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is perpetual, that one day of seven be consecrated and separated for divine worship: but the designation of the day to the Jews was in remembrance of their deliverance from Egypt, and to Christians in remembrance of our deliverance from the tyranny of the spiritual Pharaoh, Satan, and his infernal army, benefits far exceeding those of creation and rescuing from the Egyptian bondage. Indeed, every day we should redeem time from business and pleasures for the immediate service of God; but on the Lord's day we must be entirely conversant in holy duties, public and private, and abstain from common works, unless of necessity and mercy.

The religious rest of the fourth commandment is to be observed by Christians, so far as is requisite for our attendance on the service of God. It is not only our duty, but our heavenly privilege, that being tired in the dust and toil of the world, we have a freedom and an invitation to draw near to God, with the promise that He will draw near to us; that when we pay our homage we shall receive infinite blessings: for then, in the communion of saints, we present our requests with filial freedom to God, we receive His precepts for the ordering of our lives to please Him, and, by a temporal holy rest, are prepared for an eternal glorious rest. The observing of this command enables us to do the rest. Its duties are divine and spiritual, and have a powerful influence on the souls of men. The exercise of grace has an efficacy to increase it. sanctifying that day, God sanctifies us, and liberally bestows the treasures of grace and joy, the blessing consequent upon the divine institution.

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The profaners of that holy time virtually renounce their allegiance to the Creator and Redeemer. They will not attend upon His oracles, but despise the persons and office of the ministers of Christ, and their contempt reflects upon Him. They "Make the Sabbath their delight" in another sense than the commandment intends: they make it a play day. Others, who are called and counted Christians, who are good in everything but wherein they should be best,

just and merciful, temperate and chaste, affable and obliging to men, yet wretchedly neglect the duties of piety to God, and the sanctifying His day. That dear and precious interval to a saint from the business of the world is a galling restraint to carnal men from their secular employments. They will go, indeed, to the public worship from some secular motive, custom, the coercion of the laws, or the impulse of conscience, which will not be quiet without some religion; but they are glad when it is done; and by vain discourses they dash out of their minds the instructions of the Word of God. They spend a great part of the day as if it were unsanctified time, in curious dressing, in luxurious feasting, in complimental visits, in idleness, and sometimes in actions worse than idleness. The indubitable cause of this profaneness is, that they are not partakers of the Divine nature, which inclines the soul to God and raises our esteem of communion with Him as a heaven upon earth; and hence it follows that they come and go from the public ordinances neither cleansed from sin nor changed into the Divine image.

But those who conscientiously employ that day in duties proper to it, in prayer and hearing, reading the Scriptures and spiritual books, in holy conference, whereby light and heat are mutually communicated among the saints, and in the meditation of eternal things, whereby faith removes the veil and looks into the sanctuary of life and glory, (as Moses by conversing with God in the mount came down with a shining countenance,) will have a divine lustre appearing in their conduct through the following week.

BISHOP HOPKINS.

"REMEMBER the Sabbath day, to keep it holy," &c. In the words we have a command, and the enforcement of it. The command is to sanctify the Sabbath. And this is justly observable, in that whereas all the rest are simply

either positive or negative, this is both. "Remember to keep it holy," and "In it thou shalt not do any work." As if God took an especial care to fence us in on all sides to the observation of this precept. The enforcement also is more particular, and with greater care and instance, than we find in any other command. For God hath here condescended to use three cogent arguments to press the observation of this law upon us. The first is taken from His own example, whom, certainly, it is our glory, as well as our duty, to imitate in all things in which He hath propounded Himself to be our pattern: "The Lord rested the seventh day," and therefore rest ye also. The second, from that bountiful and liberal portion of time that He hath allowed us for the affairs and business of this present life: "Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work;" and, therefore, it is but fit and equitable that the seventh should be given to God, who hath so freely given the rest to thee. The third, from the dedication of this day to His own immediate worship and service: "The Lord blessed the Sabbath day, and hallowed it." So that it is no less a sin than a sacrilege, and stealing of that which is holy, to purloin any part of that time which God hath thus consecrated to Himself, and to employ it about either sinful or secular actions.

To hallow and sanctify is to set anything apart from profane and common unto sacred and spiritual uses. God, therefore, sanctified the Sabbath when He selected it out of the course of other days, and set it apart from the common employments and services of life; ordaining that the spiritual concernments of His glory and our salvation should be therein especially transacted. And this is that blessing which God hath conferred upon this day; for what other benefit is a day capable of, but only that when the other six days, like the unregarded vulgar of the year, were to be employed in the low and sordid drudgery of earthly affairs, this seventh day God hath raised from the dunghill and set upon the throne, appointing it, according to Ignatius' phrase, τὴν βασιλίδα, τὴν ὑπατον τῶν ἡμερῶν, “The prince and

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sovereign of days," exempting it from all servile works, and designing it for such spiritual and celestial employments that, were it observed according to God's command, eternity itself would not have much advantage above it, but only that it is longer? So that in the ring and circle of the week the Sabbath is the jewel, the most excellent and precious of days. God hath blessed and sanctified it, not only in this relative but also in an effective sense, viz., as He hath appointed it to be the day whereon He doth especially bless and sanctify us.

Yea, and possibly He makes the means of our sanctification to be more effectual on this day than when they are dispensed on any other common days. God doth then especially give out plentiful effusions of His Spirit, fills His ordinances with His grace and presence; and we may, with a more confident faith, expect a greater portion of spiritual blessings from Him when both the ordinances and the day too are His, than when, though the ordinances be His, yet the day is ours. In this sense, God may be said to bless and sanctify the Sabbath day, because He blesseth and sanctifies us on that day; as the psalmist most elegantly, and in a high strain of poetry, saith that God crowneth "The year with His goodness." Psalm lxv., 11. Not that the plenty and fruitfulness of the year is any blessing unto it; but it is a blessing unto men, whose hearts God then filleth with food and gladness. In both these senses may God be said to bless and sanctify the Sabbath.

As God sanctified the Sabbath, so man is commanded to sanctify it also; "Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy." Now we sanctify and hallow a day when we observe it holy to the Lord, sequestering ourselves from common affairs to those spiritual exercises which He hath required us to be conversant about on that day. God sanctifies it by consecration, we sanctify it by devotion. He hath set it apart for His worship, and on it we ought to set ourselves apart for His worship, and to be taken up only with those things which He hath either allowed or

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prescribed us; and, therefore, God doth lay an especial claim to this day. For although He be the supreme Lord of all, and doth dispense and as it were draw out the thread of time, and days, and years for us, out of the infinite bottom of His eternity, yet He doth not so particularly challenge any part of it to Himself as He doth this seventh day. Whence it is said, "The seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God." The six foregoing days of the week are thine, and thou mayest dispose of them in the honest works of thy calling, as prudence and convenience shall direct; but this day God challengeth to Himself, as His peculiar portion of our time, because He hath ordained it for His worship and service, and, therefore, it is called His. And when we devote ourselves to His service and worship, meditating on His excellency, magnifying and praising His mercy, and invoking His holy name, we then hallow this day, and give unto God that which is God's.

Now the public duties which are necessary to the right sanctifying of the Lord's day are these: Affectionate prayer, in joining with the minister, who is our mouth unto God, as well as God's mouth unto us. For as he is intrusted to deliver His sovereign will and commands, so likewise to present our requests unto the throne of His grace. We ought heedfully to attend to every petition; to dart it up to heaven with our most earnest desires; and to close and seal it up with our affectionate "Amen," So be it. For though it be the minister alone that speaks, yet it is not the minister alone that prays, but the whole congregation, by him and with him; and whatsoever petition is not accompanied with thy most sincere and cordial affections, it is as much mocking of God as if thine own mouth had uttered it without the concurrence of thy heart, which is most gross hypocrisy. Consider what promises are made to particular Christians, when they pray singly, and by themselves: "Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in My name, He will grant it you." John xv., 16, and xvi., 23. What great prevalency, then, must the united prayers of the saints have

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