“That which is natural, namely, that every seventh day should be kept holy unto the Lord, that still remaineth: that which is positive, namely, that day which was the seventh day from the creation, should be the Sabbath, or day of rest, that is now changed in the church of God.”[1044]
He says that the meaning of the declaration, “The seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God,” is this:—
“There must be one [day] of seven and not [one] of eight.”[1045]
But the special key to the whole theory is in the statement that the seventh day in the commandment was “genus,” that is to say, it was a kind of seventh day which comprehended several species of seventh days, at least two. Thus he says:—
“So he maketh the seventh day to be genus in this commandment, and to be perpetual: and in it by virtue of the commandment to comprehend these two species or kinds: the Sabbath of the Jews and of the Gentiles, of the law and of the gospel: so that both of them were comprehended in the commandment, even as genus comprehendeth both his species.”[1046]
He enforces the first day by the fourth commandment, as follows:—
“So that we have not in the gospel a new commandment for the Sabbath, diverse from that that was in the law; but there is a diverse time appointed; namely, not the seventh day from the creation, but the day of Christ’s resurrection, and the seventh from that: both of them at several times being comprehended in the fourth commandment.”[1047]
He means to say that the fourth commandment enforces the seventh day from the creation to the resurrection of Christ, and since that enforces a different seventh day, namely, the seventh from Christ’s resurrection. Such is the perverse ingenuity by which men can evade the law of God and yet make it appear that they are faithfully observing it.
Such was the origin of the seventh-part-of-time theory, by which the seventh day is dropped out of the fourth commandment, and one day in seven slipped into its place; a doctrine most opportunely framed at the very period when nothing else could save the venerable day of the sun. With the aid of this theory, the Sunday of “Pope and Pagan” was able coolly to wrap itself in the fourth commandment, and then in the character of a divine institution, to challenge obedience from all Bible Christians. It could now cast away the other frauds on which its very existence had depended, and support its authority by this one alone. In the time of Constantine it ascended the throne of the Roman Empire, and during the whole period of the Dark Ages it maintained its supremacy from the chair of St. Peter; but now it had ascended the throne of the Most High. And thus a day which God “commanded not nor spake it, neither came it into” his “mind,” was enjoined upon mankind with all the authority of his holy law. The immediate effect of Dr. Bound’s work upon the existing controversy is thus described by an Episcopalian eye-witness, Dr. Heylyn:—