love of God, and of his image, is ever the primitive, unchangeable law; and the rest are secondary, subservient laws, either positive or remedying, or both; and no tittle of this shall ever cease, if nature cease not.

5. But yet there are temporary laws of nature, which are above temporary things; or where the nature of the thing itself is mutable, from whence the natural duty doth result. As it was a duty by the then law of nature itself; for Adam's sons and daughters to marry, increase and multiply, being made a natural benediction, and the means a natural duty. And yet now, it is incest against the law of nature, for brother and sister to marry. So it was a natural duty for Adam and Eve before the fall to love each other as innocent; but not so when they ceased to be innocent: For cessante materia, cessat obligatio.'

6. So also some positive commands made to Adam in innocence ceased on the fall, and sentence; (as to dress that garden.) And some positives of the first administrations of grace, did cease by the supervening of a more perfect administration. As the two symbolical or sacramental trees in the garden, were no longer such to man, when he was turned out; so no positive ordinance of grace was any longer in force, when God himself repealed it, by the introduction of a more perfect administration.

7. Accordingly we hold, that a change is now made of the sanctified day. Where note, 1. That we take not the Seventh day (no, nor one day in seven, though that be nothing to our controversy,) to be a duty by the proper law of nature, but by a positive law: 2. That the Seventh day is never called a Sabbath till Moses's time, but only a sanctified and blessed day; the word Sabbath being ever taken in Scripture for a day of ceremonial rest, as well as of spiritual rest and worship. 3. That Christ himself hath continued a Seventh day, but changed the Seventh day to the First; not as a Sabbath, that is, a day of ceremonial rest, for he hath ended all Sabbaths, as shadows of things that were to come, even of rest which remained for the people of God. (Heb. iv. 9; Col. ii. 16.) And this is it which is incumbent upon us to prove, and I think I have fully proved already. 4. That having proved the thing done (the positive law of the Seventh day changed by the Holy Ghost to

the First day), it concerneth us not much to give the reasons of God's doings: But yet this reason may secondarily be observed; That God having made the whole frame of nature very good, did thereby make it the glass in which he was to be seen by man, and the book which he would have man chiefly study, for the knowledge of his Maker and his will. But sin having introduced disorder, confusion, and a curse upon part of the creation for man's sake, God purposed at once, both to notify to man, what he had done by sin, in bringing disorder and a curse upon the creature, and blotting the book of nature which he should have chiefly used, and also that it was his good pleasure to set up a clearer glass, even Christ incarnate, in which man might see his Maker's face, in representation suitable to our need; not now as smiling upon an innocent man, nor as frowning on a guilty man, but as reconciled to redeemed man; and to write a book in which his will should be more plainly read, than in the blotted book of nature: yea, in which he that in the creature appeared most eminently in power, might now appear most eminently in love, even redeeming, reconciling, adopting, justifying, saving love. So that, though God did not change the day, till the person of the incarnate Mediator, with his perfect last edition of the covenant, was exhibited and set up as this clearer glass and book, yet then as the seasonable time of reformation (Heb. ix. 10, 11.) he did it. To teach man that though still he must honour God as the Creator, and know him in the glass and book of the creature, yet that must be now but his secondary study; for he must primarily study God in Christ; where he is revealed in love, even most conspicuous, wondrous love.

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And how suitable this is to man after sin, and curse, and wrath, may thus evidently appear.

1. We were so dead in sin, and utterly deprived of the spiritual life, that the book of the creatures was not a sufficient means of our reviving: but as we must have the QUICKENING SPIRIT of Jesus the Mediator, so we must have a suitable means for that Spirit to work by; which that the cursed, mortified creature is not, appeareth in the experience of the case of heathens.

2. We were so dark, in sin, that the creature was not a

sufficient means of our illumination: but as we must have the ILLUMINATING SPIRIT of Jesus, so we must have a glass and a book that was suited to that illuminating work.

3. We are so alienated from God, by enmity and malignity, and loss of LOVE, that as it must be the Spirit of Jesus which must regenerate us unto LOVE, so it must be a clearer demonstration of LOVE than the creature maketh in its cursed state, which must be the fit means for the Spirit to work by in the restitution of our LOVE.

Where further note, 1. That LOVE is holiness and happiness itself; and the operations of Divine love are his perfective operations, and so fit for the last perfective act. 2. That man had many ways fallen from LOVE: as he had actually and habitually turned away his own heart from God; and as he had fallen under God's wrath, and so lost those fullest emanations of God's love, which should cherish his own love to God; and as he had forfeited the assistance of the Spirit which should repair it; and as he was fallen in love with the accursed creature, and lastly, as he was under the curse or threatening himself, and the penalties begun; it being impossible to human nature, to love a God who we think will damn us, and feel doth punish us in order thereunto. So that nothing could be more to lapsed man, or more perfective of the appearance and operations of God, than this demonstration of reconciling saving love, in our incarnate, crucified, raised, glorified, interceding Redeemer. All which sheweth that God's removal of the sanctified day from the seventh to the first day of the week, and his preferring the commemoration of redemption, and our use of the glass and book of an incarnate Saviour before that of the now accursed creature, is a work of the admirable wisdom of God, and exceeding suitable to the nature of the things.

II. Now I come to consider of what you say against all this. You cite the numbers of many chapters and verses (contrary to your grand principles, these divisions being human inventions); in all which there is nothing about the controversy in hand. The texts speak not of the decalogue only, but of the law, and of God's commandments, and of Christ's commandments. Now I must tell you beforehand, that I will take no man's word for the word of God, nor believe any thing that you say, God speaketh, without

proof. Prove it, or it goeth for nothing with me. For as I know that adding to God's word is cursed, (Rev. xxii. 18.) as well as taking away; so if I must once come to believe that God saith this or that without proof, I shall never know whom to believe; for twenty men may tell me twenty several tales, and say that God saith them all.

I expect your proof then of one of these two assertions, (for which it is that you hold, no man can gather by your own words, or citations). 1. That all the law which was in being at Christ's incarnation, was confirmed or continued by him (which yet I do not imagine you to hold, because all Paul's epistles, and especially the epistle to the Hebrews, do so fully plead against it). 2. Or else that by the law in all those texts is meant all the decalogue, and the decalogue alone.

The texts cited by you prove no more than what we hold as confidently as you: viz. 1. That all the law of nature, (where the matter or nature of the things continue) is continued by Christ, and is his principal law. 2. That the decalogue, as to the matter of it, is continued as it is the law of nature (which is almost all that is in it), but not as the Jewish law given by Moses's hands to that political body. 3. That the natural part of all the rest of Moses's law is continued as well as the decalogue. 4. That all Moses's law, as well as the decalogue, shall be fulfilled, and heaven and earth shall sooner pass away, than one jot or tittle of it shall pass till it be fulfilled. 5. That the elements, shadows, predictions, preparations, &c. are all fulfilled by the coming of Christ, and by a more perfect administration. For Christ fulfilled all righteousness; (Matt. iii. 15;) Sikatoσúvnv is sometimes but materially for Sukauμara. 6. That a change may be two ways made, 1. By destroying a thing. 2. By perfecting it. And that by the law in Matt. v. 17, &c. Christ meaneth, the whole body of God's law then in force to the Jews, considered as one frame, consisting of natutal and positive parts. Of which he saith, that he came not karaλύσαι Tov voμov, to dissolve, pull in pieces or destroy the law, as a licentious teacher, that would take off God's obligations, and leave the wills and lusts of men to a lawless liberty (which was it that the Pharisees imputed to such as were against the law): but that he came to bring in a greater strictness, a righteousness not only exceeding that of his

accusers, (ver. 20,) but instead of destroying it, to perfect the law itself, that is, to bring in a perfecter administration and edition of the law. So that as generation turneth 'semen in suppositum,' and so doth do away the seed, not by destroying it, but by changing it into a perfecter being; and as Paul saith, (1 Cor. xiii. 16-18,) "When that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away: When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood (or was affected) as a child, I thought (or reasoned) as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things, &c." not that the child or his knowledge is destroyed, but perfected and changed into better; and yet many acts of his childish reasonings may cease; and as he that would repair the temple to a greater glory, may take away the brass, and put gold instead of it, and so not change one pin of the temple by a destructive change, but by a perfective change, which (to the frame) is to edify and not destroy; even so Christ professeth that he came not to gratify the lusts of men, nor to destroy the law in the smallest point, But, 1. Himself to fulfil it in the very letter, And, 2. To accomplish the shadows, predictions, and types, `by coming himself as the truth and end, which when they had attained, they were fulfilled; And, 3. By a more perfect edition and spiritual administration, advancing, the law to a higher degree of excellency; by which not the law is said to be put away, or destroyed, but the imperfections or weaknesses of it to be done away. Not but that all God's laws are perfect as to the time and subject which they are fitted to; but not in comparison of the future time, and degrees to be added. It is a better Testament that Christ bringeth in; (Heb. vii. 22; viii. 6;) established on better promises, and procured by better sacrifice, and bringing a better hope, (Heb. viii. 6; vii. 19,) and "better things that are provided for us, that they without us should not be made perfect.” (Heb. xi. 40.) So that when Moses's law is considered as such, in that imperfect state, it is essentially or formally all done away; but not materially, for it is done away but by changing it into a better Testament and more perfect administration, which retaineth all that is natural in it, and addeth better positives suited to riper times.

So that the law as denominated from the nobler natural part, as signifying the whole law or system of precepts, then