180 OBLIGATION OF THE SABBATH. 



Religions EstalDlish ments. Divine Authority— necessary. 



selves with a Sabbath ^^as by law established/' and think 

 little of the need of Scriptural Authority. This was the 

 case with Luther and Calvin, Warburton and Paley, 

 Whately and Neander. And possibly even in this Re- 

 public, where a Eeligious Establishment is wisely forbidden 

 by the Constitution, my friend may think "law and wont" 

 of sufficient force to maintain the weekly Sabbath in all its 

 benefieent operations, without the belief in its divine au- 

 thority. He is not very explicit, it is true, on this point; 

 but this is the most charitable view of the matter. To suppose 

 he wishes to see the Sabbath practically abolished, is to sepa- 

 rate him at once from the company of the great men whom he 

 loves to cjuote. If he has read them thoroughly, he is aware 

 that their aim was not to suhvert the Sabbath, but to rescue 

 the principle and manner of its observance from Pharisaic 

 sophistry, bigotry, and superstition. But the position of 

 antagonism is not usually favorable to the full discovery of 

 truth, or to its exact expression in language. Reformers are 

 sometimes innovators. Earnest minds often, like pendulums, 

 obey unconsciously the law of oscillation. Reaction is equal 

 to action. And hence the injurious extremes and perplex- 

 ing inconsistencies of the distinguished men just named — 

 some of which I may have occasion to expose. 



But in this point, they are not models for American 

 Christians. Whatever be true in other countries and times, 

 HUMAN AUTHORITY, neither legal nor ecclesiastical, will 

 satisfy freeborn Americans. No man's conscience will be 

 bound here by anything short of divine authority — real 

 or supposed. Let the opinions of W. B. T. (as put forth with 

 such rash confidence, and defended so zealously) generally 

 prevail in this country, and no man could thereafter observe 

 the Sabbath, but as a matter of " will-worship," or at best of 

 political morality. But this in motive, in tendency, and in 

 ultimate efFect, is to abolish the Sabbath. What man of in- 

 tellectual independence would consent for one moment to the 



