186 CIVIL POWER IN THINGS sACI D. required to give his attèntion to them on a Saturdays which is his Sabbath ; would not this be a violation of the rights of conscience, if this attendance on these established lectures were imposed with a penalty ? I must answer still, that conscience in things relating to God must not he imposed upon, nor can then be obliged to alienate sacred time to mere civil purposes, but where the real necessities of the state require it; and there I suppose God will not account it criminal to comply with the necessities of the state on his own sacred day ; as for instance, to stola a flood, to quench a fire, or to repel an invasion. And as the consciences of the subjects should not without necessity be imposed upon to hear these national statutes or civil lectures, where they think the sacred time is profaned hereby; so it is still more evident that no person should he constrained against his conscience to be a reader of these civil lectures, who thinks either the reading itself or the time of reading to he unlawful or offensive to God. And 1 think it can never he supposed that the necessities of the state can be such, as to require those very persons to read these things Who think it unlawful to do it. Surely others should do that office. Yet if I may speak my most free and reasonable thoughts here, I can hardly believe the great God would account it a vio- lation of some part of his appointed sabbath, whether Saturday or Sunday,. to hear such lessons of morality and virtue, or les- sons of ,the knowledge of God and duty to him and to civil governors, which should be the chief substance of these lectures : For we find even Under the strictnesses of theJewish sabbatizing, our blessed Saviour himself went to a, oat at the house of apha- sisee ; Luke xiv. 1. and he taught them there good manners and civility as well as morality, viz, that they should not sit dozen in the chief place lest they should be removed with shame to some lower room.. And it is certain that all the books of Moses zcere read in their synagogues on the sabbath-day, wherein now and then the laws of their civil government and rules of their civil .lifetilled up whole chapters,. and employed a considerable part of the 'time of their attendance. But we must remember indeed that God was their king, and therefore sacred and civil affairs were intermingled: And if such days as some persons repute sacred should be appointed by the state for these lectures, per- haps it is proper that the christians or the Jews in sttcli a nation should he content to take other hours of the same Saturday or Sunday to worship their God upon his own appointed day, with what they suppose to be his own instituted forms or peculiar modes of worshif í Al vays supposing, as before hinted, that the readingof the laws of the land, or rather short abstracts of them, take up but a small part of that time which is sapposad fo be sacred.
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