Walker - Witsius on the Lord's Day

[VirginiaHuguenot]

Has anyone here examined the controversy between George Walker (c. 1581 - 1651, English Puritan, Westminster Divine) and Herman Witsius (1636 - 1708, Dutch Puritan) over certain aspects of the doctrine of the Lord's Day?

From the DNB entry on George Walker:

In 1638 appeared his 'Doctrine of the Sabbath,' which bears the imprint of Amsterdam, and contains extreme and peculiar views of the sanctity of the Lord's Day. A second edition, entitled 'The Holy Weekly Sabbath,' was printed in 1641. His main hypothesis was refuted by H. Witsius in his 'De OEconomia Foederum,' 1694.

Robert Cox, The Literature of the Sabbath Question, Vol. 2, p. 92:

In Book i. ch. vii. [of Witsius' The Economy of the Covenants Between God and Man], where he treats of "the First Sabbath," ... A large portion of the chapter is occupied in refuting the hyopthesis of Walker ..., which some learned Dutch contemporary of Witsius had adopted; viz., "that Adam, on the very day of his creation, being seduced by the devil, had involved himself and the whole world in the most wretched bondage of corruption; but that God on the seventh day restored all things thus corrupted by the devil and man, by his gracious promise of the Messiah: upon this restoration he rested upon that very day; and that rest, upon the reparation of the world, being peculiar to the seventh day, may be the foundation of the Sabbath." (§ 19.) These notions seem to be now without advocates in any Christian sect.

 

[dannyhyde]

Interesting, Andrew. I've not heard of this controversy, although many of the Dutch and English divines argued vehemently against these types of "seventh day" Sabbatarians.

 

[VirginiaHuguenot]

Interesting, Andrew. I've not heard of this controversy, although many of the Dutch and English divines argued vehemently against these types of "seventh day" Sabbatarians.

I don't think that Walker is putting forth seventh-day Sabbatarianism (he seems to be a proponent of the Puritan Sabbath as expressed in the Westminster Confession which he subscribed to as a Westminster Divine) but rather that its foundation was posterior to Adam's fall and grounded in the purposed redemption of Christ (as described by James Gilfillan) and his views about this are echoed by James Alting and Edmund Warren in his day.