HKB
thought it right that servants, and persons living under the jurisdiction of others, should be indulged with a day of rest, that they might enjoy some remission from their labour.
XXIX. Yet we are taught in many places that this adumbration of the spiritual rest was the principal design of the sabbath. For the Lord is hardly so strict in his requisitions of obedience to any other precept.(865) When he means to intimate, in the Prophets, that religion is totally subverted, he complains that his sabbaths are polluted, violated, neglected, and profaned;(866) as though, in case of that duty being neglected, there remained no other way in which he could be honoured. On the other hand, he notices the observance of it with singular encomiums. Wherefore also, among the other Divine communications, the faithful used very highly to esteem the revelation of the sabbath. For this is the language of the Levites in a solemn assembly, recorded by Nehemiah: “Thou madest known unto our fathers thy holy sabbath, and commandedst them precepts, statutes, and laws, by the hand of Moses.”(867) We see the singular estimation in which it is held above all the commandments of the law. All these things tend to display the dignity of the mystery, which is beautifully expressed by Moses and Ezekiel. In Exodus we read as follows: “Verily my sabbaths ye shall keep; for it is a sign between me and you throughout your generations; that ye may know that I am the Lord that doth sanctify you. Ye shall keep the sabbath therefore; for it is holy unto you. The children of Israel shall keep the sabbath, to observe the sabbath throughout their generations, for a perpetual covenant. It is a sign between me and the children of Israel for ever.”(868) This is more fully expressed by Ezekiel; but the substance of what he says is, that the sabbath was a sign by which the Israelites might know that God was their sanctifier.(869) If our sanctification consists properly in the mortification of our own will, there is a very natural analogy between the external sign and the internal thing which it represents. We must rest altogether, that God may operate within us; we must recede from our own will, resign our own heart, and renounce all our carnal affections; in short, we must cease from all the efforts of our own understanding, that having God operating within us, we may enjoy rest in him, as we are also taught by the Apostle.(870)