We, too, should always keep a spiritual sabbath, should always take a rest from servile work (i.e., sin), should always make time for and consider that the Lord is God, so that after such a sabbath, when we have been freed from the sins of conscience, we may come to the sabbath of future glory in heaven. But the peoples of the land seek a way to profane our sabbath by bringing in all sorts of things to sell us on the holy day because unclean spirits try hard to pollute the cleanness of our heart; and once they have received the payment of our consent, they heap on us the enticements of the vices in order to defile the day of greatest holiness (i.e., to darken the light of our devout thought or action with the sins they have sent in). But we should entirely shun merchandise of this sort with the walls of our closed-off city, that is, with the protection of a more perfected life.

All these matters that are contained in this chapter are relevant to the care of the Lord’s house and his ministers and services. This excellent order of religious life ought to be imitated by us, too, in a spiritual manner today, namely, that first the descendants of the exiles purified themselves from the pollution caused by the Gentiles, then they were sanctified by keeping the sabbath (which stood prominently among the first commandments of the Law)^[1] and only then did they turn all their attention to carrying out the observance of divine worship in other respects, for we must first be cleansed from evils and only then equip ourselves for good works. However, it would take quite a long time to discuss allegorically in what order we must carry out each of these in a spiritual manner with respect to the worship of the Lord, and this should be done rather in the Book of the Law itself.^[2]