When Does the Lordsday Actually Begin? (No.2)

Question 49: What reasons may be given of the Lord’s days beginning in the morning?

Answer: Other days then begin.

"That they do so with us, is evident by the account of our hours.  For midnight ended, we begin with one a clock: then the first hour of the day beginneth.  And it appears to be so among the Jews: for when Aaron proclaimed (Exod. 32. 5, 6.) To morrow shall be a feast to the Lord, They rose up early on the morrow.  I deny not but that sundry of the Jewish feasts began in the evening: as the Passover (Exod. 12.6.) But it cannot be proved that their weekly Sabbaths so began.  There were special reasons for the beginning of those feasts in the evening, which did then begin.  As for the supposed beginnings of the first days gathered out of this phrase, (the evening and the morning were the first day) they cannot be necessarily concluded to be at evening.  For the evening and the morning there importeth the moment of the evening and morning parting one from another, and the return to the same period: which moment is rather at the beginning of the morning then of evening.  The evening useth to be referred to the end of the day, and the morning to the beginning, as Exod. 29. 38, 39.  I.Sam. 17. 16. and 30.12. Joh. 20.19."

- William Gouge, The Sabbath’s Sanctification 

(London, 1641), p. 25.