Keeping Sabbath -

A pious man desires to comply with what he believes to be the will of God, but conscious of his own frailty, he revolts from enforcing others to conform to his own opinions. Such compulsion, of what shape it may, is the essence of persecution - God has given man no authority to coerce an obedience to his precepts -

Religion is a thing between a man & his maker - unless it be the voluntary offering, as the result it is but a vain cold repetition of words, which cannot be acceptable to God - If a man does not believe that religion exacts it as a minor duty to abstain from labor on the Sabbath, he will submit with reluctance & in this submission there will be no piety on his part nor will it advance the piety of others -

There can be no more justice or toleration in this law than there would be in enforcing in favor of bad policy, upon the publick, an abstinence from flesh meat during Lent, or in enforcing the Mohammedans Christians to worship Mahomet -

1. There is no one precept in the New Testament commanding us to keep a Sabbath - If we are barred to keep one, it is in consequence of the Mosaic Law -

2. The language of the 4 ^th commandment is, "The Seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord" But the Christians keep the first day not the Seventh -

3. There is not a single word either in the Old or New Testament, nor even an allusion relating to the substitution of the first day for the Seventh - The subject is not mentioned in any of the discourses of Christ nor in any of the epistles of his apostles -

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