10. If it be downright disobedience to set about our work on the
seventh day, when God says, "in _it_ thou shalt NOT do any work," can
we think to make amends for this act of disobedience by ceasing from
work on another day? Even the performance of a required duty will not
make amends for another one neglected. How much less, then, the
performance of something which is not required! "Who hath required
this at your hand?"
11. Has God ever _taken away_ the blessing which he once put upon the
seventh day, and made that day a common or secular day?
12. Does not the _reason_ of the blessing (See Quest. 3,) possess all
the cogency now that it ever did? Has it lost force by the lapse of
time? And while the reason of an institution remains, does not the
institution itself remain?
13. Was the reason of the blessing which God originally put upon the
seventh day, founded upon any need that men then had of a Redeemer?
Was it therefore to receive its accomplishment and fulfillment by the
actual coming of the Redeemer? In what possible sense can it be said,
that Jesus Christ fulfilled and made an end of this reason?
14. Has God ever said of the first day of the week, In _it_ thou shalt
not do any work? Has Christ ever said so? Have the apostles?
15. Is there any scriptural proof that Christ, or his apostles, or the
Christian churches in the days of the apostles, _refrained from labor_
on the first day of the week?
16. As there is no transgression where there is no law, (Rom. 4:15;
John 3:4,) what sin is committed by working on the first day of the
week?
17. Does not the Sabbatic Institution RESULT from the blessing and
sanctifying of _a particular day_? Is not this _the very thing in
which it consists_? How then is the institution _separable_ from the
day thus "blessed and sanctified"? How can it be separated from that
upon which its very existence depends?
18. If the very life and soul of the institution consist in the
blessing which was once put upon a particular day, is it not idle to
talk of the _transfer_ of the institution to another day? If another
day has been sanctified and blessed, then it is an _entirely new_
institution, and not a transfer of the old.
19. Does not the law of the Sabbath require the weekly commemoration
of _that_ rest which God entered into after he had finished the work
of creation? By what principle of law or logic, then, can that law be
made to _require_ the commemoration of the work of redemption?
20. If it be necessary that the work of redemption be commemorated
weekly by a positive institution, must not the obligation so to
commemorate it arise from some law which directly and specifically
requires it? But when, instead of this, the attempt is made to derive
the obligation from the Sabbath law, is it not a tacit acknowledgment
that there is no law requiring the weekly commemoration of the work of
redemption?
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