Call the Sabbath a Delight

Thomas Case, "Of Sabbath Sanctification" in Puritan Sermons, 1659-1689, Vol. 2, pp. 28-29:

(I.) If we would sanctify the sabbath acceptably, we must call the sabbath "a delight." -- Call -- That, is, account it so. Calling -- It is an act of the judgment, or appreciative faculty. A delight -- Or, as some render it, "thy delights." We must reckon the sabbath inter delicias, as is said of Jerusalem: she "remembered all her pleasant things." (Lam. i.7.) Surely, her sabbaths were some of those "pleasant things." It is said, "Her enemies did mock at her sabbaths." Ay; but she did mourn. They were her "delightful things," whereupon her heart was: and so they must be to us. But we must also remember to take-in, with the day, all the ordinances and religious services and duties of the day. They must not only be done spiritually, holily, and universally, but they must be done with delight and complacency, we must prefer them to our chiefest joy; yea, the very approach of the sabbath should be our delight. So have all the saints and servants in all ages of the church done; they have been to them the very joy and life of their souls. "I was glad when they said unto me, Let us go into the house of the Lord. Our feet shall stand within thy gates, O Jerusalem." (Psalm cxxii.1.) I was never more affected with joy and gladness in all my life, than when I was wont to hear the people encouraging one another to assemble themselves to the public worship of God, in the house of God, on God's day. O! it did my heart good to hear with us what alacrity and rejoicing they did provoke one another: "Come, let us go to the house of the Lord;" notably prophesied of in words at length: "Many people shall go and say, Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths: for out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem." (Isai. ii.3.) In the loss of ordinances and sabbaths they have been dead in the nest, like "Rachel weeping for her children, and would not be comforted, because they are not." [Matt. ii.18.] And in the recovery and enjoyment of them they have rejoiced as men rejoice that divide the spoil. (See Psalm iii., xlii., xliii., and xlviii., per totum.) Christians, we must write after this copy, and count the sabbath, not our duty only, but our delight and privilege.