Do you say, Those who believe in Christ are redeemed, not only from the curse of the Sabbath law, but also from the obligation to obey it in future? If so, who can tell but we are redeemed from every other moral obligation?
Or, do you alledge, that Christ makes a new contract with the sinner, saying, If you keep holy the first day, I will release you from the obligation to sanctify the seventh? "Do we then make void the law through faith? God forbid: yea, we establish the law," Rom. 3:31. But perhaps you say, To change the Sabbath from one day to another is not to make void the law; it is only to vary its application. I reply, It is to make void, to annul, to annihilate, one tenth part of that law that God wrote on Adam's heart; for, as has been shown already, that law required him to keep no day holy but the seventh.
Or, do you plead that, as God has substituted the Lord Jesus Christ for the sinner, without violating the moral law, so he may have substituted some other day for the seventh? I reply, The cases are not parallel; for—
1. The substitution of Christ does not render a change of any part of the law necessary; but the other does. Christ "came not to destroy" the law, but to fulfill it; and in fulfilling it, he honored the seventh day: but the substitution of some other day for the seventh, had it taken place before Christ came, would have released him, as well as us, from the obligation to obey a part of the law of the covenant of works.
2. A change of Sabbath is not, like the substitution of Christ, necessary to the salvation of sinners; for God had saved thousands before this change is alledged to have taken place.
3. The substitution of Christ changes the moral condition of the church only; but the change of Sabbath would affect the moral relations of all men; for the Sabbath was made, not for the church, but "for man."
4. The evangelical doctrine of the substitutionary sacrifice of Christ, of itself, proves the impossibility of a change of Sabbath. All evangelical Christians hold, that believers are delivered, through Christ, from the curse of the law—the law of the covenant of works—but not from the obligation to obey it. If, therefore, that law required Adam and his posterity to keep holy the seventh day of the week, Christ has never redeemed them from the obligation to render "exact obedience," in this particular, as in every other.
Do you plead, as a last resort, that, as the command not to eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge has passed away, so it may be with the law of the seventh-day Sabbath? I reply, The cases are not parallel; for that command never was a part of the moral law. It was never written, either on man's heart, or on tables of stone; but this was. Besides, the tree of knowledge has been destroyed from the face of the earth, so that to eat of its fruit is now impossible; but the seventh day will continue to return "while the earth remaineth."
Brethren, you bewilder yourselves and others, by adopting, as a moral axiom, the false principle, that whatever is in its nature positive, is for that reason, changeable. There is no principle more deadly than this. Do you not know, that all our hopes, as Christians, for time and for eternity, are suspended on the immutability of that positive arrangement between the Father and the Son, which we call the covenant of grace? Are not the decrees of God all positive, yet, at the same time, immutable? So, also, the Sabbath law, though in its nature positive, has been made unchangeable, by a solemn covenant arrangement, "in which it was impossible for God to lie." If God had not made the law, requiring the sanctification of the seventh day, an essential part of the covenant of works, your doctrine of a change of Sabbath would not be so preposterous. As it is, how can serious, thinking men, help viewing it as a monstrous and impious absurdity!