but in our gloomy island it is a blank in existence, and ought to be blotted out of the calendar.'

"The arguments, indeed, such as they are, were of late presented in the best form, I presume, which they will admit, by one of those noble senators, who opposed the late laudable act for the suppression of some enormities which had been introduced as the pastime of the Sabbath, and whose speech would condemn him to eternal infamy, if its extreme insignificancy did not reverse the sentence, and insure it a friendly and speedy oblivion.

"If lords and dukes would condescend to go to their parish church, they might find themselves well employed from ten o'clock to twelve. To the prayers they can have no reasonable objection; and, with respect to the sermon, though its diction or its sentiments may not be excellent, yet, in the present times, the want of merit is usually compensated by brevity. And the great man may comfort himself during its continuance with reflecting that, though he is neither pleased nor instructed by it, yet he himself is preaching in effect a most persuasive sermon by giving his attendance. His example will attract many auditors, and bad indeed must be the discourse from which the vulgar hearer cannot derive much advantage. If any charitable purpose is to be accomplished, and there never passes a Sunday but in the metropolis many such purposes are to be accomplished, the bare presence of a man in high life will contribute greatly to the pecuniary collection. And, if a peer of the realm was as willing to give his presence at a charity sermon as at a horse-race, to contribute to the support of orphans and widows as to keep a stud and a pack of hounds, perhaps he would find himself no loser even in the grand object of his life, the enjoyment of pleasure.

"The interval between the morning and evening service may surely be spent in reading, or in improving conversation. The rest of the day, even to eight o'clock, may be spent in the metro. polis at church (if any one chooses it), for evening lectures abound. And though there is no obligation to attend at more than the established times, yet no man can say there are no public places of resort, when he can scarcely turn a corner without seeing a churchdoor open, and hearing a bell importunately inviting him to enter. "The little time which remains after the usual religious duties of the day may certainly be spent in such a manner as to cause no tedium, even though Carlisle-house is shut, and the rigid laws forbid us to enter Vauxhall, Ranelagh, and the theatres. A cheerful walk amidst rural scenes is capable of affording, in fine weather, a very sensible pleasure. In all seasons, at all hours, and in all weathers, conversation is capable of affording an exquisite delight, --and books, of improving, exalting, refining, and captivating the human mind. He who calls in question the truth of this must allow his hearers to call in question his claim to rationality.

"The subordinate classes, for I have hitherto been speaking of the higher, seldom complain that they know not what to do on a Sunday. To them it is a joyful festival. They, for the most part,

VOL. II.

Q

are constant attendants at church; and the decency of their habits and appearance, the cleanliness which they display, the opportunity they enjoy of meeting their neighbours in the same regular and decent situation with themselves, render Sunday highly advantageous to them, exclusively of its religious advantages. They usually fill up the intervals of divine service with a rural walk, and their little indulgences at the tea-houses are highly proper and allowable. They are confined to sedentary and laborious work during the week, and a walk in the fresh air is most conducive to their health, while it affords them a very lively pleasure,—such a pleasure, indeed, as we have all felt in Milton's famous description of it. The common people are sufficiently delighted with such enjoyments, and would really be displeased with those public diversions which our travelled reformers have desired to introduce. "Neither are they in want of disputing societies to fill up their time. There are parish churches in abundance. After they have attended at them, it is far better that they should walk in the air than be pent up in a close room and putrifying air, where their health must suffer more than even in the exercise of their handicraft, trade, or vocation. But that indeed is one of the least of the evils which they must endure, were they allowed to attend at every turbulent assembly, which either the avaricious or the discontented may convene. Weak understandings are easily led astray by weak arguments. Their own morals and happiness, and the welfare of the church and state, are greatly interested in the suppression of those houses which were lately opened under the arrogant name of the theological schools. The act which suppressed them reflects honour on the British senate."

The evil and adulterous generation which Dr Knox advised to go to church admired his elegant sentences, but only smiled at his advice. As for the Act, we learn from the New Annual Re gister for 1781, p. 147, that many even of the true friends of religion looked on it as arbitrary, partial, and unwise.

293. KENNICOTT, BENJAMIN, D.D. (see No. 264.)— The Sabbath: A Sermon preached in His Majesty's Chapel, Whitehall, and before the University of Oxford. Oxford, 1781. 8vo. Pp. 47.

Dr Kennicott here argues, in a more declamatory style than in his Dissertations (above, p. 202), that the Sabbath was instituted at the creation, and its observance is therefore a duty of all men for ever.

"If, indeed," he admits, "the observation of a Sabbath had been nowhere commanded but in the 20th chapter of Exodus, and had we no notice of its having been at all observed till after the Fourth Commandment had been delivered to the Jews, then the obligation on us Christians would not have been so clear and so conclusive as

it is at present. But the case, in fact, is otherwise." (P. 12.)

"And now," he proceeds, "on viewing the subject in this light

we cease to wonder that we have no such command from Christ or his Apostles, because there was no occasion for it,-God having, at the creation, enjoined a Sabbath to all mankind, consequently to us Christians. But, as to the particular day, let this remark be carefully attended to (and, for want of attending to it, many and unhappy have been the differences amongst Christians), that, though one particular nation, in one particular country, may observe one and the same day in the week, yet all nations upon earth cannot observe one and the same day. And the reason is, because it is not the same day to all nations at the same time. In some countries the sun rises when it sets in others. With other inhabitants of this round world, it is midnight, at an hour when with us it is noonday. What therefore is our Sabbath-day cannot possibly be theirs, nor can our day be their day at all, because our day is their night.

"It being therefore impossible that any holy day can be celebrated at one and the same time by all men, though it may by the inhabitants of a single country, it follows that, though one and the same day might be commanded, and was observed in Judea, it could not be observed, and of course was not commanded, universally. Thus we see that the Jews, when in Palestine, might observe, as their Sabbath, what is nearly our Saturday; but that all men cannot observe our Sunday. So that, as the former were fixed to one particular day in seven, the latter could only be fixed to some one day in seven,-to that day which was nearest to the seventh, or to some one day which God had distinguishingly honoured, such as was the day of that universal blessing, the resurrection of Jesus Christ." (Pp. 17, 18.)

The distinction thus drawn between the Jewish and Christian Sabbath-days will hardly satisfy those who consider that the day began and ended at different times to Jews living in different parts of Palestine itself, and much more to Jews in places so distant from it and from each other as Rome and Babylon, where the Sabbath-law was no less binding than at home. Their duty everywhere appears to have simply been to observe the seventh day of the week, without caring whether it precisely coincided with the same day in other longitudes and latitudes; and surely such a duty is as practicable to Christians as to Jews. So, evidently, thought the Westminster Assembly, when they taught in their Catechism that "from the beginning of the world to the resurrection of Christ, God appointed the seventh day of the week to be the weekly Sabbath; and the first day of the week ever since, to continue to the end of the world, which is the Christian Sabbath." We may thus see great reason to doubt the soundness of Dr Kennicott's opinion, that the words in the Fourth Commandment, "the seventh day is the Sabbath,' ," "can only mean one day in seven, or every seventh day." (P. 19.) If they can mean this, they can equally mean what the Jews have always and every where understood them to mean-the seventh day of the week. If such is their meaning, his inference, unless otherwise maintainable, falls to the

ground, that " we Christians may, consistently with reason and holy Scripture, unite in that solemn petition subjoined in our Liturgy to the Fourth Commandment, and devoutly pray that God would incline our hearts to keep that law."

Dr Kennicott reiterates his opinion that the patriarchal Sabbath-day was Sunday, which was changed to Saturday at the exodus, and restored at the resurrection of Jesus.

His assertion on p. 21, that the primitive Christians "made a religious use of the whole day, and never thought of compounding the matter, like many modern Christians-consecrating one part of the day, and profaning all the rest of it,"-appears to be unsupported by anything that has come down to us from those early times; and he makes no attempt to prove it. In an appended Dialogue, entitled " Objections answered, and difficulties solved," he adds, that "little can it be doubted whether the Sabbath was not, after Christ's death, observed by the Apostles on the first day of the week" (p. 32); yet there is no end of doubters and deniers of this proposition among theological writers. (See, for instance, above, i. 158, 177, 203, 223; ii. 12, 35, 53, 55, 111, 146, 155, 199, 200.) The "friend" with whom the dialogue is carried on observes:-" By your definition of a Sabbath, as being rest for the purposes of religion, you remind me of the strange assertion of some writers, who contend that, in the Fourth Commandment, the idea of rest swallows up every other consideration: When it is really obvious to observe, that the rest is chiefly for the sake of the religion, the Commandment beginning thus- Remember the Sabbath-day, to keep it holy.'' (P. 34.) To which some may reply, that in no sense of the word "strange" can it be applied with propriety to an opinion advocated by Hebrew scholars like Spencer, Vitringa, and Le Clerc (see above, ii. 78, 110, 112), and the denial of which is based on so questionable an assumption as that the Hebrew word translated keep holy in the Fourth Commandment, must there signify (what it does not always signify in Scripture) something more than set apart for a special purpose the purpose being, in this case, a divinely appointed rest from labour, which rest was consequently a religious rite among the Jews, and as such is still by them regarded.

Here is a notice of one of the practices against which the Act 21 Geo. III., c. 49, was directed :"Author.

We have lived to see, on a Sunday, public places opened, where persons are admitted for money, to entertain themselves and one another with burlesque upon religion and ridicule of the holy Scriptures; to see advertised a museum, as admitting customers on a Sunday; to see advertised a newspaper for Sunday; and to see labourers, with their carts and waggons, travelling on this day (like their betters in coaches) in open defiance of the laws of our country!

"Friend.-I have heard that Lord Chancellor Harcourt, travelling on a Sunday through Abingdon, in time of divine service, was stopped by the constables; by whom an humble apology was

made to his Lordship for doing what they understood to be their duty. In consequence of which his Lordship ordered his coach to the church-door, and joined in the public worship till the conclusion of it.

"Author. The anecdote does honour to his Lordship's compliance, as well as to the vigilance of the officers who were guarding the observance of this day. But little can be done for religion without guardians much more powerful. And when such will arise, or what will awaken their zeal in a cause so essential to the honour of God and the preservation of religion, is not for you or me to conjecture." (Pp. 39, 40.)

294. GLASSE, SAMUEL, D.D., Rector of Hanwell, Middlesex.-A Devout Observance of the Christian Sabbath; a Sermon on Lev. xix. 30. Lond. 1781. 8vo.

295. MOFFAT, Rev. J. M., of Malmesbury.--The Protestant's Prayer Book; together with Essays on the Christian Sabbath, Baptism, and the Lord's Supper. Bristol, 1783.

296. Animadversions on the present Profanation of the Christian Sabbath; with an earnest Persuasive to persons in authority to attempt the Suppression of that scandalous Abuse. In a letter to the Right Hon. the Lord Mayor of London. By a Minister of a City Parish. Lond. 1783. 8vo.

297. PORTEUS, BEILBY, D.D., Bishop of Chester, and afterwards of London (born 1731; died 1806).—A Sermon on the Sabbath Day, preached before His Majesty. Dublin, 1784.

"It appears," says he, "that our Lord Himself very religiously observed the rest of the Sabbath, which he no otherwise interrupted than by miracles of mercy and compassion. And we may most certainly conclude, that the very same benevolence of disposition which dictated these humane exceptions would prompt him also to improve and enforce, both by his doctrine and example, the general rule of resting on the seventh day. For never was there any injunction so replete with kindness and compassion to the whole human race, especially to the lowest and most wretched part of it, as this. There cannot be a more pleasing or a more