209 



The word " Sabbath" Tital, because the only appropriate designation. 



Testament witli microscopic diligence, we can find no sjllable 

 to wliisper '^a transfer of the day/^ Granting to J. N. B. the 

 full benefit of his own forced constructions of all the passages 

 of Scripture he has been able to collect, he is just as far from 

 the establishment of his assumption — a change in the applica- 

 tion of the fourth commandment — as ever. The vital word 

 '' Sabbath" (as I before remarked, — p. 93), unfortunately, 

 "had to be omitted from all his decisive ^ facts,' built on 

 ' chapter and verse !' '' 



But, replies J. N. B. (p. 190) : " Is there anything ' vital' 

 in the ivord ^ Sabbath,' that its absence should decide the ques- 

 tion ? True vitality belongs to things, not ivords. If we find 

 the tliing — the weekly day of religious rest and convocation, 

 established by Divine x\uthority in the Christian Church on 

 ^ the first day of the week,' is it not the merest verbal trifling 

 to dispute about the name? If my friend prefers, with the 

 Apostle, to call it ' the Lord's day,' and as such admits its obli- 

 gation, I will be the last man to quarrel with him." 



I answer, ^^words" are " vital," as the exponents of ^^things." 

 Pre-eminently "vital" are they in theological discussion; and 

 my friend well knows that long and bitter battles have been 

 waged on the orthodoxy of a Greek diphthong. The word 

 ^'Sabbath" is vital here, as being the appropriate, and the only 

 appropriate, designation of the subject in dispute. If J. N. B. can 

 *'find the thing," why should he hesitate to call it by its proper 

 name ? If, in a single text of those he has presented, a day of 

 worldly rest is inculcated, under lolmtever "name" — a day in 

 which it is commanded " thou shalt not do any work'' — how 

 tappens it that in summing up his "four distinct /ac^s," with 

 all the latitude of liberal paraphrase and "forced construction," 

 he could not once lug in " the vital word" on which our con- 



Lord's day,' in case it had been then a holy day, either of divine or 

 apostolical institution." Jeremy Taylor. {Duct. Duh. b. ii. ch. il. 

 rule 6, 54.) 



18* 



