forted, and edified on the Lord's days! When men are obliged to hear, read, pray, and praise God, and to catechise their children and servants, as that which God requireth, is it not liker to be done, than if they be left to their own erroneous, backward, sluggish minds, or to the will of rulers perhaps worse than they? Q. 30. How is it that the Lord's day must be spent and sanctified?

A. Not in diverting worldly thoughts, words, or deeds; much less in idleness, or vain pastimes; and, least of all, in such sinful pleasures as corrupt the mind, and unfit a man for holy work, such as gluttony, drunkenness, lasciviousnesss, stage plays, romances, gaming, &c. But the Lord's day is specially separated to God's public worship in church communion; and the rest to private and secret holy exercises. The primitive Christians spent most of the day together: and the public worship should not be only preferred, but also take up as much of the day as we can well spend therein.

Q. 31. What are the parts of church service to be used on the Lord's day?

A. 1. The reading of the sacred Scriptures, by the teachers, and expounding them to the people: their preaching the doctrine of the gospel, and their applying it to the case and consciences of the hearers. Their guiding them in the solemn exercise of God's praise, special worship, celebrating the sacraments, especially that of communion of the body and blood of Christ, and that with such conjunction of praises to God, as that it may be fitly called the eucharist, speaking and singing joyfully of God's perfections, and his mercies to man; but specially of the wonderful work of our redemption, and therein chiefly of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. For the day is to be spent as a day of thanksgiving, in joyful and praising commemoration of Christ's resurrection.

Q. 32. On days of thanksgiving men use to feast: may we labour on the Lord's day in providing feasts ?

A. Needless cost and labour, and sensual excess, must be avoided, as unsuitable to spiritual work and rejoicing. But such provision as is suitable to a festival, for sober, holy persons, is no more to be scrupled, than the labour of going to the church, or the minister's preaching. And it is a laudable use for men to wear their best apparel on that day.

Isa. lviii. 13-15; Luke iv. 16, 18; vi. 1, 6, and xiii. 10; Acts xiii. 27, 42, 44; xv. 21; xvi. 13, and xx. 7; 1 Cor. xiv., and xvi. 1; Psalm c. 1—3, &c.

Q. 33. What are the private duties on the Lord's day?

A. Principally speaking and singing God's praises for our redemption in our families, and calling to mind what we were publicly taught, and catechising children and servants, and praying to God, and meditating on God's word, and works of nature, grace, and glory.h

Q. 34. Seeing the Lord's Day is for the commemoration of Christ's resurrection, must we cease the commemoration of the works of creation, for which the seventh day Sabbath was appointed?

A. No: the appointing of the Lord's day is accumulative, and not diminutive, as to what we were to do on the Sabbath. God did not cease to be our Creator and the God of nature, by becoming our Redeemer and the God of grace; we owe more praise to our Creator, and not less. The greater and the subsequent and more perfect work comprehendeth the lesser, antecedent, and imperfect. The Lord's Day is to be spent in praising God, both as our Creator and Redeemer; the creation itself being now delivered into the hands of Christ.

Q. 35. But is it not then safest to keep two days; the seventh to honour the Creator, and the first to commemorate our redemption?

A. No; for when the world was made all very good, God delighted in man, and man in God, as his only rest. But upon the sin of man God is become a condenining judge, and displeased with man, and the earth is cursed; so that God is so far now from being man's rest, that he is his greatest terror, till he be reconciled by Christ. No man cometh to the Father but by the Son. So that now the work of Creation must be commemorated with the work of redemption, which restoreth it to its proper use.

Q. 36. But what if a man cannot be satisfied that the seventh day is repealed, is it not safest for him to keep both?

A. God hath laid no such task on man, as to dedicate to religious duties two days in seven; and he that thinketh otherwise, it is his culpable error. But if he do it conscionably, without contentious opposing the truth, and dividing the church for it, good Christians will not despise him, but own him as a brother. Paul hath decided that case, Romans xiv. and xv. Q. 37. Why is mention here made of all within our gates ?

h Psalm xcii.; xcv.; xcvi., and cxviii. 21-24; Col. iii. 16. James v. 14; Rev. iv. 11, and x.6; Col. i. 16.

* Col. ii. 16.

A. To show that this commandment is not only directed to private persons, but to magistrates, and masters of families as such, who, though they cannot compel men to believe, they may restrain them from violating the rest of the Sabbath, and compel them to such external worship of God as all men are immediately obliged to; even all within the gates of their cities or houses.

Q. 38. What if one live where are no church meetings, or none that he can lawfully join with?

A. He must take it as his great loss and suffering, and with the more diligence improve his time in private.'

Q. 39. What preparation is necessary for the keeping holy that day?

A. 1. The chief part of our preparation is the habitual holiness of the soul, a love to God, and his word, and grace, and a sense of our necessities, and heart full of thankfulness to Christ, which relisheth sweetness in his Gospel, and in God's praise, and the communion of saints. 2. And the other part is our endeavour to prevent all distracting hinderances, and the greatest helps that we can in the most sensible means; and to meditate before of the great mercy of our redemption, of Christ's resurrection, the giving of the Holy Ghost, and the everlasting, heavenly rest which this prepareth for; and to pray for God's assistance and blessing.

CHAP. XXXVIII.

Of the Fifth Commandment.

Q. 1. WHAT are the words of the fifth commandment? A. "Honour thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be long in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee." Q. 2. Doth this commandment belong to the first table, or the second?

A. No man knoweth which of the two tables of stone it was written in by God: but if we may judge by the subject, it seemeth to be the hinge of both, or belong partly to each. As rulers are God's officers, and we obey God in them, it belongs

1 Rev. i. 10.

to our duty to God; but as they are men, it belongs to the second.m

Q. 3. Why is father and mother named, rather than kings?

A. 1. Parents are our first governors, before kings. 2. Their government is deeplier founded, even in nature, and not only in contract. 3. Parents give us our very being, and we are more obliged to them than to any. 4. They have a natural love to us, and we to them; so that they are justly named first.

Q. 4. Is it only parents that are here meant?

A. No; all true governors are included. But so far as the Commandment is part of the law of nature, it bindeth us but to natural rulers antecedently to human contract and consent, and to those that rule us by contract, but consequently."

Q. 5. What is the power of parents and rulers, which we must obey?

A. They are of various ranks and offices; and every one's power is special, in that which belongeth to his own place and office. But in general they have power first to command inferiors to obey God's laws: And, 2. to command them such undetermined things in subordination to God's laws, which God hath left to their office to determine of; as corporations make by-laws, by virtue of the king's law.

Q. 6. What if parents or princes command what God forbids?

A. We must obey God, rather than men.°

Q. 7. Are we not then guilty of disobedience?

A. No, for God never gave them power to contradict his laws.

Q. 8. But who shall be judge when men's commands are contrary to God's? Must subjects and children judge?

A. While children are infants naturally uncapable of judging, we are ruled as brutes by our parents. But when we grow up to the use of reason, our obligation to govern ourselves is greater than to be governed by others.P God's government is

Prov. i. 8; vi. 20; xiii, 1; xv. 5; xx. 20; xxiii. 22, 25, and xxx. 17; Heb. xii. 9; Eph. vi. 1, 2; Mark vii. 10, 11; Deut. xxi. 18, 19, and xxvii. 16; Lev. xix. 3, and xx. 9; Exod. xxi. 15, 17; Gen. ix. 23; Col. iii. 20, 22; Jer. xxxv. 8, 10.

" Rom. xiii. 1-3; Prov. v. 13; Tit. iii. 1, 2; 1 Pet. ii. 13; iii. 1, 5, and v. 5; 1 Tim. ii. 11; Heb. xiii. 7, 17; 1 Cor. xvi. 16.

• Acts v. 29.

P1 Pet. i. 14; 1 John v. 21; Jude xx. 21; Mark xiii. 9; Prov. xxv. 28; xvi. 37, and ix. 12; 2 Tim. ii. 15; 1 Tim, iii. 15; iv. 7, 15, 16; v. 22, and vi. 5.

the first in order of nature; and self-government is the next, though we are not capable of it till we come to some ripeness. A man is nearer to himself than his parents are, and his happiness or misery depends more on himself than on them. And indeed children's or men's obedience to others is but an act of self-government. It is a man's self-governing reason and will which causeth him to obey another; nor can a child perform any act of proper obedience differing from a brute, unless by a self-governing act. But parents' government is the next to self-government, and the government of husbands, princes, and masters, which are by contract, is next to that. Every subject, therefore, being first a subject of God, and next a self-governor, is to obey as a reasonable creature, and to understand what is his duty and what not. And because all is our duty which God commandeth, but not all that man commandeth, God's power being absolute, and all men's limited; therefore we have nothing to do with the laws of God but to know them, and love them, and obey them. But as to man's commands, we must know also, that they are not contrary to God's laws, and that they belong to the office of the commander. If a parent or prince command you to blaspheme God, or worship idols, or deny Christ, or renounce heaven, or not to pray, &c. you must obey God by disobeying him. And if a king command you not to obey your parents, or will choose for you your wife, your diet, your physic, the words you shall say to God in your secret prayers, &c., these are things which belong not to his office, no more than to a captain's, to become judge of the Common Pleas. Subjects, therefore, must judge what they must, or must not obey, as rulers must judge what they must, or must not command; or else they act not as inen.

Q. 9. But what confusion will this cause, if every subject and child become judge whether their prince's or parents' commands be lawful? Will they not take all for unlawful which their folly or corrupt wills dislike, and so cast off all obedience?

A. It is not finding inconveniences in the miserable state of lapsed mankind that will cure them. Were there any avoiding error, sin, and confusion, by government, some would have found out the way before now. But while man is bad, he will do accordingly. In avoiding these evils, we must not run into far greater. Are they not greater, if men must not discern who is their lawful governor, but must fight for an usurper in Dan. iii., and vi.