Note 13 — THE DIVINE AND PERPETUAL OBLIGATION OF THE SABBATH.

After examining all the places in which the word σάββατον and the defective plural σάββατα occur, both in the New Testament and in the Septuagint, we are satisfied that the following extract from Bishop Horsley’s Third Sermon on the Sabbath, gives the proper exposition of the passage. “I must not quit this part of my subject without briefly taking notice of a text in St. Paul’s Epistle to the Colossians, which has been supposed to contradict the whole doctrine which I have asserted, and to prove that the observation of a Sabbath in the Christian church is no point of duty, but a matter of mere compliance with ancient custom . . . From this text no less a man than the venerable Calvin drew the conclusion, in which he has been rashly followed by other considerable men, that the sanctification of the seventh day is no indispensable duty in the Christian church—that it is one of those carnal ordinances of the Jewish religion which our Lord hath blotted out. The truth however is, that in the apostolical age, the first day of the week, though it was observed with great reverence, was not called the Sabbath day, but the Lord’s day . . . and the name of the Sabbath days was appropriated to the Saturdays, and certain days in the Jewish church, which were likewise called Sabbaths in the law. The Sabbath days, therefore, of which St. Paul speaks, were not the Sundays of Christians, but the Saturdays and other Sabbaths of the Jewish calendar.”