This dissertation examines the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English and Dutch Sabbath debates and considers their influence on John Milton's writings. Previous studies of the Sabbath debates have concentrated on the English _Book of Sports_. This study focuses instead on exegesis of the Bible's Sabbath passages among English and continental writers, and it shows that the Sabbath debates were an occasion for them to reflect on the nature of liberty. In particular, it argues that the Sabbath debates prompted them to consider the relationship of law and labor to liberty. Until the early 1640s, interpreters of the Bible's Sabbath passages focused on defining Christian liberty and explaining how Christ had changed the Christian's obligation to obey the Mosaic law and perform religious works. By the mid-seventeenth century, the Sabbath debates were also shaping understandings of political liberty. Political writers explored how Sabbath-keeping could constrain and liberate subjects and also how the Sabbath could offer subjects rest from weekly toils and opportunities to participate in political life. Chapters 1 and 2 consider the turn from theological to political explorations of Sabbath law in England, focusing on the writings of the Puritans, the Laudians, Gerrard Winstanley and the Diggers, and Thomas Hobbes. Chapter 3 examines how the Sabbath debates shaped political thought in the United Provinces, concentrating on how Johannes Cocceius' covenant theology influenced Benedict de Spinoza's _Theological-Political Treatise_. Finally, this dissertation argues that Milton was in conversation with the Sabbath debates and that they influenced his views of Christian liberty and political liberty. Chapters 4 and 5 show that Milton's understanding of Sabbath law changed throughout his career: during the early 1640s he agreed with the Puritans that Christians were bound to Hebrew Sabbath law, but in his later career he argued that Christ had freed Christians from the law. Nevertheless, in both _Paradise Lost_ and _Samson Agonistes_, Milton draws from Jewish teachings about Sabbath law in order to explore the social and political functions of Sabbath-keeping. He suggests, like contemporary political thinkers, that Sabbath law could create and preserve healthy social relationships and that it could empower and liberate political subjects.