not operate to the end of the Commandment; yet the avoiding offence, and the complying with pub lick Order, is reafon enough to make the obedience to be neceffary. For he that is otherwife difobliged (as when the reafon of the Law ceafes as to his particular, yet) remains ftill obliged if he cannot do otherwile without fcandal: but this is an obligation of Charity, not of Justice.

14. All Fafting is to be ufed with prudence and charity for there is no end to which fafting ferves, but may be obtained by other inftruments: and therefore it mult at no hand be made an inftrument of fcruple, or become an enemy to our health, or be impofed upon perfons that are fick or aged, or to whom it is in any fence uncharitable, fuch as are wearied Travellers; or to whom in the whole kind of it it is ufelefs, fuch as are Women with child, poor people, and little children. But in thefe cafes the Church hath made provifion and inferted caution into her Laws; and they are to be reduced to practice according to custom, and the fentence of prudent perfons, with great latitude, and without nicenefs and curiofity having this in our first care, that we fecure our vertue, and next, that we fecure our health, that we may the better exercise the labours of ver Caffian col tue, left out of too much Aufterity we bring our felves to that condition, * that it be neceffary to be indulgent to foftness, eale and extreme tenderness. tatis eo im15. Let not Intemperance be the prologue or the pingamus, ut epilogue to your Faft, left the Faft be fo far from voluptatibus ferviamus. taking off any thing of the fin, that it be an occafion to increase it and therefore when the Faft is done, be careful that no fupervening act of gluttony or exceffive drinking unhallow the Religion of the paffed day; but eat temperately according to the proportion. of other meals, left gluttony keep either of the gates to abstinence.

*St. Bafil.

Monaft, Con

ftit. cap. 5.

21. C. 22.

Nè per cau

fam neceifi

Naz.

The Benefits of Fafting.

He that undertakes to enumerate the Benefits of Fafting, may in the next page alfo reckon all the Be

nefits of Phyfick: for Fafting is not to be commended as a duty, but as an inftrument; and in that fence no man can reprove it or undervalue it, but he that knows neither fpiritual arts nor fpiritual neceffities. But by the Doctors of the Church it is called the Nourifhment of Prayer, the restraint of Luft, the wings of the Soul, the diet of Angels, the inftrument of Humility and Self-denial, the purification of the Spirit: and the palenefs and meagernels of vifage which is consequent to the daily Faft of great Mortifiers, is by S. Bafil faid to be the Mark in the forehead which the Angel obferved when he figned the Saints in the forehead to escape the wrath of God.] The foul that is greatly vexed, which goeth stooping and feeble, and the Baruch. 2:18: eyes that fail, and the hungry foul, fhall give thee praise and righteoufnefs, O Lord.]

SECT. VI.

Of keeping Festivals, and days holy to the Lord: particularly, the Lord's Day.

TRI

RUE natural Religion, that which was com mon to all Nations and Ages, did principally rely upon four great Propofitions: 1. That there is one God; 2. That God is nothing of those things which we fee; 3. That God takes care of all things below, and governs all the World; 4. That he is the great Creatour of all things without himfelt: and according to these were framed the four firft Precepts of the Decalogue. In the first, the Unity of the Godhead is exprelly affirmed. In the fecond, his Invifibility and Immateriality. In the third, is affirmed God's Government and Providence, by avenging them that swear falfly by his Name; by which alfo his Omniscience is declared. In the fourth Commandment he proclaims himfelf the Maker of Heaven and Earth; for in memory of God's reft from the work of fix days, the feventh was hallowed into a Sabbath and the keeping it was a conteffing God

to

to be the great Maker of Heaven and Earth, and confequently to this, it alfo was a confeffion of his Goodness, his Omnipotence, and his Wifdom, all which were written with a fun-beam in the great Book of the Creature.

So long as the Law of the Sabbath was bound upon God's people, fo long God would have that to be the folemn manner of confeffing these attributes: but when, The Priesthood being changed, there was a change alfo of the Law, the great duty remained unalterable in changed circumftances. We are eternally bound to contefs God Almighty to be the Maker of Heaven and Earth; but the manner of confeffing it is changed from a rest or a doing nothing to a speaking fomething, from a day to a fymbol, from a ceremony to a substance, from a Jewifh rite to a Chriftian duty we profefs it in our Creed, we confefs it in our lives, we defcribe it by every line of our life, by every action of duty; by faith and truft, and obedience and we do alfo upon great reason comply with the Jewith manner of confelfing the Creation, fo far as it is inftrumental to a real duty. We keep one day in feven, and fo confefs the manner and circumftance of the Creation; and we reft allo that we may tend holy duties: fo imitating God's reft better than the Jew in Syneftus, who lay upon his face from evening to evening, and could not by ftripes and wounds be raised up to fteer the Ship in a great storm. God's reft was not a natural ceffation; he who could not labour, could not be faid to reft: but God's reft is to be understood to be a beholding and a rejoycing in his work finished: and therefore we truly reprefent God's reft, when we confefs and rejoyce in God's Works and God's Glory.

This the Chriftian Church does upon every day, but especially upon the Lord's Day, which the hath fet apart for this and all other Offices of Religion, being determined to this day by the Resurrection of her dearest Lord, it being the firft day of joy the Church ever had. And now upon the Lord's Day

we

we are not tied to the reft of the Sabbath, but to all the work of the Sabbath; and we are to abftain from bodily labour, not because it is a direct duty to us, as it was to the Jews, but because it is neceflary in order to our duty that we attend to the Offices of Religion.

The obfervation of the Lord's day differs nothing from the observation of the Sabbath in the matter of Religion, but in the manner. They differ in the ceremony and external rite: Reft with them was the principal; with us it is the acceffory. They differ in the office or forms of Worfhip: for they were then to worship God as a Creator and gentle Father; we are to add to that, our Redeemer, and all his other excellencies and mercies. And though we have more natural and proper reafon to keep the Lord's day than the Sabbath, yet the Jews had a divine Commandment for their day, which we have not for ours: but we have many Commandments to do all that honour to God which was intended in the fourth Commandment, and the Apostles appointed the first day of the week for doing it in folemn Affemblies. And the manner of worshipping God, and doing him folemn honour and fervice upon this day, we may best obferve in the following measures.

Rules for keeping the Lord's day and other
Christian Festivals.

1. When you go about to distinguish Festival days from common, do it not by leffening the devotions of ordinary days, that the common devotion may feem bigger upon Festivals: but on every day keep your ordinary devotions entire, and enlarge upon the Holy-day.

2. Upon the Lord's day we must abstain from all fervile and laborious works, except fuch which are matters of neceffity, of common life, or of great charity for these are permitted by that authority which hath feparated the day for holy utes. The Sabbath of the Jews, though confifting principally in reft, and

eftablished by God, did yield to thefe. The labour of Love and the labours of Religion were not against the reason and the fpirit of the Commandment, for which the Letter was decreed, and to which it ought to minister. And therefore much more is it fo on the Lord's day, where the Letter is wholly turned into Spirit, and there is no Commandment of God but of fpiritual and holy actions. The Priefts might kill their beafts and dress them for facrifice; and Christ, though born under the Law, might heal a fick man; and the fick man might carry his bed to witness his recovery, and confefs the mercy, and leap and dance to God for joy; and an ox might be led to water, and an ais be haled out of a ditch; and a man may take Phyfick, and he may eat meat, and therefore there were of neceffity tome to prepare and minifter it: and the performing these labours did not confift in minutes and just determining ftages, but they had, even then, a reasonable latitude; to only as to exclude unneceffary labour, or fuch as did not minifter to Charity or Religion. And therefore this is to be enlarged in the Golpel, whofe Sabbath or reft is but a circumftance, and acceffory to the principal and fpiritual duties. Upon the Chriftian Sabbath neceffity is to be ferved firit, then Charity, and then Religion; for this is to give place to Charity in great inftances, and the fecond to the firft in all; and in all cafes, Godis to be worshipped in fpirit and in truth.

3. The Lord's day,being the remembrance of a great bleifing, muit be a day of joy, feftivity, spiritual rejoycing and thankigiving: and therefore it is a proper work of the day to let your devotions fpend themfelves in Ginging or reading Pfalms, in recounting the great works of God, in remembring his mercies, in worfhipping his excellencies, in celebrating his attributes, in admiring his Perton, in fending portions of pleafant meat to them for whom nothing is provided, and in all the arts and inftruments of advancing God's glory and the reputation of Religion, in which it were a great decency that a memorial of the refurreEtion fhould be inferted, that the particular Religion

of