From these considerations it is evident, that those who represent the fourth commandment as requiring the observance of only _a_ Sabbath, and that upon _some one_ day of the seven indefinitely, are guilty of a false exposition of the commandment, and of handling the word of God deceitfully. They make a plain passage of Scripture to signify one thing for some thousands of years, and then ever afterwards to signify another thing. Thus do they make void the commandment of God, that they may keep their own traditions. Now let us turn to a consideration of some of the _consequences_ of this kind of exposition. Among these we will mention only three. 1. It overturns all certainty in explaining the Scriptures. If a man, in translating from a Latin or Greek author, should pervert his author's meaning in this manner, by using words in a different sense from that in which they were intended, he would be cast out and despised. But yet when a preacher represents the term _the Sabbath_ as meaning simply _a rest_, that so he may call the first day of the week _a rest_, and therefore _the Sabbath_, he deals worse with the Scriptures than the translator just mentioned does with his profane author. Instead, however, of being cast out and despised, his speculations are allowed to go for truth. Thus unbelievers are encouraged in their infidelity; and occasion is given for them to say, that the Bible is interpreted by its friends to mean just what they please to have it. It is dangerous for men to use their wits thus to blind the eyes of their fellows. 2. It abolishes the Lord's Sabbath, and makes the Fourth Commandment to be a mere cipher. First, it abolishes the Lord's Sabbath, because it teaches that the observance of the seventh day, on which God rested and which he introduced into the commandment as one with the Sabbath, is not at all binding, but the day may be spent in any kind of labor. Is not this to abolish _the Lord's_ Sabbath? Second, it makes the fourth commandment a cipher, because it takes away the _time_, which is the seventh day, and the _event commemorated_, which is God's resting from his creative work. Now read the commandment, as these expounders would have it, bereft of the _time_ and the _event commemorated_. It then commands only _a rest_, without any precept or example as to its length or frequency. One person, therefore, may rest one hour in each day; another one day in a month; and a third one month in a year; and each may call this keeping the Sabbath. Does not this make the fourth commandment a mere cipher?