. . and therefore no bodily

to the spiritual work of the day; labour is now unlawful, but such as is a hinderance to the spiritual work of the day (or accidentally a scandal and temptation to others), whereas the breach of the outward rest of the Jews' Sabbath was a sin directly of itself, without hinderance of, or respect to, the spiritual worship." (P. 422; see also 427, 450, 452, 515.) He therefore prefers the name "Lord's Day" to "the Christian Sabbath," a phrase which, when used, as he says it sometimes was, by the first Churches, was employed only analogically, as they used the names "sacrifice" and "altar." (P. 369.)

Of several texts which have been widely discussed, he says: "I am not ignorant that many of the English divines long ago expounded Matt. xxiv. 20, of the Christian Sabbath, and Col. ii. 16, as exclusive of the Jewish weekly Sabbath: but so do not most expositors, for which I think they give very good reasons, which I will not stand here to repeat.” (P. 515; also, as to Col. ii., pp. 421, 473, 485, 496). In Acts xx. 7, he finds an express mention, and in 1 Cor. xvi. 1, 2, and John xxi., intimations, that the Lord's Day “is principally to be spent in holy assemblies." (Pp. 429, 474.) Of Rom. xiv. he observes only, that, as the converted Gentiles at Rome were taught by the apostle not to despise the weak that observed meats and days, SO we must not be contentious, contemptuous, nor censorious against one another, about things of no greater moment than the Jewish days were, though some observed them without just cause: because the kingdom of God consisteth not in meats and drinks and days, but in righteousness, and peaceableness, and joy in the Holy Ghost." (Pp. 509, 465.)

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His assertions, that "it hath been the constant practice of all Christ's churches in the whole world, ever since the days of the apostles to this day, to assemble for public worship on the Lord's Day, as a day set apart thereunto by the apostles" (p. 385), and that all the churches "professed to observe it as an apostolical ordinance" (p. 407), are unsupported by a single passage among the many he adduces from the Fathers; and, being at variance with the positive declarations of sundry respectable writers (see above, i. 125), they cannot be implicitly received on the bare word even of Baxter.

Among his arguments against the Seventh-day Baptists is thisthat if a law to Adam for the observance of the seventh day continued to bind his posterity after the coming of Christ, our Lord and his apostles, and all succeeding pastors of the churches, would not have passed by this positive law to Adam without any mention of it. (P. 417.) A similar argument has lately been employed by Sir William Domville against the opinion of the Puritans that some primeval Sabbath-law continued in force after the cessation of the Jewish Sabbath. "St Paul," says he, "told his heathen converts, in his Epistles to the Romans, the Galatians, and the Colossians, that they were not bound to observe Sabbath-days. Now it is absolutely incredible that when thus writing to them concerning Sabbath-days, he should have omitted to inform them, that although not bound to observe the Jewish Sabbath, they were un

der an obligation, long lost sight of by heathen nations, but which still subsisted in its primeval force, to observe a Sabbath commanded to all mankind at the creation of the world. If St Paul knew of the existence of any such obligation, it was his duty, as the apostle of the Gentiles, to proclaim it to his heathen converts, and earnestly to exhort them to a strict and immediate compliance with it. He has done nothing of the kind; he therefore knew of no such obligation, nor of any such tenet being held in his time either by Jew or Christian as that of a Creation Sabbath." (The Sabbath; or, an Inquiry into the Supposed Obligation of the Sabbaths of the Old Testament, p. 130; see also 144).

Baxter's views about the times of the beginning and ending of the Lord's Day are probably those which have most frequently occurred to sober Christians, and have tended most to satisfy wor shipers in Britain and elsewhere that they need not follow the practice which survives in New England,—and worshipers in New England that their practice need not be exchanged for that of the remainder of Christendom. He says:

"If we can tell when any day beginneth, we may know when the Lord's Day beginneth. If we cannot, the necessity of our ignorance will shorten the trouble of our scruples by excusing us. "Because the Lord's Day is not to be kept as a Jewish Sabbath ceremoniously, but the time and the rest are here commanded subserviently for the work's sake, therefore we have not so much reason to be scrupulous about the hours of beginning and ending, as the Jews had about their Sabbath.

"I think he that judgeth of the beginning and ending of the day according to the common estimation of the country where he liveth, will best answer the ends of the institution. For he will keep still the same proportion of time; and so much as is ordinarily allowed on other days for work, he will spend this day in holy works; and so much in rest as is used to be spent in rest on other days (which may ordinarily satisfy a well-informed conscience). And if any extraordinary occasions (as journeying or the like), require him to doubt of any hours of the night, whether they be part of the Lord's Day or not; 1. It will be but his sleeping-time, and not his worshipping-time, which he will be in doubt of: And, 2. He will avoid all scandal and tempting others to break the day, if he measure the day by the common estimate; whereas, if the country where he liveth do esteem the day to begin at sun-setting, and he suppose it to begin at midnight, he may be scandalous by doing that which in the common opinion is a violation of the day. If I thought that this short kind of solution were not the fittest to afford just quietness to the minds of sober Christians in this point, I would take the pains to scan the controversy about the true beginning of days: but lest it more puzzle and perplex than edify or resolve and quiet the conscience, I save myself and the reader that trouble." (Pp. 428-9.)

Sabbath spenders are divided by Baxter into two classes—“ the hypocrite, that draweth near to God but with his lips while his

heart is far from Him;" and "the sincere experienced Christian, serving God in spirit and in truth." To the latter, the religious exercises of the day are "true and spiritual recreation, pleasure and benefit; and therefore," he adds, "we see that the holy experienced believers are still averse to sensual diversions, and do not think the Lord's Day or his service too long." (P. 447.) Here he doubtless speaks from the experience of his fervently pious mind. But to the saints and hypocrites he might have added a third class, comprising the multitude whose religious feelings are naturally cold, and who, not choosing to be hypocrites, incur the censure of the devout, and of hypocrites too, by not engaging all day in exercises which, for the most part, would necessarily be but a show of worship.

In his Christian Directory, Part I. ch. 4., he teaches, though not with reference to the Lord's Day in particular, that "the body must, as far as we can, be kept in that condition that is fittest for the service of the soul;" since "it is not the life of the body, but the health and the cheerfulness, which maketh it fit for duty; and so much pleasing of the flesh as tendeth but to its health and cheerfulness is a duty, where it can be done without greater hurt the other way. A heavy body," he adds, "is but a dull and heavy servant to the mind; yea, a great impediment to the soul in duty, and a great temptation to many sins. When the sights of prospects, and beautiful buildings, and fields and countries, or the use of walks or gardens, do tend to raise the soul to holy contemplation, to admire the Creator, and to think of the glory of the life to come (as Bernard used his pleasant walks), this delight is lawful, if not a duty, where it may be had. So when music doth cheer the mind, and fit it for thanks and praise to God; and when the rest of the body, and the use of your best apparel, and moderate feasting, on the Lord's Day and other days of thanksgiving, do promote the spiritual service of the day, they are good and profitable; but to those that are more hindered by fulness, even abstinence on such days is best." (Works, vol. iii. p. 102-3.) Again, in his Directions for getting Spiritual Peace and Comfort, he says: "All our preaching will do little to win souls from sensuality to holiness, while they look upon the sad lives of the professors of holiness.” (Vol. ix. p. 282.) And lastly, in The Saint's Everlasting Rest: "I admonish all those that are possessed of the censorious devil, that if they see a poor Christian walking privately in the fields on the Lord's Day, they would not pharisaically conclude him a Sabbath-breaker till they know more." (Vol. xxiii. p. 326.) In which application of the word "pharisaical" he does a little injustice to the Pharisees; for they walked publicly in the fields on the Sabbath-day, and, there meeting Jesus and his disciples, found no fault but with the work of plucking and rubbing the ears of corn.

Baxter's rule for determining works of necessity which may and ought to be done on the Lord's Day, is perhaps the best that can be given: "Your labour is then lawful and a duty, when, in the judgment of a truly judicious person, it is like to do more good

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than hurt; and it is then sinful, when it is like to do more hurt than good. Though all cannot discern this, yet (as far as I know) this is the true rule to judge such actions." (Vol. xiii. p. 456.)

Of other holy-days than the Lord's Day he delivers his opinion thus:

"The great blessing of an apostolic ministry, and of the stability of the martyrs in their sufferings for Christ, being so rare and notable a mercy to the Church, I confess I know no reason why the churches of all succeeding ages may not keep an anniversary-day of thanksgiving to God for Peter, or Paul, or Stephen, as well as for the Powder-plot deliverance. I know not where God hath forbidden it, directly or indirectly. If his instituting the Lord's Day were a virtual prohibition for man to separate any more, or if the prohibition of adding to God's word were against it, they would be against other days of humiliation and thanksgiving, especially anniversary; which we confess they are not. If the reason be scandal, lest the men should have the honour instead of God, I answer,-1. An honour is due to apostles and martyrs in their places, in meet subordination to God. 2. Where the case of scandal is notorious, it may become by that accident unlawful, and yet not be so in other times and places.

"The devil hath here been a great undoer by overdoing: When he knew not how else to cast out the holy observation of the Lord's Day with zealous people, he found out the trick of devising so many days called holy-days to set up by it, that the people might perceive that the observation of them all as holy, was never to be expected. And so the Lord's Day was jumbled in the heap of holy-days, and all turned into ceremony, by the Papists, and too many other churches in the world. Which became Calvin's temptation (as his own words make plain), to think too meanly of the Lord's Day with the rest.

"The controversy, Whether it be lawful to separate an anniversary-day for the commemoration of Christ's nativity, circumcision, and such like things, which were equally existent in the apostles' days, and the reason for observing them equal with following times (and so the apostles had the same reason to have appointed such days had they thought it best, as we have), I acknowledge too hard for me to determine. Not being able to prove it lawful, I cannot own and justify it; and not seeing a plain prohibition, I will not condemn it, nor be guilty of unpeaceable opposing church-customs or authority in it, but behave myself as a peaceable doubter." (Vol. xiii. pp. 464-6.)

In his Christian Directory, Part II., there is a chapter (the 18th) entitled, "Directions for the holy spending of the Lord's Day in families." (Vol. iv. pp. 240–251.) In The Life of Faith, Part II. ch. 7, he affirms the tradition of its observance from the Apostles. (Vol. xii. pp. 132-3.)-The Fourth Commandment is discussed in The Catechising of Families, ch. 37 (vol. xix. pp. 185-196); which chapter is a summary of the views more largely expressed in his treatise on the Lord's Day.

His biographer, Mr Orme; considers that the ground taken in that treatise "is the only scriptural and satisfactory ground of the divine obligation of this sacred day. It places it correctly on the footing of a New Testament ordinance; while it does not deprive it of all that support from the analogy of the original appointment of a day of rest, and of the Mosaical institution, which it may properly have. Unless we reason from the recorded example of the apostles and primitive Christians, and regard that example as not less binding than apostolic precept, we shall find very little authority for most of the ordinances of Christianity." (Life of Baxter, p.570.) For thus discarding the Fourth Commandment as the foundation of the Lord's Day, Mr Orme is taken to task by Mr Conder in the Eclectic Review for Nov. 1830, p. 407; while, on the other hand, not only has the assumed equality of apostolic example to apostolic precept been called in question (Brerewood, quoted above, i. 161; Milton's Christian Doctrine, B. ii. ch. 7, quoted below, p. 53; Cox, p. 328), but the evidence that in fact any such example of observance of the Lord's Day was set, is thought by many to be inadequate.

161. SELLERS, WILLIAM.-An Examination of a late Book published by Doctor Owen, concerning a Sacred Day of Rest. Many Truths therein as to the Morality of a Christian Sabbath assented to. With a Brief Inquiry into his Reasons for the change of it from the seventh day to the first, by way of denial. As also, the Consent of Doctor Heylin and others, touching the time and manner of the change. With an Inquiry into the nature of his assertions about the first and second Covenant. 1671. 4to. Pp. 51.

In opposition to the opinion that some one day in seven is all that the Fourth Commandment requires to be set apart, the writer maintains the obligation of the Saturday Sabbath, on the ground that "God himself directly in the letter of the text calls the seventh day the Sabbath-day, giving both the names to one and the self-same day, as all men know that ever read the commandments." (P. 6). He quotes the Second Book of Heylin, whose History he finds "full of pregnant proof from end to end, that none of the professed Christian churches in the world, East nor West, did ever own or keep the first day of the week as a Sabbath, nor did any of them judge the Sabbath was transmitted from the seventh to the first day by any Divine institution; nor was it ever by any accounted more than the other holy days were, of Easter, Whitsuntide, Christmas, Saints' days, and the wakes kept for the dedication of churches; nor were any of them set apart but by the church, [and not] with an opinion of their being holy by any command