550 THE SABBATH PERPETUAL, ACC. Whether these calculations of days, which I have here represent- ed from the writings of learned men are just or no, yet still it seems that men of learning, even in our age, are not all agreed, and cannot certainly teach us, which was the true seventh day, or the sabbath of Adam and the patriarchs before Moses : And if it cannot be certainly known by the learned, it can never be known by the bulkof mankind, and therefore it is impossible to be observed ; nor would God command all men to practise, what cannot be known, by the greatest part of them ? Do we not esteem it a sufficient reason against the absolute necessity of the successionof bishops, or ministers, in a right line from the apostles, that this line of consecration and succession, by running through all ages of popery, and the contests of two or three popes at one time, has been so broken, that it can never be certainly known ; and therefore such a sort of ecclesiastical succession and conse- cration, can never be absolutely necessary to furnish the christian church with ministers or holy ordinances ? Now if this reason be good, in the case of persons who celebrate divine worship, why should it not be good also in cases relating to the time or day of divine worship ? On the other hand, the true day of the resurrection of Christ on the first day of the week, has certainly been conveyed down to us, by the christian churches without interruption : And since there are no such doubts about this day, as are about the seventh (lay after the creation, why should we not rather keep that day, which has so much encouragement and countenance itt the New Testament, and may certainly be known byus? Answer 2. But I add yet further, that the observation of one day in seven for rest and for worship, seems tp be so far of a moral nature, as to be of perpetual obligation ; as I have before proved ; for it bath a necessary and very important influ- ence, both toward the honour of the great God, and the temporal and spiritual welfare of mankind, to keep one day in a short rotation or compass of time ; and because man could not find outthe due proportion, God himselfhad manifest- ed it from the beginning of theworld : But that this should al- ways be precisely the seventh day from the creation, carries no such necessity in it, nor does nature or scripture tell us so ; and it is beyond the power of my reason, to find out the morality of Friday the fifteenth day of the first month, and net up their booths at Succoth on Saturday, which I. suppose this author takes to be too laborious a wok for a Sab- bath; and that therefore Saturday could not be the ancient sabbath, but the next day they rested there. The learned Doctor Wallis, in his controversy with Air. Bamfield on this subject in 1692, and 1694, sayo, " whether this new seventh day from the first raining Of manna, be the some with that from the creation, no man can tell ; but there is six to one odds, that it is not." And Doctor N. Homes in 1637, waste an essay to prove that our Lord's-day, is the same day in tke week, which wan the ancient patriarchal sabbath.
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