If your defense of engaging in public activities on the Sabbath is it helps me relax and unwind and yet in doing so it means thousands must lose their opportunity to do the same is that really loving your neighbor as yourself?

I’m sure you, like me, have sat through an innumerable number of exams at presbytery or in committee, whether they be for Licentiates, new ordinands, or transfers. More often than not when it comes time to state exceptions to the Westminster Confession there are two that seem to come in like rote repeat: WLC #109 on mental images (though this has now spread to allowing false images of Christ for children in popular books, I’ve written on that elsewhere) and WCF 21.8 regarding the so-called Recreation clause. In my little foray into Seventeen82 today I want to talk a little on that phrase, what it means historically, and why the reasoning behind the taking of the exception is based on either a simple mistake or a camel’s nose to allow all sorts of things that violate the Sabbath into the confessional tent. Hope that’s enough to get your eyes up.

For those who may be unawares here is the context of WCF 21.7-8:

vii. Is it is the law of nature, that, in general, a due proportion of time be set apart for the worship of God; so, in His Word, by a positive, moral, and perpetual commandment binding all men in all ages, He has particularly appointed one day in seven, for a Sabbath, to be kept holy unto him: which, from the beginning of the world to the resurrection of Christ, was the last day of the week: and, from the resurrection of Christ, was changed into the first day of the week, which, in Scripture, is called the Lord’s Day, and is to be continued to the end of the world, as the Christian Sabbath.

viii. This Sabbath is to be kept holy unto the Lord when men, after a due preparing of their hearts, and ordering of their common affairs beforehand, do not only observe an holy rest all the day from their own works, words, and thoughts about their worldly employments and recreations, but also are taken up the whole time in the public and private exercises of His worship, and in the duties of necessity and mercy.

First of all if you are going to take this as an exception you need to name more than just this portion of the Confession of Faith. WSC #60 and WLC #117 say the same thing and defend the doctrine of WCF 21.7-8, so don’t leave them out when naming your exceptions.

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