MR. TAYLOR' S SECOND REPLY. 129 



The SaLbath snhordinate to man : and therefore not " moral." 



temple-service, these priests were yet held "blameless/' Jesus 

 was ''greater than the temple/' and therefore hetter justified 

 the '^ profan ation;^' if " mercy'^ be more acceptable to God 

 than ''saerifice/' then is he " guiltless" who places human 

 comfort above ritual observance. {Matt. xii. 3 — 7.)"^ 



But be3'ond all this, the Sabbath is suhser v ieiit to man,yield- 

 ing to his emergencies : man is not subservient to the Sabbath, 

 enchained by its exactions. This constitutes the very distinc- 

 tion between moral and positive laws. Man is made "for the 

 observance of the moral law. On the contrary, all ^ positive^ 

 institutions were made /er man.'^ 



J. N. B. entitles the argument of Bishop AYarburton a 

 ^^specious fallacy" (p. 6b), but be does not venture to assail 

 its positions.f He endeavors to obscure the distinction by a 



case of Sabbatli circumcision, and of everj other collision of laws, one 

 regulation is necessarily set aside by auother. 



* "He that did ordain the Sabbatli day, may also take away the 

 Sabbath. And he that ordained the Sabbath, did ordain it for nian's 

 sake, and not contrariwise — man because of the Sabbath day. It is 

 nieet therefore that the keeping of the Sabbath day gire place to the 

 profit and commodity of man." Erasmus. [Paraphrase in loco.) 



f It is a matter for some gratulation to find such logicians as a Bax- 

 ter, a Warburton, a Horsley, and a Whately, exactly coinciding in 

 this " specious fallacy." Says Baxter: "It seemeth plainly to mean 

 that, being hut a positive law, he had power to change it, and dispense 

 with it, as well as with other positive and Mosaical laws." (Practical 

 Woj-ks, vol. iii. On Lord's day. Appendix, ch. i.) Warburton re- 

 marks — "■ }^ positive institutions were ' made for man,' for the hetter 

 direction of his conduct in certain situations of life ; the observance of 

 which is therefore to be regulated on the end for which they were in- 

 stituted: for (contrary to the nature of v\oral duties) the observance 

 of them may, in some circumstances, become hurtfiil to man for whose 

 benefit they were instituted ; and whenever this is the case, God and 

 nature grant a dispensation," [Div. Leg. B. iv. sec. 6, note " rrrr.") 

 Horsley argues upon the text, that " What is aflSrraed of the Sabbath 

 in these remarkable words, is equally true of all the ordLnances of 

 exterual worship .... We have our Lord's authority to say that tho 



