DISCOURSE I. MO before : 1Vow.ifthere was sogreat an interruption, I think it is liard to be proved, that the Jewish sabbath* was the seventh day from from the creationof the world : this is often made a doubt and matter of dispute in this controversy. Some learned men, by exact. calculations have pretended to find, that the sabbath which God discovered and marked out for their future observa- tion byproviding a double quantity ofmanna the day before, was really the sixth day of the week, and not the seventh from the creation. And if so, then christians who keep the Lord's day are actually returned to the ancient paradisaical or patriarchal sabbath, that. is, the last day of the week of the creationt. * Though the Jewish sabbath may be called sometimes the seventh day, this can only mean the day of rest after six days 1thoer, which is the constant sense of it : but not the very seventh day on which God rested, and which he sanctified for a sabbath to Adam in paradise, ' f Mr. Joseph Mede, that very learned writer, 'in the last ace, discourses on the sabbath, from Ezek. xx. 20. Hallowmy sabbalhs, and they shall be a sign between me and you, to acknowledge that I Jehovah am your God. And here he supposes, that as in the xx. of Exodus, tl.e creation of the world in six days, and God's restingoa the seventh, is given as the reason why the Jews were appointed to keep one day in seven; so in the fifth of Deuteronomy, their deliverance front Egypt, and their rest from bondage, was the reason why they were required to keep that particular day for their sabbath, whether it were the seventh from the creation or no. Scripture no where tells us it was so, though men take it for granted. Certain I am, saith he, the Jewskept not that day for a sabbath till the raining of manna: And when it had rained manna six days together, it rained noneon the seventh, which was the twenty-second day of the secondmonth, and this they were commanded to keep for their sabbath. Now if the twenty-second day of the month were the sabbath, the fifteenth should have bhen so too, if that day had been kept before as the seventh from the creation : But the text tells ua plainly, Ex. xvi. 1. that they marched a wearisome march on that day, and this by God's was appointment, that is, by the leading cloud; and therefore iris plain they did not keep it as a sabbath. Now since the,beginning of their year was altered for a memorial of their coming out of-Egypt ; Ex. xii. 2. why might nottheir day of holy rest also be altered for a momorial of the same mercy ? And that God, as the Creator of the world, and as their Redeemer from the land of bondage, had his proper memorial of both in the Jewish sabbath, even Jeho- vah their Creator and Redeemer. There is a learned author has written a treatise, 1683, whose rpnning title is " The Patriarchal Sabbath ;" and hs also, by computation drawn from the xvi. chapter of Exodus, says, " As God at the institution of the Passover appointed that month to be the first to the Israelites, which 'was not the first in respect of the creation, so he purposed to change the beginning of the week to the Israel- ites, and appoint that day their seventh, which was the sixth in thepatriarchal account. And he legt a plain note or character upon it, perhaps he means, the Withholding the manna, page 99. And in.page 186, he says, " all communion with heathens is pathetically forbidden to the Jews, lest they should by that means be drawn to idolatry ; and therefore, we have less reason to wonder that God should appoint the Jews another day for their weekly sabbath, than that whichwas instituted at first to all mankind, when the Gentiles had perverted the cenarcration of that day to the worship of. the sun. And for the like reason, the Christian church changed the name of Sunday into that of the Lord's-day, that she might secure her children from the opinion of the heathen world, that it was in honour of theplanet of the sun." But besides this, he adds, page 188, " The more special reasonof God's appointing the Saturday for their sabbath, was because Saturday was the first day of rest they had from Egyptian bondage: For they marched from Ramesea on. nfm3
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