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qualifications which occur in your correspondent ' s remarks on my former letter .
The learned author of " The Scripture Testimony to the Messiah" admits what , for an obvious reason , Sabbatarian Calvinists have never been forward to acknowledge , that ** on one great branch of obedience , " ( the holiness of Sundai / , J " the French Reformer entertained a sentiment
lower than that which most Christians in our country approve ; " while 44 he considered the religious observance of the first day of the week , as a duty , upon the grounds of expedience and utility principally" Your Correspondent , indeed , regards Calvin ' s " views of the sanctification of the
Lord ' s day" as * ' defective and introductory to very melancholy consequences . " These admissions are however qualified . Calvin is supposed , in his *• Dissertation on the Fourth
Commandment , " to describe " the religious observance of the first day of the week" as an " arrangement—enjoined upon us by the will of God . " Mad the passage ( II . 8 , S £ ) been translated entire , it would , I think , have appeared that what Calvin
considered as divinely enjoined upon Christians , was their assembling for public worship and instruction , and not the appropriation of any particular day or portion of time , like the Jewish Sabbath , for such a purpose . For the religious observance of Sunday
Calvin argues , I apprehend , not principally , as your Correspondent admits , but wholly * ' upon the grounds of expedience and utility . " This appears from the following words , being part of the passage omitted in the translation of Sect . 82 , in your 488 th page , ( col . 2 , line 25 , ) Conventus
Ecclesiostici nobis Dei verbo praicipmn ' - tur c et corum tiecessitas , ipsa vitas txperientia nota satis est . Nisi stati sint 9 et sttos habeant constitutes dies , quomodo haberi possunt . ( Religious assemblings are enjoined-upon us in the word of God ; and their necessity is sufficiently discovered in the experience of life * Now unless these are
stated , and special days are appointed for them , how can they be observed ?) From the beginning of Sect . S 3 , it appears that even such a highly expo ^ nA * mu * geinent was disapproved
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by some of Calvin ' s contemporaries , felloiv-reforrtiers I should suppose . He contents himself with calling them nonnnlli inquieti spiritus ( certain
restless spirits ; . For Papists he had other epithets in store ; and Unitarians would probably have been consigned to the same kennel w \\ h His * panicum canem * ( that Spanish dog ) Servetvs , Whoever these restless
spirits were , Calvin thus replies to them—lonyo tnlervallo differimns , i ? i hdc parte , a Judeis . { We very widely differ , on this subject , with the Jews . ) He then shews in what the difference
consisted : Non enim , nt ceremoniam , arctissimfi religione , celebramns 9 qua pntemus mysterium spirituale figurari : sed snscipimus nt remedium retinendo in ecclesia ordini necessarium . This
passage is thus correctly rendered in Norton ' s Translation , 1634 : " For we keep it , not with straite religion , as a ceremonie , wherein we think a spiritual mysterie to be figured , but we retaine it , as a necessarie remedy to the keeping of order , in the church . "
In the next and concluding Section , after expressing his approbation of the conduct of the ancient fathers in substituting the iLord ' s-clay for the Sabbath , Calvin thus guards against being misunderstood , as if he supposed
that Christians , like Jews , were under any divine law which had consecrated a seventh portion of their time for exclusively religious uses . On the contrary , the French Reformer might have conscientiously adopted the evanescent Decades of his countrymen . Calvin says , Neque sic tarnen septena ,-viivm numcrum moror , tit ejus servitufi acclesiam astyingam , neque enim ecclesias damnavero quce alios conventibus suis solenyies dies habeant , modb a superstitione absint . ( Neither do I so regard the number seven as to bind the church to the observance of it ; nor will I condemn churches who
may appoint other days for their so-* Thus Calvin calls Servetus in hi « Commentary on Acts xx . 28 . On winch Franciscus Lismaninus wrote in the mar <» gin of his copy , the following * distich , Cur tibi sum Calvin ^ canis ? Tuns « ffi - cit ardor Xte -earns heu dicar , scd miseranda < ii * i * Sfce £ fm * t diu 3 y p . p 5 *
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554 Calvin * $ Notion of the Sabbath .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Sept. 2, 1819, page 554, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1776/page/30/
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