sail as far westward as the west of Ireland, or a little farther, it will be an hour later, and not be noon there till it be one o'clock at the place where he embarked. And so in proportion, an hour for every fifteen degrees. And accordingly, when he hath gone round the whole circle of three hundred and sixty degrees (that is, four-and-twenty times fifteen), it will be later by four-and-twenty hours; that is, it will be but Saturday noon with him, when it is Sunday noon with those who staid here; that is, his Saturday will be our Sunday. And thenceforth his Saturday-Sabbath will be the same day with our Sunday-Sabbath ever after.

"And this, I think, should fully satisfy him. For he tells us, p. 39, The variety of the time of the sun-rising or setting in different climates doth no way disturb; for that a day longer or shorter is still a day, and but a day.'

"Most certain it is he who shall have thus sailed round the world will have had one day fewer than those who staid here. So it was with Sir Francis Drake and his company: And so it hath been with all who have taken such a voyage (as many have done, for it is not a rare case); and so will be to any who shall so do. "What he would resolve upon this case, or what he thinks Sir Francis Drake was to do when this happened, I cannot tell.

"If he would go on to reckon the days according as they had happened to him in his voyage, then this expedient must fully satisfy him; for then he keeps his Saturday-Sabbath on our Sunday.

'If he thinks the account should be rectified when or before he comes home, and call the days thenceforth as he finds those to do that staid here, what shall become of that day he hath lost? and which day of the week shall he reckon that to be?

86 'And when must he rectify that account? when he comes home, or somewhere by the way?" (Pp. 78-80.)

Wallis argues, p. 23, that in the time of Christ the Jews reckoned their days, not from sunset to sunset, but, in accordance with the Roman custom, from midnight to midnight. Two passages, however, Mark i. 32, and Luke iv. 40, seem to militate against this unusual view. (See above, i. 56, 61, and note * on p. 57.) The Evangelists, who wrote for Gentile as well as Jewish readers, may have sometimes accommodated their language to those accustomed to the Roman way of reckoning.

191. BAMPFIELD, THOMAS (see No. 189).-A Reply to Dr Wallis his Discourse concerning the Christian Sabbath. Lond. 1693. 4to. Pp. 80.

There is a copy of this Reply in the Bodleian Library, but I have not seen it.

192. MARLOW, ISAAC.-A Tract on the Sabbath Day.

Wherein the keeping of the First Day of the Week a Sabbath is justified by a Divine Command and a Double Example contained in the Old and New Testament. With Answers to the chiefest Objections made by the Jewish Seventh-day Sabbatharians and others. Lond. 1693. 4to. Pp. 87.

The institution of the Sabbath at the beginning is here maintained; while the Fourth Commandment is regarded as having been "for the use of the Gentiles," as well as the Israelites, in as far as it was the substance of the law of nature. The author thinks with Chafie that Sunday was observed by the ancient Gentiles, and that this was probably the seventh day in order from the creation.

193. WITSIUS, HERMAN, a learned Calvinistic Theologian, Professor of Divinity at Leyden (born 1636; died 1708). De Economia Foederum Dei cum Hominibus. Traject. 1694. 4to.

There is an English translation by William Crookshank, D.D. It was published last century, and has been several times reprinted, the last edition being in 2 vols. 8vo, Lond. 1837. It is entitled, "The Economy of the Covenants between God and Man."

In Book i. ch. vii., where he treats of "the First Sabbath," Witsius interprets the "resting" of God on the seventh day as meaning that He not only desisted from creating new species of creatures, but "acquiesced and took complacency" in his finished work. And it is further supposed that He set this his resting before man as a pattern by which he should be taught to acquiesce in nothing but God, whose glorification should be his sole pleasure; and that He sanctified the seventh day by commanding it to be employed by man for that sacred work, adding a promise, that all that time thus employed by man should be highly blessed to him. A large portion of the chapter is occupied in refuting the hypothesis of Walker (see above, p. 38, note), which some learned Dutch contemporary of Witsius had adopted; viz., "that Adam, on the very day of his creation, being seduced by the devil, had involved himself and the whole world in the most wretched bondage of corrup tion; but that God on the seventh day restored all things thus corrupted by the devil and by man, by his gracious promise of the Messiah upon this restoration he rested upon that very day; and that rest, upon the reparation of the world, being peculiar to the seventh day, may be the foundation of the Sabbath." (§ 19.) These notions seem to be now without advocates in any Christian sect.

In Book iv. ch. iv. the Decalogue is considered, and the question as to the perpetuity and universality of its obligation discussed. The author says:

"It has been formerly, and is to this day a matter of dispute in the church, whether the laws of the two tables, as they were given to the people of Israel by Moses, are of perpetual obligation, and extend even to us Christians. Hieronymus Zanchius, Operum tom. iv. lib. 1, c. 11, maintains at large, and by several arguments, that we Christians have nothing to do with the moral precepts, as they were given to the Israelites by Moses; but only in so far as they agree with the law of nature, common to all nations, and confirmed by Christ, whom we acknowledge to be our King. And Musculus writes to the same purpose, Loc. Commun. de abrogatione legis Mosaica. But while David Pareus gives his opinion about the opposite opinions of Dominicus a Soto and Bellarmine, the former of whom denied that we are subject to the law of the Decalogue as it was delivered by Moses, but the latter, on the contrary, maintained that the law, as given by Moses, was also binding on us, though he premises (ad libri Bellarmini de justificatione iv. c. 6) that it is of small importance to dispute about the ministry of Moses by which the law was formerly promulgated, provided the law, and the obedience thereof, be in vigour or force in the church; yet he says that Bellarmine's opinion is to be retained as the safer and more preferable. Rivet, in Explicat. Decalog., thinks that the difference is not in the thing, but in the manner of expression: for all agree, that all the moral duties contained in the law are of perpetual observance among Christians, in so far as they are natural precepts, imprinted on the minds of all by God, the author of nature; and as by way of instruction they are contained in the written laws, they are a great, nay a necessary help to our weakness and ignoYet he rather seems to incline to the sentiment of Zanchius and Musculus. We shall comprehend our own opinion in the following positions.

rance.

"1. Seeing the Decalogue contains the sum of the law of nature, and, as to its substance, is one and the same therewith, so far it is of perpetual and universal obligation. And thus far all divines are agreed, the Socinians themselves not excepted. See Volkel. lib. iv. c. 5.

"2. We are not only to perform the duties which it requires, because they are agreeable to reason; and to abstain from the contrary vices, because reason declares them to be base and vile; but also under this formal notion-because God has enjoined those duties, and prohibited those vices; that his authority as lawgiver, may be acknowledged, and our goodness have the nature of an obedience; which, as such, is founded on the alone authority of him who commands. And who can doubt, that it is the duty of a rational creature to acknowledge God as his supreme Lord and Governor, to whose will, without any further examination, he ought to submit, saying, Lord, what wouldst thou have me to do?'

"3. The Gentiles, who had heard nothing of the giving of the law in the wilderness, were not bound to the observance of that law, as it was published to the Israelites, but only as inscribed on their own consciences. Hence the apostle says, that as many as

have sinned without law,' namely, the written law,' shall also perish without law,' Rom. ii. 12; that is, shall not be condemned in consequence of the law, as delivered to Israel in writing, but of the violation of the natural law. However, if any of the Gentiles came to have any knowledge of the giving of this law, they were to believe that the precepts of it were spoken to them no less than they were to Israel; nor could they neglect them without throwing contempt on God, and incurring the forfeiture of salvation.

"4. Though the precepts of common honesty, in some special manner, and with some particular circumstances, were originally appointed for a peculiar people, yet they are still binding by a divine authority on all those who come to know that God formerly enjoined them to their neighbours. For instance, what Paul wrote to the Romans, is no less binding on us than it was on them; because the obligation is founded on the manifestation or discovery of the divine will and pleasure. When, therefore, God has said to any particular person, that this or that duty is incumbent upon him as a rational creature, who ought to bear a resemblance to the divine image; all other men who hear this are as much bound to that duty, as he to whom it was first proposed; not only because they apprehend the matter of that precept to be consonant to reason; but also, because the command was given by God, no matter to whom it was given at first.

"5. Common precepts, which bind all to whom they are made known, on account of the authority of him who enjoins them, may be pressed upon some by certain peculiar reasons. For instance,

the precept concerning constancy in the faith of the gospel, might be pressed on Jews and Gentiles from different motives, and yet the precept remain common to both. Thus when God published the Decalogue to the Israelites, he annexed some reasons, which, to the latter, were peculiar to them alone; because, what was a common duty to all, he was pleased in an especial manner to recommend to them. Yet in his wisdom he published those reasons in such a manner as to concern others also, by way of analogy, and in their mystical signification.

"6. As the people of Israel constituted the church at that time, and as Jesus Christ the Son of God, and King of the church, prescribed the Decalogue to them, it follows that the same law retains its force in the church, till it be abrogated again by the King of the church. We are not to think that the church of the Old Testament, which consisted of Israelites, and that of the New, though for the greatest part made up of Gentiles, were a quite different people. They ought to be looked upon as one kingdom of Christ, who made both one; Eph. ii. 14, and who graffed us, when wild olives, into that fat olive, Rom. xi. 17. And consequently, the laws which were once given to the church by Christ the King, are always binding on the whole church, unless Christ shall declare, that he has abrogated them by some other institution. But it is absurd to imagine, that Christ abrogated the moral law, in so far as he gave it by the mediation of Moses to the church of Israel, and directly confirmed

the same law to the Christian church. For seeing it is the same law, of the same King, in one and the same kingdom, though that kingdom is enriched with new accessions and new privileges; why should we suppose it abrogated and ratified again almost in the same breath? Nay, many considerations persuade us to believe that the law of the Decalogue was given to the church in order to be a perpetual rule, from the manner in which it was given.

"For, as these commandments were published before the assembly of the whole church, in the hearing of all, while the other precepts were given to Moses alone in his sacred retirement; as they were engraved on tables of stone by the finger of God, to the end that, as Calvin remarks, this doctrine might remain in perpetual force; and seeing they, and they alone, were put in the ark of the covenant, under the wings and guardianship of God himself, God plainly shewed by so many prerogatives, that the reason of those precepts was far different from that of the others, which were only imposed on the church for a time.

"We may add, that Christ has declared, he was not come to destroy, but to fulfil the law' (Matt. v. 17). To destroy, signifies there, to abrogate, and to free men from the obligation of it, as appears from ver. 19. But that Christ speaks of the law of the Decalogue, we gather from what follows, where he explains the precepts of that law, and recommends them to his disciples. And when Paul, Rom. xiii. 9, and James, chap. ii. 8, 11, inculcate the precepts of the law on Christians, in the same terms in which they were delivered by Moses to Israel, they do not insist upon this consideration, that they were agreeable to the dictates of right reason, or were ratified again by Christ, but that they were thus formerly published and written by God. Nay (Eph. vi. 2), the apostle not only insists on the promise that was annexed to the fifth commandment, but also on the order of the precepts, recommending honour or regard to parents from this argument, that this is the first commandment with promise. But if the Decalogue, as it was formerly delivered to the church of Israel, did not concern Christians, that argument of the apostle (which be it far from us to say) would have no force with Christians.

"Finally, if the Decalogue, as it was formerly given to the church, was not now binding on the same, it must necessarily have been revoked by God, and abrogated by Christ; both which is absurd. For who will be so bold as to suppose God to speak in this manner :-' It is indeed my will, that you observe those natural precepts, which I formerly commanded the Israelites, in the law that was published with such solemnity; but for the future, I will not have you bound to these, because of my command, but because nature requires it.' And why should Christ abrogate the precepts given to the church of Israel, in order directly to give the very same precepts again to the Christian church? Not to say, that there is not the least sign of any such abrogation in the sacred writings.

"However, we do not refuse, that the law of the covenant of