Lord’s Day 12 (2019). “For if those worldly duties (which we are commanded to walk in, and be of necessity required, and without the which the commonwealth cannot stand at all) are then forbidden, when we should attend upon the Lord’s work, because we cannot be wholly occupied in both; much more those things must be given over which serve but for pleasure, without the which mankind may continue, though not so well continue. Because we cannot have the present delight in the use of them, and yet at the same time be occupied in the hearing of the Word, and such other parts of God’s holy worship and service, as He requires of us upon the Sabbath day…. And we must rest from these things so much the more, by how much the works of our recreation are less needful, than the works of our vocation, and yet do more hinder us from the sanctifying of the Sabbath than they. For experience (which is the mistress of very fools) may teach us (and our nature is such that it must needs be so), how much we are moved with delectable things everyone in his kind, some this way, another that; how marvelously they do affect us, how all our senses are taken up with them, and all the parts of soul and body wholly possessed with them, that for the present time none of them can be occupied about the Lord’s work immediately, at least wise as they should be” (Nicholas Bownd). “Christ is born, is circumcised, dies, rises again for us every day in the preaching of the Gospel” (Danæu). “This is the day which the Lord hath made; we will rejoice and be glad in it” (Psalm 118:24).
