Covel on the Sabbath

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · BATTLE CREEK, MICH. · Jan 17, 1871

Covel on the Sabbath.

In a “Dictionary of the Holy Bible,” by Rev. Jas. Covel, Jr., issued in 1839 from the Methodist Publishing House, No. 200 Mulberry St., New York, we find the following excellent remarks upon the Sabbath question. The reader may not find in the article any argument with which he is not already acquainted; but he will see in it good evidence that the idea of the abolition of the law, and the cessation of the Sabbath, was not the doctrine then held by Methodists; and as such, it will be of interest, and may be of use; for some, even among Methodists, now talk in a very different manner. True, the writer subsequently argues for a change of day. But the essential point is to maintain the law of God in its entirety and immutability, as Mr. Covel emphatically does. This being done, a little further examination is sufficient to convince thinking minds, that no change of day is possible. We are sorry to believe, as we are nevertheless compelled to do, that many have taken the ground of no law, and consequently no Sabbath, simply to avoid the claims of the seventh day; and we are glad to meet with testimony from earnest Christians of any age, past or present, that the moral law of God, with its merciful provision of a day of rest, is still the rule of life for Christians. Keep such testimony before the people, that the candid may see that the doctrine of no law and no Sabbath is chiefly an after-thought, to avoid the claims of truth.

It is wholly a mistake, that the Sabbath, because not re-enacted with the formality of the decalogue, is not explicitly enjoined upon Christians, and that the testimony of Scripture to such an injunction is not unequivocal and irrefragable. The Sabbath was appointed at the creation of the world, and sanctified, or set apart for holy purposes, “for man,” for all men, and therefore for Christians; since there was never any repeal of the original institution. To this we add, that if the moral law be the law of Christians, then is the Sabbath as explicitly enjoined upon them as upon the Jews. But that the moral law is our law, as well as the law of the Jews, a few passages of Scripture will prove as well as many. Our Lord declares that he “came not to destroy the law and the prophets, but to fulfil.” I take it, that by “the law,” he meant both the moral and the ceremonial; ceremonial law could only be fulfilled in him, by realizing its types; and moral law, by upholding its authority. That the observance of the Sabbath is a part of the moral law, is clear from its being found in the decalogue, the doctrine of which our Lord sums up in the moral duties of loving God and our neighbor; and for this reason, the injunctions of the prophets, on the subject of the Sabbath, are to be regarded as a part of their moral teaching.

Another explicit proof that the law of the ten commandments, and consequently the law of the Sabbath, is obligatory upon Christians, is found in the answer of the apostle to an objection to the doctrine of justification by faith: “Do we then make void the law through faith?” Rom. 3: 31; which is equivalent to asking, Does Christianity teach that the law is no longer obligatory on Christians, because it teaches that no man can be justified by it? To this he answers, in the most solemn form of expression, “God forbid; yea, we establish the law.” Now, the sense in which the apostle uses the term, “the law,” in this argument, is indubitably marked in Rom. 7: 7: “I had not known sin but by the law; for I had not known lust, except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet;” which being a plain reference to the tenth command of the decalogue, as plainly shows that the decalogue is “the law” of which he speaks. This, then, is the law which is established by the gospel; and this can mean nothing else but the establishment and confirmation of its authority, as the rule of all inward and outward holiness. Whoever, therefore, denies the obligation of the Sabbath on Christians, denies the obligation of the whole decalogue.