To the extent possible under law, the Text Creation Partnership has waived all copyright and related or neighboring rights to this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above, according to the terms of the CC0 1.0 Public Domain Dedication (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/). This waiver does not extend to any page images or other supplementary files associated with this work, which may be protected by copyright or other license restrictions. Please go to http://www.textcreationpartnership.org/ for more information.
There wants not sufficient proof that the Gentiles gene∣rally [ 190] practised and approved a seventh daies Sabbath, and that it was highly honoured among them as very sacred: This truth both Tertullian, Eusebius, Iosephus and Philo have for∣merly
affirmed; Aretus also, especially learned Rivet, have lately vindicated and made good against all the exceptions of Gomarus and others;* 1.1 insomuch as that the last refuge both of Gomarus and Primrose is this, viz. That all those Heathens who writ about the Sabbath and in honour of it, received not their light from nature, but from the writings of the Iewish Common∣wealth, all those heathenish testimonies about the Sabbath, being published and writ long after the delivering of the law upon mount Sinai: And therefore they think this no argument to prove that this law was practised ever since the world began, or that it was known by the light of nature, by which it might be evinced to be morall: but by this answer we shall scarce know any thing to be according to the light of nature by the writings of the Heathens, for all their writings are since Mo∣ses time, if they be of any credit; but suppose they did not know it by the working power of the light of nature, yet if they approved of, and honoured this day when it was made known by other means, so that rhey knew it by the appro∣ving light of nature, as the authors alleaged make good, its then sufficient to prove the seventh day morall, even by the light of nature: And although Seneca and some others scoft at the Jewish Sabbaths, as if they lost the seventh part of their time thereby; yet we know that mens lusts wil give them leave to scoffe at that which yet their consciences cha∣stise them for; beside I think those scoffs were not so much at the seventh day as at their ••••ict and ceremonious obser∣vance thereof, as also of their seventh yeeres, wherein its no wonder if that the light of nature should not so clear∣ly see.
Aret. loc. Com. de Sab. Rivet. in Com. 4 & dissert. de orig. Sab. Prim. part. 1. cap. 3. s. 9.