MR. TAYLOR* S THIRD REPLY. 207 



No Scriptural authority for a transfer. No Sabbatarian text to be found. 



said V — At last then we may hope for some little scrap of this 

 " ample evidence'^ — so patiently awaited, so anxioiisly desired. 

 " One fundamental part of that evidence is seen (as I showed 

 in my last article) in the nature and necessity of the case — that 

 is to say, in the new relations established by the work of Christ, 

 and confirmed by His resurrection from the dead on that day." 

 (p. 171.) Alas ! We are promised %read :" behold '' a stone." 

 The only ^^ fundamental part of the evidence is " chapter and 

 verse/' my friend ! Has your laborious search proved un- 

 availing ? — Why not candidly avow it ? Has the " ample eyi- 

 dence in the Scriptures" been adduced ? Where is it to be 

 found ? The thirsting eye trudges through barren paragraphs, 

 .but the promised well-spring is not there. Assumptions — 

 " explanations" — rhetorical episodes — these instead must we 

 accept, and not " too curiously consider." I have challenged 

 the production of one single text from the New Testament to 

 countenance Sabbatarianism ; one single text, but half as ex- 

 plicit as Col. ii. 16, on the J.ri^i-sabbatarian side; and have 

 pledged myself to surrender " the whole argument without re- 

 serve.'^ (p. 40.) My appeal remains unanswered. I charge 

 upon my friend, that the text does not exist, upon whose naked 

 strength, he himself will dåre to rest the decision of any one 

 of our issues. 



"Look calmly, now," says he, "at the case before us. Here 

 is the Law of the Weekly Sabbath in the Decalogue, — moral,* 

 positive, clear, benign," &c. &c. " And yet you demand posi- 

 tive proof of its re-enactment by Christ in explicit terms, or of 

 an equally explicit account of its transfer to the first day, from 

 the seventh of the Jewish calendar week. [Exactly. You 

 know ' there is ample evidence in the Scriptures,' if we could 

 hutfind it.'] Demands at once preposterous and presumptuous ! 



* " A weekly Sabbath ... is not of itself obvious !" (J. N. B. jo. 15.) 

 *' The law of observing the seventh-day Sabbath is not of a moral 

 nature." Dr. Gill. [Body of Divinity, vol. iii. b. iii. ch. 8.) 



