[205]. To this the poet’s observation might well be applied, Tantum religio potuit saudere malorum! Lucet. de Nat. Rer. Lib. 1. And that human sacrifices were offered, appears from what we read of the king of Moab, who took his eldest son, that should have reigned in his stead, and offered him for a burnt-offering, 2 Kings iii. 27.
[206]. Satan knew the state of the armies, and wished to drive Saul to despair.
[207]. Vid. Jos. Antq. Lib. II. Cap. 5.
[208]. See more of this in Vol. I. Page 226.
[210]. See Vol. I. Quest. iv.
[211]. Quest. xi.
[212]. Παρρησια.
[213]. If they appeal to God in an irreverent manner, they are a violation of this commandment. If they be not appeals to him, they are in fact, an application to him without any knowledge of him, and this is Atheism.
[214]. “The devoting of a seventh Part of Time in a holy manner to the Lord, belongs unchangeably to the moral nature and obligation of the fourth Commandment, which is transferred in the New Testament, from the seventh to the first day of the week. (See John xx. 26. and Acts xx. 7.) To this it may not be amiss to add the judicious note of Mr. Kennicott in his dissertation on the oblations of Cain and Abel, p. 184, 185, where he says, ‘The sabbath, or weekly day of holiness, might well be called a sign to the Jews;’ for the Jewish sabbath was a sign, as being founded on a double reason, the second of which (the Egyptian deliverance) evidently distinguished that people from all others, and was therefore as a sign constantly to remind them of the particular care of heaven, and what uncommon returns of goodness they were to make for so signal a deliverance. But there is great reason to believe, that the sabbath of the Israelites was altered with their year, at their coming forth from Egypt; and a short attention to this point may not be here improper, the case then seems to be this. At the finishing of the creation, God sanctified the seventh day; this seventh day, being the first day of Adam’s life, was consecrated by way of first-fruits to God; and therefore Adam may reasonably be supposed to have began his computation of the days of the week with the first whole day of his own existence; thus the sabbath became the first day of the week; but when mankind fell from the worship of the true God, they first substituted the worship of the sun, in his place, and preserving the same weekly day of worship, but devoting it to the sun, the sabbath was called Sunday; for that Sunday was the first day of the week, and is so still in the east, is proved by Mr. Selden (Jus. Nat. and Gent. Lib. 3. Cap. 22.) Thus the sabbath of the Patriarchs continued to be the Sunday of the idolaters, till the coming up of the Israelites out of Egypt; and then, as God altered the beginning of their year, so he also changed the day of their worship from Sunday to Saturday; the first reason of which might be, that as Sunday was the day of worship among the Idolaters, the Israelites would be more likely to join with them, if they rested on the same day, than if they were to work on that day, and serve their God upon another. But a second reason certainly was, in order to perpetuate the memory of their deliverance on that day from Egyptian slavery; for Moses, when he applies the fourth Commandment to the particular cases of his own people, Deut. v. 15, does not enforce it, as in Ex. xx. 11. by the consideration of God’s resting on that day which was the sabbath of the Patriarchs; but binds it upon them by saying, Remember that thou wast a servant in Egypt, and that the Lord thy God brought thee out thence through a mighty hand, and by a stretched-out arm; therefore the Lord thy God hath commanded THEE to keep this SABBATH-DAY. Allowing then the preceding observations, we immediately see, how the sabbath naturally reverted to Sunday, after the abolition of Judaism without any express command for the alteration. To which he adds a quotation from Bp. Cumberland, (Orig. Gent. Antiq. p. 400.) which speaks of the Gentiles, as called, after Christ’s time into the same universal church with the Patriarchs; and another from Justin Martyr, Την δε του ηλιου ημεραν κοινη παντες την συνελευσιν ποιουμεθα επειδη πρωτη εστιν ημερα, ενἡ ὁ θεος το σκοτος δε την υλην τρεψας, κοσμον εποιησε και Ιησους Χριστος ὁ ημετερος σωτηρ τη αυτη ημερα εκ νεκρων ανεστη. Apol c. s. 89. The purport of which is, that all Christians generally assembled for religious worship on the Sunday; because it is the first day in which God finished the creation of the world; and on the same day of the week, Jesus Christ, our Saviour, rose from the dead.”