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Counterfeit Coin

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Publishing Committee · Saratoga Springs, N. Y. · Oct 7, 1851

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 2, No. 5.

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Counterfeit Coin.

Being the substance of a recent Conversation between an eminent Counselor at Law and a Sabbatarian.
The Lawyer contended that although the first day of the week had no divine authority for its sanctity or observance as a Sabbath, yet if it be kept as scrupulously and conscientiously as the seventh day demanded, it could not but be as acceptable to God.
In answer to such sophistry, the Sabbatarian submitted the following legal case to him:—
“I am told that I can purchase, in the State of Connecticut, one hundred copper cents, bearing the impress and superscription of the United States Mint, and equal in every respect in value to the mint coin, for sixty-five cents, payable in gold or silver. But I admit them to be counterfeit. I admit, also, that I circulate this spurious coin. Now, will you undertake, for a fee of $10,000, to defend my cause against a prosecution for passing such false coin, and exonerate me from conviction in the United States’ Courts.”
The honest lawyer’s answer unhesitatingly was, “I cannot argue your cause in the very teeth of so unquestionable a law as appears to exist on the Statute Books.”
The Sabbatarian replied:—“Then, as you admit your first day Sabbath a counterfeit, allow me to answer you as the celebrated Mr. Whiston did Chancellor King of England upon a similar question: ‘If God Almighty should be as consistent, as just, and as jealous of his laws in the Court of Heaven, as my Lord Chancellor is in his, where are we then?’”
THE INFERENCE.—If, then, I cannot obtain an advocate on earth, (for no one of repute would undertake it,) to plead my cause with the offer of a fee of $10,000, for the violation of a law of man’s making, what ground have I to expect that the only advocate to be obtained in the Court of Heaven, i. e. the Lord Jesus Christ, will defend my cause against a breach of that law which his father ever made punishable with DEATH, temporal and eternal?—and who himself, when on earth, in his comment on that law, averred that not one jot or tittle could in any wise pass from it? (Matt. v, 18, 19.)—[Sab. Tract No. 7.