which they cannot treat of popularly without apologizing to their self-respect and sense of duty: on the part of the better informed Laity, a distaste for a doctrine, which, treated, (as it generally is), illogically and with want of historical precision, they condemn together with its advocates, and dismiss summarily, either as a clumsy artifice or as a burthen too heavy to be borne. But I see, further, that this was not always so; that there was a time when Κυριακὴ and Σάββατον respectively had their meanings accurately and sharply defined. Hence I venture to hope that an attempt to restate those meanings, and to clear up certain difficulties connected with them, may not be altogether in vain.

I will only make two requests; the first, that the liberty of candid inquiry, so readily allowed in other matters, may be as readily allowed here; the second, that my audience will carefully discriminate between two things, which, though essentially distinct, are often confounded in popular nomenclature, a respectful desire to set an insti

tution on its true basis, and a disrespectful desire to undermine it. I hold this institution to be, in a spiritual sense of the words, "The day which the Lord hath made;" "I rejoice and am glad in it:" and I believe the way in which it is regarded to be no uncertain index of Christian steadfastness or decline, signum aut stantis aut cadentis Christiani."

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The terms of my subject are these: "The origin, history, and present obligation of the "Lord's Day or Sunday." Philosophically speaking, these terms embrace the whole reason of that day, its past history, its present state, its transition to that state, its destination. Of the method in which I shall treat of it, and of the date to be assumed for its commencement, I shall speak presently. But, before doing so, as controversy on the subject has existed chiefly in, and on the borders of, the English Church, I would mention a few of the theories which have been propounded in England concerning it since the Reformation, an acquaintance with which may be useful to us in the discussion which is to follow. Their diversity will at any rate justify an attempt to exhibit some view which shall bind the conscience as scriptural, and satisfy the historical enquirer as consistent with early antiquity; which shall leave a law under Christianity, and yet involve no Jewish legality. I do not at this moment enter at length on their comparative merits or defects. These will appear as

we proceed. I do little more than state the theories themselves as concisely but as fairly as I can, giving not the exact words, but what appears to be the spirit of the several theorists.

Here then is the first view.5

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Christianity admits of no distinction of days. "The whole Mosaic Law, call it what you will, "ceremonial, political, moral, has been fulfilled "and has past away. Christ did not Himself in"stitute, He did not give authority to others to "institute, nor may others institute without His "authority, any special day of worship or rest in "lieu of or in succession to the Sabbath. There"fore, the Sunday is altogether a fiction; there is now either no Sabbath at all, or, if the mere "word be contended for, it may be understood "that a true Christian now observes a spiritual"every-day-Sabbath, a type of the better Sabbath "in heaven." These tenets were advocated by certain Antinomians and Anabaptists.

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And here is the second view, though, perhaps, chronologically speaking, it should stand after the third, of which it is the honest development.

"The Decalogue is altogether and in every part "of it moral. The Sabbath, therefore, which is enjoined in it, is still in force under Christianity, "for our Lord did not come to destroy the law. Though generally observed on the first day in "the week, it cannot be observed on that day "without sin. It ought to be observed on the

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"Seventh day, that is, on Saturday, and of course "with all the rigor prescribed both in the Fourth "Commandment, and in other parts of Scripture." This is what may be called the extreme Sabbatarian view. It was partially held in England during the seventeenth century. There are a few professors of it now, but they are chiefly to be found in America. Its most prominent champion was a certain Theophilus Brabourne,' who published more than one work upon it. He was formally answered by Bishop Francis White, of Ely, whose name we shall meet with again.

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"The Sabbath existed from the beginning, was "re-enacted and regulated by Moses, and has "never since been abolished or superseded. The day indeed has been changed, but, as 'the seventh 'day' and 'one day in seven' obviously mean the "same thing, we may fairly transfer to the first 'day, whatever Scripture says of the seventh day. "Thus our Sabbath, for so we prefer to designate

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it, must be observed as strictly as was that of "the Jews, in the wilderness under Moses, or in "Jerusalem under Nehemiah." This is, on the whole, the Sabbatarian view as it appears in the celebrated work of Dr. Nicholas Bownd,' which was first put forth A.D. 1595, and afterwards republished with additions A.D. 1606. It was formalized by the Westminster Divines in the statements made in their "Confession of Faith" and their