32 ABROGATION OP THE SABBATH. 



No Gentile Sabbath hefore conversion : none afkr. 



than robhery or murder ; and J. N. B. would then have had 

 some slight chance of exercising his ingenuity in maintaining 

 his ^^ fallacy.''* It is very certain that these Gentiles never 

 were bound by the Jewish Sabbath law previous to their con- 

 version ] and it will not be doubted that they would have 

 found a strict observance of the Jewish Sabbath not the least 

 burdensome portion of ^' the law of Moses/' which the Pha- 

 risees had commanded them to keep. When, therefore, the 

 mother Church at Jerusalem by official edict resolved " to lay 

 upon them no greater hurden than these neeessary things" 

 above mentioned, it is impossible to include the fourth com- 

 mandment as obligatory upon them, without grossly pervert- 

 ing the language and the purport of Scripture. 



But, even granting, for the sake of the argument, that the 

 canonical decision was "restricted to the Jewish ceremonial 

 law/' the admission would not help my friend a particle. As 

 the Sabbath law has already been fully shown to belong to 

 that law (vide Proposition II.), it would still necessarily fall 

 within the recognized province of the ecclesiastical judgment, 

 and its omission would be quite as decisive. On either sup- 

 position, therefore, the silent rejection of the fourth command- 

 ment at once suspends its authority; unless J. N. B. is pre- 

 pared to show that the Greeks and Bomans themselves had a 

 weekly Sabbath — ajmrf from this repudiated law of Sinai. I 

 hardly suppose that this will be attempted. 



When the church at Antioch received the circular epistle 

 announcing the decision, we learn that " they rejoiced for the 

 consolation.'' Contemplating the relief tlius accorded by this 

 gospel sabbatism from Mosaic bondage, how appropriate be- 

 comes the prophet's announcement concerning the root of 



* "If the Apostles had intended to decree anything against homi- 

 cide in this canon, they would doubtless have appointed the whole 

 Desalogue to be observed by the Gentile converts." Spenger. [De 

 Legibus Hebræor. Ritual, lib. ii. cap. xxvi. scct. 4.) 



