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who directed the employment of others, would permit their slaves and labourers to rest from their work every seventh day or that civil government, indeed, would have submitted to the loss of a seventh part of the public industry, and that too in addition to the numerous festivals which the national religions indulged to the people; at least, this would have been an encumbrance, which might have greatly retarded the reception of Christianity in the world. In reality, the institution of a weekly sabbath is so connected with the functions of civil life, and requires so much of the concurrence of civil law, in its regulation and support, that it cannot, perhaps, properly be made the ordinance of any religion, till that religion be received as the religion of the state.

The opinion, that Christ and his Apostles meant to retain the duties of the Jewish sabbath, shifting only the day from the seventh to the first, seems to prevail without sufficient proof; nor does any evidence remain in Scripture (of what, however, is not improbable), that the first day of the week was thus distinguished in commemoration of our Lord's resurrection.

The conclusion from the whole inquiry

(for it is our business to follow the arguments, to whatever probability they conduct us), is this: The assembling upon the first day of the week for the purpose of public worship and religious instruction, is a law of Christianity, of Divine appointment; the resting on that day from our employments longer than we are detained from them by attendance upon these assemblies, is to Christians an ordinance of human institution; binding nevertheless upon the conscience of every individual of a country in which a weekly sabbath is established, for the sake of the beneficial purposes which the public and regular observance of it promotes, and recommended perhaps in some degree to the Divine approbation, by the resemblance it bears to what God was pleased to make a solemn part of the law which he delivered to the people of Israel, and by its subserviency to many of the same uses.

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BY WHAT

CHAPTER VIII.

ACTS AND OMISSIONS THE

DUTY OF THE CHRISTIAN SABBATH IS
VIOLATED.

SINCE the obligation upon Christians to comply with the religious observance of Sunday, arises from the public uses of the institution, and the authority of the apostolic practice, the manner of observing it ought to be that which best fulfils these uses, and conforms the nearest to this practice.

The uses proposed by the institution are; 1. To facilitate attendance upon public worship.

2. To meliorate the condition of the laborious classes of mankind, by regular and reasonable returns of rest.

3. By a general suspension of business and amusement, to invite and enable persons of every description to apply their time and thoughts to subjects appertaining to their salvation.

With the primitive Christians, the peculiar, and probably for some time the only, distinction of the first day of the week, was

the holding of religious assemblies upon that day. We learn, however, from the testimony of a very early writer amongst them, that they also reserved the day for religious meditations ;-Unusquisque nostrum (saith Irenæus) sabbatizat spiritualiter, meditatione legis gaudens, opificium Dei admirans.

WHEREFORE the duty of the day is vio

lated,

1st, By all such employments or engagements as (though differing from our ordinary occupation) hinder our attendance upon public worship, or take up so much of our time as not to leave a sufficient part of the day at leisure for religious reflection; as the going of journeys, the paying or receiving of visits which engage the whole day, or employing the time at home in writing letters, settling accounts, or in applying ourselves to studies, or the reading of books, which bear no relation to the business of religion.

2dly, By unnecessary encroachments on the rest and liberty which Sunday ought to bring to the inferior orders of the community; as by keeping servants on that day confined and busied in preparations for the superfluous elegancies of our table, or dress.

3dly, By such recreations as are custom

arily forborne out of respect to the day; as hunting, shooting, fishing, public diversions, frequenting taverns, playing at cards. or dice.

If it be asked, as it often has been, wherein consists the difference between walking out with your staff, or with your gun? between spending the evening at home, or in a tavern? between passing the Sunday afternoon at a game of cards, or in conversation not more edifying, nor always so inoffensive?--to these, and to the same question under a variety of forms, and in a multitude of similar examples, we return the following answer :That the religious observance of Sunday, if it ought to be retained at all, must be upholden by some public and visible distinctions that, draw the line of distinction where you will, many actions which are situated on the confines of the line, will differ very little, and yet lie on the opposite sides of it:-that every trespass upon that reserve which public decency has established, breaks down the fence by which the day is separated to the service of religion :—that it is unsafe to trifle with scruples and habits that have a beneficial tendency, although founded merely in custom:-that these li

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