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frame, knew that a due measure and proportion of action and reft were neceffary for that end. Working fix days, and refting the feventh day and the greatest part of the seven nights, throws labor and rest into the fame measure, or very near it. This is certainly one leading defign of the fourth command; it is the infallible rule of human exercises and refts, as a facred preventive to keep us in health and vigor.

For want of attention to this, fome are driven on by avarice and ambition that they know not how nor when to give over the fir and hurry; and others hardly ever willing to begin: fome killing themselves with inceffant toils, and others numbed and half dead by laziness and inactivity. The divifion of our time as we have it in the weekly numbers, is a merciful scheme to prevent these evils; and is founded in the nature of things. For fuch a measure of labor calls for fuch and fuch intervals; and reft, in its own nature, equally calls for action. Mankind cannot be in a proper ftate of firmness, ftrength and vigor without this. The human body was not made to be happy in one endless fcene either of labor or

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reft, nor the mind neither; but in a variety and mixture of both. Heaven itself is made a scene of pure happiness, and its inhabitants kept in eternal bloom and vigor, by these wise and grateful alternatives from which they never deviate, and therefore live in perfect order, reason and propriety.

If, as fome would have it, entering heaven is bidding adieu to all employment and going into a state of eternal inactivity, I should think that the laziest drones on earth, must be the highest saints in heaven. But heaven is full of activity, full of rational employment fuited to the dignity and perfection of our nature there, varied into wife intervals and refts, agreeable to what we are accustomed to in this introductory state.

Therefore this matter was too weighty to be left for man himself to fettle. The fabbath must be feptenary and fixed by God himself. Septenary, or every seventh day, and neither more nor lefs, that labor and reft might bear a proportion and regulate each other for the purpose here mentioned. Therefore the command is fo worded,

as

as to require and enjoin working fix days, as well as refting the feventh. And he that will not work at some lawful business fix days, is as real a violator of the fourth command as he who will not reft on the seventh, unless by fomething lawful or unavoidable he is hindered. He therefore who opposes and rejects, or wishes this command out of his way, is not only an enemy to God, but to human nature in general.

Secondly, God has commanded us to work fix days and reft but one, in order to bring in plenty and riches. If he had ordered fix days to be fabbatical and one for work, business would have been thereby cramped and confined within fuch narrow bounds, that poverty would have been, in the natural courfe of things, unavoidable. But the appointment of fix days for the bufinefs of life, gives all the opportunities that can be of any fervice, to think, to contrive and to do. This is what is devoted, and even confecrated for the purpose of doing all our bufinefs; and if it is not done, or if any one fays, that he cannot do it all in fix days, it can never be done at all. This is the measure of time which unerring

wisdom

wisdom and prudence has judged proper for doing our common business, and for doing it all as the precept enjoins; that is, doing a week's work. Six days is time enough to do a week's work, and but enough.

Thofe therefore who keep both jewish and christian fabbaths, do break and profane the fourth command in every view and administration of it at once. They throw the primitive fabbath out of its more honorable place, as comprehended in, and incorporated with the new; they leffen the new fabbath on the refurrection day as not alone fufficient, and make a breach in the week; redu cing it from fix to five working days. Thus, they break the command, though I have the charity to believe not wilfully but inadvertently. The precept, measures and numbers our working week, and makes it to be fix days, commanding us to our own business, Doing fome business

be employed in our business;

to do it; and do it all.

or other, is not enough; or working fome days; one, or even five; but the command ties us to our own business, and not another's; requiring us to do it all: and all our work, is all

that

that which a man may reasonably do in fix days. And in general, all the week's work, of each individual of mankind, is contained within the fix days; neither more nor less: If a man works five days, and does ever fo much in the time, he has not fulfilled the command, nor performed his duty; for all his work, is all that he can reasonably do, to the end of fix days. I repeat it again, it is not doing fomething, and working fome of the days, but it is doing all the work: that is, all that a perfon can do in fix days. And if it is not fix days' work, it is not all his work, let it be as much as it will. If a perfon has not worked and gained as much as he can in reafon do in fix days, he has not done all his work, as the law requires.

Unless then the fourth command is held in force it cannot be proved that any man is obliged directly by any law of God to do a days work. All the bufinefs in the world would be left under the hands of mere humour or accidental neceffities, and no man bound by divine authority to attend to it, nor to be lawfully called to an account for. neglecting it. But God by his law has expressly

made

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