6. What think you of those who are accustom ed to swear in conversation? They take an unwarranted liberty with the name of God, and expose themselves to the danger of swearing falsely. 7. What other sins are forbidden by this commandment? Cursing and blaspheming. 8. What do you mean by cursing? To curse is to wish or pray that God would become at your option the minister of evil to some person or thing. but if, in addition, he compel others to ask the same remuneration which he does, he invades their right; he deprives them of the liberty which he claims for himself, and consequently commits an act of injustice. No oath then which leads to such injustice can be binding. It was a sin to take it, and will be another sin to keep it. 6. Swear in conversation.-Our Saviour, to the prohibition of swearing at all, adds: Let your speech be yea, yea, nay, nay: for that which is over and above, cometh of evil. (Matt. v. 34.) Hence the disciple of Christ ought to be content, in the ordinary intercourse of life, with simply affirming or denying, without the addition of an oath for, as the oath is a solemn appeal to the knowledge and veracity of God, to employ such appeals in confirmation of matters trifling or profane, must be, in addition to the danger of perjury, highly irreverent and irreligious. 8. To curse. To curse another is both a breach of the charity which we owe to him, and a profanation of the name of God, on whom we call to become the minister of our passion. 9. But what if the name of God be suppressed in the curse. Still it is understood: so that the profanation is the same. 10. What do you mean by blaspheming? To speak irreverently of God, or of that which is holy, or consecrated to his service. THE THIRD COMMANDMENT. 1. Which is the third commandment? 66 Remember that thou keep holy the Sabbath day." 10. Blaspheming.-By the law of Moses this sin was punished with death. He that blasphemeth the name of the Lord, dying let him die, and all the multitude shall stone him. (Lev. xxiv. 16.) 1. Keep holy the sabbath day.—More literally, remember the day of rest, to hallow it. There is no mention in Scripture of the observance of a sabbath, or day of rest, till after the flight of the Israelites out of Egypt. On their arrival, in the second month, in the desert of Sin, they had consumed all their provisions: when Moses announced to them that a certain food, afterwards called manna, would be sent to them from heaven, which they might gather on the six following mornings; but that on the seventh day God would observe a day of rest, and there would be no manna to be gathered. So it happened: and the people kept the rest on the seventh day. (Ex. xvi. 30.) This was the first sabbath. In the same manner God supplied them with manna during their sojourn in the desert. (Ex. xvi. 35.) Every six days, successively, manna 2. In what manner? "Six days shalt thou labour and do all thy work: but on the seventh is the rest to the Lord thy God. On it thou shalt do no work, fell from the clouds, and every seventh day there was no manna, but a sabbath, or day of rest, both on the part of God and of his people. 2. The seventh is the rest.—That is, the seventh from the first fall of the manna. It should be remembered, that the day of rest is fixed by God to the seventh day; and not, as some pretend, to one day out of the seven. To suppose that the command is observed by keeping the first day, because it is one of the seven days, is as unreasonable as to maintain that the first son has a right to take a bequest made to the seventh, on the ground that he, the first, is one of the seven sons. But here two questions may be asked. 1°. Why did God appoint any day of rest? He has himself answered: Remember that thou wast a slave in the land of Egypt, and that the Lord thy God hath brought thee thence with a strong hand and stretched-out arm: therefore the Lord thy God hath commanded thee to keep the day of rest. (Deut. v. 15.) 2o. Why did he fix on the seventh day. This he has also answered. Because in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, and the waters, and all things that in them are, and rested on the seventh day; therefore the Lord hath blessed the seventh day, and hallowed it. (Ex. xx. 11.) We read the same in Genesis ii. 2: whether it was that God, on resting from the work of the creation, blessed by anticipation the seventh day, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, nor thy bondman, nor thy bondwoman, nor thy beast, nor the stranger that is within thy gates." (Exod. xx. 9, 10.) 3. Does this commandment bind Christians, as it bound the Israelites? No neither as to the time, nor as to the : manner. 4. How not as to the time? Because they kept their sabbath or rest from sunset on Friday to sunset on Saturday: we now keep ours from midnight on Saturday to midnight on Sunday. or, as is more probable, that Moses, writing after the institution of the sabbath, alluded in this place to the blessing mentioned in the commandment. 3. Does it bind Christians?-It should be observed, that the words of our Saviour-If thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments (Matt. xix. 17)——— are not a positive confirmation of the whole decalogue, or ten commandments; for when he was asked what commandments he meant, he replied by enumerating some from the decalogue, and one from another part of the law. His answer shows that he meant the moral precepts of the covenant: but this precept of keeping the Jewish sabbath was not mentioned either by him then, or by any of the sacred writers afterwards. 4. Sunset. From evening unto evening shall brate your sabbath. (Lev. xxiii. 32.) Here it may be observed, that not only do we not keep the Sunday on the same day with the Jewish sabbath, but that we do not even keep it exactly at the same time on which it was kept by the first Christians. For, as their teachers were Jews, they ye cele 5. By what authority was this alteration made? By authority of the "Holy Catholic Church." reckoned, according to the custom of the Jews, the first day of the week from sunset on Saturday to sunset on Sunday; but, afterwards it was found more convenient to adopt the computation of time in use among the Greeks and Latins; and hence the Sunday has for many centuries been kept from midnight to midnight. Still, however, to the present day, the first vespers, or evening service, of the principal feast, are celebrated on the preceding evening. 5. By what authority.-There is not a syllable in Scripture to prove that the obligation of resting from work was ever transferred from the Saturday to the Sunday, from the first to the seventh day of the week. Our Saviour seems to foretel that his disciples at Jerusalem would keep the Jewish sabbath till the destruction of the city; for he exhorts them to pray that their flight may not be on the sabbath. (Matt. xxiv. 10.) But even if they kept it, it does not follow that they did so through any conscientious obligation; for so fierce was the zeal of the Jews for the external observance of the sabbath, that they would undoubtedly have massacred any of their countrymen who profaned it. St. Paul seems to teach, that in the Gentile Churches, at least, there was no necessity of keeping the sabbath; for he says: Let no man judge you in respect of a festival day, or of the moons, or of the sabbaths. (Col. ii. 16.) The Scripture, then, is silent with respect to the obligation of keeping the Sunday a day of rest. We have no other authority for it than that of the |