84 ABROGATION OF THE SABBATH. 



Wåeburton ; and Buntan. Epistle to the Hebrews Anti-Sabbatarian. 



SO is the other ! " No one ever yet mistook circumcision for a 

 natural dutj," remarks Bishop Warburton, "while it has 

 been esteemed a kind of impiety to deny the Sabbath to be of 

 that number V {Div. Legat. B. iv. sec. 6, note.^ 



To adopt the language of John Bunyan, I would ask, 

 '^ What can be more plain, these things thus standing in the 

 Testament of God, than that the seventh-day Sabbaths, as 

 siich, were given to Israel — to Israel only : and that the Gen- 

 tiles as such were not concerned therein !" (^Essay on the Sah- 

 hath, quest. iii.) He was fully warranted in the assertion, 

 " that the old seventh-day Sabbath is aholished and done aicay, 

 and that it has nothing to do with the churches of the Gen- 

 tiles/' {Ihid. quest. iv.) 



VI. In regard to the Sixth and last Proposition, that the 

 Epistles uniformly regard the Sabbath as a provisional type, 

 fulfilled and superseded by the gospel dispensation, my friend 

 again laconically says, " This I deny, and challenge him to 

 the proof. It certainly is not fofhid in the epistle to the He- 

 brews. '^ Let us see hcw far this interesting treatise confirms, 

 or tends to illustrate our proposition. The deductions of its 

 author are oftentimes apparently remote, and (as Peter has 

 observed, 2 Epist. iii. 16) even their scope occasionally ob- 

 scure ; still, accepting his doctrines, we must, to the best of 

 our ability, endeavor to discover his design. 



What is the "resf of God, referred to by the Psalmist 

 (xcv. 11), and by whom should it be enjoyed, appear to have 

 been the questions suggested to the apostle's mind by the quo- 

 tation he had introduced, to warn the Hebrews against " un- 

 belief (chap. iii.) And in this connection, since the ancient 

 Israelites who believed not '' could not enter in because of 

 unbelief,'' he contends that, by application to the new dispen- 

 sation, only those " ivliich have helieved, do enter into rest'' 

 (iv. 3), that is, that the promised rest could only be referred 

 to — and enjoyed by — the faithful Christian. And he endea- 

 vors to establish this by the consideration, first, that while the 



