appeal of 1731, What do ye more than others? and afterwards published on the subject of the Sabbatic institution, in his Sermons and Holiness of Times. His admirer, Dr. Doddridge, handles the same topic in his lectures. The learned Dr. Kennicott declares. decidedly for a perpetual Sabbath, and in his dissertations of 1747 establishes the article on which that doctrine ultimately depends— the divine institution of the weekly rest at the creation. Dr. Gibbons, known by his many writings, the zealous Walker of Truro, and the excellent Bishop Gibson, write on the subject wholly in a practical strain. Bolton assails a particular form of Sabbath desecration, while Moses Browne, without the genius of Herbert, makes good verse tributary to the cause. Dr. Webster sketches the history of the institution with more of the Puritan spirit than Grascome, while Catcott and Parry defend its antiquity-all of them in sermons. Steffe in 1757 was the first to enlarge on the wisdom and policy of a weekly day of rest and worship, though the Occasional Paper of 1740 may have suggested the idea. The controversial blends with the practical in the writings of Drs. Ridgley, Chandler and John Taylor, Richard Amner, Job Orton, Archbishop Secker, Coetlogon, Bishop Pearce, Jeylinger Symons, Lewelyn, Bishop Porteus, Archdeacon Pott, and Samuel Palmer. The pamphlets of Lowe and Dr. Thomas Horne are practical. Dr. Priestley, in controversy with his brother Socinian, Evanson, supports the orthodox opinion, and even Chubb upholds the first against the seventh day of rest. We, of course, omit many authors in this century whose views, though favourable to a divinely appointed and permanent Sabbath, are only briefly expressed in works on other subjects.

In the nineteenth century, efforts on behalf of the Lord's day have been called forth to an unparalleled extent. One of the most effective assaults on the abounding desecration of the day proceeded from a meeting of the friends of the London Christian Instruction Society, held in 1829. To this was owing the publication of several useful works by Sherman, Clayton, and Burder, with a reprint of the Essays by Dr. Heman Humphrey of America. Bishop Blomfield printed in 1830 his Letter to the inhabitants of London, which led to important results. The matter was taken up in the pulpit; the press was employed; the Lord's-day Society

was formed; the country was everywhere roused. Parliament became an arena of the controversy, and its discussions operated beneficially among the upper ranks and in foreign lands, while the evidence collected by its means, and through the exertions of Sir Andrew Agnew, has been and will remain an inexhaustible arsenal for supplying the means of defence and attack in the cause of a holy Sabbath.

The amount of authorship which has been elicited on behalf of the institution in this century is immense. When we have advanced in it some years we find the path covered with writings, "thick as autumnal leaves that strew the brooks in Vallambrosa." Many of them, though ephemeral, may have done much good in their respective circles. A few that appear to us the more important may be named. Bishop Horsley, as the late Dr. Wilson said, has "three noble sermons on the subject, in which he powerfully maintains the generally received doctrine," though, as the Doctor justly added, "he errs in considering the Sabbath more of a positive than moral character." Dean Milner presents both argument and practice with energetic brevity. The Christian Sabbath of Holden, notwithstanding some prolix digressions, is one of the best modern discussions of the subject. Dr. Daniel Wilson's volume is scarcely inferior to that of Holden. Of the treatise

of Thorn, it is enough to say that it is recommended by men of note, including John Foster and Robert Hall, and that it had in 1830 reached its seventh edition. More or less complete publications—some of them bearing the impress of the wellknown genius and scholarship of their authors-have been furnished by Gurney, Conder, Treffry, Charlotte Elizabeth, Drs. Croly and Richard W. Hamilton, the Woolwich Lecturers, Johnstone, Ball, and Hill, author of the prize essay, The Sabbath made for Man. Some have appeared to advantage in conflict with opponents of the common doctrine, as Hey of Leeds, in replying to Dr. Paley; Atcheson, to Mons. Beausobre; James of Cobham, to Dr. Heylyn; Cameron, Foster (Collon), Barter, and particularly Professor Samuel Lee and Archdeacon Stopford, to Archbishop Whately; Brooke, to Burnside and Bannerman; Bouchier, to H. Mayhew; a writer in the London Quarterly Review, to Powell; M'Guire, to Langley; and O'Neil, with others,

to Reichel.

Some have happily illustrated particular departments of the question, as Jordan, who has thrown light on septenary institutions in heathendom, and Baylee, who has usefully laboured in the fields of history and statistics. Others have effectually exposed certain errors and abuses, as a Layman, who ably assails the Sunday newspaper; Kingsmill, who impressively warns his countrymen against the attempts of Anti-Sabbatic writers, Leagues, and shareholders in railways and the Crystal Palace, to bring them under his charge as chaplain of a prison; Arthur, who exhibits with graphic power the evils of a French Sunday; Napier, who in Parliament eloquently deprecated the opening of the British Museum on the Lord's day; Baptist Noel, who applied his earnest spirit to the dispersing of Sunday music bands; and Henry Rogers, who exerted his great talents, that might have found still more fitting exercise on the whole question, to crush the fancy that access to places of public amusement on the Sabbath would be in any one shape a boon to our people.

The enemies of the divine and salutary law of a weekly holy rest, have, doubtless, by their principles and measures, done much injury, and to none more than themselves; but they have hitherto found it, as all who make the attempt will ever find it, impossible to effect its overthrow. Opposition has not only awakened profounder inquiry among many concerning its claims, but served to animate the zeal of Christian men on its behalf, and to bind them together in a phalanx, which, going forth under the leadership of the Lord of the Sabbath, may be expected to place the institution, in due time, above "the strife of tongues," and the rude foot of practical violation, thereby closing the history of Sabbatic controversies, if not also of Sabbatic literature, in England.

UNITED STATES.

It has been the happiness of North America that her foundations were to such an extent laid in religion, and that, destined to be the resort of persons of all characters and fortunes from the old world, she has at various times received into her territory many of the best of men, bringing with them, for the counterac

tion of her evils and the advancement of her prosperity, Christian principles, institutions, and manners. The earnest prayers and

hallowed Sabbaths of her founders and settlers have entailed on her a rich and long-continued blessing, which it is to be hoped will prevail to the overthrow of whatever tends to cut it off.

One of the chief cares of the Pilgrim Fathers, as of those who preceded them from Holland, and followed them from England, was the due observance of the sacred rest. In the earliest records of the Dutch colonists in New York, there are decrees of the most stringent character, intended to guard the infant community against the demoralizing tendencies of Sabbath profanations. There are still earlier records of attention on the part of the English setttlers to this subject. Whether they established themselves in New Plymouth, Salem, or Cambridge, they alike felt the sanctification of the Lord's day to be an all-important matter. Few will justify all the measures employed by them for enforcing the duty, but their reverence and regard for the institution were indubitable. It was not long, however, before roots of bitterness springing up troubled them. The most serious of their early trials is thus described by Samuel Rutherford :-"They were not well established in New England, when Antinomians sprang up among them, for the Church cannot be long without enemies. These were libertines, Familists, Antinomians, and enthusiasts, who had brought these wicked opinions out of Old England with them, where they grew under prelacy. I heard at London, that godly preachers were in danger of being persecuted by Laud for striving to reclaim some Antinomians. Divers of them became unclean, they had no prayer in their family, no Sabbath, insufferable pride, hideous lying."2 But union is strength. A Synod was called. The errors were unanswerably refuted, and unanimously condemned. "And so the Lord," says Shepard, who was mainly instrumental in closing the career of Ann Hutchinson and her party, "within one year wrought a great change among us, having delivered the country from war with the Indians and Familists, who rose and fell together."3

1 Decrees of Peter Stuyvesant, 1647, 1648. The Sabbath in New York, p. 6.

2 Spiritual Antichrist, pp. 171, 180.

Albro's Life of Thomas Shepard, pp. cxxv. cxxvi.

But it was not so easy, especially by fines and the stocks, to rid the country of some other errors and evils in relation to the Lord's day. We find several ministers-Cotton, Hooker, and Cobbet corresponding with Shepard, and stating arguments for the common doctrine, as if the matter engaged their serious consideration, and had been or were about to be canvassed in the pulpit or through the press. The points on one or other of which certain persons had difficulties and doubts, were the morality and the day of the Sabbath.2 Mr. Shepard, we know, did preach a course of sermons on the whole subject of the institution, which were "thrown into the form of theses or short propositions at the earnest request, and for the particular use of the students of Harvard College," and afterwards, in substance, published in 1649.3 Dr. Albro, his American biographer, justly eulogizes the Theses Sabbaticæ, as "a masterly discussion of the morality, the change, the beginning, and the sanctification of the Sabbath." Thomas Shepard, who was obnoxious to Laud, retired to America in 1635, was first pastor of the first church, Cambridge, Mass., and is well known as the author of several practical works, particularly sermons on the Parable of the Ten Virgins, which, when preached, accomplished their object of contributing to put down the Antinomian heresy in New England. It was said of him, that he "scarce ever preached a sermon, but some one or other of his congregation was struck with great distress, and cried out in agony, What shall I do to be saved!" And he himself, addressing some young ministers, said on his deathbed, "First, that the studying of every sermon cost him tears; he wept in the studying of every sermon. Secondly, before he preached any sermon, he got good by it himself. Thirdly, he always went up into the pulpit, as if he were to give up his accounts unto his Master."5

The Churches in New England, having, at a Synod in 1648, adopted the Westminster Confession of Faith as their doctrinal

1 Felt's Ecclesiastical History of New England, pp. 569, 604, 614.

2 Ibid. pp. 587, 614.

. Besides the edition in his Collected Works (1853), there is one before us of the year 1650, and we have seen another which appeared in 1655.

A Life, p. clxxx.

Mather's Magnalia (1702), p. 238.