The Role Of The Moral Law In Thomas Shepard’s Doctrine Of The Sabbath

by Curtis J. Evans

Curtis J. Evans is a Ph.D. Student in American Religious History at Harvard University.

In the history of Christian thought, continual debates on the role of the law under the age of grace have led to countless splits in Christian churches. This has been a particularly acute problem in the Reformed tradition with its emphasis on the importance of law in society and its simultaneous insistence on justification by faith alone. The difficulty of reconciling free grace and “evangelical legalism” is epitomized in the work of Thomas Shepard (1605–1649) on the Sabbath day. Shepard’s Theses Sabbaticae (1649) was based on several sermons given by Shepard to his congregation in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He had also spoken on this topic in order to clear away certain doubts students had about it at Harvard College, which explains why the sermons were altered into the scholastic form of theses, or short propositions. Several fellow ministers urged Shepard to revise and enlarge his sermons for publication (a request to which he stated he reluctantly agreed). The work was published in London in 1649, the year of Shepard’s death.[1]

In the first part of this essay I examine the attempts of Reformed thinkers, beginning with John Calvin, to explicate the precise role of the moral law under the gospel era. It is hoped that such an analytical survey will situate Shepard’s thought within the larger context of the Reformed tradition, and hence will clarify some of the theological questions that he was addressing. The second part of this essay looks at the immediate historical circumstances of Shepard’s Theses in order to discern more clearly why Shepard felt the Sabbath would be the most appropriate means by which he could elaborate on the role of the moral law in the life of the believer.[2] As a culmination of nearly a century of Reformed exegesis of relevant scriptural passages that dealt with the Old and New Covenants, Shepard’s work marks a focused restatement of the view that the moral law must continue to function as a guide for the believer even though the believer is now under grace. The Sabbath doctrine served as the occasion for this debate primarily because it was a visible reminder to Shepard that the requirement for legalistic duties is the pathway to true spiritual freedom. Therefore, he could argue that God’s free grace is compatible with urging Christian conduct that is in conformity with the demands of the law. He saw this most manifest in the institution of the Sabbath on the first week of creation.

I. The Moral Law in the Reformed Tradition: Calvin on the Continuity of the Law in the Old and New Testament

The precise purpose of the law has posed considerable difficulty, especially for Protestant theologians since the Reformation. If Christians are justified by faith alone, what role could the law possibly have in the believer’s life? Were not those who advocated obedience to the law guilty of works-righteousness and thus subject to the same aspersions leveled against Roman Catholics? Martin Luther sometimes pitted the law against the gospel. However, a systematic treatment of the law was left to Luther’s followers. In the Reformed tradition, John Calvin sought to explain the differences and similarities of believers under the Old and New Covenant. For Calvin the law meant not only the Ten Commandments but also the “form of religion handed down by God through Moses.” He claimed that Moses was sent to renew the covenant made with Abraham. The law itself must be interpreted in terms of “shadows,” “figures,” or “types” that correspond to the truth. The law leads people under the Old Testament to Christ.[3]

In agreement with Luther and others, Calvin argued that the “moral law” consists of three parts or uses: 1) It condemns us, making us realize how unrighteous we are. It is a mirror revealing to us our inner weakness and wickedness. 2) It restrains wicked people from evil by its threats of punishment. Regarding this second usage, Calvin maintained that for some the law not only restrains but also humbles them and makes them realize their need to receive Christ’s grace. 3) The third use is the principal one Calvin emphasized. The law serves as an instrument for believers to learn more thoroughly the nature of God’s will and to confirm them in their understanding of it. It arouses them to obedience, strengthens them, and draws them back “from the slippery path of transgression.” As Calvin wrote, “The law is to the flesh like a whip to an idle and balky ass, to arouse it to work.”[4]

Calvin castigated those who denied the Christian’s obligation to fulfill any part (whether moral or ceremonial) of the Old Testament law. He argued that the law points out the goal toward which we are to strive throughout our lives. It is “one everlasting and unchangeable rule to live by” and thus applicable to every age. The law is abrogated to the extent that it no longer condemns us. Jesus did indeed abolish the ceremonial law and the rites in usage under the Old Testament dispensation, but even these were foreshadows of Christ’s coming work. At one point, Calvin even equated the moral law and the Ten Commandments with the image of God in humans. Thus he wrote: “Now that inward law, which we have above described as written, even engraved, upon the hearts of all, in a sense asserts the very same things that are to be learned from the two Tables.”[5]

In order to defend grace as the basis of God’s covenant with Israel and with believers, Calvin found it necessary to affirm a basic continuity between the Old and New Testaments. Thus he argued that the gospel differs from the law only in clarity of manifestation. Even the covenant God made with the patriarchs is essentially the same as that made with Christians in terms of its substance and reality. The covenants differ only in their mode of dispensation. The notion of a covenant of works (at least under the Old Testament dispensation) set over against a covenant of grace is nowhere to be found in Calvin’s Institutes. In fact, Calvin thought that Christ restores in believers the image of God that was corrupted through the fall.[6] God may have used various means of tutoring the Hebrew people through their ceremonial laws and religious rites, but they were also chosen solely on the basis of God’s grace.[7]

II. The Puritans and the Development of Covenant Theology

John von Rohr, in his work on the covenant in Puritan thought, argues that it was not until the 1580s that covenant theology spoke of God’s two covenants with humanity, the one pristine and soon broken by Adam, the second subsequent and established by God’s free act of mercy. As we have seen, Calvin did not articulate a precise division between a covenant of works and a covenant of grace. How one distinguished between the covenant of works (sometimes called the covenant of nature) and the covenant of grace depended on one’s view of the Old Testament and its relationship to the New. Puritans, who stood in the Reformed tradition, recognized continuity in the Scriptures between the Old and New Testaments because they saw the progress of revelation in the administration of one covenant. But even Puritan exegesis struggled to express the place within the biblical story of the law as it was given to Moses. Von Rohr notes several views held by Puritan theologians on this issue. The largest body of Puritans saw the Mosaic law given to Israel as part of the covenant of grace. A few thought it was subservient to the covenant of grace. It was thus seen as preparing Israel for the future coming of Christ, curbing the sin of idolatry into which Israel had fallen, and restoring covenant faithfulness. Some Puritans held that the Mosaic covenant was bestowed as a continuation of the covenant of works (mostly Antinomians, who rejected efforts to join law and saving grace, held this view).[8]

Among the larger body of Puritans who viewed the Mosaic covenant as a genuine part of the covenant of grace, it was held that the law provides a rule of life for those who, already in the covenant, were seeking to walk in the way of the Lord. It was seen as an enlargement of the covenant made with Abraham. It could not be a covenant of works as was the first covenant made with Adam, for now it was given to sinners unable to obey it out of their own strength. Even though the covenant is offered absolutely (in the sense that it is based on God’s sheer grace), it is also conditional because it must be received in faith by those who would come by consent into the covenant. Antinomians felt that this view of the covenant could lead to works-righteousness. As von Rohr writes, “To rely on the fulfillment of conditions is to rely on one’s own doing, and that is an unstable foundation for covenant security. Even to build on one’s faith is to build on both unsatisfactory and improper grounds. Faith itself is subject to hypocrisy.”[9]

Puritans sought to avoid all charges of works-righteousness by affirming contingency but denying meritoriousness. They wanted to save the conditionality-of the covenant. They asserted that the act of faith itself, along with other appropriate human actions, was prerequisite for the covenant relationship. The law functioned as a source for generating remorse and leading the believer to the grace of the gospel. The law of God is a mirror to reveal to the sinner his or her sins. The law is also a hammer that pounds into one’s awareness contrition that one has failed in obedience. Thus Puritans argued that “the law must be used diligently to awaken the drowsy and to sharpen the consciences of those inclined to be too easy on themselves.” Richard Baxter even claimed that disregard for the law was the basic cause for the emergence of antinomianism.[10]

The difficult task for the Puritans who preached the law was to avoid legalism on the one hand and libertinism on the other. They were agreed that the “third use” of the law was to be a guide for the Christian’s conduct. The law cannot justify but it can enlighten one on what one’s duties are. Antinomians argued that the good works of a Christian’s life were the activity of the Holy Spirit in which the believer took little or no part. Puritans saw this approach as being destructive of human activity, especially antinomian attempts to minimize the role of human effort and to maximize the role of the divine.[11]

As was mentioned before, the distinction between a covenant of works and a covenant of grace did not develop until the 1580s in the Reformed tradition. Those who held this view maintained that the first covenant was set aside inasmuch as humans could no longer be justified by God in conformity with the covenant of works by fulfilling the law. However, they claimed that the moral law remained in force, and thus condemned every person who failed to obey it (which meant the entire human race). As Heinrich Heppe records, “In this new economy of salvation the law was set up in Israel not to abolish once more the covenant of grace promised to the fathers and to institute a new covenant of law, but to prepare for its promised confirmation through the death of Christ.”[12] In other words, Reformed thinkers deemed it necessary to stress the “evangelical character” and graciousness of the Old Testament law even while proclaiming that no one could keep it (in its basic form as the moral law), and that it condemns all those who fail to keep it perfectly. However, the immutability of God served as a central belief in Reformed thought, which ensured that “justifying grace was one and the same before and after the manifestation of Christ.”[13]

Covenant theology and its explication of the role of the law reached its most concise and clear elaboration (during Shepard’s lifetime) in the Westminster Confession of Faith. In the 1647 edition of the Confession, Chapter 7 (“Of God’s Covenant with Man”) began: “The distance between God and the creature is so great that although reasonable creatures do owe obedience unto him as their Creator, yet they could never have any fruition of him as their blessedness and reward but by some voluntary condescension on God’s part, which he hath been pleased to express by way of covenant.” It went on to assert explicitly that God made a covenant of works with Adam, in which Adam was promised life upon the condition of perfect obedience. After the fall, God made a second covenant, the covenant of grace, in which he freely offered sinners (i.e., the elect) life and salvation through Jesus Christ upon the condition of faith in Jesus’ saving work. While acknowledging that the covenant was “differently administered” in the time of the law and in the time of the gospel, Westminster divines refused to concede that these two covenants differed in substance. They wrote, “There are not, therefore, two covenants of grace differing in substance, but one and the same under various dispensations.”[14] Thus the Mosaic era was subsumed under the era of grace.

In its discussion of the moral law, the Confession (Chapter 19, “Of the Law of God”) stated that God offered Adam a law, as a covenant of works, which bound him and all his posterity to perfect and exact obedience. After the fall, this law remained a perfect rule of righteousness, and as such was delivered by God to Moses in the form of the Ten Commandments. The moral law binds all humans forever to obedience, including believers. The gospel merely strengthens one’s obligation to obey the moral law. Believers are not under the law as a covenant of works (i.e., they do not, indeed cannot, keep it to be justified), but it serves as their rule of life. It informs them of the will of God and their duty. It helps them to discover the sinful pollutions in their hearts and minds, incites them to hatred of sin, and reveals to them more clearly their need for Christ. Despite its emphasis on duties and obligations, the law and its uses are not contrary to the grace of the gospel. Instead, God’s Spirit enables believers to do God’s will cheerfully and willingly as it is revealed in the law.[15] To the extent that the Westminster Confession is a mature development of covenant theology and its precise articulation of the role of the law in the life of the believer, one finds remarkable congruence between its central teachings and that of John Calvin (though Calvin did not make an explicit mention of the covenant of works). This is additional evidence that covenant theology was not a deviation from the central emphases of Calvin’s theology as Perry Miller argued.[16]

III. Thomas Shepard’s Conception of the Moral Law

When one engages in a close reading of Shepard’s Theses, one is struck by how infrequently mention of the Sabbath is made. Such a realization tempts one to conclude that the Sabbath was just one means by which Shepard wanted to enforce his theological and social views. However, that judgment would be too hasty and would ignore much of the historical context out of which the Theses developed. It is clear that Shepard’s sharpest polemics were directed at those who sought to “spiritualize” the Sabbath day out of the Decalogue. In the preface Shepard wrote, “That a seventh part of time hath been religiously and universally observed both under the law and under the gospel, is without controversy; the great debate and difficulty which now remains concerning this time is the morality of it, whether it was thus observed in the Christian churches by unwritten tradition, or by divine commission; whether from the churches’ custom, or Christ’s command; whether as a moral duty, or as a human law.”[17] In other words, Shepard found himself in the midst of a debate about the Sabbath in particular (whether it is a moral command, why the day was changed to Sunday, when and how should it be kept, etc.) that, when fully addressed, led to the larger question of the place of the Old Testament in the theology of the Christian church. More specifically, Shepard saw his task as one of promoting the “directive power” of the moral law against the “loose wits” of his time. This debate eventually focused on the Sabbath as one means of upholding the entire law. When Antinomians called for an end to the law as a rule for believers and urged that every day be kept as a Sabbath, Shepard thought this would be destructive of law in general. Thus Shepard wrote, “if the God of this world would have all professors [of the Christian faith] enjoy a total immunity from the law of God, and all manner of licentiousness allowed them without check of conscience, let them make an every-day Sabbath.”[18]

IV. David Primrose and Theophilus Brabourne

Two of the most frequently cited authors in Shepard’s Theses are David Primrose and Theophilus Brabourne. Both were English writers who held quite different viewpoints regarding the Sabbath day. Primrose, who received the brunt of Shepard’s critique regarding the proper understanding of the Sabbath as part of the moral law, had written A Treatise of the Sabbath and Lord’s Day (1636). Though Shepard vigorously denied Primrose’s conclusion, he wrote of him as one who “speaks with most weight and spirit in this controversy.”[19] Brabourne had authored A Discourse upon the Sabbath Day (1628) and A Defense of… the Sabbath (1632) and argued for Saturday observance in both books. His views were treated in Shepard’s discussion of the change of the Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday. In his work, Primrose emphatically repudiated the belief that the institution and observation of the Jewish Sabbath was moral, that it began with the creation of the world, and that it existed before the formation of the ancient Israelites as a nation (all of these propositions were affirmed by Shepard). He also contended that the establishment of a day for God’s public service was a point of order and ecclesiastical governance. In other words, there is nothing binding about the day on which one chooses to meet. This did not mean that public worship was optional (in this regard, Primrose’s position is remarkably similar to Calvin’s emphasis on Sabbath observance as a point of decorum and order). As Primrose stated:

And sith [sic] Sunday hath beene appointed by Order of the Church, for the prime day where these exercises are ordinarily to be practiced, all are bound in regard of them, to cease from all other workes, during the whole time that they are practiced in the Church publikely,…, and for to shew that they are full of love and respect to those blessed exercises of religion, and to the Order of the Church, from which they should never be absent without reasons of great consequence, whereof every ones conscience ought to judge by the rules of godlinesse, and of Christian prudence.[20]

Primrose preferred that Christians refrain from calling Sunday the Sabbath, and they should instead refer to it as the Lord’s Day. He felt that there was a major difference between the Lord’s Day and the Jewish Sabbath. Sunday should be a time of delight, not to be kept in the manner in which the Jews did. It must have nothing to do with ceremonies and externals. It is a spiritual Sabbath. Thus, though all church members must assiduously seek to honor God on Sundays, even if they live in places where there is no church, they are only required to cease from common labor during the time in which public worship is taking place. After the time chosen by the church for worship has expired, and the service of the day has ended, they are free to do whatever they wish, whether it be work or refreshing themselves. Primrose therefore opposed those who would have Christians be bound to keep a twenty-four-hour Sabbath.[21]

Theophilus Brabourne (1590–1661) was the most influential seventh-day Sabbath keeper in England prior to the Stuart Restoration in 1660. In fact, his early writings became almost a point of reference for writers of various opinions in the ensuing Sabbatarian debates. His Discourse (1628) was the first printed work in the English language to advocate religious observance of Saturday as the Sabbath.[22] In this work, he asserted that he would not give weight to arguments that are not based in Scripture (thus expressing a very primitivist approach in his writings). He sought to ground contemporary practices on the time and example of the apostles.

Brabourne’s main arguments were summarized in the subtitle of his work: 1) The Lord’s Day is not the Sabbath day by divine institution. 2) The seventh-day Sabbath has not been abolished, and is therefore still in force. 3) The church need not separate over Sabbath practice. He appealed to the reader by expressing his deep sadness that the Church was involved in a weekly violation of the fourth commandment and was “superstitiously sanctifying a day, the first day of the week for the Sabbath, which God, nor Christ, nor any of his Apostles ever commanded or appointed.” Interestingly, Brabourne agreed with Primrose’s contention that it was the church that changed the seventh day to Sunday for worship, but he drew quite a different conclusion from this observation. He labored to show that there is no evidence in the New Testament that the seventh day was abrogated, and that the church, without scriptural warrant, does not have the proper authority to change the day.[23]

Another issue at stake for Brabourne was the way in which this change of the Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday affected people’s views on Scripture. He wrote, “we must not set up Sabbathes, tyeing mens consciences upon probabilities and contingencies.” Establishing the Sabbath is too weighty a matter to rest on probable arguments or inferences. Brabourne also made an enlightening observation, which, in part, helps us to understand why Shepard found himself at such pains to explain why the Sabbath, even after he concluded that the seventh day was binding and part of the moral law, should be changed to Sunday:

Whereas in matters of such weight as is this establishing a Sabbath, we ought bring arguments necessarily and demonstratiuily [sic] proveing; and not contingencies, and especially since the raiseing up this new Sabbath, which has no Com.[mandment] for it, from Christ or his Apostles, makes waye for throwing down the ould Sabbath, which stands by an express Com. from God. Let us beware therefore of matcheing probable humane reasons, with an infallible divine precept: yea doe we not leane more to our humane reasons in this pointe, than to Gods expresse 4th Com?[24]

Brabourne was naïve enough to think that if the Church of England should accept the seventh-day Sabbath, no split in the church would occur. He himself remained a loyal member of the church throughout his life, and avoided fellowship with separatist or Sabbatarian congregations.[25] His Defense (1632) was essentially a new work, though many of the arguments of his first work were restated. This work was “undertaken against all Anti-sabbatharians, both of Protestants, Papists, Antinomians, and Anabaptists,” along with several ministers whose names were listed on the title page. The book was addressed to Charles I, archbishops, and bishops throughout the kingdom. He again bemoaned the fact that the church was living with the corruption that former ages endured because of ignorance. He saw recovery of the true Sabbath as part of God’s plan to renew his people and to lead them into deeper truth. He urged the archbishops and bishops to consider seriously several propositions:

1. That that Sacred ordinance of Gods Sabbath (then the which is not any in our Church more ancient; commanded by God in his Morall Law; ratified by Christ the Sonne of God; practiced by the Apostles; & also by the primitive Churches after them, for 300 or 400 yeeres together) is now fully trampled under foote and prophaned. 2. That the Decalogues, & 10 Commandments of Almighty God, are not wholly and fully taught and maintained in our Church, but onley by partes & peeces. 3. That God hath not his whole & intire worship & service, prescribed in the first Table of the Decalogue, but is denied one fourth part thereof weekly. 4. That Gods 4th commandement, is by common doctrine in our Church, wholly frustrate and nullified, both roote and brance. 5. That by very man in our Church, there is gross superstition committed, Gods worship corrupted, yea plaine Idolatry wrought.[26]

V. Shepard’s Doctrine of the Sabbath as a Middle Path

It was in the immediate context of these kinds of debates and in response to such very different positions that Shepard penned his Theses. Locally, Shepard had to contend with “Antinomians, Familists and Libertine,” collective terms of abuse for those religious groups who carried their zeal for purity too far and threatened the doctrine of the means of grace.[27] These groups were especially troubling to Shepard’s understanding of the Sabbath. He declared that “the Familists and Antinomians of late…, do make all days equally holy under the gospel, and none to be observed more than another by virtue of any command of God, unless it be from some command of man to which the outward man they should not stick to conform.”[28] Though Shepard had emerged as one of the “elite group” of ministers of New England by the end of the 1630s (particularly because of his role in the antinomian controversy), many of the problems surrounding the antinomian controversy (e.g., the role of the law, whether good works are evidence of justification, etc.) still seemed uppermost in his mind as he wrote the Theses in the 1640s. Shepard was particularly concerned that an easy gospel message might not reach people in the way that the terror of the law could. In a letter (written in 1647) to the English minister Giles Firmin he asserted:

Let my love end in breathing out this desire: Preach humiliation. Labor to possess men with a sense of wrath to come, and misery. The gospel consolations and grace, which some would have dished out as the dainties of the times, and set upon the ministers table, may possibly tickle and ravish some, and do some good to them that are humbled and converted already. But if axes and wedges, withal, be not used to hew and break this rough, uneven, bold, yet professing age, I am confident the work and fruit of those men’s ministry will be at best mere hypocrisy; and they shall find it, and see it, if they live to see a few years more.[29]

In his doctrine of the Sabbath, Shepard felt that he was advancing a middle way between the Antinomians (who wanted to make all days equal) and seventh-day men like Brabourne who advocated a return to the Jewish Saturday-Sabbath. Unlike many of the seventh-day men, Shepard referred to Constantine as a pious person because he enjoined observance of Sunday as the Lord’s Day in 321. However, as the seventh-day men maintained, he stated that the “doctrine and darkness of Popery” had obscured the truth about the Sabbath. He averred that Roman Catholics especially erred when they “added their abominable profanations to it, in May games, and May poles, in sports and pastimes in dancing and revelings, and so laid it level, and made it equal, (in a manner,) to the rest of their holy days.” He railed against the difference in wording between the Ten Commandments as portrayed in Catholic catechisms and the original wording in Exod 20, notably the former’s rendering of the fourth commandment as “remember to keep the holy festivals” instead of “remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.”[30]

The proper observance of the Sabbath and the way it exemplified the role of the moral law in the life of the believer were central aspects of Shepard’s theology of the Sabbath. He maintained that “religion is just as the Sabbath is, and decays and grows as the Sabbath is esteemed: the immediate honor and worship of God which is brought forth and swaddled in the first three commandments, is nursed up and suckled in the bosom of the Sabbath.” He saw the Sabbath as a catchall. It is a bulwark against prelacy, popery, and profaneness. Regarding Primose’s arguments against the morality (i.e., that it is not a part of the moral law) of the Sabbath, Shepard admitted that they were “heavy” contentions and that they had to be seriously considered. In a reference to the Anti-nomians and spiritual writers, he asserted: “For by making the Christian Sabbath to be only a spiritual Sabbath in the bosom of God out of Heb. iv., they hereby abolish a seventh-day Sabbath, and make every day equally a Sabbath to a Christian man.” For Shepard this perspective on Scripture would lead to disastrous consequences such that even the New Testament teachings would be “allegorized and spiritualized out of the world.” He invoked the slippery slope argument. If one spiritualized the Sabbath, this would inevitably engender a rejection of the outward word, the sacraments, and eventually all outward ordinances, ministries, churches, etc., because such people think they need only rely on their inward kingdom and temple. Shepard observed that separating the spiritual Sabbath from physical observance of the Sabbath gave rise to “almost all the late and most pernicious errors of these times.” Here he was concerned primarily with those who emphasized an inward spiritual experience (whom he often referred to as Antinomians, Familists, Libertines, and “spiritual” writers) of Christ and who rejected reliance upon what they deemed to be outward legal or ceremonial forms of worship. This approach to religion horrified Shepard and he spared no ink to refute it.[31]

VI. A Theology of the Moral Law

All that has been said so far was merely prefatory statements in Shepard’s Theses. In the first of 207 theses on the morality of the Sabbath (which covers nearly two-thirds of the entire treatise of 373 theses), Shepard opened with the following comment: “Time is one of the most precious blessings which worthless man enjoys; a jewel of inestimable worth; a golden stream, dissolving, and, as it were, continually running down by us, out of one eternity into another, yet seldom taken notices of until it is quite passed away from us.” He contended that because man has been created by God he was made an eternal being.[32] As a creature who proceeds from God, man continually returns to God and is thereby preserved by God. When left to himself, man is lost and strays from God. This would be an endless separation from God—man’s very source of life and preservation—if God did not set his hand to lead man back to himself.[33] The Sabbath was created because of this human limitation. Man returns to God every week through the Sabbath so that he might have a foretaste of his “perfect blessedness to come.” Our ultimate rest in God is a glorious privilege and a moral duty. In like manner, the Sabbath commandment to rest is a moral and perpetual law. If the Sabbath was given to man in his state of innocence, then how much more does fallen man need the Sabbath so that he might rest from his toilsome and wearisome labors! Therefore, it is on the Sabbath day when humans are to draw most near to God and when the “soul is to have its weekly revolution back again” to God.[34]

Though Shepard agreed with those who believed that the natural law is a part of the moral law (particularly in their attempts to distinguish between a ceremonial and moral law, and what effect this has on one’s interpretation of whether or not the Sabbath commandment is still binding), he reasoned that the moral law is broader than the natural law. He made this distinction in part because if he denied it, it would demonstrate a flaw in his argument that God’s natural law (which is moral in nature) is universally implanted in human minds. To concede this point would raise the obvious question of why all nations do not observe a religious day similar to the Jewish Sabbath. Shepard thus maintained that if the moral law is equated with the natural law (as it often was in the Reformed tradition), then the natural law is to be construed so narrowly as to include only what the principles left in corrupt humans (since the fall) dictate or demand. If this is the case, then it must follow that many of the rules and principles given to humans at creation are not indeed a part of the natural law since it is clear (in Shepard’s thinking) that these have been blotted out and obliterated in sinful humans. Of course, the tension still remains because though Shepard does not deny that humans still retain some remnant of God’s image (what some theologians have called the doctrine of common grace), he is at pains to explain how it is that a moral law (which by its nature is both universal and perpetual) shows no signs of existence across human cultures.[35]

Shepard also felt that the other option, which he deemed equally odious and unacceptable, was to deny that the human mind has been corrupted by the fall (a view that he attributed to Catholics). If the “imperfect light of man’s corrupt mind must be the principal judge of that which is moral,” which must follow, Shepard contended, once one accepts that what is only to be accounted moral is that which is known naturally by humans, then human morality is chosen as a reliable guide rather than the norms of the Bible. In other words, once one argues that the natural law is equivalent to the moral law, then one would expect that humans instinctively (or more accurately, naturally) know what their moral duties are. Those duties that they do not perform are simply those with which they were not equipped at creation. To the extent that human moral behavior would seem to conflict with Scripture, one would have to “ceremonialize” those parts of Scripture which humans did not naturally act upon. For Shepard, this view was fraught with difficulty and would lead to placing native human morality above the decrees of Holy Scripture.[36]

In light of the fact that Shepard perceived the chief controversy to be about the moral nature of the Sabbath commandment, he made considerable efforts to define a moral law. A moral law is defined as one that is perpetual and universal, binding all persons in all ages and times. However, even here Shepard made his typical fine distinctions. For him, a law “primarily moral” is perpetual, but perpetuity is rather an adjunct or accessory quality rather than being of the essence of such a moral law (the reason for this distinction will become clear in his discussion of the change of the Sabbath to Sunday). He stipulated that a divine law may be said to be moral in two ways: 1) more largely and generally moral and 2) more strictly and specially moral. The former applies to every law of God, whether ceremonial, judicial, or other types of laws God might establish for special reasons. More strictly and specially moral laws are those commanded by God because they are good. Judicial and ceremonial laws are good laws, but not especially so since they are commanded for higher ends. Moral laws are intrinsically good, whereas ceremonial laws are good merely because they are means to a greater good. Shepard disagreed with those who claimed that a moral law is good simply because it was commanded by the sovereign will of God. Rather, he maintained that God makes every moral law good, and then he commands that it be obeyed.[37]

In making these fine distinctions, Shepard was attempting to answer the following question: What is the goodness in a moral law (that distinguishes it from other laws) for which it is therefore commanded? He first noted that goodness and evil only have meaning in the context of obedience to or transgression of a moral law.[38] Nothing is therefore morally good or evil until some law has been passed to command or forbid it. He also observed that a rational human being (i.e., one who has right reason that has not been corrupted or blinded by the fall) would recognize when a moral law is suitable to and congruous with human nature. He acknowledged that right reason does not make something moral, but it simply judges and discerns what is moral. Something might be suitable to human nature before right reason recognizes it as such, but it is certain that when it is seen by right reason it will be understood for what it is since God has made it such that it will be suitable to human nature that is not corrupted. Shepard pressed this point because he hoped that if one demonstrated that moral laws are good in themselves, it might follow that they must be perpetual and unchangeable, and that they are also universal. Yet Shepard was still forced to make the peculiar claim that perpetuity and universality are “inseparable adjuncts” rather than the essence of a moral law. He felt that this had to be the case since God commanded some things in one dispensation and others in another. However, he still has not explained how this comports with his earlier claim that moral laws are not simply commanded by the sovereign will of God (and thus become good by virtue of having been commanded). This was especially evident when he mentioned the example of Yahweh commanding Abraham to sacrifice Isaac when in other instances he condemned human sacrifice.[39]

Four rules should guide our judgment in discerning whether or not laws are suitable and agreeable to human nature. 1) The law must necessarily flow from a “natural relation” between God and humans, and between humans and other humans. 2) Such laws are drawn from God’s attributes and actions. They point out how natural and good it is (to uncorrupt humans) to be like God, who is a merciful and loving God. 3) The law must be evidently good to human reason, which sees its inherent goodness either innately or by some external helps. 4) The law was written on man’s heart at creation. Shepard wrote, “If, therefore, it be proved that the law of the Sabbath was then writ upon man’s heart, then it undeniably follows that it is meet and suitable to all men still to observe a Sabbath day.” Now this does not mean that Shepard wanted to prove that humans could naturally perceive that a law is suitable to their nature. After all, he clearly asserted that humans do not recognize the goodness of the Sabbath and therefore do not observe it for this very reason. He castigated those who “make Aristotle’s ethics as complete a teacher of true morality as Adam’s heart in innocency.” Humans simply cannot discern without revelation from God that one day in seven is “comely and most meet for man to give unto God.” Nevertheless, because God’s Spirit enlightens the believer about what is good and suitable for human nature, we must accept this experience rather than the opaque knowledge that fallen sinful humans possess about their condition after the fall.[40]

Shepard claimed that if the precepts of the second table of the Decalogue are moral, how much more the first which concern our relationship with God. Even the brute beasts, if they could talk, would declare that a seventh day’s rest is good for them. How much more should human beings! He proclaimed, “Take away a Sabbath, who can defend us from atheism, barbarism, and all manner of devilism and profaneness?” This might be one of the most difficult arguments for our twenty-first century minds to grasp. What possible connection could there be between worship on a particular day and atheism, for example? Apparently, Shepard was not alone in this view. Bryan Ball, in his work on the seventh-day men, shows that they shared similar perspectives on the importance of the Sabbath. The English writer William Saller penned a book about the Sabbath in 1664 with the revealing title, A Preservative against Atheism and Error. Shepard and others believed that without the weekly observation of a divinely appointed day of rest, and without a set time to continually focus the mind on the Creator, belief was easily crowded out by the demands and concerns of everyday life. The Sabbath was thus deemed necessary as a recurring memorial of God’s acts and his salvific work on behalf of his creatures.[41]

When Shepard turned to the question of why the New Testament does not specifically enjoin the Sabbath, he attempted to refute Primrose’s suggestion that the fourth commandment must be explicitly reaffirmed or ratified in the New Testament, as the other nine are, if it is to be considered a moral law. He observed that many other moral laws of the Old Testament are not expressly mentioned in the New Testament. Furthermore, he asserted that there is a general ratification of the moral law (i.e., all of the Ten Commandments) in the New Testament, especially in such passages as Rom 7:7–12 and Matt 5:17–20, which respectively assert that the moral law is holy, just, and good, and that Christ did not come to destroy the law but to fulfill it. The gospel also promises that the law will be written on the heart of believers.[42]

Regarding the claim that all of the Ten Commandments are moral except the fourth, Shepard declared that there were three kinds of laws which were commonly recognized by the Jews: moral, ceremonial, and judicial. Moral laws governed the people of Israel as a human society. They dealt with people’s manner of behavior among themselves. They comprise the law of nature revived. The moral law is contained in the Decalogue. It is a second edition and impression of the primitive and perfect law of nature, which was engraved on the human heart in humanity’s state of innocence. This moral law was written upon tables of stone by the finger of God. God’s image, in which man was created, consists of holiness and righteousness. As such, “the law of the decalogue contains nothing but what was once written as a law of life upon [man’s] heart in his innocent estate.” The Ten Commandments were thus given to man because he had lost the true knowledge of God after the fall. The first part of the Decalogue (first four commandments which express God’s holiness) contains expressions regarding love for God. The second part (which expresses God’s righteousness) contains commandments about man’s love for his fellow man. God requires that humans keep the moral law as revivified in the Ten Commandments. Both parts of the law are binding, universal, and perpetual. Therefore, Shepard concluded his analysis of the moral law by stating that the covenant of works God made with Adam was the same as the covenant of works expressed in the moral law. In this respect, he agreed with those in the Reformed tradition who held that the Mosaic covenant was given as a continuation of the covenant of works (though at times he equates the demands of the law with the requirements of the new covenant in terms of actual duties required—though not for the sake of salvation under the gospel era).[43]

The ceremonial law regarded the Jews as a church and it governed them as a sacred society. It consisted of types and shadows of things to come (here Shepard follows Calvin very closely). It was temporary, and ceased when Christ came. It had binding power only for the Jewish nation and their proselytes, and was never intended for other nations. Shepard argued that “every ceremonial law was temporary, but every temporary law was not ceremonial.” However, the judicial law treated the Jews as a commonwealth, and it governed them as a civil society. Judicial laws served as hedges and fences that safeguarded moral and ceremonial laws. Their binding power was “mixed and various” since only those that protect moral laws remain binding for all nations. But judicial laws that defend ceremonial laws are no longer valid. For example, capital punishment for adultery would exemplify a judicial law (execution) upholding a moral law (the seventh commandment). Shepard emphasized this point to prove that the civil magistrate has power to preserve “God’s worship from idolatrous and profane mixtures.” This might have been an oblique reference to Roger Will-jam’s arguments (in his The Bloody Tenent of Persecution, 1644) about the limitations of the civil magistrate.[44]

In anticipation of his attempts to refute Brabourne’s plea for Saturday observance, Shepard contended that the fourth commandment contains a moral command in two ways: 1) primarily, firstly, and more generally moral and 2) secondarily, derivatively, and consequently moral. Thus he wrote, “To keep a day, a seventh day’s Sabbath, is perpetual, it being primarily moral; but to observe this or that particular day is of itself changeable, being secondarily moral.” We must not dismiss these remarks as the abstruse musings of a scholastic pedant. Rather, Shepard made this distinction because he wanted to show how it is possible that the Sabbath commandment is moral and binding, and yet that the day was changed from Saturday to Sunday without violating its essential requirements. His point is that things necessarily moral are perpetual, but things secondarily moral are not necessarily so.[45]

Shepard’s strong desire to regulate social behavior is evident in his emphatic remarks that the fourth commandment requires not just a part of the day for worship, but the whole day is solemn and must be devoted to public and private worship (and this even after his arguments would suggest that a precise portion of time is not essential to the observance of this moral law). This is precisely the opposite of the view advocated by Primrose. Any view concerning Sabbath observance that might be interpreted as giving people more freedom to pursue their individual interests or self-chosen practices (i.e., without the direct sanction or command of a law), whether strictly religious (such as prayer) or recreation, Shepard sought to refute by pointing to its perceived disastrous effects in promoting either unbridled human lusts or unrestrained, immoral behavior. His pen bristled with these words:

For such restraint of time to holy duties as makes the time holy for duties’ sake, so that no time is holy but in the performance of holy duties, and these duties (upon narrow examination) only public duties, doth open a gap for licentiousness, voluptuousness, sports, May poles, and dog markets, and such like profaneness, out of the time of holy public worship, or what private worship each man shall think most meet.[46]

In his discussion of the errors of the “Familists” and “Antinomians,” whom he argued made all days equal under the gospel, we come to the heart of Shepard’s argument, namely whether the moral law is to be a Christian’s rule of life. It also reveals the evangelical legalism that Shepard endorsed. He rejected the notion of equal days under the gospel era because this would lead to neglect of work throughout the week, and would also undermine the uniqueness of the true Sabbath. It is comparable to every man in a Christian commonwealth claiming to be king and judge. This would destroy civil government. In like manner, to call every day holy as is the Sabbath would subvert the true Sabbath and lead to “anarchy and confusion of days.” God’s appointed Sabbath would actually be abased and dethroned. Moreover, for any human to attribute holiness to a day that God has not set apart is equivalent to superstition. It is a sinful human invention (which Shepard deplores as a means of worshiping God). Even though he accepted that there is an internal Sabbath alongside the external Sabbath, the former does not abolish the latter. The internal Sabbath is to be kept every day as we rest from sin and worship God in spirit and truth, but this should not detract from the need to set aside the special day (which God has made holy) on a weekly basis to come together and publicly worship God.[47]

Shepard felt that those who considered all days equal did so because of their prior belief that the moral law should not be the Christian’s rule of life. He was especially critical of John Saltmarsh, an English Antinomian who deplored orthodox Puritan preaching. He accused Saltmarsh and others of claiming that a believer, now that he is under the covenant of grace, has no use for the law as a rule of life. Saltmarsh lamented that Puritan preaching contained “usually but a grain or dram of Gospel to a pound of Law.” Shepard admitted that the moral law is not a covenant of life to the believer in the sense that one is justified by keeping it or condemned by breaking it. However, he thought it was dangerous to maintain a distinction between the spiritual or internal Sabbath and the observance of an actual Sabbath day because this would lead to doubts about the lawfulness of any set times for public worship, and of the hearing of the Word and prayer.[48] His concern about Saltmarsh’s ideas and the Antinomians regarding these issues was quite serious. Though Shepard could write about the colonists being strangers to the books and writings of European authors, his deep-seated fears centered on many of the new ideas flowing from England and many of the spiritual writers. He wrote with horror:

Must God’s people reject these things as their A, B, C [a reference to antinomian arguments that the law was a schoolmaster that must now be put aside since maturity under the gospel is now possible] ? Must the new lights of these times be the dreams, and visions, and slaverings of doting and deluded old monks? Shall the simplicity of the gospel ministry be rejected, as a common thing, and shall Harphius, Theological Mystica, Augustinus Elutherius, Jacob Behmen, Cusanus, Raimandus Sabund, Theologica Germanica, and such monk-admirers, be set up as the new lights and beacons on the mountain of these elevated times?[49]

It comes as no surprise that when Shepard defined sin he chose the definition that best suited his emphasis on the moral law. Sin, as noted earlier, is described as the transgression of God’s law. It is therefore the greatest evil. Holiness is our conformity to the law, and is our greatest good. Thus it is not bondage for a Christian to be bound by observance of the law as his rule since it binds him to his greatest happiness. Shepard excoriated those “libertines” who saw no sin in themselves with the eye of faith because they claimed they were justified in Christ who saw no sin in them. He wrote:

I know that, in beholding our free justification by the blood of Christ, we are to exclude all law from our consciences as a covenant of life, not to see or fear any condemnation for sin, or any sin able to take away life; but will it hence follow, that a justified person must see no sin by the eye of faith, nor any law as his rule to walk by, to discover sin.[50]

Shepard opposed all attempts to spiritualize the law, and this led him to deny that the Apostle Paul’s exposition of the power of the Spirit in helping the believer to overcome sin (Rom 7–8) must be taken to mean that the Spirit of life (also referred to as the law of the mind or spiritual law by the Antinomians) is the rule of the Christian life. This spiritual law is imperfect and unfit to be our rule. The inward law, though it is our actual conformity to the rule of life without, must itself be ruled. The outward law, written and revealed in the Scriptures, is perfect in that it perfectly declares to us God’s will. One cannot have the Spirit without the external law as the rule of life. “It was therefore a hellish device of libertines to exempt men from all law, and from the sense of all sin.” Furthermore, the fundamental error of the Antinomians was that they imagined that there is a great difference between the law and the gospel, that the law requires doing, and that the gospel does not. They also believed that all believers, because they are under the gospel, are under no “law of doing,” and they confound justification with sanctification by wrongly making Christ’s righteousness to be “materially and formally their sanctification.” In short, the law is not a covenant of works, as some claim. In fact, “the law, as it was given by Moses, was given by Christ in Moses.” It is a covenant of grace, first delivered to Abraham and his descendents, then to Moses on Mount Sinai, and finally to believers through Christ. There is no reason to set Moses against Christ, or law against gospel. Thus Shepard concluded his detailed “excursus” on the law versus gospel: “And thus we see that the moral law is our rule of life, and consequently the law of the Sabbath, which is a branch of this rule.”[51]

As Shepard began to direct his discussion toward the change of the Sabbath, he could not allow himself to accept the conclusion (advanced by Primrose, Brabourne, and Catholics writers) that church authorities changed the Sabbath day from Saturday to Sunday. Because “the moral duty of observing a seventh day is not changed, but only the day,” he can with great difficulty assert that Sunday is not a violation of a command that he has already declared is moral and perpetual. In any case, Shepard’s legalistic mind wanted nothing left to chance, not even private duties of believers on the Sabbath. He cannot permit a situation in which human beings have ample latitude in making decisions that have important consequences for all of society. He admitted that there is no Scripture which explicitly states that the Saturday Sabbath was changed to Sunday. Even so, there is good reason to find in Scripture precedents and markers (the example of the apostles and the resurrection, for example), which indicate such a change is authorized by divine approval and appointment. Otherwise, “To make ecclesiastical custom, established first by the imperial law of Constantine, to be the foundation of the change, is to make a prop for prelacy, and a step to Popery, and to open a gap to all human inventions.” This would create a wedge for the Antinomians to make all days equal, and this was a most dreadful prospect for Shepard.[52]

VII. Summary Remarks on Shepard and Legalism

As stated before, I do not find convincing any reductionistic interpretation of Shepard’s work that suggests he used the Sabbath as a way of regulating moral behavior (though it is very difficult to deny that he saw the Sabbath as one way of regulating the moral behavior of believers). His Theses invite one to focus on the centrality of the moral law in his thought. Why else would it be given such emphasis in a work that is explicitly about the Sabbath? Even Shepard himself linked a lack of respect for the fourth commandment to a rejection of the moral law as a rule of life. Though his arguments often seem impenetrable, and even if he at times addressed recondite minutiae, he rarely treated doctrines abstractly. He considered doctrines in the context of what effects they might have on society and in the life of the believer. Thus atheism, barbarism, licentiousness, and a whole bevy of deleterious practices are said to result from an incorrect understanding of the Sabbath. To the extent that actions are prescribed and commanded by law, they can be regulated, predicted, and properly addressed (if infractions should occur). Therefore, it is not surprising that Shepard devoted a significant amount of space (in the Albro edition nearly forty pages of small print) to show that the Sabbath should be kept from Saturday evening to Sunday evening. Believers are simply to follow the example of Adam, Nehemiah, and Christ himself. They have a pattern to which they should adhere. Otherwise, if humans are left to devise their own rules (however sincere they might be), or if they personally or privately choose how they will worship God (on which days, in what way, etc.), chaos will ensue.[53] Since Shepard felt that God abhorred worship offered through human traditions, these were the real options that he perceived from his perspective.

In an ironic manner, Shepard’s journals reveal, despite his protestations against the Antinomians, that persons like himself could never find peace of mind or assurance of their salvation so long as they looked to themselves and their outward conformity to the demands of the law. Perhaps this explains why Shepard waged such a fierce verbal battle against the spiritual writers. Michael McGiffert notes that Shepard was tempted by Grindletonian[54] perfectionism as a young man, and that he had definite Antinomian susceptibilities. He craved perfect assurance, and he no doubt understood why some would have been drawn to Antinomian attempts to circumvent the law by resting in Christ’s bosom. In his journal entry, dated August 14, 1641, he bared his soul’s anxieties: “This day in musing I saw that when I saw God angry I thought to pacify him by abstaining from all sin for time to come, but then I remembered (1) that my righteousness could not satisfy and that this was resting on my own righteousness. (2) I saw I could not do it. (3) I saw Christ’s righteousness ready made and already finished, fit only for that purpose.”[55] These personal remarks (in addition to numerous other entries that show Shepard constantly analyzing and rehearsing the basis of his salvation) clearly show that it is not accurate to accuse Shepard of teaching or believing in a form of works-righteousness, but, perhaps even more importantly, they demonstrate that Shepard’s own life paradoxically lent credence to Antinomian objections to relying on one’s outward actions or good works as evidence of justification.

It is hardly sufficient to assert that Shepard’s straightforward reading of the Bible led him to his conclusions about the moral law. Quite apart from the fact there is no direct interpretation of a complex book like the Bible (particularly in light of its varied literary genres and history of interpretation), one needs only to point out that this claim is complicated by the fact that many of Shepard’s contemporaries read the same Bible and came to radically different conclusions. In his descriptions of the Sabbath and the function of the moral law in the life of the believer, his thoroughgoing legalism becomes all too evident. It was apparently agreeable to his belief system that a regulated and law-ruled life was the best defense against licentiousness and unruliness, and would strengthen and support the Christian commonwealth. Whatever else might be said, Shepard could not imagine a healthy society with strong believers apart from the aid of the moral law restraining and directing the passions of sinful human beings. It was God’s gift to bridle the restless spirit of man. It was through its demands and legal requirements that one would enjoy true freedom to serve God. The Sabbath was one means of bringing sinful humans into a weekly reminder of their Creator, and a way of granting believers a foretaste of the rest they would enjoy for eternity.

Notes

1. “Life of Shepard,” in Works of Thomas Shepard (ed. T. Albro; New York: AMS Press, Inc., 1967), 3:clxxxii.
2. The full title of Shepard’s work is revealing: Theses Sabbaticae, or The Doctrine of the Sabbath; Wheran are Clearly Discussed the Morality, the Change, the Beginning, and the Sanctification of the Sabbath, Divers Cases of Conscience Resolved, and the Moral Law, as a Rule of Life to a Believer, Occasionally and Distinctly Handled.
3. John Calvin, The Institutes of the Christian Religion (ed. John T McNeill; LCC; Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1960), 2.7.1.
4. Ibid., 2.7.11-12.
5. Ibid., 2.7.13-16, 2.8.1.
6. Ibid., 1.15.4.
7. Ibid., 2.9.1-14.
8. John von Rohr, The Covenant of Grace in Puritan Thought (Atlanta, Ga.: Scholars Press, 1986), 49–50, 193–94.
9. Ibid., 50-51, 53-54.
10. Ibid., 54-55, 59, 61-62.
11. Ibid., 72, 75, 111,135-36.
12. Henrich Heppe, Reformed Dogmatics (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1950), 316,398-99.
13. Ibid., 400-402.
14. “Westminster Confession of Faith,” in Creeds of Christendom (ed. P. Schaff; rev. ed. by David S. Schaff; Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker, 1998; original edition, Harper & Row, 1931), 3:616–18.
15. Ibid., 640-43.
16. See Perry Miller’s “Preparation for Salvation in Seventeenth-Century New England,” JHI 4 (1943): 253-56. This huge topic would take one far afield from the subject of this essay. As David D. Hall notes, it is more accurate to view Calvin as one of many theologians in the broader Reformed tradition rather than the creator of a “pure Calvinism” that is ahistorical in nature. See his “Narrating Puritanism,” in New Dimensions in American Religious History (ed. H. S. Stout and D. G. Hart; New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 66–67.
17. Theses Sabbaticae in Works of Thomas Shepard, 3:9.
18. Ibid., 13, 17, 23.
19. Ibid., 137.
20. David Primrose, A Treatise of the Sabbath and Lord’s Day (1636), 283–303.
21. Ibid., 305-9.
22. Bryan W. Ball, The Seventh-day Men: Sabbatarians and Sabbatarianism in England and Wales, 1600–1800 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), 22, 62.
23. Theophilus Brabourne, A Discourse Upon the Sabbath Day (1628), preface, 1–3.
24. Ibid., 3-11.
25. Ball, Seventh-day Men, 60.
26. Brabourne, A Defense of that most Ancient, and Sacred Ordinance of Gods, the Sabbath (1632), preface, a2-a3, b. Pagination is difficult to make out from the printed copy I possess. Much of this material is stated in the preface. Harvard’s Houghton Library has a bound volume (which I have browsed), but this material is quoted from the copies made from microfiche.
27. David D. Hall, The Faithful Shepherd: A History of the New England Ministry in the Seventeenth Century (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1972), 89.
28. Theses, 73.
29. “Life of Thomas Shepard,” in Works of Shepard (ed. J. Albro), 1: clxxxvi-clxxxvii. The English editors of Shepard’s Subjection to Christ observed that “some souls can relish none but meal-mouthed preachers…, but these times need humbling ministries, and blessed be God that there are any; for where there are no law sermons, there will be few gospel lives” (Works of Shepard, 3:278). See also Hall’s Faithful Shepherd, 162–66.
30. Theses, 9–11. See also Ball, Seventh-day Men, 10–14. Ball notes that seventh-day Sabbatarians drew upon Dan 7:25 and other prophetic passages to argue that the Papacy’s attempt to “change times and laws” was clearly evident in the change of the Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday and in the alteration of the wording of the fourth commandment. Thus they saw this as a sign that a restoration of the true Sabbath was indicative of the end of the age. Shepard, though he castigated Catholics for rewording the fourth commandment and for granting other festivals equal status to the Sabbath, displayed none of this eschatological fervor in his writings. He made every effort to show that the change of the Sabbath day to Sunday was divinely authorized. He was also quick to argue that England had more “power of godliness” than any other nation because of its “excelling care and conscience of honoring the Sabbath” (Theses, 13–14).
31. Theses, 12–18.
32. I shall often use “man” when summarizing or explaining Shepard’s work because it is rather cumbersome to try to make many of the quotations from or summaries of his work coordinate grammatically with the more gender-inclusive “human beings” or “humanity.” His use of “man” means the entire human family.
33. In this context, Shepard seems to have in mind a general condition of human finitude in which human beings need regular contact with God so that they will not forget their dependence upon him and so that they will not wander aimlessly about in life. This should not be confused with “endless separation” as it is understood in the traditional Christian doctrine of hell.
34. Theses, 25–27.
35. Ibid., 28-29. This difficulty led Shepard to reject Primrose’s claim that there is no evidence that human cultures reverence a day as the Jews did the Sabbath. However, to ensure that he will win the argument even if he conceded that Primrose is correct, Shepard claimed that the only way we can truly discern what is moral is not by relying on what is known and practiced by all humans, but by trusting in and examining “the perfect rule of morality” contained in the Holy Scriptures.
36. Ibid., 28-29.
37. Ibid., 29-30.
38. The notion of sin as being against God’s heart or a non-legal conception of sin seems absolutely impossible for Shepard to entertain.
39. Ibid., 29-36. Shepard’s arguments at this point evince a deep reliance on Jesuit and post-Tridentine Catholic theologians (especially Francois Suarez). His intent is to show that though the Sabbath is a moral law (hence binding), the sanctification of a seventh part of time does not mean the Saturday Sabbath as such inheres in the command (when properly understood). Rather, he will attempt to show that Sunday also fulfills the intent of the fourth commandment.
40. Ibid., 37-45.
41. Theses, 45–47; Ball, Seventh-day Men, 16. This certainly seemed to be the chief concern for Shepard, especially his desire to emphasize strict observance of the moral law as a way of keeping in check the natural human tendency to break God’s laws…While I grant the force of Ball’s argument, I do not think we should overlook the possible rhetorical effect intended by these writers (rarely was the Sabbath discussed without reference to a whole host of theological implications). Even so, Ball’s interpretation at times appears too much like a twentieth-century reflection on atheism and agnosticism (and their causes) that has been inadvertently read into the past, but he is certainly correct to link concern for the Sabbath observance with worries about the moral law in general.
42. Theses, 47–48.
43. Ibid., 48-52; cf. von Rohr, Covenant of Grace, 50-51
44. Theses, 53–57.
45. Ibid., 58-64.
46. Ibid., 69-72.
47. Ibid., 73-79.
48. Ibid., 80-82.
49. Ibid., 23, 80-83; von Rohr, Covenant of Grace, 62-63. See also Winton Soldberg, Redeem the Time: The Puritan Sabbath in Early America (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1977), 153-54.
50. Ibid., 83-85.
51. Ibid., 86-101, 133.
52. Ibid., 136-39, 143, 187-88.
53. Ibid., 188, 216-53.
54. These were spiritual seekers and perfectionists in Shepard’s day, and were regarded by their critics as Antinomians and Familists.
55. Michael McGiffert, ed., God’s Plot: Puritan Spirituality in Thomas Shepard’s Cambridge (rev: ed.; Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1994), 28, 44, 97.