{"collection":"scripture-revelation","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/wikisource_Thelyphthora_Volume_1_Chapter_4/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/wikisource_Thelyphthora_Volume_1_Chapter_4","id":"wikisource_Thelyphthora_Volume_1_Chapter_4","license":"Public Domain / CC-BY-SA (see source)","rights_basis":"wikisource_site_inclusion_policy","source":"wikisource","source_url":"https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Thelyphthora/Volume_1/Chapter_4","summary":null,"tags":["Pages_using_ppoem_with_custom_stanza_classes","Subpages"],"text":"CHAP. IV.\n\nOf Polygamy.\n\nI PROMISED the Reader, that the proofs for what I advance should be drawn from the word of God; and, for my own sake, as well as that of the truth, I find myself more especially bound to keep this promise, with respect to the subject before us: for if I were to go to human authorities, I should wander into such an endless labyrinth of difference and contradiction, as to lose sight of every thing but fruitless disputation.\n\nThat the mischiefs which must inevitably attend polygamy on the woman's side, do not accrue from it on the part of the man, is very clear and on this principle, we may account for the total difference which is put between them in the divine law\u2014the one punished with death, the other not so much as mentioned in a criminal light. So far from being prohibited or condemned by the law, we find it allowed, owned, and even blessed of God: and in no one instance, amongst the many recorded in scripture, so much as disapproved.\n\nBy polygamy, I would be understood to mean , what the word literally imports, the having and cohabiting with more than one wife at a time. Whether taken together, as seems to be the case of king Jehoash, 2 Chron. xxiv. 3. or first one and then another, as Jacob, Gen. xxix. 28. or David, 1 Sam. xxv. 43; it was this which was allowed of God, consequently practised by His people. The putting away or divorcing one woman, in order to take another, was as much forbidden in the Old Testament as in the New. God says, Deut. xxii. 29. She shall be his wife; he may not put her away all his days. So before, ver. 19, and again, Exod. xxi. 10. If he take him another wife, her food (i. e. of the first wife) her raiment, and her duty of marriage, he shall not diminish. Putting away or divorcing a first, in order to take a second, is a palpable breach of these laws, and therefore treated by the great and infallible interpreter of them as a heinous offence against God, it being a breach of that obligation, laid upon the man, to consider his wife as one flesh with himself, and, as such, to cleave to her for life, as bone of his bone, flesh of his flesh, Gen. ii. 23; which our Lord cites, and reasons upon, to prove the abomination of such a proceeding, as absolutely contrary to the original institution of the marriage-bond.\n\nThis, however, was the common practice of the profligate Jews of that day, who abused the liberty of divorce permitted by Moses in certain cases, to the most licentious purposes, so as to make marriage little better than a pretence for gratifying their lusts, divorcing one, in order to take another, and thus profaning the holy ordinance of God, by giving it no higher place in their esteem, than as a means of indulging their depraved appetites. A monstrous practice! against which Christ's discourse, Matth. xix. 4, &c. is levelled, not against polygamy, as considered simply in itself. If we interpret this passage as such an explanation of God's law from the beginning, as will serve to prove all polygamists are adulterers, we must condemn a large generation of God's dearest servants and children; and instead of believing that all these died in faith, Heb. xi. 13. we must say, that many of them died in a state of unbelief and disobedience; and instead of looking for Abraham, Jacob, David, &c. in the kingdom of heaven, we must look for them in the kingdom of Satan; for his they were, and him they served, if polygamy be an offence against the law from the beginning, under which these people lived and died, without the least repentance, or any signs of it, as adulterers, fornicators, and whoremongers. That is the infallible consequence of the common interpretation of this passage; for Christ does not ground the authority of what He declares on any new law which he was introducing, but on an explanation of God's law from the beginning, revealed first to Adam, afterwards recorded by Moses, that it might be transmitted to all succeeding generations, as the one rule of faith and practice, for all those to whom God's word should come, to the end of the world. Neither with you only, saith Moses to the people (then present at the re-publication of God's law, Deut. xxix. 14, 15.) do I make this covenant and this oath, but with him that standeth here with us this day, before the Lord our God, and also with him that is not (or those who are not) here with us this day, i. e. with all succeeding generations, till time shall be no more.\n\nTherefore Christ, so far from altering, changing, or destroying the law delivered from God by Moses, enters a caveat against such a supposition (Matt. v. 17.) Think not that I am come to destroy the law or the prophets; I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil: for verily I say unto you, 'till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, 'till all be fulfilled\u2014\u1f14\u03c9\u03c2 \u1f02\u03bd \u03c0\u03ac\u03bd\u03c4\u03b1 \u03b3\u03ad\u03bd\u03b7\u03c4\u03b1\u03b9\u2014until all things be done. Hammond. And again (Luke xvi. 17.) It is easier for heaven and earth to pass, than one tittle of the law to fail. This not only stamps unchangeableness upon the law, but upon its import, sense, and meaning, as one and the same throughout all ages and generations, as an invariable rule of life for the members of God's visible church upon earth, even to the least jot or tittle.\n\nNotwithstanding, as this passage of Matt. xix. is the chief ground on which that absurd position is built, that \"Polygamy, though allowed under the law, is forbidden under the gospel;\" or, \"though permitted under the Old Testament, is forbidden under the New\" (as if there could be a law in the New Testament contradictory to\nthat in the Old Testament) it may be worth our while to consider the matter more minutely.\n\nThe question put by the Pharisees, Matt. xix. 3. is not, \"whether it be lawful to marry two wives at a time, or to take one to another?\" but\u2014\"Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife for every cause?\" The question concerns divorce, and divorce only. When we consider who it was that was to give the answer, we may be certain of its entire pertinence to the question. It follows (ver. 4, &c.) He answered and said unto them, Have ye not read, that He which made them at the beginning, made them male and female, and said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and cleave unto his wife, and they twain (i. e. the man and his wife) shall be one flesh? wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.\n\nWith so close, so apposite, so conclusive an answer, grounded on the old marriage-institution, not on any new dispensation; they ought to have been satisfied that divorce was unlawful. But they urge him farther, and (ver. 7.) said unto him\u2014Why did Moses then command to give a writing of divorcement, and put her away? He saith unto them, Moses, because of the hardness of your hearts, suffered you to put away your wives, but from the beginning it was not so (i. e. that men should put away their wives). And I say unto you, that whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery; and he who marrieth her which is put away, committeth adultery.\n\nThis last is the verse which has made the difficulty; for if this were meant to condemn polygamy, it amounts, so far, to a contradiction, or rather repeal, of the old law, which permitted it; and then more than a jot or tittle has passed from the law. If it means that it was always sinful, and against the law of God, it condemns, as was before observed, all that ever practised it, and falls heavy on some of the greatest saints, that are recorded in scripture as patterns of faith, holiness, and obedience.\n\nThis difficulty, like many others in the scriptures, can only be solved, by attending to the character of the speaker, the peculiar circumstances of the persons spoken to, and the particular occasion on which the words were spoken; for want of this, we are apt to interpret the scriptures more by sound than sense, and thus make them speak what they never meant .\n\nThe Jews, at the time of their dispute with Christ on the subject of divorce, were fonder of tradition than of the scriptures, and of the teachings of their rabbies, than of the law of God; insomuch that Christ charges them (Matt. xv. 9.) with teaching for doctrines the commandments of men: and (Mark vii. 9, 13.) with rejecting and making the word of God of none effect, through their tradition. There were several famous rabbies, whom they highly reverenced, but particularly Shammah, Hillell, and Akiba.\n\nThe school of Shammah taught, that a man could not be lawfully divorced from his wife, \"unless he had found her guilty of some action which was really infamous, and contrary to the rules of virtue.\" But the school of Hillell , who was Shammah's disciple, taught, on the contrary, that \"the least reasons were sufficient to authorize a man to put away his wife. For example\u2014if she did not dress his victuals well, or if he found any other woman he liked better.\" Akiba was still more indulgent than Hillell, for he affirmed that \"it was sufficient cause for a man to put away his wife, if she were not agreeable to her husband.\"\n\nJosephus and Philo shew very sufficiently, that in their time the Jews believed divorce to be lawful on every trivial cause. That the Pharisees had learnt to explain the toleration of Moses in a like extensive manner, may be gathered from the question which they put to our Saviour. The above observations may therefore serve as a key to the scripture under consideration. The Pharisees (who asked, whether it was lawful for a man to put away his wife for every cause?) seem to have been deeply tinctured with that position of Hillell, and to have adopted that particular cause of divorce mentioned by him, that of seeing a woman they liked better, so putting away one whom they liked less, in order to take another whom they liked more. Against this Christ may be understood to level his answer\u2014Whosoever putteth away his wife, except for the cause of fornication, and marrieth another, committeth adultery, &c. not as condemning polygamy in itself, against which there was no law, but under the particular circumstance of unlawful divorce to effect it, against which the law of God was from the beginning. Such a thing was not contained in Moses's permission, nor mentioned therein, but was contrary to the very institution of marriage; and, as our Lord shews clearly, ver. 4, 5, 6, virtually forbidden by the very words of it. It was as unlawful for a man to put away or divorce his wife for another woman, as for a woman to put away or divorce her husband for another man: the marriage-bond being equally binding as to the matter of putting away. We may also observe, that though the saints of God, of whom we read so much in the Old Testament , practised polygamy, yet they did not put away one wife in order to make room for another. This was as directly forbidden them by the law of God, delivered by Moses, as by Christ, on the authority of that law, to these Pharisees.\n\nHere I would observe, that our translators of the Bible seem to have paid too much attention to the Scribes and Pharisees, in the rendering the passage referred to for the justification of their doctrines about divorce. The Pharisees say, Moses commanded to give a writing of divorcement, and put her away. Thus the rabbies construed Deut. xxiv. 1, &c. in the imperative mood; and we, by doing the same in our translation of that passage, have justified their misinterpretation, and even justify the divorced woman's going to be another man's wife. She may go, and be another man's wife; so we translate, verse 2. No marvel, if this be the case, that Christ is supposed to condemn something which was before allowed; whereas the whole passage is suppository or hypothetical, and only introductory of that positive law, ver. 4. The whole should be rendered thus, if we would avoid the absurdity of supposing Moses to command, what God positively forbad, and to consign a married woman into the arms of an adulterer, in the very face of the seventh commandment, by saying, \"She may go and be another man's wife.\" ver. 2. This would be establishing adultery by a solemn law.\n\nThe Hebrew text should be rendered\u2014When, (or if) a man hath taken a wife, or woman, and married her, and it come to pass that she find no favour in his eyes, because he hath found some uncleanness in her, and (if) he write her a bill of divorcement, and give it in her hand, and send her out of his house, and she shall have departed out of his house, and (if) she go and be another man's wife, and if the latter husband hate her, (here we explain the \u05d5 by an if, why not before?) and write her a bill of divorcement, &c. or if the latter husband die, which took her to be his wife, her former husband, which sent her away, may not take her again to his wife after that she is defiled, for that is abomination before the Lord, and thou shalt not cause the land to sin, which the Lord thy God giveth thee for an inheritance.\n\nThus the Greek interpreters express the sense of these four verses, and the Vulgar Latin, yea, and the Chaldee paraphrase may be so understood. So Tremellius renders the words, and Vatablus explains them, Scripseritque ei libellum repudii & dederit Ei in manu, ejeceritque,'' &c. If he shall have written her a bill of divorce, &c. \"This is not an absolute sentence,\" saith Vatablus, \"but ought to be joined to the words following, which shew that if such things happened, that if a man divorced his wife, and if another took her, the former husband might not take her again, she having been defiled.\" Which proves the same thing contended for by our Lord, in His discourse with the Pharisees, that those permissive divorces, which, says He, Moses permitted, \u1f10\u03c0\u03ad\u03c4\u03c1\u03b5\u03c8\u03b5\u03bd\u2014not, as the Pharisees would have it, \u1f10\u03bd\u03b5\u03c4\u03ad\u03b9\u03bb\u03b1\u03c4\u03bf, commanded\u2014made no difference as to the marriage-bond in the sight of God. The man who put away his wife, for no other cause than marrying another, which was the practice of these people, committed a great sin, not only by not cleaving to his wife, as God had commanded, but by putting her away for another woman, and thus causing her to commit adultery with another man. See Matt. v. 32. And in this sense, as accessary to his divorced wife's crime, might himself be said to commit adultery. But more of this hereafter.\n\nIf those divorces could have operated, as a dissolution of the first marriage, she would not have been defiled by marrying another man; but this not being the case, she was defiled in the sight of God, when put away by unlawful divorce, as when she went to another man without any divorce. Very striking are the words of Jer. iii. 1. They say, If a man put away his wife, and she go from him, and become another man's, shall he return to her again? shall not that land be greatly polluted?\u2014But where is any thing like this said of polygamy? That polygamy was practised throughout all ages of the Jewish \u0153conomy, cannot be denied. It is equally evident, that it was the deliberate, open, avowed, and wilful practice of the most holy and excellent of the earth, of Abraham, the father of the faithful, the friend of God, Is. xli. 8. as well as of the most illustrious of his children; and this, without the least reproof or rebuke from God, or the most distant hint or expression of his displeasure, either by Moses, or any other of the prophets. No trace of sorrow, remorse, or repentance, touching this matter, is to be found in any one instance, and therefore many commentators are at a loss to maintain the sinfulness of polygamy, but at the expence of scripture, reason, and common sense.\n\nSome say\u2014\"It was a sin, but God allowed it for the hardness of their hearts.\" That Moses suffered (\u1f10\u03c0\u03ad\u03c4\u03c1\u03b5\u03c8\u03b5\u03bd, permitted, tolerated) divorce, so far as not to exact the outward punishment of it in certain cases, is evident from the supposed circumstances in Deut. xxiv. 1, &c. But this was in order to avoid worse mischief amongst the wicked and profligate part of the community, such as mal-treating, beating, or even killing their hated wives. This is what we may suppose, in part at least, to be meant by our Lord, when He says\u2014Moses, because of the hardness of your hearts, suffered you to put away your wives. This is said of divorce, not of polygamy, as plainly appears by the words of the text. And herein Moses seems to have acted more as a politician, than as a lawgiver\u2014by permission, not by commandment, like that of Paul, 1 Cor. vii. 6. It is not said\u2014God suffered it\u2014but\u2014Moses suffered you to put away your wives: but, Christ adds, from the beginning it was not so\u2014i. e. that men should put away their wives. Here is not the least hint about polygamy.\n\nCan we suppose, however, that God suffered Abraham, Jacob, David, and others of His saints, to break His law, and this for the hardness of their hearts?\u2014If they had hearts of stone, who ever had an heart of flesh? Ezek. xi. 19. Do not reason and common-sense start back at such a supposition?\n\nOthers have as absurdly said, \"that, God, being the sovereign, has a right to dispense with his own laws, and having done this, polygamy was no sin.\"\n\nWe find particular occasional instances of God's dispensing with the rigour of His laws on certain emergencies, and for particular purposes\u2014as in David's eating the shew-bread, which it was not lawful for any but the priests to eat. Also in some other instances which might be mentioned. But where do we find a total suspension of one of the commandments of the moral law for ages together? If it was as great a sin for a man to have two wives, as for a woman to have two husbands, why suspend it on the part of the man, and not on the part of the woman? Why invariably ordain punishment on one side, and not on the other, if each was equally sinful against the law itself? Doth God pervert judgment? Or doth the Almighty pervert justice? Job viii. 3. God is no respecter of persons. Acts x. 34. He accepteth (i. e. with undue and partial favour) no man's person. Gal. ii. 6. As many as have sinned in the law, shall be judged by the law. Rom. ii. 11, 12. Nor is it conceivable that the righteous Judge of all should Himself depart from the rule laid down for his vice-gerents, the judges of the earth, (Deut. i. 17.) Ye shall not respect persons in judgment. No other account then can consistently be given of the matter, than what may be gathered from the uniform and unvaried use of the word \u05e0\u05d0\u05e3\u2014adultery\u2014in the seventh commandment, as relating to the wife; that is to say, as forbidding polygamy on her side, but not to the husband as forbidding polygamy on his.\n\nOthers would make the wise, holy, great, and good men, who were polygamists, wholly ignorant of the law, as to the true meaning thereof, and say\u2014\"The times of ignorance God winked at\"\u2014wresting this text (Acts xvii. 30.) which speaks of the blind Gentiles, who were without the written law of God, and making it relate to the Jews, to whom were committed the oracles of God. Rom. iii. 1, 2. But, waving this, was Abraham, that prophet, Gen. xx. 7. whom God, from the familiar intercourse He had with him, calls His friend? (Is. xli. 8.)\u2014was Jacob, who spake with God face to face (Gen. xxxii. 30.) ignorant? Could Moses, the sacred penman and expounder of the law, be ignorant? so ignorant, as not to know its true meaning? Could David be ignorant? If so, to how little purpose was his study in it all the day long? Ps. cxix. 97. Are we to suppose Solomon ignorant, to whom God said\u2014Lo, I have given thee a wise and understanding heart, so that there was none like thee before thee, neither after thee shall any arise like unto thee? 1 Kings iii. 12. See 1 Kings iv. 29, &c. Comp. Matt. xii. 42. Luke xi. 31. Such a solution of the matter will more easily prove the ignorance of such commentators, than their assertions prove ignorance in the holiest and wisest men that ever lived under the light of the Old Testament, where alone God's law is to be found, and on the authority of which the whole New Testament can only stand. The kings of Israel were expressly commanded to write a copy of the law with their own hand; it was to be with them, and they were to read in it daily. Deut. xvii. 18, 19. The Priests and Levites could not be ignorant; for their lips were to keep knowledge, and the people were to seek the law at their mouth. Mal. ii. 7. As for the people, they not only heard the law constantly, but were commanded to write it upon the very door-posts of their houses. Deut. vi. 9. Whatever else, therefore, their polygamy proceeded from, it could not be derived from ignorance. They could not be ignorant of the seventh commandment; and supposing that many of them, like their descendents in later times, lost sight of its spiritual intendment, yet the meaning of its outward letter they could hardly be at a loss for, especially as they must observe its uniform and unvaried use throughout the whole of their scriptures. If, therefore, polygamists sinned against the seventh commandment, they did it with their eyes open; and whosoever can believe that such men as we have mentioned, could do this without any scruple before-hand, or sorrow afterwards, or the least sign of repentance, must believe more than, for their sakes, and the sake of thousands of God's saints (who though not mentioned as polygamists, doubtless were so) I could wish even to surmise, or than is in the least consistent with the account which we have of them in the holy scriptures.\n\nI shall only observe farther on this head, of attributing the practice of polygamy by the Old-Testament saints to ignorance, that we must charge ignorance on God's high-priest Jehoiada, who stands recorded, 2 Kings xii. and 2 Chron. xxiv. as one of the wisest, best, and greatest characters that ever lived, as likewise one of the most exemplary promoters of God's honour, and a chief instrument of the reformation of religion in Judah, in the reign of king Jehoash. If so, our charge of ignorance will not stop here, but even reach the Spirit of God Himself. For He says, that Joash did right in the sight of the Lord all the days of Jehoiada the priest, 2 Chron. xxiv. 2. or (as it is 2 Kings xii. 2.) all his days, wherein Jehoiada the priest instructed him; and yet we are told, ver. 3. that Jehoiada took for him two wives, and he begat sons and daughters. On whom shall the commentator fix ignorance? On Jehoiada the high-priest, for teaching his pupil king Jehoash to be a polygamist, by taking for him two wives? or on Jehoash, who received them, and cohabited with them? or on the Holy Ghost, who bears testimony to the rectitude of king Jehoash's conduct, all his days wherein Jehoiada the priest instructed him?\n\nThe learned Bishop Patrick, on 2 Chron. xxiv. 3. says, that \"Jehoiada did not take these two wives for the king, but for himself.\" Supposing it to be so, the proof of the lawfulness of polygamy in Jehoiada's opinion is equally strong. But this sense of the Bishop's will hardly arise from the position and construction of the Hebrew text: for it does not stand in the order of our translation\u2014And Jehoiada took for him two wives\u2014so as to make him the relative to Jehoiada; but\n\nduas\n\n\u05e9\u05ea\u05d9\u05dd\n\ntwo\n\nuxores\n\n\u05e0\u05e9\u05d9\u05dd\n\nwives\n\nJehoiada\n\n\u05d9\u05d4\u05d5\u05d9\u05d3\u05d0\n\nJehoiada\n\nei\n\n\u05dc\u05d5\n\nhim to\n\ntulit Et.\n\n\u05d5\u05d9\u05e9\u05d0\n\nbrought And\n\nMont.\n\nSo that the \u05dc\u05d5\u2014to him\u2014stands as the relative to the chief subject of the preceding verse, which is evidently king Jehoash, whose history the sacred penman is here recording, as a part of which this action of Jehoiada's is here related.\nThe Bishop is conscious of a difficulty in his interpretation, arising from a constant tradition of the Jews, that the high-priest was to have but one wife at a time, which was founded on Lev. xxi. 13, 14. This he endeavours to get rid of by saying\u2014\"It is not certain that Jehoiada was high-priest, for he is every where called Jehoiada the priest, and but once only (ver. 6.) the chief.\"\u2014But this is no argument at all against his being high-priest, for Abiathar, who was high-priest, is no where called so in the Old Testament, but always the priest; so his father Abimelech, as the Bishop himself observes on 1 Sam. xxi. 13; so Eli the priest, 1 Sam. ii. 11; Zadoc the priest, 1 Kings iv. 2. 1 Chron. xxix. 22; and even Aaron himself, Ps. xcix. 6. The title of \u05e8\u05d0\u05e9\u2014the chief, or head, which is given to Jehoiada, ver. 6. signifies certainly more than \"the chief of one of the courses of priests.\"\u2014His having apparently the conduct and management of every thing relating to the temple, his anointing king Jehoash (comp. 1 Kings i. 45.) and many other circumstances related of him, bespeak him plainly to be no less than high-priest; and therefore the word \u05e8\u05d0\u05e9\u2014chief, or head\u2014denotes this here, as it does that Seraiah was high-priest, 2 Kings xxv. 18. For all which reasons it seems clear, that Jehoiada (who had before married Jehoshabeath, the sister of king Ahaziah, 2 Chron. xxii. 11.) took not these two wives for himself, but for king Joash.\n\nThese things are too plain not to force conviction on the minds of many; therefore it is that they have said with the learned author of the \"Historical Library\"\u2014\"Polygamy, though not expressly allowed, is however tacitly implied in the law of Moses.\" This is going farther than those I have mentioned, but yet does not come up to the matter. For if it be forbidden by the seventh commandment, or by any other law, it is as contradictory to scripture to say, that it was tacitly implied, as that it was expressly allowed. This last is the truth; it was expressly allowed, and that by God Himself: a direct proof this, that it was not forbidden by the seventh commandment, or by any other law, unless we can suppose the all-wise God to be so inconsistent with Himself, as to forbid, and yet allow, the same thing under the same circumstances.\n\nSome have found out, that \"polygamy was allowed for the more expeditious peopling\nof the world.\"\u2014Supposing it is a mean of increasing population (which by the way will admit of great doubt) yet where was the use of this amongst the Jews, when, before their entrance into Canaan, they were as the stars in heaven for multitude? Deut. i. 10; and yet polygamy did not cease after their entrance into the promised land.\n\nAs for all popular arguments against polygamy, which the wisdom of this world has invented, and believed as so many certain conclusions on the side of truth, they equally apply against the wisdom and holiness of God in allowing it, as against those who maintain it: therefore, as He will be justified in His sayings, and clear when He is judged, Rom. iii. 4. the best answer which can be given, for the present, is that included in the awful question of the Apostle, Rom. ix. 20. \"Nay but, O man, who art thou that repliest against God?\" Though this immediately relates to another point, yet it is applicable to all the vain reasonings of men against the dispensations of Providence, either in the natural or moral world. Which said reasonings, when thoroughly canvassed, and set in their true light, will appear to be neither more nor less, than the pleadings of human pride, on the behalf of human ignorance. Our prejudices and our opinions reciprocally affect each other, and, upon examination, they will usually be found as much alike as the image and the mold it is cast in.\n\n\"Go wiser thou, and in thy scale of sense,\n\"Weigh thy opinion against Providence\u2014\n\"Call imperfection what thou fanciest such,\n\"Say, here He gives too little\u2014there too much\u2014\n\n\"Snatch from His hand the balance and the rod,\n\"Rejudge His justice, be the God of God.\n\n\"In pride, in reas'ning pride, our error lies,\n\"All quit their sphere, and rush into the skies;\n\"And who but wishes to invert the laws\n\"Of order, sins against th' eternal cause.\n\n\"All this dread order break\u2014for whom?\u2014for thee?\n\"Vile worm! Oh madness! pride! impiety!\n\"Go teach eternal wisdom how to rule,\n\"Then drop into thyself\u2014and be a fool.\n\n\"From pride, from pride, our very reas'ning springs\u2014\n\"Account for moral, as for nat'ral things:\n\"Why charge we Heaven in those, in these acquit?\u2014\n\"In both, to reason right, is to submit.\"\nEssay on Man.\n\nIn fewer, but in still more forcible and humbling words, doth Paul express himself to the self-wise among the Corinthians\u2014and in them to us\u20141 Cor. iii. 18, 19.\u2014Let no man deceive himself\u2014If any man among you seem to be wise in this world\u2014\u03b5\u03bd \u03c4\u03c9 \u03b1\u03b9\u03c9\u03bd\u03b9 \u03c4\u03bf\u03c5\u03c4\u03c9\u2014like the philosophers, politicians, and rabbies of the age, (Guyse) let him become a fool that he may be wise for the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God.\n\nThough it be beside my design, in this treatise, to consider the subjects thereof on any other footing than as they appear in the scriptures; yet I will so far depart from my purpose, as to take notice of a popular argument against polygamy, which, in the minds of some learned and considerate men, has been of such importance, as to outweigh all that could be said for it. It is this\u2014\"The males and females brought into the world are nearly on a balance, only allowing a little excess on the side of the males; whence it follows, that nature intends only one wife \"for the same person; if they have more, some others must go without any.\" This argument, plausible as it may seem, wants one essential to solidity, which is truth. For saying which, I will, by way of justification, transcribe a few paragraphs from Dr. Forster's \"Observations during a Voyage round the World\"\u2014published 1778. This ingenious author, who seems to be a most strenuous monogamist, after speaking of \"Monogamy established in the isles of the South Sea,\" very candidly says\u2014\"But here I find myself obliged to confess, that I am not as yet persuaded of the great and universal argument for monogamy, viz. the equal proportion of women to men; as, in my opinion, it is not clearly proved that this just proportion holds place in all countries and climates. On the contrary, I am of opinion, that the constitution of food and climate, and the prevailing custom of marrying many wives, have, by length of time, produced a considerable disparity between the numbers of men and women; so that now, to one man, several women are born. This observation is really confirmed by fact; for all the voyagers unanimously agree, that among all the African nations polygamy is customary; nor has any one observed that there are men among these nations without wives, for every one is matched to one or more females.\" Here he refers to Bosman's \"Description of the coast of Guinea,\" \"who likewise,\" says the Doctor, \"expressly declares, that the number of women much exceeds that of the men.\"\u2014\"When a polygamous nation lives in the neighbourhood of monogamous nations, there is always a probability that the women necessary for so many men who have more than one wife, are obtained by stealth, force, or by commerce from the neighbouring nations; but in Africa, all the nations are polygamous; every man is married, and has more than one wife. He cannot procure these wives from the neighbouring tribes where the same custom prevails: it is therefore, in my opinion, a clear and settled point, that the women born among these nations must be more numerous than the males.\n\n\"Though the colonists at the Cape of Good Hope are monogamous, I observed, in the various families of the town and country, the number of females to prevail.\"\u2014\"It has been observed in Sweden, more females than males have been born during the latter part of this century\u2014it is reported in the kingdom of Bantam, even ten women are born to one man;\" and refers to Lord Kaimes's Hist. of Man, vol. i. p. 176.\" Montesquieu, Spirit of Laws\u2014Eng. Trans. 4th edition, octavo\u2014vol. i. p. 374. mentions this\u2014\"I confess,\" says he, \"if what history tells us be true, that at Bantam there are ten women to one man, this must be a case peculiarly favourable to polygamy.\"\n\nFrom all this it appears to me, that, unless we can find that God delivered to Moses as many different laws to govern the actions of His reasonable creatures, as there are different parts of the globe inhabited by them, so as that there is one law for the inhabitants of Asia and Africa, and another for those of Europe, this sort of arguments, drawn from the outward appearances of things in different parts of the world, proves nothing on either side of the question, but the exceeding ignorance of mankind as touching the acts and dispensations of that infinitely wise Being, whose judgments are unsearchable, and His ways past finding out! Rom. xi. 33.\n\nThe best and fairest, and indeed the only way to get at the truth, on this as on every other occasion where religion is concerned, is to lay aside prejudice, from whatever quarter it may be derived, and to let the Bible speak for itself. Then we shall see that polygamy, notwithstanding the seventh commandment, was allowed by God Himself, who, however others might mistake it, must infallibly know His own mind, be perfectly acquainted with His own will, and thoroughly understand His own law. If He did not intend to allow polygamy, but to prevent or condemn it, either by the seventh commandment, or by some other law, how is it possible that He should make laws for its regulation, any more than He should make laws for the regulation of adultery, theft, or murder? How is it conceivable that He should give the least countenance to it, or so express His approbation of it, as even to work miracles in support of it? For the making a woman fruitful who was naturally barren, must have been the effect of supernatural power. He blessed, and in a distinguished manner owned the issue\u2014and declared it legitimate to all intents and purposes. If this be not allowance, what is? As to the first, namely, his making laws for the regulation of polygamy, let us consider what is written, Exod. xxi. 10. If he (i. e. the husband) take him another wife (not\u2014in so doing he sins against the seventh commandment, recorded in the preceding chapter\u2014but) her food, her raiment (i. e. of the first wife) and her duty of marriage, he shall not diminish\u2014\u05dc\u05d0 \u05d9\u05d2\u05e8\u05e2\u2014he shall not subtract or withold, \u1f40\u03c5\u03ba \u03b1\u03c0\u03bf\u03c3\u03c4\u03b5\u03c1\u03b7\u03c3\u03b5\u03b9, LXX. Compare 1 Cor. vii. 5. Here God positively forbids a neglect, much more the divorcing or putting away the first wife, but charges no sin on taking the second.\n\n2dly. When Jacob married Rachel she was barren, and so continued for many years; but God did not leave this as a punishment upon her for marrying a man who had another wife. It is said, Gen. xxx. 22. that God remembered Rachel, and God hearkened unto her\u2014and opened her womb\u2014and she conceived and bare a son\u2014and said, God hath taken away my reproach. Surely this passage of scripture ought to afford a complete answer to those who bring the words of the marriage-bond, as cited by Christ, Matth. xix. They twain shall be one flesh, to prove polygamy sinful; and should lead us to construe them, as by this instance, and many others, the Lawgiver Himself appears to have done; that is to say, where a woman, not betrothed to another man, unites herself in personal knowledge with the man of her choice, let that man's situation be what it may\u2014they twain shall be one flesh. How other-wise do we find such a woman as Rachel, united to Jacob, who had a wife then living, praying to God for a blessing on her intercourse with Jacob, and God hearkening unto her, opening her womb, removing her barrenness, and thus, by miracle, taking away her reproach? We also find the offspring legitimate, and inheritors of the land of Canaan; a plain proof that Joseph and Benjamin were no bastards, or born out of lawful marriage. See a like palpable instance of God's miraculous blessing on polygamy in the case of Hannah, 1 Sam. i. and ii.\u2014These instances serve also to prove, that, in God's account, the second marriage is just as valid as the first, and as obligatory, and that our making it less so, is contradictory to the divine wisdom.\n\n3dly. God blessed and owned the issue. How eminently this was the case with regard to Joseph, see Gen. xlix. 22\u201326; to Samuel, see 1 Sam. iii. 19. It was expressly commanded, that a bastard, or son of a woman who was with child by whoredom, should not enter into the congregation of the Lord, even to his tenth generation. Deut. xxiii. 2. But we find Samuel, the offspring of polygamy, ministring to the Lord in the tabernacle at Shiloh, even in his very childhood, cloathed with a linen ephod before Eli the priest. See this whole history, 1 Sam. i. and ii. Who then can doubt of Samuel's legitimacy, consequently of God's allowance of, and blessing on polygamy? If such second marriage was in God's account null and void, as a sin against the original law of marriage, the seventh commandment, or any other law of God, no mark of legitimacy could have been found on the Issue; for a null and void marriage is tantamount to no marriage at all; and if no marriage, no legitimacy of the issue can possibly be. Instead of such a blessing as Hannah obtained, we should have found her and her husband Elkanah charged with adultery, dragged forth and stoned to death; for so was adultery to be punished. All this furnishes us with a conclusive proof, that the having more than one wife with which a man cohabited, was not adultery in the sight of God; or, in other words, that it never was reckoned by Him any sin against the seventh commandment, the original marriage-institution, or any other law whatsoever.\n\n4thly. But there is a passage (Deut. xxi. 15.) which is express to the point, and amounts to a demonstration of God's allowance of polygamy. If there be to a man \u05e9\u05ea\u05d9 \u05e0\u05e9\u05d9\u05dd\u2014two wives\u2014(Compare Gen. iv. 19. 1 Sam. i. 2. xxx. 5.)\u2014the one beloved, and the one hated, and they have borne him children, both the beloved and the hated\u2014and if the first-born be to the hated, then it shall be, when he maketh his sons to inherit that which he hath, that he may not make the son of the beloved first-born before the son of the hated, which is indeed the first-born, by giving him a double portion of all that he hath; for he is the beginning of his strength, and the right of the first-born is his.\n\nOn the footing of this law, the marriage of both women is equally lawful, God calls them both wives (for so the word \u05e0\u05e9\u05d9\u05dd must be rendered in this place, as the context shews plainly) and He can't be mistaken, if He calls them so they certainly were so. If the second wife bore the first son, that son was to inherit before a son born afterwards of the first wife. Here the issue is expressly deemed legitimate, and inheritable to the double portion of the first-born; which could not be, if the second marriage were not deemed as lawful and valid as the first.\n\nThe wisdom of this world, as at present constituted, would say\u2014the man was an adulterer\u2014the second wife an adulteress\u2014our law would make the man a felon\u2014our ecclesiastical courts would pronounce the second marriage null and void\u2014the issue would be bastardized\u2014and our devout people would lift up their hands and eyes, and deem the whole a monstrous piece of wickedness! Which view of the matter is most agreeable to the mind and will of God, must be left to the judicious reader to determine.\n\nDean Delaney, who cannot venture to deny absolutely that this text relates to polygamy\u2014yet, in a note, endeavours to get rid of its evidence, by saying, that \"this one expression\u2014her's that was hated\u2014see our translation\u2014makes this law appear rather to be understood of the children of two successive wives.\"\u2014But the Hebrew runs thus\u2014\u05d5\u05d4\u05d9\u05d4 \u05d4\u05d1\u05df \u05d4\u05d1\u05db\u05e8 \u05dc\u05e9\u05e0\u05d9\u05d0\u05d4\u2014and the first-born son be to the hated\u2014so that the stress laid on the words of our translation, her's that was hated, is good for nothing. See Reflections on Polygamy, p. 56.\n\nThe learned Dr. Rutherforth has also taken no small pains, to get rid of the conclusive evidence of this text in favour of the divine allowance of polygamy. That learned professor, in his lectures which he red at Cambridge, on Grotius de Jure, found this text, in the plain and obvious meaning of the Hebrew, by no means conformable to the position which he had laid down, that polygamy was contrary to the law of nature; he therefore is for supposing the two wives to have been in succession, and that the first-born was the son of the first wife. See Institutes of Natural Law, b. i. c. 15.\n\nBut it is very extraordinary, if this were the case, that it should not be so expressed. This is a point of too much consequence, to be established on words, which do not carry that meaning, and no other, on the face of them: so far from it, the only terms used in the description of the women are\u2014\"The one beloved\u2014and the one hated,\"\u2014who can say which was which?\u2014consequently, presume to determine, of which wife the first-born was, in point of time?\n\nDr. Rutherforth, as well as Dr. Delaney, in his treatment of all scriptures which oppose his law of nature scheme, puts one in mind of Kolben's account of the Rhinoceros\u2014\"This creature, in order to get at his prey, marches towards it in a right line, tearing his way very furiously through all opposition of trees and bushes. When he is upon the march, he is heard at a great distance, forcing his way through thick bushes, and snapping of trees.\"\n\nAs for Grotius and Puffendorf, they both allow that the Jewish law permitted polygamy, as they both declare; and both mention this text as one proof of it. See Grot. de Jure, lib. ii. c. 5. \u00a7 9. Marg. Puffend. lib. vi. c. 1. \u00a7 16. The like may be said of the great Mr. Selden, Bishop Patrick, and every other learned commentator, who had not a very interesting reason for imitating Peter Kolben's Rhinoceros above-mentioned.\n\nOne particular occasion of this law seems to have been, what had happened in the case of Leah and Rachel, Jacob's \u05e9\u05ea\u05d9 \u05e0\u05e9\u05d9\u05dd\u2014two wives\u2014the one beloved and the one hated.\u2014See Gen. xxix. 30, 31. Reuben was the first-born of Leah\u2014Joseph of Rachel. Jacob disinherited the son of the hated, and gave the right of the first-born to the son of the beloved\u2014but this was not a mere act of caprice, and undue preference, against the law of inheritance, upon account of Jacob's partiality to Rachel; but an act of justice, on account of Reuben's crime, who had gone up to his father's couch, and defiled his concubine Bilhah.\u2014He therefore disinherited him, as a punishment, and the birth-right thus became Joseph's, who was the first-born of Jacob by Rachel. See 1 Chron. v. 1, 2.\n\nAs this might have been made a precedent among the polygamous Jews, and what had been an act of justice in Jacob, made use of to justify an indulgence of undue partiality for one wife before another, to the disherison of the first-born, and to the overturning the sacred rights he was invested with, as a type or figure of Him that was to come\u2014who, as the great antitype, is styled, \"the first-born of every creature.\" Col. i. 15.\u2014therefore this law seems to have been made, and stands as an irrefragable proof of the lawfulness of polygamy; because it stands as a proof, not only of the allowed practice of it, but of the legitimacy of the issue in the sight of God; which is evinced to demonstration in the above case of Joseph, who could not have inherited the right of the first-born, on any other principle.\n\nSimeon was the next son of Leah, but could not take the inheritance, not being the first-born of his mother\u2014but Joseph was, and therefore, as the only legitimate heir, took the birth-right, on the disherison of Reuben the first-born of Leah.\n\nBut farther. To say that polygamy is sinful (for if it ever was it certainly is, and if ever it was not it certainly is not, unless some positive law hath made an alteration, or unless good and evil change their nature by length of time, like the fashion of our cloaths) is to make God the author of sin; for not to forbid that which is evil, but even to countenance and promote it, and this uniformly for ages together, is being so far the author of it, and accessary to it in the highest degree.\u2014And shall we dare to say, or even to think, that this is chargeable on Him who is of purer eyes than to behold evil, and who cannot look on iniquity? Hab. i. 13. God forbid!\n\nWhen He is upbraiding David, by the prophet Nathan, for his ingratitude towards His Almighty benefactor, (2 Sam. xii.) He does it in the following terms: ver. 8. I gave thee thy master's house, and thy master's wives into thy bosom, and I gave thee the house of Israel and Judah, and if that had been too little, I would moreover have given thee such and such things.\n\nCan we suppose God giving more wives than one into David's bosom, who already had more than one, if it was sin in David to take them? Can we imagine that God should thus transgress (as it were) His own commandment in one instance, and yet so severely reprove and chastise David for breaking it in another? Is it not rather plain, from the whole transaction, that David committed mortal sin in taking another living man's wife, but none in taking the widows of the deceased Saul? that therefore, though the law of God condemned the first, yet it did not condemn the second?\n\nThis passage of 2 Sam. xii. 8. is so conclusive a proof of God's allowance of polygamy, that writers on the other side of the question have not been able to get rid of it, but by a downright corruption of the text. Instead of the plain, obvious, and literal meaning of the word \u05d7\u05d9\u05e7\u2014which signifies the \"breast or bosom, from the throat to the pit of the stomach,\" have construed it into power, and would tell us that \"God gave Saul's wives into David's power, as a sovereign, not into his bosom as an husband.\"\n\n\"Take this expression in its strongest and most strict sense\" (says the late reverend and learned Dean Delaney, in a book called \"Reflections on Polygamy,\" printed at London, 1737, under the name of Phileleutherus Dubliniensis) \"as where Sarai tells Abram that she had given her maid into his bosom, (Gen. xvi. 5.) what more can be meant by it, than that she gave her into his power?\" We have but to look at the whole context of that passage, and this learned man's question receives a full and explicit answer, and his whole argument an absolute refutation. Gen. xvi. 1. &c. Now Sarai, Abram's wife, bare him no children, and she had an handmaid, an \u00c6gyptian, whose name was Hagar; and Sarai said unto Abram, Behold now the Lord hath restrained me from bearing, I pray thee go in unto my maid, it may be that I may obtain children by her. And Abram hearkened unto the voice of Sarai: and Sarai, Abram's wife, took Hagar her maid, the \u00c6gyptian, and gave her to Abram to be his wife (\u05dc\u05d0\u05e9\u05d4) and he went in unto Hagar, and she conceived; and when she saw that he had conceived, her mistress was despised in her eyes: and Sarai said unto Abram, My wrong be upon thee; I have given my maid into thy bosom, and when she saw that she had conceived, I was despised in her eyes; the Lord judge between me and thee. This scripture is too plain to need any comment. I will therefore, after observing that \u05d7\u05d9\u05e7 no more signifies power, than it signifies an horse, only add, that if Saul's wives had not been given into David's bosom, in the plain and usual sense of that expression, the circumstance itself could not have afforded that striking aggravation, so beautifully intimated in Nathan's parable, of the rich man's sparing to take of his own flock, and his own herd, to dress for the wayfaring man that was come unto him, but taking the poor man's lamb, &c.\n\nThe learned Dean, as well as some other commentators on this famous passage, go still farther, and tell us, David could not enjoy these widows of Saul as wives, because in so doing he would have committed incest, they being mothers-in-law to Michal, Saul's daughter, who was David's wife. But where is such a union forbidden? I have carefully examined the degrees of affinity and consanguinity wherein marriage is forbidden, and do find a man must not marry his own mother-in-law, (Lev. xviii. 8.) but as to his wife's mother-in-law, there is not a trace of such an impediment. As for Michal's own mother, she, if living, must be put out of the question. See Lev. xviii. 17.\n\nThese things being considered, the observations of such commentators evaporate into just what Nathan's parable and remonstrance must do, supposing such criticisms to be true; that is to say, into\u2014nothing at all. David's ingratitude to God, and to his worthy Uriah\u2014were not so marked by Nathan, because David had a number of women whom he could not enjoy; but because he might have enjoyed them whenever he pleased: therefore his taking Uriah's wife was the more inexcusable, and his rebellious ingratitude against God, who gave him so many women into his bosom, the more aggravated.\n\nThese truths have not failed universally in their influence, but have forced themselves into the consciences of some; who, not being able to resist their conviction, have confessed that \"Polygamy was allowed of God to the Jews, but yet it is forbidden to Christians\"\u2014which is just as true as if it was said, that \"the people under the Old Testament were men and women, but Christians are not; for to suppose that the human species is changed, is not more absurd, than to suppose a change either of the original design of God in the institution of marriage, or of the sense and meaning of the seventh commandment, as forbidding or condemning that now, which was not forbidden or condemned, either by the one or the other, for so many ages before. As for the positive law of the seventh commandment, it is attended with such pains and penalties in the breach of it, that it is impossible but that some instance of God's disapprobation of polygamy must have been met with, had that been within the meaning of it; otherwise the absurdity must follow, of supposing a suspension of this law for 1500 years after it was ordained of God, delivered to Moses, and by him to the people at Mount Sinai\u2014and all this for the indulgence of mortal sin in one sex, while it was punished with death in the other.\n\nIn the first place, I would observe in general, that polygamy, in its proper sense, as practised under the Old Testament by the people of God; that is, the taking two wives together at once, or one to another, and cohabiting with both, is not so much as mentioned any where, that I can find, from the first chapter of Saint Matthew to the last of the Revelation of Saint John, inclusive: therefore it cannot be said to be condemned. The famous passage in Matt. xix. which has been already considered, and will be more fully hereafter, certainly relates to divorce, and, properly speaking, not to polygamy; for this, simply considered, does not come in question. The people there, so far from intending polygamy, meant nothing less, for they meant to have but one wife at a time; else why were they for divorcing one, in order to take another? Their sin was this, not the taking and cohabiting with more than one at a time. They imagined themselves totally free from the first, before they married the second.\n\nThe New Testament was not to introduce a new law concerning this, nor any thing else. Nothing is to be found there which was not in the Old Testament, only as to the manner; the matter is one and the same. Otherwise, how could Paul derive any strength to his argument, Gal. iii. 10. by citing the sanction of the old law, to prove the necessity of salvation by grace? If the law be in a single instance altered, or changed in one single point, how can it be said by an inspired apostle of Christ\u2014Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them?\u2014which, as it never had, so it never can have but one sense and meaning; and our Lord shews, that it not only condemned the act, but the very thought of adultery. Did it only begin to do this, when Christ said, Whosoever looketh upon a woman to lust after her, hath already committed adultery with her in his heart ? Matt. v. 28. (but then this must mean such a woman as adultery could be committed with, supposing the thought brought forth into act). And does not the Old Testament say the same thing? What else is the meaning of the tenth commandment, which says, Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife? or of Prov. xxiv. 9. The thought of foolishness is sin? The word \u05d6\u05de\u05ea which we translate the thought, signifies a wicked imagination, prava aut mala cogitatio. Mont.\u2014an evil thought. The law is spiritual, says Paul, I had not known lust (i. e. known it to be evil) except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet. Rom. vii. 7. Therefore, when our Saviour preached on the Mount, He did not make, ordain, or publish any new law, nor did he make the law more spiritual than when published at Mount Sinai; but He set it forth, and vindicated it from the false glosses of the Scribes and Pharisees, who, in their teaching, dwelt on the outward letter only, throwing a veil of obscurity over its spiritual sense and meaning. The seventh commandment was just as spiritual under the Old Testament as under the New. The very thought of adultery in David, was as sinful as it would have been in Saint Paul. How then can it be imagined, that the commandment against adultery meant not as much in the times of Moses and the prophets, as in the days of Christ and His Apostles? or, in other words, as much under the Old Testament as under the New? How can it be thought to condemn any thing amongst Christians, which it did not equally condemn amongst the Jews? Whatsoever things the law saith, it saith to them that are under the law (whether Jews or Christians) that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world become guilty before God. Rom. iii. 19. If then the law ever condemned polygamy as adultery, whoredom, or fornication, it certainly does it now; but, as hath been shewn, it never did condemn it in any one instance, not only from the beginning, by any construction put on the original marriage-institution, but also for 1500 years together after the giving the law at Mount Sinai; therefore it never has condemned it since: for Christ gave no new meaning to this or any other of the commandments, but only vindicated and restored the old. What was murder is now murder\u2014what was theft is now theft\u2014what was adultery is now adultery\u2014and what was none of these, is still none of these.\n\nGod's law is His will, and His will is His law; a change of one must infer a change in the other, and either of these a change in Himself: an idea which is wholly irreconcileable with the scripture-character of God, with whom there is no variableness, neither any shadow of turning. James i. 17.\n\nMen may cobble, and vamp, and alter, and repeal laws, and indeed it must be so, as mischiefs, which escape all human prescience and foresight, must daily arise; but it cannot be so with Omniscience. All things are present and open to Him. Heb. iv. 13. He ordained the propagation of mankind\u2014He blessed them, and said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth. Gen. i. 28. He made the woman, and brought her to the man, and said\u2014A man shall cleave to his wife, Gen. ii. 22, 24. (by which expression, according to St. Paul's interpretation, 1 Cor. vi. 15, 16. is meant the act of copulation or marriage) and they shall be one flesh\u2014thus creating between them so indissoluble a bond, as never to be divided more. Though these words were spoken immediately by Adam, yet, doubtless, he spake under the influence of the divine Spirit, as may appear from Christ's manner of applying the words, Matt. xix. 4, 5. and may therefore, as what Moses and the prophets spake under the same holy influence, be styled\u2014\"The word of God.\" The circumscription and regulation of the whole was provided for by fixed, determined, and immutable laws, calculated for all times, places, and ages of the world, wherein He should be pleased to make them known. These laws, on the establishment of the church, on its deliverance out of \u00c6gypt, were given to Moses, and enforced and explained by him, and the subsequent prophets, under the immediate command and teaching of God; and continue, like the holy Lawgiver Himself, one and the same for ever. Who may marry together, and who may not\u2014what is a lawful marriage in God's account, and what is not so, was not left to the uncertain or presumptuous determinations of mankind, but immutably fixed by written laws of God. To these it is our bounden duty to conform, and to say to all subsequent inventions of men, as well those which forbid marriage entirely, as those who would put asunder those whom God hath joined together, under pretence of greater purity and holiness, as the angel did to Peter, Acts x. 15. What God hath cleansed, that call thou not common or unclean.\n\nI have mentioned the law being explained by the prophets. These were extraordinary messengers which God raised up and sent forth under a special commission; not only to foretell things to come, but to preach to the people, to hold forth the law, to point out their defections from it, and to call them to repentance, under the severest terms of God's displeasure, unless they obeyed. Their commission, in these respects, we find recorded, Is. lviii. 1. Cry aloud, spare not, lift up thy voice like a trumpet: shew my people their transgressions, and the house of Jacob their sins. This commission was to be faithfully executed, at the peril of the prophet's own destruction, as appears from the solemn charge given to Ezekiel, chap. iii. 18. When I say to the wicked, Thou shalt surely die, and thou givest him not warning, nor speakest to warn the wicked to save his life, the same wicked man shall die in his iniquity, but his blood will I require at thine hand.\n\nThese prophets executed their commission very unfaithfully towards God and the people, as well as most dangerously for themselves, if polygamy was a sin against God's law; for it was the common practice of the whole nation, from the prince on the throne to the lowest of the people; and yet neither Isaiah, Jeremiah, nor any one of the prophets, bore the least testimony against it. They reproved them sharply and plainly for defiling their neighbours wives; as Jer. v. 8; xxix. 23.\u2014in which fifth chapter, we not only find the prophet bearing testimony against adultery, but against whoredom and fornication, ver. 7. for that they assembled themselves by troops in the harlots houses. Not a word against polygamy. How is it possible, in any reason, to think that this, if a sin, should never be mentioned as such, by God\u2014by Moses\u2014or any one of the prophets?\n\nHere I may particularly mention Elijah the Tishbite, who could with truth say of himself, 1 Kings xix. 10. \u05e7\u05e0\u05d0 \u05e7\u05e0\u05d0\u05ea\u05d9\u2014zelando zelatus sum. Mont. Which emphatical reduplication we translate by\u2014I have been very jealous for the Lord of hosts. This holy man was fired with zeal for God's law, and was a most faithful and undaunted reprover of sin, even to the very face of king Ahab (who at that time reigned in Israel, and was doubtless a polygamist; by his having seventy sons) yet not a word is said about his polygamy; which could hardly have been omitted, had it been a sin against either the primary law of marriage, or the seventh commandment. The same zeal which led Elijah to tell Ahab, that he and his father's house had troubled Israel, by forsaking the commandments of the Lord, and following Baalim, must surely have led him to reprove Ahab's polygamy, had that also been a forsaking the commandments of Jehovah. The scripture, 1 Kings xvi. 31. strongly remarks, as an aggravation of Ahab's superlative wickedness, that he married an idolatress, contrary to Deut. vii. 3. Had his polygamy been contrary to Exod. xx. 14. this would hardly have escaped the reproofs of the prophet Elijah, who did not forget Jezabel, and the prophets which ate at her table. 1 Kings xviii. 19.\n\nWe may also observe that Ezekiel, ch. xxii. sets down very particularly the sins of lewdness, which the Jews were addicted to in his day, ver. 10, 11. but not a word of polygamy is there to be found.\n\nAlthough it be true, that none of the prophets before the captivity mention it as a sin, yet did not Malachi, after the return from the captivity, speak of it, and in very severe terms condemn it? thus closing the canon of the Old Testament with a most awful reprehension of it? Mal. ii. 14, 15.\n\nAs this famous passage is taken for granted to be a condemnation of polygamy under the Old Testament, let us examine it, and we shall find that it does not even relate to the subject: if it did, it would be very strange, that so material a point should escape all the prophets that went before him, Moses himself not excepted. This single circumstance should make one suspicious of the common interpretation given to this portion of scripture by the general run of commentators, who, mistaking the sound of the words for the sense of the text, have followed one another like sheep, who keep the same track, only because others have gone before them. The words, as they stand in our translation, are these\u2014The Lord hath been witness between thee and the wife of thy youth, against whom thou hast dealt treacherously: yet she is thy companion and the wife of thy covenant. And did not He make one? yet hath He the residue of the spirit. And wherefore one? That He might seek a godly seed. Therefore take heed to your spirit, and let none deal treacherously against the wife of his youth; for the Lord God of Israel saith, that he hateth putting away.\n\nThe last words are a key to the rest, and shew, that the instance in which they dealt treacherously with their wives, was putting them away; and this, in order to take heathen women in their room. This is manifest from ver. 11. Judah hath dealt treacherously, and an abomination is committed in Israel and Jerusalem; for Judah hath prophaned the holiness of the Lord which he loved, and hath married the daughter of a strange god.\n\nEzra , who lived about this time, hath recorded the fact at large, and fully explains the matter; chap. ix. 1. The people of Israel and the priests have not separated themselves from the people of the lands, for they have taken of their daughters for themselves, and for their sons, and the holy seed have mingled themselves with the people of those lands.\n\nVer. 10. And now, O Lord, what shall we say after this? for we have forsaken thy commandments, which thou hast commanded by thy servants the prophets, saying, The land which ye go to possess is an unclean land, &c.\n\nVer. 12. Now therefore give not your daughters unto their sons, neither take their daughters to your sons, &c.\n\nChap. x. 2. We have trespassed against our God, and have taken strange wives of the people of the land. Now therefore let us make a covenant with our God, to put away all the wives, and such as are born of them, ver. 3.\n\nThe putting away these heathen women was a duty, and this by the positive law of God. For God having, as it were, forbidden the banns in express words (Deut. vii. 3.) their marriages were absolutely null and void ab initio; they could contract no valid marriage whatsoever with them, and therefore must put them away. This affords us a strong proof of the lawfulness of polygamy, where the woman was not excepted against, as by the law above mentioned, or by some other: for if this were otherwise, we should hear of putting away all but the first in all cases. God would not have suffered any marriage which was contrary to the seventh commandment, any more than those which were contrary to Deut. vii. 3. When we compare Ezra and Malachi together, we find by the former, that the Jews took heathen women for their wives; and by the latter, that they not only did this, but put away their Israelitish wives for that very purpose. This is plainly what ver. 14. calls dealing treacherously with their wives, their divorcing them for this unhallowed purpose. There the prophet uses the like arguments against them as he had before used, ver. 10. with regard to their dealing treacherously with their brethren\u2014Have we not all one father? hath not one God created us? why do we deal treacherously every man against his brother, by profaning the covenant of our fathers? When they put away their Jewish wives, and married the heathen idolatrous women, they profaned the covenant of their fathers; that is, that command of God delivered to their fathers, not only in the original institution of marriage, which forbad putting away, but also that positive law, Deut. vii. 3. which forbad marriage with heathens. They dealt treacherously with their brethren; that is to say, with the parents and relations of their unjustly-divorced wives, who gave them their daughters or sisters in marriage, to abide with them, not to be put away. They dealt treacherously also with their wives, in putting them away.\u2014Therefore the prophet reproves them, and calls them to repentance by the following considerations, ver. 14, 15; which I will endeavour to lay before the reader in a paraphrase suitable to the literal and true meaning of the original Hebrew, and conformable to the analogy of divine revelation, as delivered to us by Moses and the prophets. Then it will appear, that these distinguished servants of God were not guilty of concealing, disguising, or dissembling the truth; nor God Himself capable of suffering His seventh commandment, as well as the original institution of marriage, to be transgressed, not only with impunity, but allowance, uniformly through so many ages, or of leaving His church and people utterly ignorant of His mind and will touching so important a matter, for all that time,\n\n\u05d5\u05dc\u05d0 \u05d0\u05d7\u05d3 \u05e2\u05e9\u05d4\u2014Et ne unus fecit? Mont.\u2014And did not one make? Here our commentators, misled by our translators, and these by the vulgar error of the sinfulness of polygamy, tell us, that \"these words signify God's making but one woman at the beginning; He had the residue of the spirit, and therefore could have made more women for Adam if He had pleased.\" One misfortune attending so ignorant a comment, is, that the word \u05d0\u05d7\u05d3 cannot signify one woman, unless, among other changes, women were of the masculine gender under the Old Testament, though of the feminine under the New Testament; for \u05d0\u05d7\u05d3 is certainly of the masculine gender\u2014\u05d0\u05d7\u05ea is the feminine\u2014See Judges ix. 53.\u2014\u05d0\u05e9\u05d4 \u05d0\u05d7\u05ea\u2014mulier una. Mont. & al freq. This, besides an undue transposition of the words, is, I take it, a conclusive reason for saying they mistake the passage. It is not\u2014Did not he make One?\u2014but\u2014Did not One make? like ver. 10. Have we not all one Father? Did not one God create \"us? Did not One, or The One, make both you and your Jewish wives? Did He not form both of you\u2014(see Deut. xxxii. 6.) naturally of the same seed of Abraham\u2014spiritually by the same holy dispensation and ordinances?\u2014At ver. 14. it is said\u2014\u05d5\u05d4\u05d9\u05d0 \u05d7\u05d1\u05e8\u05ea\u05da\u2014she is thy companion, or associate\u2014\u05d5\u05d0\u05e9\u05ea \u05d1\u05e8\u05d9\u05ea\u05da\u2014and a wife, or woman, of thy covenant\u2014i. e. a partaker with thee in the covenant made with Abraham and his seed after him. So the prophet Zech. ix. 11. where God says to the daughter of Zion\u2014As for thee\u2014\u05d1\u05d3\u05dd \u05d1\u05e8\u05d9\u05ea\u05da\u2014In (or by) the blood thy covenant I have sent forth thy prisoners, &c. where \u05d1\u05e8\u05d9\u05ea\u05da\u2014thy covenant\u2014compared with the context in this place of Malachi, clearly determines the meaning to be as above, and it stands here as opposed to the daughter of a strange God, ver. 11.\u2014\u05d5\u05e9\u05d0\u05e8 \u05e8\u05d5\u05d7 \u05dc\u05d5\u2014And He hath (or hath He not?) the remainder of the Spirit\u2014Hath He not the same power He ever had?\u2014Is His hand shortened at all, so that He cannot complete your restoration if He pleases, or punish you still more severely, if you continue disobedient to His commandments? Spirit is here used for power , mighty, but especially irresistible power; as Ps. cxxxix. 7. Is. lix. 19. Is. lxiii. 14. Is. xxxiv. 16.\u2014\u05d5\u05de\u05d4 \u05d4\u05d0\u05d7\u05d3 \u05de\u05d1\u05e7\u05e9 And what did The One seek? \u05d6\u05e8\u05e2 \u05d0\u05dc\u05d4\u05d9\u05dd\u2014a seed of God\u2014an holy seed (see Ezra ix. 2. compare ver. 14.) therefore take heed to your spirit\u2014that is, your temper\u2014affections\"\u2014as \u05e8\u05d5\u05d7 is very often applied, (see Numb. xiv. 24. 1 Sam. i. 15.) \"and none of you deal treacherously against the wife of thy youth, (whom thou hast married when a virgin) by putting her away, and taking these idolatresses; for I the Lord hate putting away.\" The consideration of the relation they stood in to Jehovah\u2014He their common Father\u2014they His professing children, was one argument against their separating\u2014another was, that, as the Lord sought a godly seed in their offspring, by their being devoted to Him in their earliest infancy, then brought up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, this design would be defeated by their taking idolatrous women, who, instead of devoting the children to Jehovah, would be for bringing them up to the worship of their idols, and an ungodly seed be the consequence. See Deut. vii. 3, 4. Lastly, God had forbidden divorce from the beginning, (see Gen. ii. 24.) for He hateth putting away at any rate; but how much more to see His own professing daughters put away, that His own professing sons might marry the daughters of a strange God? This was indeed doing an abominable thing which God hated. Jer. xliv. 4.\n\nThis I take to be a clear, consistent view of this famous passage, and agrees exactly with what Ezra says, chap. ix. 9. &c. and chap. x. 2. &c. who did not rend his mantle and garment, and pluck the hair off his head and beard, and sit down astonished, because the people did what their fathers Abram, Jacob, David, &c. had done without the least reproof, and had been constantly, openly, avowedly practised by the holiest of their forefathers, without the least scruple on their part, or condemnation on God's part\u2014but because they had married heathen women, and, as appears by Mal. ii. 14. had dealt treacherously against the Jewish lawful wives, by putting them away in order to do it.\n\nAs to the notion expressed by commentators, in their apparently misconceived ideas of this text of Malachi\u2014that because God created but one man and one woman at first, therefore he intended that \"no man should have more than one wife at a time ever after,\" I do humbly conceive, that, if God had meant so, He would somewhere have said so, and not have left it to the wisdom of men to put their interpretations on what He was pleased to do; for who hath known the mind of the Lord, and who hath been his counsellor? Rom. xi. 34. Some may argue, that because it was said\u2014\"A man shall cleave to his wife, not wives, therefore it is unlawful for a man to have two or more wives in succession, and can only have one so long as he lives, because Adam had but one.\" This sort of conceits is like supposing that God forbad the wearing cloth, or silk, or linen, because He cloathed our first parents with skins. Gen. iii. 21; or supposing, like those mad heretics of the second century, who called themselves Adamites, that Christians are to meet together stark naked without any shame, because it is said (Gen. ii. 25.) Adam and Eve were naked, and were not ashamed. If we take upon ourselves to interpret this or any act of God merely by our imaginations, we take upon us what does not belong to us. We are told, Deut. xxix. 29. Secret things belong unto the Lord our God, but those things which are revealed, to us and our children for ever, that we may do all the words of His law.\n\nThat God might have created 10,000 men, and as many women, is certain. Why He did not, He hath no where told us, any more than why He created only one man and one woman. This and all things else are to be resolved into His own good pleasure, and the counsel of his own will. Eph. i. 11. Rev. iv. 11. Our attempting to account for any of His holy acts or dispensations, any farther than the revelation of His word expressly authorizes us, is to be wise above what is written, to involve ourselves in endless mazes of error, till\u2014professing ourselves wise, we become fools. Rom. i. 22.\n\nGod's bringing the woman to the man\u2014that solemn denunciation\u2014therefore shall a man leave father and mother, and cleave unto his wife, and they shall be one flesh\u2014form a conclusive argument against wanton and causeless divorce; and are expressly made use of by Christ for that purpose in His dispute with the Pharisees, Matt. xix. 4, 5; but it is no where, in the whole scripture, made use of as an argument against polygamy. There were, doubtless, opportunities enough in the antediluvian, as well as the postdiluvian world, to have given occasion for it, had any such thing been intended.\n\nThe first instance of polygamy which is recorded, we find Gen. iv. 19. And Lamech took unto him two wives, the name of one was Adah, the other Zillah. Here our commentators think they have found out the sin of polygamy\u2014\"It was one of the degenerate race of Cain,\" saith one, \"that first transgressed the law of marriage, that two only should be one flesh.\" These are the words of one of the wisest and best (Mr. Henry) among our English commentators, and serve to shew how far men will go to support a popular notion, or pre-conceived opinion, even to the corrupting of the Bible. There are no such words as \"two only\" in the law of marriage referred to\u2014It stands, Gen ii. 24. they shall be one flesh; and, as mentioned by Christ, Matt. xix. 5. \u1f41\u03b9 \u03b4\u03c5\u03bf\u2014they twain shall be one flesh. So Mark x. 8. Had the words \"two only\" been there, we should not have red so frequently afterwards of God's countenancing, or His saints practising polygamy, any more than of His countenancing, and their practising adultery. I must here take notice of the Evangelist's introduction of the words \u1f41\u03b9 \u03b4\u03c5\u03bf\u2014they twain, or the twain\u2014which certainly was not done as an addition to the original words, or as an interpolation, in order to introduce some new doctrine, but merely as a sort of paraphrase to explain their import, sense, and meaning that a man and his wife, though before marriage they were two\u2014that is, separate, unconnected, independent of each other, so that they might or might not come together, yet afterwards they are no more two, separate, unconnected, independent persons, but as one flesh, \u1f10\u03b9\u03c2 \u03c3\u03ac\u03c1\u03ba\u03b1 \u03bc\u03af\u03b1\u03bd.\u2014The words \u1f41\u03b9 \u03b4\u03c5\u03bf\u2014the twain\u2014are not to be taken in their numerical sense, for if they be, what follows ver. 6.\u2014so that they are no more twain\u2014would not be true; for certainly a man and woman are as much numerically two after marriage, as they are before it, and therefore cannot be numerically one; but in the same sense in which they were spoken of as two before, they now become one, that is to say, in consideration of law.\n\nThe marriage destroys their unconnectedness, distinctness, and independency on each other, so that in all legal consideration they are no more twain, but one flesh. Therefore the consequence is proved which our blessed Lord meant to prove\u2014it could not be lawful for a man \u03b1\u03c0\u03bf\u03bb\u03c5\u03b5\u03b9\u03bd\u2014to divorce his wife for every cause, or for any cause except one, which, of itself, divided their persons again, and amounted to a total dissolution of the marriage-bond: for to make a man live with an adultress, would be to make him father other people's children, defeat his own rightful heirs, and introduce that confusion into his family, which it was one grand object of the seventh commandment to prevent. For want of considering the words \u1f41\u03b9 \u03b4\u03c5\u03bf\u2014they twain, or the twain\u2014in the legal sense above-mentioned, our commentators have jingled them in their fancies, till they have blundered into their two only\u2014two and no more: thus interpolating and corrupting the words of the marriage-institution, as it stands recorded Gen. ii. 24. and what is worse still, making our blessed Saviour do the same, by representing Him as using the words in their numerical sense. This stamps untruth, nay, downright nonsense on what He says, ver. 6; for it is not true that a man and his wife are no more (numerically) two; and to say that persons, who are numerically two, are yet numerically one, is downright nonsense. As the word twain is to be understood in a legal sense, so they shall be one flesh, cannot be understood in a literal sense, as if by a kind of matrimonial transubstantiation they became literally one body (see 1 Cor. vi. 16); but that they are so in a legal sense is very certain; and therefore, as a man cannot separate his bones from his flesh, nor his flesh from his bones, without destroying himself, so neither can a man put away his wife unjustly (who, in estimation of God's law, is bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh) without offending against the holiness, and destroying the positive obligation of the marriage-institution.\n\nThose, who by the legerdemain of this same numerical interpretation of the word twain, added to the sound of the former clause of ver. 9. make Christ condemn polygamy as adultery, represent Him as using the word \u05e0\u05d0\u05e3\u2014adultery\u2014in an unauthorized unconformity to the Hebrew scripture (as our Lord doubtless spake in Hebrew); for no where is that word used, to denote a man who had one wife, taking another to her, and cohabiting with both (which I take to be the true and genuine notion of polygamy); nor is it used in any other sense, but to denote the defilement of a married woman. Our Saviour, who constantly appealed to the Hebrew scriptures for what he delivered to the people, can hardly be supposed to have advanced a doctrine so unsupported by them; and that before an audience of those very Pharisees, who we are told, Luke xi. 54. were laying wait for him, seeking to catch something out of His mouth, that they might accuse Him. Again\u2014by making Christ declare polygamy to be adultery, they charge Him with asserting a falshood, both in point of law and fact, by declaring all such after-taken women not to be the real wives of the men who took them; for if they were, adultery must be out of the question. Let us examine this on the footing of scripture. It is said, 1 Sam. xxv. 42, 43, Abigail became David's wife, and David also took Ahinoam of Jezreel, and they were also both of them his wives. So witnesseth the Holy Ghost, and this, though ver. 44. tells us, he had at that very time another wife living. By saying they were also both of them his wives (for that must be the meaning of \u05e0\u05e9\u05d9\u05dd in this context) it is making each one flesh with him, so that he could not divorce either; and if either had gone to another man, she would have been an adultress, and the man who took her would have been an adulterer. I say this, taking it for granted that the Holy Ghost would not have called them his wives, \u05dc\u05d5 \u05dc\u05e0\u05e9\u05d9\u05dd\u2014sibi in uxores. Mont.\u2014unless they really were so. See also 1 Sam. xxvii. 3.\n\nThus, on the authority of the Hebrew scripture, an after-taken woman is as much a man's wife who takes her, as the first is\u2014therefore it is neither true in point of law or fact, that a man having one wife, and taking another, committeth adultery; for which reason it is impossible Christ should ever say so, and those who make Him say so, wrest His words from their true meaning.\u2014But as this portion of scripture will necessarily fall under farther consideration hereafter, I will now return to the history of Lamech.\n\nWhether he did right or wrong does not appear, for it is only said\u2014Lamech took him two wives. His being \"of the degenerate race of Cain\" made it not a jot the worse, or a tittle the better, any more than the same thing done by Jacob made it either the one or the other, because he was \"of the blessed race of Seth.\" The invention of music, which was afterwards made such considerable use of in the temple of God\u2014of agriculture and the care of cattle\u2014of working in brass and iron, were all found out by Lamech's children; yet I cannot conceive that they are the less innocent in themselves, or less useful to mankind, than if they had been found out by Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. We can only say of such observations on scripture, that they are very silly; but if the word of God is to be corrupted, in order to serve as a foundation for them, they are very wicked. See Deut. iv. 2. xii. 32. I only mention Mr. Henry, but I might name others; one who goes so far in corrupting the text, that he represents it as the command of God, that two, and no more, should be one flesh, Gen. ii. 24.\" The words simply are \u05d5\u05d4\u05d9\u05d5 \u05dc\u05d1\u05e9\u05e8 \u05d0\u05d7\u05d3\u2014Et erunt in carnem unam. \u039a\u03b1\u1f76 \u1f14\u03c3\u03bf\u03bd\u03c4\u03b1\u03b9 \u03bf\u03b9 \u03b4\u03c5\u03bf \u1f10\u03b9\u03c2 \u03c3\u03ac\u03c1\u03ba\u03b1 \u03bc\u03af\u03b1\u03bd. Matt. xix. 5. They twain shall be one flesh. The words \u1f12\u03c3\u03bf\u03bd\u03c4\u03b1\u03b9 \u1f41\u03b9 \u03b4\u03c5\u03bf\u2014they two shall be, &c.\u2014relate to the man and his wife, mentioned in the same verse, and answer to the \u05d5\u05d4\u05d9\u05d5 Gen. ii. 24. which signifies they shall be\u2014meaning the \u05d0\u05d9\u05e9 and \u05d0\u05e9\u05ea\u05d5 the man and his wife, Gen. ii. 24. So that though here be a small variation between they shall be, and they twain shall be, yet it is merely verbal in point of quotation; the sense is just the same, whether, speaking of a man and woman, we say\u2014they, or\u2014they twain: but adding the word only, or they two and no more, is a very material alteration, so material, as to alter the whole sense of the passage, and to make every polygamist that ever lived, an offender against the original institution of marriage. Rather than fail in this, even the learned Beza himself will condescend to talk nonsense. On 1 Cor. vi. 16. where the apostle cites our Lord's words\u2014Two shall be one flesh\u2014\"this \u1f41\u03b9 \u03b4\u03c5\u03bf,\" says he, \"is not mentioned by Moses, but is rightly added, as well in this place as in Matt. xix. 5. and Mark x. 8. because there is only mention made of a man and of one wife, but not of wives; nor is it true that a polygamist is one with each of his several wives, when he is rather divided into as many parts as he has wives.\" Though this learned man represents a polygamist as Judges xix. 29. represents the Levite's concubine, whom he divided, together with her bones, into twelve parts, and sent her into all the coasts of Israel, yet the polygamists which we read of in scripture were as entire individuals, in a moral as well as a natural sense, as those who had but one wife; otherwise each woman could not have called the man her husband, 1 Sam. i. 8, 22, 23. nor could each woman be called his wife, ver. 2. Now whatever parties, being united, in God's account are man and wife, they are also one flesh, therefore it is true, \"that a polygamist is one with each of his several wives\"\u2014that is to say, in the legal sense above-mentioned; nor can all the reasonings of men prove them otherwise, 'till, they can prove themselves wiser than He is who declares them to be so. And I do verily believe, that if a man had seduced any wife of a polygamist, and had been arraigned before the judges of Israel on that statute, Deut. xxii. 22. he must, as well as the woman, have been condemned to die, notwithstanding what Beza has said, or what all the reasoners in the world could have said on the subject of polygamy, in arrest of judgment.\n\nBut there is a text in the Old Testament, which is looked upon by some to be a direct forbiddance of polygamy; for it stands in the margin of our Bibles\u2014Thou shalt not take one wife to another. If this be right rendering of the Hebrew, then the saints of old time sinned against light, knowledge, and law with a witness! But it is translated in the text\u2014Neither shalt thou take a wife to her sister, to vex her, in her life-time. Lev. xviii. 18. First, I would observe, that the marginal reading\u2014\"one wife to another\"\u2014disunites entirely the 18th verse from the preceding context to which it belongs; this only treats of marriages which are unlawful with respect to affinity and consanguinity. The brother's wife had there been spoken of, ver. 16; here, most naturally, as a necessary part of the prohibition of incest, the wife's sister. Secondly, This rendering of the text is agreeable to the grammatical sense of the Hebrew, which the other is not. This is demonstrably shewn in Tympius's note on Lev. xviii. 18. in Noldius, Heb. Part. \u05d0\u05e9\u05d4 p. 30. But as I find the meaning of this important passage better explained by the learned Bishop Patrick on the place, than I can express it in any words of my own, I will transcribe the Bishop's note as it stands:\n\n\"There are a great many eminent writers, who, following our marginal translation (one wife to another) imagine that here plurality of wives is expressly forbidden by God, and they think there is an example to justify this translation, Exod. xxvi. 3. where Moses is commanded to take care that the five curtains of the tabernacle were coupled together, one to its sister, as the Hebrew phrase is, meaning one to another; which, if it were true, would solve several difficulties: but there are such reasons against it, as that I cannot think it to be the meaning. For as more wives than one were indulged before the law, so they were after. And Moses himself supposes as much, when he provides, a man should not prefer a child he had by a beloved wife, before one he had by her whom he hated, if he was the eldest son; which plainly intimates an allowance in his law of more wives than one.\"\n\nHere, by the good and learned Bishop's leave, I would observe that he expresses himself rather inaccurately; for by saying\u2014\"Moses himself supposes as much,\" and by calling the law he is mentioning, \"his (Moses's) law,\"\u2014it looks as if Moses was speaking by his own wisdom, and establishing some law merely on his own authority; whereas Moses, under the immediate inspiration of the Holy Ghost (Numb. xi. 17, 25. and 2 Pet. i. 21.) is the mouth of God Himself to the people; to whom He says, Deut. iv. 5. Behold, I have taught you statutes and judgments, even as the Lord commanded me, that ye should do so in the land whither ye go to possess it. The only instance in which Moses acted by his own authority, was in the matter of divorces. When our Saviour is mentioning this, Matth. xix. he does not say\u2014God suffered, but\u2014Moses, because of the hardness of your hearts, suffered you to put away your wives; but from the beginning it was not so; plainly intimating that such divorce was not of God's ordaining, but merely of Moses's permission, as an expedient to obviate the mischiefs of his enforcing the letter of the law in every instance, by compelling them to retain their wives; thus subjecting them to their ill treatment and brutality, even to the beating and perhaps killing them. So that, in this toleration of divorce for, or upon account of, the hardness of their hearts, Moses might say as Paul, 1 Cor. vii. 12. To such speak I, not the Lord\u2014but as to other things, not I, but the Lord, ver. 10.\u2014The Bishop proceeds\u2014\"And so we find expressly their kings might have, though not a multitude, Deut. xvii. 17; and their best king, who red God's law day and night, and could not but understand it, took many wives without any reproof: nay, God gave him more than he had before, by delivering his (late) master's wives to him, 2 Sam. xii. 8. And besides all this, Moses, speaking all along in this chapter of consanguinity and affinity, it is reasonable, as Schindlerus observes, to conclude he doth so here, not of one woman to another, but of one sister to another. There being also the like reason to understand the word sister properly in this place, as the words daughter or mother in others, ver. 17, and chap. xx. 14. where he forbids a man to take a woman and her mother, or a woman and her daughter, as Theodoric Hackspan sufficiently notes.\n\n\"The meaning therefore is, that though two wives at a time, or more, were permitted in those days, no man should take two sisters (as Jacob formerly did, before there was any positive law against it) begotten of the same father, or born of the same mother, whether legitimately or illegitimately, (which, though it may seem prohibited before, because the marriage of a brother's wife is forbidden) yet it is here directly prohibited, as other marriages are which were implicitly forbidden before; for ver. 7. the marriage of a son with his mother is forbidden, and ver. 10. the marriage of a father with his daughter.\"\n\nTo the above remarks of the learned and judicious Bishop Patrick, I will venture to add a conjecture of my own, the solidity of which must be submitted to the reader's determination. It is very certain that at ver. 16. the marriage of a brother's wife is forbidden, and as the wife's sister is thereby virtually or implicitly forbidden to marry the sister's husband, it might be supposed that there was little occasion to mention the wife's sister in direct terms afterwards, ver. 18. But the necessity of this is apparent, when we recollect the precedent of Jacob, which the Jews would probably have urged against an interpretative prohibition of such a thing, at ver. 16. It was certainly no sin in Jacob, because there was no law against it; but after this positive law, it could not be done without sin, for\u2014sin is the transgression of the law.\n\nAs there was but one man and one woman at first, the peopling of the world must have been carried on between much nearer relations, and therefore there could be no law to forbid marriages of this sort. So after the flood, when but eight persons, and those all of one family, were left of mankind, we find, for many ages, no laws enacted against marrying within those degrees of relationship, which were afterwards expressly prohibited. But when the reason ceased, the thing itself was to cease, as demonstrably appears by God's enacting the positive laws against marrying within certain degrees of consanguinity and affinity; subject nevertheless, like all other of His general laws, to such exceptions, restraints, or qualifications, as He in his infinite wisdom should see expedient. Some of them carry their own reasons with them, others do not, but doubtless all equally wise, as equally the dispensations of Omniscience.\n\nBy the way, I cannot help observing it as a very extraordinary thing, that the Christian churches should adopt one part of the law respecting marriages, and pay no regard to the rest of it. They have made the eighteenth chapter of Leviticus, from ver. 6 to ver 18, inclusive, a part of our religion; so Exod. xx. 14. and some other passages of the law. But why this, and not the rest of the whole law of God, where marriage, as His ordinance relating to all mankind, is concerned? Is not this proceeding of Christian churchmen, like that of the Jewish, Mal. ii. 9. where God complains\u2014Ye have not kept my ways, but have been partial in the law? The man who renders a solid reason for adopting Exod. xx. to ver. 17, inclusive, and Lev. xviii. from ver. 6 to ver. 18, inclusive, as well as many other parts of that chapter, and at the same time rejecting Exod. xxii. 16. and Deut. xxii. 28, 29, as touching the moral intendment of them, will perform a very difficult task, unless he can prove that marrying a wife's sister, for instance, is a greater crime, and of more evil tendency to mankind, as well as more inimical to the interests of civil society, than enticing a virgin\u2014debauching her\u2014and then abandoning her to infamy and prostitutution; or, that though this was a sin in the days of Moses, yet it is no sin now, and therefore the positive commandments which God enacted to prevent it, are no longer to be considered of any force or obligation.\n\nIt is true, that we do not keep precisely the seventh day, as the Christian Sabbath, looking upon the fourth commandment, in that respect, as ceremonial, typical, or prefigurative of something else (whether rightly or no does not come within my present design to consider); but as to the moral part, which sanctifies a given portion of our time for the public worship of Him to whom we stand indebted for all, we very rightly look upon this as the bounden duty and service of Christians, as well as Jews, till time shall be no more. So with regard to the sum of fifty shekels, or the dower according to the dowry of virgins, (see Exod. xxii. 16. Deut. xxii. 29.) this may be set down among the ceremonial or temporary observances of what may be called, to this purpose, the Jewish law. But with respect to the moral intendment of those laws in Exodus and Deuteronomy, which was to establish, ratify, and confirm the marriage-ordinance in the fullness of its obligation\u2014they shall be one flesh\u2014to prevent men from abandoning women to whoredom and protitution, and all the bitter consequences of seduction and dereliction, those laws ought to be as binding on the consciences of mankind, as the morality of the fourth commandment, or of any other law of God whatsoever. To these purposes they are as much moral laws as any of the ten commandments. If this be not the case, why do we waste the time of public worship in causing these chapters to be red over to the people? Deut. xxii. is our first lesson for the evening-service every 4th of March; as is Exod. xxii. for every 8th of February in the morning. But it would be very strange if the minister was to preface with\u2014\"Good people, ye are assembled here to hear the word of God; but ye are not to mind what ye hear, because the protection of females from the lust, villainy, treachery, and cruelty of men, is no longer an object of the laws which I am going to read to you. They bound the Jews, but we Christians have nothing to do with them.\" Dreadful as such language would be to hear, it says no more, than every man does, who contends for the obsoleteness and abolition of these wise, holy, and salutary provisions for female security.\n\nWith respect to the New Testament, the subject of polygamy, simply considered, is not so much as mentioned, either as good or bad. The more I have searched, the more I am convinced that it is not to be found, unless incidentally in the epistles to Timothy and Titus, and there only hinted at as the possible situation of certain people. Nor is there the least occasion it should be mentioned, as it was amply explained and determinately settled in the law which was given by Moses (see John i. 17.); where we do not find it said, that one law was given by Moses, and another law by Jesus Christ; but \u1f49 \u03bd\u03cc\u03bc\u03bf\u03c2, the law\u2014which, in the connection it stands, must signify the whole law\u2014all the law which God ever ordained or revealed to mortals\u2014was given by Moses; Grace\u2014to pardon the transgressions of that law; Truth\u2014to fulfil and answer every demand of its moral requirements, as well as every ceremonial prefiguration\u2014came by Jesus Christ. Heb. ix. 15. Col. ii. 17. So that Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth. Rom. x. 4.\n\nHowever, as it is almost universally taken for granted, that \"though polygamy might be allowed under the Old Testament, yet it is forbidden under the New Testament;\" and as this opinion is as prevalent as that of transubstantiation, and the worship of the Virgin Mary, are in the church of Rome, and for centuries were in the church of England, let us proceed farther to examine the foundation upon which it stands.\n\nIn the first place, I cannot find, or even conceive, an instance in which the writings of the apostles of Christ contradict those of Moses and the Prophets. If there could be such a thing, both must be rendered suspicious\u2014one must be false\u2014both sides of a contradiction cannot be true. The adversaries of revelation have long tried, as they have earnestly wished, to find such a thing, but in vain! God forbid that its friends should even imagine it possible! If it be true, that the scriptures of the Old Testament are able to make us wise unto salvation , 2 Tim. iii. 15. it must be because they contain the law and the gospel; for no man can be wise unto salvation without the knowledge of these. They certainly contain both\u2014the gospel was preached unto Abraham, Gal. iii. 8; to the Israelites under the Old Testament, as well as to us under the New Testament. Heb. iv. 2. We have the same spirit of faith, 2 Cor. iv. 13. and doubtless the same object of faith, 1 Cor. x. 4. Numb. xxi. 9. with John iii. 14, 15. Wherefore it is not to be conceived, that God should leave the heirs of salvation in a state of ignorance touching the original institution of marriage, or of the meaning of those positive laws which were to enforce it (and this after the giving of the law for 1500 years together) any more under the Old Testament than under the New Testament. It must be as necessary for a Jew, in order to be wise unto salvation, to know God's mind and will on these interesting and important subjects, as for a Christian. Each must be judged by the same law\u2014each saved, though under different dispensations of it, by the same gospel.\n\nAs little probable is it, that He should allow His own beloved children to fly in the face of His authority, and live in the breach of His positive law, for so long a period, without the least check or reproof, when part of His gracious covenant runs in these words, Ps. lxxxix. 30. If his children forsake my law, and walk not in my judgments; if they break my statutes, and keep not my commandments; then will I visit their offences with the rod, and their sin with scourges. There are instances enough of this for other things\u2014witness David's broken bones, Ps. li. 8. for his adultery with Bathsheba, and murder of Uriah. But where is there one instance of it for polygamy? Wherein did God ever punish it? David died as really a Christian believer as St. Paul did; witness his last words, 2 Sam. xxiii. 5; and yet, amidst all the explicit confessions he made in the most solemn hours of his repentance, he does not once bewail the polygamy he lived in; nay, almost the last act of his life was an act of polygamy, in taking Abishag the Shunamite to lie in his bosom, his wife Bathsheba being then living. For though it be said, 1 Kings i. 4. that he knew her not; yet it plainly appears, by what Solomon said, 1 Kings ii. 22, 23. that he was so betrothed or espoused to David, as to be looked upon as his wife . Accordingly she belonged to the crown; was to be at the disposal of the successor; and therefore Adonijah, who was elder than Solomon, by asking for Abishag, the late king's widow, to wife, is treated as having a treasonable design against the crown itself, and is put to death as a traitor.\n\nIs it then conceivable that polygamy, allowed of God uninterruptedly through so many ages and generations with impunity and even approbation, should all of a sudden start up into a mortal sin, by the seventh commandment's receiving a construction which it never before had\u2014which was never before given to the words in which it was conceived? How could our lives and properties be secure, if time could alter the meaning of our penal statutes?\u2014who will draw the line, and say how much or how little time is necessary to effect this? But if such can be the case with the moral law of God, then was the Psalmist mistaken in calling it perfect (Ps. xix. 7.) for it is changeable. Then is it less to be depended on than the laws of the Medes and Persians. Esth. i. 19.\u2014less sacred than the decree of an earthly monarch. Esth. viii. 8. Dan. vi. 15. If this be the case, what man can have any security for his peace?\u2014In order therefore to avoid something worse than absurdity, we must conclude, that the original institution of marriage, and the seventh commandment of the decalogue, mean neither more nor less, where Christians are concerned, than where the Jews were\u2014or, in other words, they mean precisely one and the same thing under the New Testament as under the Old Testament.\n\nBy taking texts here and there in the New Testament, and detaching them from their reference to and connection with the Old Testament, many heresies have arisen; as Arianism, Socinianism, and perhaps most others. Ye do err, not knowing the scriptures. So with regard to marriage\u2014because Christ said\u2014Some make themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake: he that is able to receive it, let him receive it (Matt. xix. 12.); and St. Paul, 1 Cor. vii. 1. and in other parts of that chapter, speaks in favour of a single life, with respect to the then distressed state of the church (ver. 26) there were multitudes of people, in the early ages of Christianity, who took these things in a wrong sense, and found out that \"marriage was a carnal thing, and forbidden by the New Testament, as unbecoming the purity of that dispensation:\" little reflecting, that the command of increase and multiply, and the institution of marriage as the means thereof, were the dispensations of God Himself to our first parents when they were in a state of perfect innocence, and therefore could not be incompatible therewith.\n\nThat venerable man John Trapp, on 1 Cor. vii. 8. says\u2014\"The blemish will never be wiped off some of the antient fathers, who, to establish their own idol of I know not what virginity, which they themselves had not, have written most wickedly and basely of marriage.\" To say truth, I cannot conceive any man's conscience to be more taken captive by the devil (2 Tim. ii. 26) than his is, who is brought under a persuasion that celibacy is more pure and holy, and, as such, more acceptable to God than marriage. Such a one, who, under this persuasion, abstains from marriage, lives in perpetual opposition to that command which was given with a blessing from God\u2014increase and multiply, and replenish the earth, &c. This was at the original creation of male and female upon earth. Gen. i. 27, 28. And again, at the renewal of the earth after the deluge, this commandment stands, Gen. ix. 1, 7. repeated twice. Now can an opposition to so positive, so express, so reiterated an ordinance of Heaven, be reckoned a constituent part of righteousness and true holiness? What is this, but to fly in the face of the divine wisdom and goodness, and to esteem ourselves wiser and holier than the Lord of all? So those who prefer a life of solitude to matrimonial connection, as holier and better, how much holier and better do they make themselves than Him who said\u2014It is not good for man to be alone? It is remarkable that the reiterated command for the propagation of the species stands, Gen. ix 7. in direct connection, as it were, and immediately following after the positive law against murder: as privation of life is an offence against this, prevention of life is something very like it, and therefore fitly placed near it in the sacred code.\n\nSome of the fathers were wild enough to say\u2014hoc dictum, ratione multitudinis liberorum, pertinere ad tempora ante Christum, non ad nos qui alio vivimus \u00e6vo\u2014mundum jam non desiderare illud crescite et multiplicamini. \"This command, by reason of multiplying children, belonged to the times before Christ, not to us, who live in another age\u2014the world does not now want that same\u2014Be fruitful, and multiply.\" Such were the delusions of Jerom\u2014Tertullian\u2014Chrysostom\u2014Cyprian\u2014Oecumenius, &c. Bernard, in Cant. Serm. 59. thus glosses on the words\u2014The voice of the turtle is heard, &c.; which he says is \"the preaching of continence, respecting those who castrate themselves for the kingdom of heaven. At the beginning that voice was not heard, but rather increase and multiply; for barrenness was subject to a curse; polygamy was allowed,\" &c. His words are\u2014\"Vox turturis audita est, qu\u00e6 est predicatio continenti\u00e6, eos, qui se castrant propter regnum c\u0153lorum, spectans; cum ab initio vox ista non sit audita, sed magis\u2014crescite & multiplicamini, sterilitas etiam maledictioni suit subjecta, polygamia concessa,\" &c.; but all this is now at an end, \"quia hodie, repleto mundo, non tam sit necessaria quam olim\"\u2014\"because now, the world being filled (with people) it is not so necessary as formerly.\" If the reader has a mind to see how far folly and enthusiasm can carry people on these subjects, let him read Tertullian's epistles to Eustachius\u2014to Gerontius\u2014and against Helvetius; Tertullian on Chastity; Chrysostom on Virginity; Cyprian on the discipline of Virgins; and Oecumenius on 1 Cor. vii.\u2014then he will begin to find out how marriage itself was vilified, and of course what gave rise to the condemnation of second marriages of all sorts, therefore of polygamy, in the Christian church, till the church of Rome had the impudence to anathematize the man who should say, that \"it was not forbidden by the law of God,\" (see Brent. Coun. Trent. p. 784) \"just as they did those who should affirm, that for a priest to marry was allowed by the law of God.\" Ibid.\n\nThe consequences of all this unnatural plan of celibacy are too many to enumerate, too horrible to particularize. It fared with numbers of the Christians, who did not like to retain the divine command in their practice, as it did with the heathens, who did not like to retain God in their knowledge\u2014God gave them up to uncleanness, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves: who changed the truth of God into a lye, &c. For this cause God gave them up to vile affections, &c. See Rom. i. 24\u201328. When we endeavour to stop the course of a river by laying a dam across the stream, the effect must be, that it will either make its way, bearing down all before it, or it will make a passage over its banks, and overflow and destroy the country. Such is the effect of endeavouring to stop the natural course of those desires which the Creator hath implanted in us for the purpose of carrying His primary command into execution. They will bear down all before them, or be turned out of their course; and then follows what the history of the Popish celibacy abundantly acquaints us with. As this is a subject too indelicate to dwell upon, I will only refer the reader to those books which treat thereof; such as Fox's Martyrology\u2014The Packets from Rome, collected and published in two volumes quarto, by a set of gentlemen, 1735, under the title of The History of Popery, vol. ii. p. 431. A work this, which is too valuable to be lost to the public; and therefore, as I fear it is near out of print, it were to be wished it should be reprinted in as handsome an edition as that above referred to. See also Burnet Hist. Ref. vol. i. p. 191.\n\nAs for those men who have the gift of continency, they, as it appears from the scriptures, and all experience, are probably very few, at least comparatively; and those who received it in the days of our Lord and His apostles, seem to have received this for the particular purpose of keeping themselves disentangled from the affairs of this life, during the infancy and persecution of the church, 1 Cor. vii. 7, 17. Such do not want cloysters and cells for their security. As for those who have it not, locking them up together in such places, and depriving them of the remedy which God commands in marriage, has been attended with a two-fold wickedness; 1. in living contrary to the ordinance of Heaven; 2. in gratifying their desires contrary to the course of nature, or at least in some way which the divine law hath prohibited. Therefore the Apostle doth not say\u2014if they cannot contain, let them shut themselves up, or pray that the order of nature may be inverted; but\u2014let them marry; it is better to marry than burn: as if he had said\u2014\"One or other of these must be the consequence.\" So, when married persons have separated for a while or season, on some religious occasions\u2014come together again, saith he, lest Satan tempt you for your incontinency.\n\nFrom all which it may be gathered, that celibacy is not an ordinance of God, but a snare of Satan\u2014that marriage is the ordinance of God; therefore, that a man who may marry, and doth not, has no more warrant from God's word to expect that he shall be kept from vice, than that he would be kept from starving, if, instead of eating and drinking, he was to pray that the appetites of hunger and thirst might be totally annihilated.\n\nThe indiscriminate and total prohibition of polygamy, as it has no warrant from the word of God, may also be the means of plunging many into the mischiefs of uncommanded celibacy; for many men there are, who very early in life marry, perhaps without all the consideration which ought to be exercised in so momentous an undertaking\u2014many things may happen which may be very reasonable, and indeed unavoidable, causes of separation from their wives; as for instance\u2014incurable disease of mind or body, unconquerable violence of temper, perpetual refractoriness of disposition, levity of behaviour\u2014which, though not amounting to such proof as to be the ground of utter legal divorce, yet such as may destroy the whole comfort of a man's life. By these and many other means, an husband may be reduced to the situation of an unmarried man, harrassed by the same desires, subject to the same temptations; yet his condition is ten-fold worse; the one may marry, the other cannot: so he must remain hopeless and helpless, or plunge into vice and misery, because he is debarred of the remedy which God hath provided, stripped of that undoubted privilege with which God and nature have invested him, by the lyes and forgeries of fathers and councils, &c. The Romish church indeed, at the council of Trent, anathematized all who should say, that \"those who have not the gift of chastity might marry, in regard that God doth not deny the gift to him that doth demand it.\" This anti-scriptural decree, which directly gives the lye to the Apostle, 1 Cor. vii. 9. is founded upon a fallacy, which many fall into, from arguing without the necessary distinction between what God can do, and what He will do. That He can do every thing is without a doubt; but that we are warranted to expect He will do what He hath no where promised, is not true. God could certainly have made us to live upon the air; but He hath not: meat and drink are absolutely necessary for our subsistence; it would therefore be the highest presumption, nay even the madness of enthusiasm, for any man to pray that the natural appetites of hunger and thirst might cease, and that for the future he might live, not on meat and drink, but solely by respiration of air. So, to pray to Him whose command is\u2014Be fruitful and multiply, bring forth abundantly in the earth, and multiply therein (Gen. ix. 7.) that the natural desire which is to lead to this may be annihilated, and the effect of it destroyed, is to petition against the divine wisdom, to arraign the divine holiness, and to remonstrate, in effect, against having any share in an obedience to the divine command.\u2014Where is there\u2014where can there be a promise, to warrant so unhallowed a proceeding? Surely no where, but in the imaginations of those who have fallen themselves, and who want to lead others into the snare of the devil. When we pray against what God hath forbidden, no doubt we shall, in His own way and time, obtain grace to help in every time of need; but when we pray against what He has commanded, we tempt Him to deliver us up to the delusions of our own minds, and our end will be according to our works\u2014what that end is likely to be, the histories before hinted at very sufficiently declare.\n\nThat there may be situations, and particular circumstances, under which it is not only lawful, but duty, to pray for continence\u2014I mean for entire subduction of, and power over, our natural desires\u2014there can be no doubt; as where they would lead us to forbidden enjoyment: but then we must judge of this by the scriptures, not by the prejudices, folly, and superstition of men like ourselves: for, at this rate, we may be praying that God would alter His mind, change His will, and vacate His commands, in order to make way for our opposition to them. Whereas, this is the confidence that we have in Him, that if we ask any thing according to His will, He heareth us. And if we know that He hear us, whatsoever we ask (i. e. according to His will) we know that we have the petitions that we desired of Him. 1 John v. 14, 15.\n\nFor a man to pray that he might never again feel the appetites of hunger and thirst, or, at least, be enabled to refrain entirely from satisfying them, would be deservedly reckoned madness\u2014but to pray to be kept from gluttony and drunkenness, and all forbidden indulgence and excess, would be asking according to the will of God, and the man would have a scriptural ground and warrant to expect an answer of peace.\n\nSo, if a man takes it into his head, that those other desires, which God hath, for the wiseft purposes, implanted in our nature, are sinful in themselves, and, on this footing, prays against them, he is under a sad delusion, and every petition he utters is no less than an arraignment of the wisdom and holiness of the great Creator of all. Yet the Popish histories are replete with miracles wrought by Christ and the Virgin Mary, in answer to such petitions; and no doubt but these lyes are most devoutly believed by thousands, who make men's traditions, and not God's word, the rule of their faith.\n\nBesides the evils which have been noticed as the consequences of our superstition on the subject of polygamy, the utter extinction of families might also be mentioned; whereas, sooner than this should be the case in Israel, we find God enacting a peculiar positive law, in order to prevent it; which said law was certainly a virtual command of polygamy in many, perhaps in most, cases, as it was very rare to find an unmarried man among the Jews. The law to which I allude, is that of Deut. xxv. 5. where the husband's brother was to marry the widow of the deceased, if he died without children\u2014that his name might not be put out of Israel. Though all the reasons of this law do not now subsist, therefore the law itself, as far as those reasons have ceased, hath itself ceased; yet it serves to shew us that God did certainly allow polygamy, and even command it, sooner than suffer inheritances to fail by the extinction of families.\n\nThe end of marriage, say some, is society and mutual comfort; but they are rather an effect of marriage, none of the principal end, which is procreation of children, and so the continuance of mankind, according to the first institution, Gen. i. 28. As for comfort and society, they may be between man and man, woman and woman, and therefore no proper end of marriage. That conjunction which cannot answer the great end for which marriage was ordained by God, should not prevent or hinder that which can, nor does it appear from scripture that it was ever intended it should.\n\nFrigidity, or perpetual impotency of generation on the man's side, is held by our laws, a cause of divorce a vinculo matrimonii; therefore it is but reasonable, that a perpetual impotency of generation (which at a certain time of a woman's life may be ascertained) in the woman, should be allowed as a reasonable and justifiable ground for polygamy. Folly and superstition may set up an objection to this, but nature, reason, and scripture, all unite in their suffrage for the truth of the position. See Gen. xvi. 2, 3. Gen. xxx. 1\u20139.\n\nAmong us, if a man be married to a barren woman, he cannot take another wife while she lives, but must content himself with letting his nobility, titles, honours, and family be annihilated, and his estates escheat to the crown, under pain and penalty of being adjudged a felon if he marries a second wife (living the first) who might be the means of continuing and transmitting all these things to a long and numerous posterity.\n\nThis foolish superstition is like that of the Jews in the days of Mattathias, who suffered themselves to be slaughtered by the enemy without resistance, because it was the sabbath-day, 1 Mac. ii. 32, 38; or like that of the Carthusians, who live entirely on fish, and would not eat a piece of other flesh (see 1 Cor. xv. 39.) even to save their lives.\n\nThe modern Jews are wiser, for though they in general coincide with the government where their lot happens to be cast, so that they are polygamous or monogamous, according to the laws of the country they live in; yet if a Jew be married ten years to a woman, and has no child by her, he is at liberty to take another, that he may have an heir to his substance; and in so doing he certainly is justified by the law of God; which law we have set aside, and established our own superstition in its place, which not only tends to the annihilation and extinction of families, and of course to depopulation; but is, as elsewhere is more fully observed, the source of endless ruin and destruction to the weaker sex, whose seducers, if married men, are totally exempt from making them that amends, and doing them that justice, which God's law commanded, and which, among us Christians, is looked upon as duty to withhold, or rather, as a mortal sin to comply with.\n\nAs these points are fully treated in other parts of this book, I will now proceed to shew, that the wild notions about marriage, which were introduced into the church, bear an earlier date than the days of Tertullian, and those other fathers mentioned before.\n\n\"There were others,\" says Mr. Broughton\u2014Hist. lib. tit. Marriage\u2014\"who simply exclaimed against marriage as unlawful under the gospel. This doctrine was first taught by Saturnilus, a scholar of Simon Magus and Marcion, but afterwards better known amongst the Encratites; to these may be added the Apostolics or Apotactics, the Manichees, Severians, and many others. The church had great struggles with these antient heretics, who inveighed bitterly against marriage under the gospel-state, and wrought upon many weak minds, to be guilty of great irregularities, under pretence of a more refined way of living.\n\n\"The church had also another contest with the Montanists and Novatians, about second marriages, these heretics rejecting them as utterly unlawful.\"\u2014And indeed the ecclesiastical histories inform us, that this madness (for I can call it nothing else) was carried so far, as that second marriages were styled no better than whoredom; and ecclesiastical persons were forbidden to be present at them on pain of excommunication. This in the very face of the scriptures of God, which declare just as much for second marriages as for first. Rom. vii. 2, 3. 1 Cor. vii. 39. By all this we see what work may be made with the scriptures, when the imaginations of men are let loose, instead of comparing spiritual things with spiritual, and making God the interpreter of His own word.\n\nAs for the practice of polygamy among the first Christians, it was probably very frequent; if not\u2014why did Paul (1 Tim. iii. 2 and Tit. i. 6.) recommend the choice of Bishops and Deacons from amongst those who had but one wife?\u2014What occasion for this caution of the apostle's, if none had more than one? That the election was to be made from amongst the Christian believers, there can be no doubt, that is to say, of such as had been admitted to baptism and the Lord's supper, and were enrolled as members of the Christian church. To suppose that none of these had more than one wife, is to suppose the apostle giving a needless rule in the election of Bishops and Deacons. To suppose that any who had more than one wife, should be admitted to baptism and the Lord's supper, if Christ had forbidden polygamy as adultery, is to suppose a greater absurdity still, and that the great apostle of the Gentiles was less faithful to his trust, than those Jesuits who refused to admit the King of Tonquin into the Christian church, unless he would put away all his wives but one: for which these pseudo-apostles were very justly driven out of the country.\n\nThe learned Selden has proved, in his Uxor H\u00e6braica, that polygamy was allowed, not only among the Hebrews, but among most other nations throughout the world; doubtless among the inhabitants of that vast tract of Asia, throughout which the gospel was preached by the great apostle of the Gentiles, where so many Christian churches were planted, as well as in the neighbouring states of Greece: yet in none of Paul's epistles, nor in the seven awful epistles which St. John was commanded to write to the seven churches in Asia, is polygamy found amongst the crimes for which they were reproved. Every other species of commerce between the sexes, is distinctly and often mentioned, this not once, except on the woman's side, as Rom. vii. 3; but had it been sinful and against the law on the man's side, it is inconceivable that it should not have been mentioned on both sides equally.\n\nWhen St. Paul says that a Bishop or Deacon is to be the husband of one wife, it certainly carries with it a tacit allowance of polygamy, as to the lawfulness of it with regard to all other men; not that it was sinful in one more than in another; but this was a prudential caution in that distressed and infant state of the church, that those who were to have the management of it, should have as little avocation and distraction as the nature of things would admit of. Paul does not say that a Bishop or Deacon should not be married, as the church of Rome says, but that he should be the husband of one wife; for however those who had more could find time to manage their own affairs, they could not be supposed to have leisure enough to attend the church, and its embarrassed and various concerns, as they ought. Upon this principle he seems to give the preference to those who had no wife, 1 Cor. vii. 32, 33. I would have you without carefulness. He that is unmarried careth for the things that belong to the Lord, how he may please the Lord: but he that is married, careth for the things that are of the world, how he may please his wife. This certainly relates to all Christians, but especially to ministers. The heretics of old took it so strongly in the former sense, that they held marriage unlawful to Christians\u2014the Papists take it so strongly in the latter, that it is one of the authorities on which they forbid their clergy to marry at all. There are some who interpret the above passages (1 Tim. iii. 2. and Tit. i. 6.) to mean, that a Bishop or Deacon should, if a widower, have had but one wife, or have been but once married; and this upon the ground of what is said, 1 Tim. v. 9. concerning the women who were to be chosen to the office of Deaconesses\u2014Let not a woman be taken into the number under sixty years, having been the wife of one man. There are also those, who, on the authority of these passages, hold it unlawful for a minister to marry a second time on the loss of his wife, and unlawful also for any woman to marry again on the loss of her husband. These ridiculous opinions owe their birth to the before-mentioned cause, of taking words by the sound, instead of the sense\u2014the usual consequence of detaching scripture from scripture, not comparing it with itself, by taking the whole together. By this, men may prove\u2014quidlibet ex quolibet\u2014\"what they please from what they please;\"\u2014and this is the sheet-anchor of error, as well as of many monstrous practices, and so has been in all ages; they can be maintained no other way. The whole doctrine of transubstantiation, absurd as it is in all its parts, is held together by the sound of Hoc est corpus meum\u2014This is my body.\u2014The sound of h\u00e6reticum devita, in a Latin version of Tit. iii. 10. has authorized the most barbarous murders of thousands, who have been burned alive by the inquisition, under the denomination of heretics. It has been made to signify h\u00e6reticum de vit\u00e2\u2014an heretic from life; that is\u2014put him from life\u2014kill him.\u2014Thus, by separating the word devita, and turning the last two syllables into the substantive vita, the preposition de just answered the purpose. A less tragical consequence of this method of interpretation is related by Erasmus. He tells of a friar preaching from those words of Christ, Luke xvii. 17. which stand in some Latin versions\u2014Nonne decem facti sunt mundi\u2014who began to prove there are ten worlds. An arch fellow standing by, stopped his mouth with the following words\u2014Sed ubi sunt novem?\u2014But where are the nine?\n\nIt is said of St. Francis, that from the words, Go you into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature, he thought himself bound to preach to beasts and birds, and accordingly did it very often, and with wonderful success, as they tell us in the legend of his life. Perhaps it was much on a like principle that St. Anthony of Padua went and preached to the fishes\u2014whose discourse to them may be found in Broughton Hist. Lib. vol. i. p. 53.\n\nDr. Hammond, in his note on 1 Tim. iii. 2. says\u2014\"What is the meaning of \u03bc\u03b9\u1fb6\u03c2 \u03b3\u03c5\u03bd\u03b1\u03b9\u03ba\u1f78\u03c2 \u1f00\u03bd\u1f74\u03c1\u2014the husband of one wife\u2014both here and ver. 12, and Tit. i. 6. and of \u1f11\u03bd\u1f78\u03c2 \u1f00\u03bd\u03b4\u03c1\u1f78\u03c2 \u03b3\u03c5\u03bd\u1f74\u2014the wife of one husband\u2014chap. v. 9. will not easily be resolved.\" But surely all difficulty vanishes, when the whole is taken together; and it is observed from the original in what different tenses the verbs \u03b3\u03b9\u03bd\u03bf\u03bc\u03b1\u03b9 and \u1f15\u03b9\u03bc\u03b9 are used. This shews that the apostle, 1 Tim. iii. 2, and Tit. i. 6. was describing the situation of the men he was then speaking of, as what it then was\u2014and in 1 Tim. v. 9. that of the widows, as to what it had been. 1 Tim. iii. 2. \u0394\u03b5\u1fd6 \u03bf\u1f56\u03bd \u03c4\u1f78\u03bd \u1f18\u03c0\u03af\u03c3\u03ba\u03bf\u03c0\u03bf\u03bd \u1f18\u0342\u0399\u039d\u0391\u0399 \u03bc\u03b9\u1fb6\u03c2 \u03b3\u03c5\u03bd\u03b1\u03b9\u03ba\u1f78\u03c2 \u1f0c\u03bd\u03b4\u03c1\u03b1\u2014A Bishop ought to be (not to have been) the husband of one wife, and Tit. i. 6. \u1f18\u03af \u03c4\u03b9\u03c2 \u0395\u03a3\u03a4\u038a\u039d \u03bc\u03b9\u1fb6\u03c2 \u03b3\u03c5\u03bd\u03b1\u03b9\u03ba\u1f78\u03c2\u2014if any be (is) the husband of one wife. \u1f18\u03c3\u03c4\u03b9\u03bd being of the present tense, can signify only what a man is at the time spoken of: whereas the expression concerning the women, 1 Tim. v. 9. is widely different. The woman is called \u03a7\u03b7\u03c1\u03b1, a widow; and it is observable, that the verb is not expressed as before, either in the infinitive or indicative mood of \u1f1c\u03b9\u03bc\u03b9, to be, but by the participle of the pr\u00e6teritum, or past time, of the verb \u03b3\u03b9\u03bd\u03bf\u03bc\u03b1\u03b9, to be or become.\u2014It is \u03b3\u03b5\u03b3\u03bf\u03bd\u1fe6\u03b9\u03b1\u2014which we have rightly rendered\u2014having been\u2014that is\u2014in time past having been, or become the wife of one man\u2014a widow, who never had been but once married; not\u2014that had not had two husbands at a time; such a thing was hardly ever heard of, as lawful, even amongst the heathens themselves. I would therefore harmonize and paraphrase the whole as follows:\u2014\"Forasmuch as all things are to be done decently and in order, (1 Cor. xiv. 40.) but this cannot be, unless some proper form of government be established; it is necessary that proper officers be appointed to administer that government. Some who are to be\u2014\u1f18\u03c0\u03af\u03c3\u03ba\u03bf\u03c0\u03bf\u03b9\u2014overseers of the whole; others \u0394\u03b9\u03ac\u03ba\u03bf\u03bd\u03bf\u03b9\u2014deacons, or inferior serving ministers under them. The first order of men are to overlook the clergy, as well as the laity\u2014to preach the word\u2014administer the sacraments, and to have power to censure evil doers, even as far as excommunication, the church agreeing thereto. 1 Cor. v. 4, 5. Such an office should, doubtless, be filled with men of irreproachable characters, and of such conduct and dispositions as to be in all respects blameless, not only for the better maintenance of their authority, but also for the influence of their example. As such an office must moreover require great attention, those should be chosen, who are entangled as little as possible in the affairs of this life. 2 Tim. ii. 4. Therefore, though for this reason single men might in general answer the purpose best, (1 Cor. vii. 33.) yet it may be expedient, in some instances, to chuse married men into the offices of Bishops and Deacons. Where this is the case, the election should not be made of such of the Christians as have more than one wife, as such a situation must necessarily involve the person in more worldly care, than can be consistent with a due attention to that care, which must come upon them daily, respecting the church. Therefore, the having more than one wife should always be considered as a bar to a man's election, either to the office of a Bishop or of a Deacon, (1 Tim. iii. 12.); for though these last may not have so extensive a jurisdiction, yet, what with preaching the word\u2014assisting the Bishops and elders\u2014visiting the sick\u2014and distributing the church's alms to the poor\u2014one wife and family is as much as can be at all considered consistent with any tolerable diligence in the duties of a Deacon's office.\n\n\"But as the sick are to be visited and attended, as well as the poor relieved, it may be necessary also to appoint women for these purposes, especially as to attending and nursing the poor of their own sex. These may require many offices highly improper for men to be engaged in; though the nursing sick men, or visiting and relieving them, may very properly fall also under the care of women. These women may also be called \u0394\u03b9\u03ac\u03ba\u03bf\u03bd\u03bf\u03b9 \u03c4\u1fc6\u03c2 \u1f10\u03ba\u03ba\u03bb\u03b7\u03c3\u03af\u03b1\u03c2 (see Rom. xvi. 1.) servants or ministers of the church. Those who are to be deemed proper for these offices, must not be young, raw, unexperienced girls; nor married women, whose attention belongs to their husbands and families, 1 Cor. vii. 34; nor the younger widows, who are not arrived at a time of life suitable to such employments, 1 Tim. v. 11: let these marry, to keep themselves out of mischief, ver. 12, 13, 14. The only women who are fit to be chosen as servants or ministers of the church in the respects above mentioned, should be far advanced in years; that is to say, not less than threescore years old, who having buried their husbands and brought up their children, 1 Tim. v. 10. have time, as well as inclination, to devote themselves to the offices of the church. They should also be sober and discrect persons, who, by their conduct in their younger years, have shewn their temperance and sobriety, by having contented themselves with one husband, and who, ever after the death of that husband, have secluded themselves from any further worldly engagements of that sort, so as to be justly styled widows indeed; though desolate, yet trusting in God (1 Tim. v. 5.); and like Anna, Luke ii. 36, 37. continuing in supplications and prayers night and day.\"\u2014This I take to be a consistent and clear view of these passages taken together. As we may from hence infer, that there were women in the church younger than sixty years, by the Apostle's express exclusion of those under that age from those offices to which women were to be chosen; as also that there were many who had been twice married, by his designing those who had been but once married for the aforesaid offices; so we may as fairly conclude, from his saying a bishop\u2014\u03b4\u03b5\u1fd6 \u1f14\u03b9\u03bd\u03b1\u03b9\u2014ought to be\u2014and again, if any, \u1f14\u03c3\u03c4\u03b9\u03bd\u2014is or be the husband of one wife\u2014that there were many Christians, not who had had, but at that present time actually had more than one wife. If this had not been the case, it would have been as much out of the question to have mentioned the having but one wife, as to have said, that none should be chosen but those who had but one head or one body, when it was not to be supposed that any man had more.\n\nAs to the conceit, that, \"what the Apostle says about the bishops and deacons, is to prove that no minister may marry a second time,\" it is all but as bad as saying, with the church of Rome, that he ought not to marry at all.\n\nWith respect to the business of polygamy, as to the thing itself, nothing that is here said proves it to be more or less sinful in one man than in another; that depends wholly on the law of God delivered by Moses. Therefore the prudential reasons, for which he evidently excepted against polygamists being elected to church-offices, no more affects the matter of polygamy, than the excepting against women under sixty years old, proves it sinful in a woman to be younger, or that, because no woman was to be chosen to the office of a deaconess who had been twice married, therefore it was sinful for the woman to marry again after the death of her husband, contrary to 1 Cor. vii. 39. and to the express advice of the Apostle, 1 Tim. v. 14.\n\nAs to the supposed unlawfulness of second marriages, or the notion, that if a man lost his wife, it was sinful to marry again; this began very early in the church, and spread itself even to this country. We find in the time of Ed. I. about the year 1276, the parliament adopted a constitution made by the Pope at Lyons, to exclude men that had been twice married from all clerks privilege. So that if a man was convicted of felony, who would otherwise have had his clergy, and it appeared that he had been twice married, he was to be executed like other lay-people. A statute of 18 Ed. III. mitigated the rigour of this law with respect to clerks, by making a suggestion of bigamy triable by the ordinary, before the justices could proceed. But all were delivered from the bondage of such laws by 1 Ed. VI. c. 12. \u00a7 16. which enacts, that\u2014\"every person, who by any law or statute of this realm ought to have the benefit of clergy, shall be allowed the same, although he hath been divers times married to any single woman or single women, or to two wives or more, or to any widow or widows.\"\n\nAmong the six famous articles proposed by Henry VIII. to the parliament and convocation, one was\u2014\"whether priests, that is to say, men dedicate to God by priesthood, may, by the law of God, marry after or no?\"\u2014\"After great, long, deliberate, and advised disputation and consultation had and made concerning the said article, as well by the consent of the King's Highness, as by the assent of the Lords spiritual and temporal, and other learned men of his Clergy in their convocations, and by the consent of the Commons, in this present parliament assembled, it was and is finally resolved, accorded, and agreed\u2014that priests, after the order of priesthood received as afore, may not marry by the law of God. The enacting part of 31 Henry VIII. c. 14. goes on and says\u2014If any person shall preach\u2014teach\u2014or obstinately affirm and defend, that any man, after the order of priesthood received, may marry or contract matrimony, he shall be adjudged to suffer death, and forfeit lands and goods as a felon; and if any priest do actually marry or contract marriage with another, or any man that is or hath been a priest do carnally use any woman to whom he is or hath been married, or with whom he hath contracted matrimony, or openly be conversant or familiar with any such woman, both the man and the woman shall be adjudged felons.\"\n\nThat all this was contrary to the law of God is apparent; for the priests and Levites under the Old Testament, and the apostles and other ministers under the New Testament, who were respectively the clergy of the time, might marry, and many of them were actually married men. I therefore mention these things, to shew how we may be led into error, even to putting men to death, thinking we do God service (John xvi. 2.) when once the word of God is left for the inventions and traditions of men; and how far men may believe things which are contrary to scripture are right and good, and things agreeable to scripture are wrong and abominable\u2014that this may become the creed of a whole nation, nay of a whole church including many nations, so as to gain the sanction of public statutes, the solemn opinions of lawyers, the most awful determinations of courts of justice. The condemnation of polygamy is equally an human device, and has no more authority from scripture for making a man a felon and to suffer death (see 1 Jac. c. 11.) for having two wives, than the stat. 31 Henry VIII. above mentioned, had for hanging a priest and the woman he had married. All these things are equally the inventions of men, or rather of Satan transformed into an angel of light; but the scriptures are the true Ithuriel's spear, the touch of which alone can make him appear in his own shape, of a lyar and a murderer from the beginning.\n\nThe first public law in the empire against polygamy was at the latter end of the fourth century, about the year 393, by the emperor Theodosius; this was repealed by the emperor Valentinian about sixty years afterwards, and the subjects of the empire were permitted to marry as many wives as they pleased; \"nor does it appear (says Chambers, tit. Polygamy) that the bishops made any opposition to this introduction\"\u2014(he should have said restoration; for if it had not existed before, no law would have been made against it by Theodosius)\u2014\"of polygamy into the empire.\" After all, no human authority can decide upon the matter, as this has evidently given its suffrage both ways upon the same questions. But can the determinations of the all-wise God be thus precarious and contradictory? Can the Old Testament and New Testament be at as great a variance as the 31 Henry VIII. c. 14.\u2014which makes it death for both the man and woman, in the case of a priest, to marry, or even to contract matrimony, or to affirm it lawful so to do\u2014and the 5 and 6 Edw. VI. c. 12. which declares the marriage of clerks to be as lawful as the marriages of other men?\u2014Had the scriptures forbidden polygamy, all the human laws that ever could be enacted, and all the human authorities that ever could be produced, could not make it lawful in the sight of God\u2014for that were to place men above God. On the other hand, if God hath not forbidden it, but even allowed it, all the men upon earth, though joined with all the angels in heaven, cannot make it sinful\u2014for this were also to set the creatures above their Maker. Judging and determining on the matter either way, but on the authority of God's law, is a much more serious thing than is usually imagined; for there are as many woes pronounced on those who call good evil, as on those who call evil good. Is. v. 20.\n\nThe learned Grotius, in his book De Ver. Christian. Rel. lib. ii. \u00a7 13. note 12, seems to intimate, that 1 Cor. vii. 4. is to be relied on as a text full in point to prove the unlawfulness of polygamy amongst Christians; for that it was lawful amongst the Jews, he not only allows, but brings many authorities to prove, in note 7. on lib. ii. sect. 13. But there is another text, at ver. 2, which, as it has been looked upon as a conclusive argument against polygamy, I will first consider, and then proceed in order to the following verses, from ver. 2 to ver. 5, inclusive. The words of the text alluded to are\u2014Nevertheless, to avoid fornication, let every man have his own wife, and every woman her own husband. The strength of the whole argument drawn from this passage consists in a sort of quibble upon the word wife, that, as well as the word husband, being in the singular number\u2014wife, not wives. But suppose it had been said, \"Let every man have his own servant, and every servant his own master,\" would it afford a conclusive proof, that because no man can serve two masters, therefore no master could have more than one servant?\n\nHowever, as this text has been, and is, looked upon as a direct proof of the unlawfulness of polygamy among Christians, let us give it a thorough consideration. In the first place, let us restore it to its own genuine words; for our translators have introduced something which is not in the original. The words in the Greek are\u2014\u0394\u03b9\u1f70 \u03b4\u1f72 \u03c4\u1f70\u03c2 \u03c0\u03bf\u03c1\u03bd\u03b5\u03af\u03b1\u03c2\u2014the verb to avoid is not there\u2014the words \u03c4\u03b1\u03c2 \u03c0\u03bf\u03c1\u03bd\u03b5\u03b9\u03b1\u03c2, which we translate fornication, are plural, not singular, and should be rendered fornications, or the fornications\u2014they being in the accusative case, are governed, not by the verb to avoid, which is not in the text, but by the preposition \u03b4\u03b9\u1f70, which is. This preposition \u03b4\u03b9\u1f70 has various meanings, according to the case it governs. Sometimes it governs a genitive\u2014sometimes an accusative, and then it may signify\u2014for;\u2014so Dr. Hammond renders it here\u2014but for fornications;\u2014also\u2014with respect to\u2014as to\u2014with regard to\u2014quod attinet ad:\u2014so ver. 26. \u03b4\u03b9\u1f70 \u03c4\u03b7\u03bd \u1f10\u03bd\u03b5\u03c3\u03c4\u03c9\u03c3\u03b1\u03bd \u1f00\u03bd\u03b1\u03b3\u03ba\u03b7\u03bd, may be rendered, with respect to (in respect of\u2014Dr. Hammond) the present necessity. Many authorities might be cited for this use of the word, both in sacred and profane writers; and it so suits with the subject-matter of the verse in question, that I conceive this to be the sense of \u03b4\u03b9\u1f70 in this place.\n\nThe context shews very plainly, that what St. Paul says, is in answer to some questions put to him by letter, and sent to him at Philippi, where he appears to have been when he wrote the answer; and if we may judge of the questions by the answer, which is surely a very fair way of judging, they probably concerned a very infamous, but common practice, that of married men lending out or even marrying their wives to other people, and of course the married women going from their own husbands to other men. That this was the case in Corinth, may well be taken for granted, when we consider that there were so many sources from which such practices were so easily derived. The Corinthians were a people lewd and debauched to a proverb\u2014\u039a\u03bf\u03c1\u03b9\u03bd\u03b8\u03b9\u03b1\u03b6\u03b5\u03b9\u03bd, to Corinthianize, or play the Corinthian, was a phrase which expressed a man's being abominable\u2014add to this the fondness of the Greeks for the maxims of the divine Plato, as he was called, one of which was\u2014\u03ba\u03bf\u03b9\u03bd\u03b1\u03c2 \u03bc\u03b5\u03bd \u03b3\u03c5\u03bd\u03b1\u03b9\u03ba\u03b1\u03c2 \u03ba\u03bf\u03b9\u03bd\u03bf\u03c5\u03c2 \u03b4\u03b5 \u1f10\u03b9\u03bd\u03b1\u03b9 \u03c0\u03b1\u03b9\u03b4\u03b1\u03c2, that \"women and children ought to be common:\"\u2014add to this the sect of the Gnostics, those early heretics, who held a community of women, and that all marriage was of the devil;\"\u2014these spread their errors far and wide among the Christian churches:\u2014and lastly\u2014the horrid practice of men's lending their wives to others, was even a sort of law in Greece; this originated first in Sparta, that famous city of Peloponnesus, on the edge of which Corinth stood; from thence it spread itself into the rest of the cities of Greece, Corinth, no doubt, as well as others. The following account of this vile custom is to be found in Plutarch's life of the celebrated Spartan lawgiver Lycurgus. \"He (Lycurgus) next bethought himself how to prevent that wild and womanish passion of jealousy, by making it a matter of reputation, not only to banish from matrimony all violence and disorder, but also to allow men the freedom of imparting the use of their wives to deserving persons, that so they might have children by them. And he laughed at those who think the violation of the marriage-bed such an insupportable affront, that they revenge it by murders and cruel wars. Lycurgus thought a man not to be blamed, who, being in years, and having a young wife, should recommend some virtuous handsome young man, that he might have a child by him, who might inherit the good qualities of such a father, and this child the good man loves as tenderly as if he was his own getting.\u2014On the other hand, a worthy man, who was in love with a married woman upon account of her modesty, and well-favouredness of her children, might, without formality, beg of her husband a night's lodging, that he might, like slips of a fine tree, planted in a goodly garden, have children of a good race, and well related. For Lycurgus was of opinion, that children were not so much the propriety of their parents, as of the whole commonwealth; and therefore he would not have them begotten by the first comers, but by the best men that could be found.\"\n\nThis custom was far from being reckoned criminal or adulterous, it was applauded greatly; and \"so far were women from that scandalous liberty which has been objected to them, that they knew not what the name of adultery meant.\"\u2014\"A proof of this we have in Geradas, a very antient Spartan, who, being asked by a stranger what punishment their law had appointed for adultery? answered\u2014\"My friend, there are no adulterers in our country.\" But, replies the stranger, suppose there were one, how would you punish him?\" He answered\u2014\"The offender must pay to the plaintiff a bull, with a neck so long, that he might drink out of the river Eurotas, from over the top of mount Taygeta.\" \"Why, 'tis impossible to find such a bull, said the man.\" Geradas smiling replied\u2014\"Twas just as impossible to find an adulterer in Sparta.\" It is endless to observe on the total blindness of such people, with respect to the law of God: but when the Corinthians were awakened to a sense of divine things, though, as well as others in that part of Greece, they had been infected with this Spartan leaven, and followed the practices, as they had imbibed the principles of their neighbours; yet neither custom, example, nor prejudice of education, could silence, or any longer satisfy their consciences, and therefore they seem to have written to the apostle, to know his sense of the matter; which he clearly gives them in the words of the text, and which evidently reprobate this horrid custom. Having, in the preceding chapter, discussed at large the subjects of whoredom and fornication, and lewdness in general, he begins this seventh chapter with an answer to the particular questions proposed to him in the letter which he had received from them. The passage may be thus paraphrased\u2014Now concerning the things whereof ye wrote unto me\u2014\"I say, first in general, though not for the reasons which some of your philosophers have given, nor for those which the Gnostics have suggested, as if marriage was wrong or sinful in itself, but for prudential reasons, arising from the situation of things at this time (ver. 26.) it is good, \u03ba\u03b1\u03bb\u1f78\u03bd, useful, profitable (ver. 8 and 26.) for a man not to touch a woman\u2014to have no dealings with the other sex. (See Matt. xix. 11, 12.) But with respect to the fornications you mention, and concerning which you desire to know my sentiments; I answer, conformably to the law of God, which ordains, that a man shall cleave to his wife, &c. (Gen. ii. 24.) and that no woman shall depart from her husband, and go to another man (see Rom. vii. 1, 2, 3). Let every man have his wife\u2014\u03c4\u03b7\u03bd \u03b3\u03c5\u03bd\u03b1\u03b9\u03ba\u03b1 \u1f11\u03b1\u03c5\u03c4\u03bf\u03c5\u2014the woman who belongs to him\u2014and not lend her out, or suffer her to marry another, nor let him take a woman who is not \u03b3\u03c5\u03bd\u03b7 \u1f11\u03b1\u03c5\u03c4\u03bf\u03c5, his wife, but another man's, to himself. So also let every married woman have her own proper husband\u2014\u03c4\u03bf\u03bd \u1f30\u03b4\u03b9\u03bf\u03bd \u03b1\u03bd\u03b4\u03c1\u03b1\u2014the man appropriated to her, exclusively of all other men upon earth, and not depart, or suffer herself to lent or given to any other man.\"\n\nI would here observe, that there is a very remarkable difference of expression, which though preserved in many other translations, is not in ours. We render the two clauses just alike, whereas they are not so in the original, but\u2014\u03c4\u03b7\u03bd \u1f19\u0391\u03a5\u03a4\u039f\u03a5 \u03b3\u03c5\u03bd\u1fb6\u03b9\u03ba\u03b1, and \u03c4\u03bf\u03bd \u0399\u0394\u0399\u039f\u039d \u1f00\u03bd\u03b4\u03c1\u03b1. The Latin translations preserve this difference of expression\u2014suam uxorem\u2014proprium virum. Leusd. ex Mont. So the old and new translations in Beza's Testament, and Barker's Eng. Test. 1615, and the Geneva, 1557. Let every man have his wife, and every woman her own husband. If all scripture be given by inspiration of God, (2 Tim. iii. 16.) and holy men spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost, (2 Pet. i. 21.) I cannot but think that there is some weighty reason for the difference of expression, in giving the epithet \u1f38\u03b4\u03b9\u03bf\u03bd to the husband, with respect to the wife, and not to the wife, with respect to the husband. This is observable, not only in this place, but in many others. Leigh, Crit. Sac. observes this, as occurring every where in the sacred writings of the New Testament\u2014uxoribus sui \u03b9\u03b4\u03b9\u03bf\u03b9 \u03b1\u03bd\u03b4\u03c1\u03b5\u03c2 tribuuntur passim in sacris. Leigh sub voc. \u03b9\u03b4\u03b9\u03bf\u03c2. Eph. v. 24, 25. \u03c4\u03bf\u1fd6\u03c2 \u1f30\u03b4\u03af\u03bf\u03b9\u03c2 \u1f00\u03bd\u03b4\u03c1\u03ac\u03c3\u03b9\u03bd, their own husbands\u2014\u03c4\u1f70\u03c2 \u03b3\u03c5\u03bd\u1fb6\u03b9\u03ba\u03b1\u03c2 \u1f11\u03b1\u03c5\u03c4\u1ff6\u03bd, your wives;\u2014and ver. 28, \u03c4\u03b1\u03c2 \u1f11\u03b1\u03c5\u03c4\u03c9\u03bd \u03b3\u03c5\u03bd\u1fb6\u03b9\u03ba\u03b1\u03c2, their wives\u2014\u03c4\u03b7\u03bd \u1f11\u03b1\u03c5\u03c4\u03bf\u03c5 \u03b3\u03c5\u03bd\u03b1\u03b9\u03ba\u03b1, his wife.\u2014Again, Col. iii. 18, 19. \u03c4\u03bf\u1fd6\u03c2 \u1f30\u03b4\u03af\u03bf\u03b9\u03c2 \u1f00\u03bd\u03b4\u03c1\u03b1\u03c3\u03b9\u03bd\u2014propriis viris\u2014their own husbands\u2014\u03c4\u1f70\u03c2 \u03b3\u03c5\u03bd\u1fb6\u03b9\u03ba\u03b1\u03c2, your wives (\u1f11\u03b1\u03c5\u03c4\u1ff6\u03bd being understood). St. Peter, who was the apostle of the circumcision, uses the same mode of expression, 1 Pet. iii. 1. Let the wives be subject, \u03c4\u03bf\u03b9\u03c2 \u1f30\u03b4\u03b9\u03bf\u03b9\u03c2 \u1f00\u03bd\u03b4\u03c1\u03ac\u03c3\u03b9\u03bd\u2014propriis viris\u2014to their own husbands. Comp. 1 Pet. iii. 5. The word \u1f30\u03b4\u03b9\u03bf\u03c2 has certainly an emphatical meaning wherever we find it, therefore must have its emphasis in this place, as well as in others. It seems to denote such an appropriation of the husband to the wife, as that she could not have, or go to any other man. This idea may be illustrated from Rom. xiv. 4. Who art thou that judgest another man's servant? \u03c4\u1ff6 \u1f30\u03b4\u03af\u03c9 \u03ba\u03c5\u03c1\u03af\u1ff3\u2014proprio domino\u2014to his own master he standeth or falleth. Here \u1f30\u03b4\u03b9\u03bf\u03c2 is used as an epithet to the master with respect to the servant (as 1 Tim. vi. 1. Tit. ii. 9.) and must denote such an appropriation of the master to the servant, as to exempt the servant from the authority, power, controul, command, or service of any other, but that of his own (\u0399\u03b4\u03b9\u03bf\u03c5) master; for, as was observed before, no man can serve two masters, though the master may have many servants; nor is any of his servants the less so, because he has others. So here, 1 Cor. vii. 2. and the other passages referred to, the husband is styled \u1f30\u03b4\u03b9\u03bf\u03bd, to denote, that no other man can have any power, propriety, or interest whatsoever in the society of the wife, but the \u1f30\u03b4\u03b9\u03bf\u03c2 \u1f00\u03bd\u03b7\u03c1, the proper and appropriated, peculiar husband. I own that I can account for this difference of expression in no other way, than by supposing the scripture consistent with itself, and that the distinction so evident in the Old Testament was to be preserved throughout the New Testament that though a man might have more than one wife, yet a woman could have but one husband; had she more, neither could be styled properly \u1f30\u03b4\u03b9\u03bf\u03c2 \u1f00\u03bd\u03b7\u03c1, for she would be as much the property of one as of the other, or rather be in common between, or among them, according to their number; whereas, doubtless, though a man has two wives, each may be properly styled \u03b3\u03cd\u03bd\u03b7 \u1f11\u03b1\u03c5\u03c4\u1f78\u03c5\u2014his wife. No man may be said to have an exclusive property in, or appropriation of himself to, a person or thing, which others may share with him: therefore the word \u1f30\u03b4\u03b9\u03bf\u03c2 is peculiarly adapted to denote the exclusive appropriation of the husband to the wife to be, like the exclusive appropriation of the master to the servant, such a one as gives to him alone, exclusive of all others, the whole attention, obedience, and service of the party, so long as the relation which requires these shall continue. Whereas \u03b3\u03c5\u03bd\u03b7, wife, is never found with the exclusive \u1f30\u03b4\u03b9\u03bf\u03c2, but coupled only with the pronoun possessive \u1f11\u03b1\u03c5\u03c4\u03bf\u1fe6. To illustrate what has been said, we may observe as to Jacob and his two wives, Leah and Rachel, Rachel as well as Leah, with respect to Jacob, was \u03b3\u03c5\u03bd\u03b7 \u1f11\u03b1\u03c5\u03c4\u03bf\u03c5, his wife (Gen. xxx. 26. xxxi. 50.) and he the \u1f30\u03b4\u03b9\u03bf\u03c2 \u1f00\u03bd\u03b7\u03c1, the husband, exclusively of all other men, appropriated to both, insomuch that neither could have gone to any other man, without being an adulteress: but we no where find Jacob, nor any other polygamist, stigmatized as an adulterer or fornicator, on account of his having two wives. That such a custom as Plutarch shews to have originated from the famous lawgiver of Sparta, should reach Corinth, which stood at the edge of Peloponnesus, is not at all surprizing, when we find it had even reached to Rome. Numa Pompilius, the famous successor of Romulus, anno 715 before Christ, established this horrid practice among the Romans. He was a great reformer of religion, and improver of the laws, in which he is said \"to have had a particular regard to the preserving of modesty in women. Nevertheless, he permitted husbands to lend their wives, after they had had children by them. This was a kind of temporary divorce, in favour of those men whose wives were barren; but the husbands still continued to have the same power over them, and could call them home, or lend them to others, as they pleased.\" Ant. Univ. Hist. vol. xi. p. 298.\n\nThat this practice long continued at Rome, there can be little doubt; for, about 700 years afterwards, we find, that Cato of Utica actually gave his wife Marcia to his friend Hortensius, and himself assisted at the wedding.\n\nThe words of the text clearly apply to the forbidding so monstrous a breach of the law of marriage, and apply equally to polygamy as to monogamy. Abigail and Ahinoam were, with respect to David, each of them \u03b3\u03c5\u03bd\u03b7 \u1f11\u03b1\u03c5\u03c4\u03bf\u03c5, his wife\u2014for the Holy Ghost saith, 1 Sam. xxv. 43. they were both of them his wives: and therefore he was the \u1f30\u03b4\u03b9\u03bf\u03c2 \u1f00\u03bd\u03b7\u03c1, the peculiar, proper, appropriated husband to both. If David had taken another man's wife, or either of them had been lent out or given to another man, this would have fallen directly under the interdict of the apostle, who here says no more than is exactly consonant with the law of Moses.\n\nSaying that this text forbids polygamy, because the word wife is in the singular number, is mere trifling; as much so, as contending that a man is to love but one neighbour, because it is said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself; not neighbours; or that he shall keep but one servant, because it is said, Rom. xiv. 4. Who art thou that judgest another's man's servant, in the singular number, not servants, in the plural: or to argue for polygamy, because it is said, 1 Cor. vii. 29. they that have wives, and not every one that has a wife. All such literal or verbal criticism is mere word-catching, far below the dignity of fair argument, and deserves nothing but contempt.\n\nThose who represent the apostle as addressing himself to single persons, and advising them to marry, to avoid fornication, make him guilty of evident tautology\u2014for the eighth verse is expressly addressed to the unmarried and widows. After wishing that all, like himself, could live unmarried (that they might have less distraction in their attendance on the service of God, ver. 35.) he adds\u2014but if they cannot contain let them marry, for it is better to marry than burn\u2014\u03c0\u03c5\u03c1\u03bf\u03c5\u03c3\u03b8\u03b1\u03b9, to be fired, to be on fire\u2014(comp. Cant. viii. 6. Hos. vii. 4.) that is, with lust, or unchaste desires, by which they might be driven into the commission of fornication, and all manner of uncleanness; which is, in effect, saying the same thing over again, as some would have him to say at the second verse, the very terms of which shew it to be addressed to married persons; for how could the apostle say to a single man\u2014let him have\u2014\u03ad\u03c7\u03b5\u03c4\u03c9, retain\u2014\u03b3\u03c5\u03bd\u1fb6\u03b9\u03ba\u03b1 \u1f11\u03b1\u03c5\u03c4\u03bf\u03c5, his wife; or to a single woman\u2014let her have, i. e. keep to\u2014\u03c4\u03bf\u03bd \u1f30\u03b4\u03b9\u03bf\u03bd \u03b1\u03bd\u03b4\u03c1\u03b1, her own husband? The immediate connection of this verse with the three following, which can belong to married people only, is another strong argument for the truth of this observation. Besides, if we understand the \u1f11\u03ba\u03b1\u03c3\u03c4\u03bf\u03c2, every man, and the \u1f11\u03ba\u03b1\u03c3\u03c4\u03b7, every woman, to relate here to any but the married people, it may seem to make the apostle command every one to marry, whether they chuse it or not, contrary to ver. 7, 8. The word \u1f11\u03ba\u03b1\u03c3\u03c4\u03bf\u03c2 is certainly relative, and must agree with some masculine substantive understood: this can be, (agreeably to the rest of the verse) nothing but \u1f00\u03bd\u03b7\u03c1, which, in the last clause, must signify husband\u2014\u03c4\u03bf\u03bd \u03b9\u03b4\u03b9\u03bf\u03bd \u03b1\u03bd\u03b4\u03c1\u03b1, her own husband, and so in the four times it is used in the two following verses. The word \u1f11\u03ba\u03b1\u03c3\u03c4\u03b7 is also relative, and must agree with some feminine substantive understood; this can be no other than \u03b3\u03c5\u03bd\u03b7, which, in this verse, is rendered wife; and so the four times it is used in the following verses. If the \u03b1\u03bd\u03b7\u03c1 and \u03b3\u03c5\u03bd\u03b7 which are understood, had been rendered as they are uniformly in the rest of the context, all difficulty in understanding, and all disputes about, the apostle's meaning had been saved, and the evil alluded to reprobated in as plain terms as the apostle intended it should; for the verse would have stood thus\u2014Let every husband (or married man) have his wife\u2014\u03b3\u03c5\u03bd\u1fb6\u03b9\u03ba\u03b1 \u1f11\u03b1\u03c5\u03c4\u03bf\u03c5, the wife that belongs to him\u2014and every wife (or married woman) have her own husband.\n\nWhen he addresses himself to single persons, and advises them to marry to avoid fornication (which is certainly the meaning of ver. 9.) he does not use a doubtful periphrasis, but speaks the matter in the common usual phrase\u2014\u03b3\u03b1\u03bc\u03b7\u03c3\u03ac\u03c4\u03c9\u03c3\u03b1\u03bd\u2014let them marry. There is something remarkable also at the tenth and eleventh verses, where, in answer to some questions put to him in the Corinthians letter, probably about married persons, who were in a state of separation, he says\u2014Let not the wife depart from her husband, but if she depart\u2014\u03bc\u03b5\u03bd\u03ad\u03c4\u03c9 \u1f04\u03b3\u03b1\u03bc\u03bf\u03c2\u2014let her remain unmarried. Comp. Rom. vii. 3. and 1 Cor. vii. 39. This is said to be, the command of God, ver. 10; how is it that it is not extended to the husband? It is only said\u2014Let not the husband put away his wife. Had he construed Matt. xix. 9. by the sound instead of the sense, he most probably would have said of the husband also, \u03bc\u03b5\u03bd\u03ad\u03c4\u03c9 \u1f04\u03b3\u03b1\u03bc\u03bf\u03c2\u2014let him remain unmarried, in case of her departure, or of his putting her away.\n\nBut as those false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into the apostles of Christ, 2 Cor xi. 13. had, by their erroneous and monstrous doctrines, saying, \"that all marriage was of the Devil\" (for such was the doctrine of the Gnostics) sadly distressed the consciences of weak people, and led them to think, that, as marriage was a sinful thing, therefore all conjugal intercourse between married people must be sinful too, we find the apostle proceeding, ver. 3. to answer that part of the letter which related to their distress on this account. But, so far from deeming the intercourse of married persons wrong, he says\u2014Let the husband render unto the wife due benevolence, \u1f48\u03c6\u03b5\u03b9\u03bb\u03bf\u03bc\u03b5\u03bd\u03b7\u03bd \u1f10\u03c5\u03bd\u03bf\u03b9\u03b1\u03bd (which answers to the \u05e2\u05e0\u05d4 of Moses, Exod. xxi. 10. and which we decently render duty of marriage) and likewise the wife unto the husband. The wife has not power over her own body, so as to withdraw herself entirely from the conjugal debt, but the husband may, as a matter of right, have access to her at all proper times and seasons. Likewise the husband has not the power (\u03bf\u1f50\u03ba \u1f10\u03be\u03bf\u03c5\u03c3\u03b9\u03b1\u03b6\u03b5\u03b9) of his own body, so as to withdraw from the conjugal intercourse with his wife, but the wife, as a debt due from the contract which the man is under to her, by the very terms of their union, has a right to his society.\n\n\"Therefore, defraud ye not one the other\u2014\u03bc\u03b7 \u1f00\u03c0\u03bf\u03c3\u03c4\u03b5\u03c1\u03b5\u03b9\u03c4\u03b5 \u1f00\u03bb\u03bb\u03b7\u03bb\u03bf\u03c5\u03c2 do not deprive or wrong each other in these respects, under a false notion of its being sinful to come together as man and wife. There may be times, indeed, when both may find it expedient, and therefore both consent to separate for a while; as on occasion of particular abstinence and devotion: but let not even this exceed the bounds of prudence, lest, if it should, Satan should take the advantage of you, and tempt you to gratify, in an unlawful way, those desires which may lawfully be satisfied between married persons. However, I do not insist upon the matter of your parting, even for a season, by way of commandment, \u03ba\u03b1\u03c4\u1fbd \u03b5\u03c0\u03b9\u03c4\u03b1\u03b3\u03b7\u03bd, but by way of permission, \u03ba\u03b1\u03c4\u03b1 \u03c3\u03c5\u03b3\u03b3\u03bd\u03ce\u03bc\u03b7\u03bd.\" See 2 Cor. viii. 10.\n\nI take the \u1f48\u03c6\u03b5\u03b9\u03bb\u03bf\u03bc\u03b5\u03bd\u03b7\u03bd \u1f10\u03c5\u03bd\u03bf\u03b9\u03b1\u03bd of Paul to answer exactly to the word \u05e2\u05e0\u05d4, which is rendered duty of marriage. This is mentioned by Moses to be still due to the first wife, though a man take a second. Exod. xxi. 10. Therefore this passage of St. Paul no more concludes against polygamy, than that of Moses, which actually supposes it. The root \u05e2\u05e0\u05d4, means to act upon some person or thing\u2014and, in Kal, to lie with a woman, Gen. xxxiv. 2. Deut. xxi. 14. Deut. xxii. 24, 29: so that by comparing scripture with scripture, we shall find one part explain the other. There is a similarity of expression between Moses and Paul, which, I own, makes me think that the latter copied the sentiments of the former, upon the subjects before us. Moses saith \u05d5\u05e2\u05e0\u05ea\u05d4 \u05dc\u05d0 \u05d9\u05d2\u05e8\u05e2\u2014her duty of marriage he shall not withold\u2014subtract\u2014withdraw\u2014keep back from her. Paul says\u2014let the husband render to the wife due benevolence\u2014\u1f48\u03c6\u03b5\u03b9\u03bb\u03bf\u03bc\u03b5\u03bd\u03b7\u03bd \u1f18\u03c5\u03bd\u03bf\u03b9\u03b1\u03bd which is saying the same thing, in other words indeed, but with the same meaning. To render to another their due, is not to withold it; and not to withold it, is to render it. Paul says, \u03bc\u03b7 \u1f00\u03c0\u03bf\u03c3\u03c4\u03b5\u03c1\u03b5\u03b9\u03c4\u03b5\u2014Moses says \u05dc\u05d0 \u05d9\u05d2\u05e8\u05e2, which the LXX actually translate \u03bf\u1f50\u03ba \u1f00\u03c0\u03bf\u03c3\u03c4\u03b5\u03c1\u03ae\u03c3\u03b5\u03b9. This is the very identical verb which we translate defraud not. \u05d2\u05e8\u05e2 signifies to subtract or withdraw\u2014to withold or keep back;\u2014the Greek \u1f00\u03c0\u03bf\u03c3\u03c4\u03b5\u03c1\u03b5\u03c9 has the same meaning\u2014so that Paul may be said to translate, just as the LXX have done, the \u05d2\u05e8\u05e2 of Moses. The only shadow of difference between the Jewish law-giver, and the Christian apostle, consists in the explicitness of the latter, and conciseness of the former. Moses's words imply what Paul's declare, and, vice vers\u00e2, Paul declares what is implied by Moses. If the husband is not to withold the marriage-duty from the wife, this must imply that the wife is not to withold it from the husband. There must be a parity of reason in both cases. Neither husband nor wife can have any such power over their own bodies. This is plainly said by Paul, and, in consistence with the law of marriage, must evidently be meant by Moses. For my own part, I as much believe that Paul had the doctrine in Exod. xxi. 10. in his mind, when he wrote that part of the answer to the Corinthians letter, wherein he solved their difficulties about the intercourse of married people, as it is now in my mind, while I am writing these words; and thus, upon good authority, even that of the mind of God as delivered by Moses, he could be so peremptory in declaring that such intercourse was duty on both sides, and therefore could not (as the Gnostic doctrine might have led them to suppose) be a sin.\n\nSt. Paul, who, before his conversion, had profited in the Jews religion above many his equals in his own nation, Gal. i. 14. could hardly, after his conversion, be ignorant of the law of Moses; so far from it, he was, undoubtedly, a most accomplished teacher of it. Witness the masterly manner in which he explains the sense and meaning of the moral law, and unfolds the whole design of the ceremonial law. By the first, he demonstrated the necessity of the gospel for salvation\u2014by the second, he shewed the gospel to have been one and the same, though under different dispensations of it, from the fall of Adam to the coming of Jesus Christ. Now to set Paul, as a law-giver, in Moses' feat, and to represent him as condemning that which was not condemned by the law of Moses, is to make him act inconsistently with his own declaration, Rom. iii. 31. Do we make void the law through faith?\u2014God forbid! yea\u2014we establish the law. It is to make him transgress the law, by despising that solemn sanction, which equally forbad adding to it, or diminishing from it; and to put him in much the same situation with those, whether men or angels, who preached any other gospel than that which he preached; for to preach any other law than that which was given by Moses, is as great an offence as to preach any other gospel than that which came by Jesus Christ. This we may learn from the very words of the law itself. Deut. iv. 2. xii. 32.\n\nDr. Whitby, a very laborious and learned commentator, in his comment on\u2014the husband, \u1f10\u03ba \u1f10\u03be\u03bf\u03c5\u03c3\u03b9\u03b1\u03b6\u03b5\u03b9, hath not power of his own body, &c. says\u2014\"Here is a plain argument against polygamy.\" That here is a plain argument to prove that he shall not withhold the duty of marriage from the wife, and that, in this respect, neither shall defraud or withold from the other, on proper occasions, the conjugal debt, is very certain. But as what is here said, is founded in the very nature and essence of the marriage-relation, it must equally concern all that ever have married, or shall marry, to the end of the world, as well under the Old Testament as the New Testament; it bears equally hard, if it be an argument against polygamy, on the man who, having one wife, took another, in the days of Moses, as on any one who should do so at this hour (for certainly the marriage-relation must always be the same) and will prove much more against certain distinguished characters under the Old Testament, than I dare say the author meant it should. For this we have his own word\u2014\"Nor can I think\" (says he) \"that Abraham, Jacob, David, and other pious men, would have had more wives, or wives and concubines, had this been a plain violation of the law of nature; nor would God have so highly approved of them, had they lived in adultery.\" Note on Matt. xix. 7, 8.\n\nWhen learned and pious men find out \"plain arguments\" against things which are not mentioned, or even hinted at, in the text, it is a shrewd sign that prejudice, and not judgment, dictates the comment. The Corinthians had a very \"plain argument\" against their fears about married persons cohabiting together; and if they compared this scripture, ver. 3, 4, with what Moses so positively laid down, Exod. xxi. 10. the polygamists among them were no more to forsake the company of their wives, so as to withold the duty of marriage, than those who had but one wife were to withdraw themselves from her society in the same respect.\n\nThat there were many polygamists among the Gentile converts, as well as among the Jewish, there can be but little doubt; for, as Grotius observes\u2014Inter Paganos pauc\u00e6 gentes una uxore content\u00e6 fuerunt.\u2014\"Among the Pagans, few nations were content with one wife;\" and we do not find the apostle making this any bar to church-membership, though he expressly does to church offices. See before, p. It can hardly be supposed, that if polygamy were sinful, that is to say, an offence against the law of God, the great apostle should be so liberal and so particular, in his epistle to the Corinthians, in the condemnation of every other species of illicit commerce between the sexes, and yet omit this in the black catalogue, chap. vi. 9, &c. or that he should not be as zealous for the honour of the law of marriage, and of the seventh commandment, which was evidently to maintain it, as Ezra was for that positive law of Deut. vii. 3, against the marrying with heathens. Ezra made the Jews put away the wives which they had illegally taken, and even the very children which they had by them; How is it that Paul, if polygamy was sinful, did not make the Gentile and the Jewish converts put away every wife, but the first, and annul every polygamous contract? Why not say, that being the husband of one wife was as necessary to the being a Christian, as to be chosen a Bishop or Deacon? for it certainly was, if polygamy be sinful. John the Baptist, at the expence of his liberty, and afterwards of his life, honestly, openly, in words that it was out of the reach of all commentators to sophisticate, or give more than one meaning to, told Herod, with respect to Herodias, his brother Philip's wife\u2014It is not lawful for thee to have her. But how could Paul, with truth, say to the Ephesians, the Corinthians, or any other people amongst whom he ministered\u2014I have not shunned to declare unto you, \u03c0\u03b1\u03c3\u03b1\u03bd \u03c4\u03b7\u03bd \u03b2\u03bf\u03c5\u03bb\u03b7\u03bd, all (the whole) counsel of God\u2014if polygamy were a sin, and he did not as openly and plainly declare against it, as he did against every other fleshly transgression of God's pure and holy law? That he has no were done this, I may say\u2014res ipsa indicat.\n\nAs for taking a text here or there, detaching it from the context, and the context itself from the rest of the Bible; then chusing out a single sentence, or word in a sentence, this too without any reference to the original Hebrew or Greek, and because it seems to sound that way, to make it a proof of some opinion we have been taught to hold; it is that sort of criticism which may make the scripture prove any thing, and every thing, just as fancy leads, and, in short, must render the scriptures themselves as vague and indeterminate as the minds of men are.\n\nWetstein, Prol. p. 146, speaks of \"certain doctors\u2014qui, neglecta connectione contextus sacri, singulas pericopas tanquam singulas sententias, & quasi totidem aphorismos considerant; ut ita liberius su\u00e6 phantasi\u00e6 indulgere, atque quidlibet ex quolibet efficere possint.\"\u2014\"Who neglecting the connection of the sacred context, consider all the several verses, as single sentences by themselves, and as so many aphorisms, or general maxims, so that they may the more freely indulge their own fancy, and make what they please from what they please.\"\n\nWhoever has red the history of that renowned worthy, Alderman Whittington, whose biographer tells us that he was twice Lord Mayor of London, may recollect a circumstance in that great man's life, which affords an exemplification of the aptness which possesses the human mind, to interpret sounds into that particular sense which its own prejudices, however imbibed, wish to put upon them. It is said that Whittington, being an apprentice in the city, left his master with an intent to go into the country. It being about the time of evening, he sat himself down somewhere in the skirts of the town; his ear was caught with the ringing of six bells, he listened attentively to them, 'till at last he persuaded himself that they proclaimed his future greatness in the following sounds:\n\n1\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a02\u00a0\u00a0\u00a03\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a04\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a05\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a06\n\n\"Turn again Whittington,\n\n1\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a02\u00a0\u00a0\u00a03\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a04\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a05\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a06\n\n\"Lord Mayor of London.\"\n\nHe was so captivated with the conceit, that he not only imagined the bells said this to him, but that all who heard them must give their peal the same interpretation; and, no doubt, under such a prepossession, it would have been almost impossible to have persuaded him to the contrary.\n\nSo, when men have been brought up under the prejudices of vulgar opinion and common error, and have their minds swayed and biassed by long custom to one certain train of thinking, they have but to meet with a text in scripture which seems to echo to their sense of things, that sense will immediately chime in with the sound, and both together, almost beyond the power of conviction to the contrary, confirm them still more strongly in their sentiments. What these may happen to be, makes very little difference\u2014whether it be transubstantiation\u2014praying to saints\u2014worshipping images\u2014the doctrine of purgatory\u2014or, \"though polygamy was allowed under the law, it is forbidden under the gospel\"\u2014or, in short, any other popular prejudice: they will always act towards scripture as Whittington did with the bells, till that liberality of mind, which ought to possess us, as the privilege of thinking and reasonable beings, opens the way to free enquiry\u2014then, and not till then, we shall be noble like the Bereans, Acts xvii. 11. who would no longer be led by their own prejudices, or prejudiced by other people's opinions, but received the word of God with all readiness of mind, and searched the scriptures daily, whether those things (which they heard preached by Paul) were so. The scriptures which these Jews at Berea searched so diligently, must have been the scriptures of the Old Testament; no others, if written, could then have come to their hands; but they compared the New Testament as preached by Paul, with the Old Testament of Moses and the prophets, that they might judge whether the things he declared to them were of divine authority, answerable to former revelations of God's mind and will, or not. This is the method which I have endeavoured to observe throughout this book, and which I most sincerely recommend to every reader, as well as to every person who wishes to know and to do the will of God. If once we detach the New Testament from the Old Testament; there is not a single heresy that will not find something to say for itself, perhaps more than we may be able very easily to answer. But let us carry what we hear to the Old Testament; if it exactly tallies with that, we may be sure it is a right interpretation of the New Testament; if otherwise, it must be false, because the mind and will of God can never vary, disagree with, or contradict itself. I do not say these things with regard to any particular doctrine of the New Testament, but with respect to the whole.\u2014The doctrine of a Trinity in unity\u2014the incarnation\u2014birth\u2014life\u2014teaching\u2014miracles\u2014sufferings\u2014death\u2014burial\u2014resurrection\u2014ascension\u2014glorification, and intercession of Jesus Christ, together with the aspect these things bear towards the salvation of mankind, if only related in a book, no single article of which was ever heard or thought of for four thousand years together, would challenge little more of my assent or belief, than the Koran of Mahomet, the Zend, or Zend-avesta of Confucius, or the Shaster of the Bramins. But when I compare these things with what is contained in the Old Testament, to which the New Testament so often refers for their truth, I then can no more suppose them to be false, than I can suppose it possible for men to see into futurity, exactly delineate what is to happen ages before it comes to pass, and so exactly, as that the event shall be a literal fulfilment of all that is foretold, unless He who is perfect in knowledge hath made a revelation or discovery of things which no mortal wisdom or foresight could have ever otherwise been acquainted with. Therefore, when we compare the New Testament with the Old, we may be assured that it is as impossible to be false, as that a dozen dice should be thrown the same number for a million times running; no hazard or casualty could bring such a thing within the most acute calculation of chance; therefore I conclude, that nothing short of infinite wisdom and divine contrivance could ever first declare, and then fulfil, the wondrous things which are written in Moses and the prophets. When therefore I hear of a doctrine as taught in the New Testament, I am certain, if it be true, it must accord with the scriptures of the Old Testament. Thither I carry it; if I find it does not exactly tally with what I find there, I am certain it is false, and must arise from some misconception, and, of course, some misinterpretation of the passage where it is supposed to be found. I am told that sin is a transgression of the law; when I hear it asserted that polygamy is sinful, I consult the law; if it be forbidden there, I agree to the sinfulness of it; if not forbidden there, but allowed, I find myself reduced to this dilemma\u2014either the asserter of such a proposition, who says he takes it from the New Testament, is mistaken; which is probable, or the New Testament must contradict the law, which is impossible.\n\nWith respect to what is frequently urged against polygamy among Christians, that \"tho' it was allowed by the law of Moses, yet it is forbidden by the law of Christ\"\u2014by which Christ is made a repealer of the old, and a giver of a new law\u2014it so affects His character as the Messiah, as to render Him, if it be true, not the person which Moses and the prophets represent Him, or what He represented Himself to be. The discussion, therefore, of this horrid position requires, and shall have, a chapter by itself.\n\nAt present, I will advert to an argument taken from the New Testament, to prove the unlawfulness of polygamy among Christians; though allowed to the Jews under the Old Testament. St Paul, Eph. v. 31, 32. and in some other passages, represents marriage as a figure or representation of Christ and His church, which is but one: whereas, having more wives than one at a time, destroys the analogy which the marriage-state bears to Christ and His church. In answer to which, I would ask, If Christ and His church were not as much one under the Old Testament as under the New Testament? Is. liv. 5. Thy Maker is thine husband, the Lord of Hosts is his name; the God of the whole earth shall He be called. See alfo Jer. iii. 14, 20. The church, taken collectively, is but one; but distributively, it consists of many. Rom. xii. 5. We being many, are one body in Christ\u2014and 1 Cor. xii. 12. For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of that one body being many, are one body, so also is Christ. So that the argument against polygamy, taken from the union and unity of Christ and His church, rather leans the other way; unless, contrary to scripture and fact, it could be proved that the church consisted but of one member; whereas it consists of many, and yet is but one body\u2014one houshold\u2014Eph. ii. 19. One family, even though the saints in heaven be also taken into the account. Eph. iii. 15. The bride or spouse of Christ is but one\u2014i. e. one church; yet every member of that church is as distinctly the spouse of Christ, as really married to Him that rose from the dead (Rom. vii. 4.) as the whole is, collectively considered. Surely these scriptural illustrations of the nature of the marriage-bond, afford a complete answer to that question, \"If a man hath two wives, how can he be one flesh with both\u2014or each one flesh with him?\" See Eph. v. 30.\n\nWe also read not only of the church of Christ in the singular number, but of the churches of Christ in the plural, about forty times in the New Testament; which, by the way, is at least as conclusive an argument for polygamy, as the other is against it.\n\nFrom the making Christ and His church an emblem of marriage, or marriage an emblem of Christ and His church, some have looked upon it as a sacrament. There is certainly an outward sign of something spiritual; but as there wants that which is essentially necessary to make it a sacrament, which is God's own appointment of it as such, the more scriptural professors of Christianity reject it. For the same reason I would reject those arguments against polygamy, which are drawn from the union of Christ and His church, because God has no where established their authority, (that I can find) either in the Old Testament or the New. These arguments would have been just as conclusive under the former as under the latter. The church is called the married wife. Is. liv. 1. Her Redeemer, the Lord of hosts, is called her Husband, ver. 5; but never did Isaiah, nor any other of the prophets, use this as an argument against the polygamy of the people. If this was not done, or so much as hinted at, under the Old Testament, why are we to conceive it to be done under the New, when the same things and persons are equally represented under both?\n\nHad polygamy been intended to have been condemned under the New-Testament dispensation, I should humbly suppose that our Lord would have put the matter out of question by words too plain to admit of the least dispute that He whose loins were girt about with faithfulness (Is. xi. 5.) would have been at least as faithful to His hearers of the lost sheep of the house of Isreal, to whom He was so immediately sent (Matt. xv. 24.) and spoken to them in as plain and unequivocal terms as John the Baptist did to Herod, upon the subject of his brother Philip's wife (Matt. xiv. 4.) There cannot be the least doubt, that numbers of our Lord's multitudes of hearers were polygamists\u2014all in principle\u2014many in practice; nor can it be doubted, that if this was against the law of marriage, the law of the seventh commandment, or any other positive law of God, it must be a mortal, damnable sin, involving the man as well as the woman in destruction and perdition. Paul could declare openly, that if a woman, living her husband, be married to another, she shall be called an adulteress, and vouches the law of God for his authority, Rom. vii. 1, 2, 3. How is it that Christ did not openly say the same thing on the part of the man?\u2014Because, if He had, He could not have vouched the law of God for his authority; and for the same reason, that he could not say it, he could not think it, for God's law was within his heart, Ps. xl. 8. and no thought could ever be in the pure and perfect heart of Christ, but what was exactly conformable, in all things, to the pure and perfect law of God. Let us then carry what our Lord saith against divorce, Matt. xix. 9. to the law and to the testimony, and it can no more conclude against polygamy, simply considered, than it concludes against bigamy, or a man's marrying a second wife after the death of his first, and being twice married. Some of the primitive fathers cited it, to prove that every second marriage was adultery; but here their learned and pious advocate, Dr. Cave, does allow, that \"they stretched the string till it cracked again.\"\n\nI might also observe, that, if polygamy was a sin, and even a national sin, an epidemical transgression of the law of God, it is very extraordinary that our Lord's fore-runner, John the Baptist, who came to preach repentance, should not mention, nor even hint at it; for his commission ran thus\u2014Luke i. 17. To turn the hearts of the fathers unto the children, the disobedient to the wisdom of the just; to make ready a people prepared for the Lord. It is said of him, Matt. xvii. 11. that he should restore or reform (\u03b1\u03c0\u03bf\u03ba\u03b1\u03c4\u03b1\u03c3\u03c4\u03b7\u03c3\u03b5\u03b9) all things.\n\nNo man could have a fairer opportunity to bear his testimony against a national sin, than the Baptist had; for it is said (Matt. iii. 5.) Then went out to him Jerusalem, and all Judea, and all the region round about Jordan; and among the numbers who were baptized of him in Jordan, confessing their sins (ver. 6.) there were many harlots (chap. xxi. 32.) So that it is evident he did not spare to inveigh most sharply against the sin of fleshly uncleanness; had polygamy been of this kind, he doubtless would have preached against it, which, if he had, some trace would most probably have been left of it, as there is of his preaching against the sin of whoredom, by the harlots (\u1f01\u03b9 \u03c0\u03bf\u03c1\u03bd\u03b1\u03b9) being said to believe on him; which they certainly would not have done, any more than the Scribes and Pharisees (Matt. xxi. 32.) if the preacher had not awakened them to a deep and real sense of their guilt, by setting forth the heinousness of their sin. He exerted his eloquence also against public grievances, such as the extortion of the public officers of the revenue\u2014the publicans\u2014\u03c4\u03b5\u03bb\u03c9\u03bd\u03b1\u03b9\u2014tax-gatherers\u2014likewise against the oppressive methods used by the soldiery, who made it a custom either to take people's goods by violence, or to defraud them of their property, by extorting it under the terror of false accusation. These were public grievances, against which the Baptist bore so open a testimony, that the publicans and soldiers came to him, saying\u2014What shall we do? This being the case, is it conceivable that a man of the Baptist's character, who was so zealous for the honour of the law, as to reprove even a king to his face for adultery, should suffer, if polygamy be adultery, a whole nation, as it were, of public adulterers, to stand before him, and not bear the least testimony against them? I do not say this is a conclusive, but it is surely a very strong presumptive argument, that in the Baptist's views of the matter, polygamy, whoredom, and adultery were by no means the same thing.\n\nHaving finished, for the present, what I had to say on the subject of polygamy, as supposed to be condemned by the New Testament, I must return back to the Old Testament, to shew that polygamy was not only allowed in all cases, but in some commanded. The first instance of this which I shall mention, is with respect to the law, Deut. xxv. 5\u201310. If brethren dwell together, and one of them die, and have no child, the wife of the dead shall not marry without unto a stranger: her husband's brother shall go in unto her, and take her to him to wife, and perform the duty of an husband's brother unto her. And it shall be that the firstborn which she beareth, shall succeed in the name of his brother which is dead, that his name be not put out of Israel, &c.\n\nThis law must certainly be looked upon as an exception from the general law (Lev. xviii. 16.) and the reason of it appears in the law itself, viz. \"To preserve inheritances in the families to which they belonged.\" Therefore all lands which had been mortgaged, were to return back to the owner at the year of jubilee. See Lev. xxv. 25, 28. See also a special provision against the alienation of lands from the tribe to which they belonged, Numb. xxxvi. 2\u20139. This was of the utmost consequence in the designs of Providence respecting the Messiah, whose genealogy, with respect to his being of the seed of Abraham\u2014the tribe of Judah\u2014the family of David, was not more ascertained by his lineal descent, than by the preservation of Bethlehem Ephrata in the tribe of Judah, and family of David. By which it came to pass, that the prophecy concerning the very place of the Messiah's birth was literally fulfilled (Comp. Mic. v. 2. with Matt. ii. 4, 5, 6, and Luke ii. 3, 4, 5, 6, 7.) The Jewish doctors, as Mr. Selden, in his Uxor H\u00e6braica, and others after him, observe, made several exceptions to this law; but as the text makes none, I know not that we are warranted in making any. Bishop Burnet seems to have had a right view of the matter, in his observation on the generality of this law. His words are\u2014\"Yea, polygamy was made, in some cases, a duty by Moses's law; when any died without issue, his brother, or nearest kinsman, was to marry his wife, for raising up seed to him; and all were obliged to obey this, under the hazard of infamy if they refused; neither is there any exceptions made for such as were married; from whence I may faithfully conclude, that what God made necessary in some cases, to any degree, can in no case be sinful in itself, since God is holy in all his ways. And thus far it appears that polygamy is not contrary to the law and nature of marriage.\"\n\nI am indebted for the above quotation to the before-mentioned reverend Dean's book on polygamy, wherein the Dean seems a little comforted by the Bishop's having said, that \"he was at a distance from his books and papers, when he gave his opinion on this point.\"\u2014\"This,\" adds he, \"was the best excuse that could be given for so rash a decision, which it would have been for the honour of his reading to have retracted, and which, I sincerely wish he had retracted, when he returned to his books.\"\n\nThe good Dean, in his zeal against polygamy, don't give himself time to consider the soundness of the learned prelate's opinion.\n\nAs there was no law against polygamy, there was nothing to exempt a married man from the obligation of marrying his brother's widow on this account; for if so, things might have been so situated, that Bethlehem might have gone away into some other family than that of David, into some other tribe than that of Judah, and, of course, Joseph and his wife Mary have gone elsewhere to be taxed; for this might evidently have been the consequence of the widow and the inheritance going into the hands of a stranger. But God says\u2014The wife of the dead shall not marry without unto a stranger\u2014her husband's brother shall go in unto her, &c. Here is a negative clause, positively declaring whom she shall not marry, and an affirmative clause, as positively declaring whom she shall. Now let us suppose, that not only the surviving brother, but all the near kinsmen, to whom the marriage of the widow, and the redemption of the inheritance belonged, were married men; if that exempted them from the obligation of this law\u2014as they could not redeem the inheritance, unless they married the widow (Ruth iv. 5.)\u2014the end of this important law must in many cases be defeated\u2014the widow be tempted to marry a stranger\u2014to put herself and the inheritance into his hands\u2014and the whole reason assigned for the law itself, that of raising up seed to the deceased, to preserve the inheritance in his family, that his name be not put out of Israel\u2014fall to the ground. For which weighty reasons, as there was evidently no law against polygamy, there could be no exemption of a man from the positive duty of this law because he was married. As we say\u2014ubi eadem ratio ibi idem jus.\n\nBut the learned Dean, in order to overthrow all the Bishop's reasoning on the subject, observes from Selden's Ux. Heb. that \"the Chaldee paraphrast, the Midrash, and Josephus, agree, that this was the reason why Mahlon's next kinsman refused to redeem Ruth, his widow, viz.\u2014Because it was not lawful for him to marry her, having a wife of his own.\" That people should invent reasons for men's actions, where none are given, is not so surprizing as overlooking the reasons that are given, and substituting others which do not appear to be so much as thought of by the parties themselves. This is the case here\u2014Mahlon's next kinsman is applied to, as by law he ought to have been, to buy Mahlon's inheritance, and to marry Ruth his widow: his answer is neither more nor less than this\u2014\"I cannot redeem it for myself, lest I mar my own inheritance.\"\u2014How these words relate to the lawfulness or unlawfulness of the matter, was reserved for the ingenuity of modern interpreters to make out\u2014that they may, and most probably do, relate to the expediency or inexpediency of such a step, the kinsman's present circumstances considered, may be easily inferred from the words of the reason given. The kinsman might be married, perhaps have many children, and but a small provision for them\u2014therefore, when he hears of not only disbursing the redemption-price for Mahlon's parcel of land, but that this could not be done, without marrying a very poor young woman, by whom he might have another numerous family of children, which he could not maintain, educate, or provide for, out of the small parcel of land which was Elimelech's, but must diminish his own inheritance of which he was possessed, to the damage of his other family, he prudently declines the kinsman's part\u2014lest, said he, I mar mine own inheritance. Such a sense as this the words will most certainly bear; but as to their meaning that the man would not marry Ruth\u2014\"because it was not lawful for him to marry her, having a wife of his own\"\u2014it is a conceit, fetched even farther than, one would think, the utmost unfairness of prejudice itself could reach.\n\nSince I wrote the above, I have looked into Bishop Patrick, on Ruth iv. 6. who mentions the passage alluded to in the Chaldee paraphrast, and the Midrash; and so far from their appearing to say what the Dean would make them, there is not a word of any such thing; they put quite a different sense upon the words. As for Josephus, I would almost venture to affirm, without looking into the book, that he cannot so grossly contradict himself; for when he is writing that part of the History of David, where he speaks of his polygamy, he says\u2014\u03b4\u03bf\u03bd\u03c4\u03bf\u03c2 \u03b4\u03b5 \u1f00\u03c5\u03c4\u03c9 \u03ba\u03b1\u1f76 \u03b3\u03c5\u03bd\u03b1\u03b9\u03ba\u03b1\u03c2 \u1f01\u03c2 \u03b4\u03b9\u03ba\u03b1\u03b9\u03c9\u03c2 \u03ba\u03b1\u03b9 \u03bd\u03bf\u03bc\u03b9\u03bc\u03c9\u03c2 \u1f20\u03bd\u03b1\u03b3\u03b5\u03c4\u03bf\u2014(God) \"giving him wives, which he justly and lawfully married.\" However, having consulted Josephus on the subject, I find no such reason assigned by the kinsman, for refusing to redeem Mahlon's land, and to marry his widow, as the Dean asserts.\u2014Josephus, Antiq. lib. ix. c. 5. \u00a7 4. speaking of the kinsman's refusal, says, that he rejected the offer\u2014\u1f18\u03b9\u03bd\u03b1\u03b9 \u03b4\u03b5 \u03ba\u03b1\u1f76 \u03b3\u03c5\u03bd\u03b1\u03b9\u03ba\u03b1 \u03bb\u03b5\u03b3\u03c9\u03bd \u1f00\u03c5\u03c4\u03c9 \u03ba\u03b1\u03b9 \u03c0\u03b1\u03b9\u03b4\u03b1\u03c2 \u03b7\u03b4\u03b7 \"Saying, he had already a wife and children;\" but not a word that it was \"unlawful to marry another woman.\" Not that Josephus represents the matter as the Bible does, any more than the learned Dean rightly represents the sentiments of Josephus. It might not be expedient for the kinsman to marry Ruth, as he was circumstanced; but this has nothing to do with the lawfulness or unlawfulness of the matter, with respect to the law of God. Lawfulness and expediency are very distinct and different considerations. See 1 Cor. vi. 12. 1 Cor. x. 23. As for Mr. Selden, he, in the very passage which the Dean quotes, resolves the kinsman's refusal to marry Ruth into a matter of prudence, and that for much the same reasons which I have assigned above.\n\nThe law itself on which we have been discoursing, was only a local and temporary institution, and, in the very nature of it, could only concern the Jews, and that only with regard to their peculiar situation before the coming of the Messiah, when so much depended on the clearness of family descent and inheritance. It is observable that this law, though not reduced to writing and published till the time of Moses, yet existed among the patriarchs, as we learn from Gen. xxxviii. 8.\n\nI now shall observe on some laws of more extensive import, the obligation of which must concern every man, and that at all times and places, because the evident purpose for which they were ordained, and the reasons on which they are apparently founded, must equally concern all mankind. The laws I mean, are those already spoken of, as made for the preservation of the female sex from ruin and prositution, by compelling every man to marry the virgin he lies with. The first of them is to be found Exod. xxii. 16; the other Deut. xxii. 28, 29. These laws must in some cases command polygamy, and therefore, in such cases, make it a duty; for they are so framed as to admit of no other construction, consistently with the terms in which Moses hath recorded them. The terms in which these laws are enacted, with respect to the men seducing or taking virgins, &c. are as indefinite as words can possibly be: If a man, says our translation.\u2014This must, ex vi termini, mean any man whatsoever, be his situation what it may\u2014which is exactly the sense of the Hebrew \u05db\u05d9 \u05d0\u05d9\u05e9\u2014As the right understanding of this comprehensive and unlimited word \u05d0\u05d9\u05e9 is of the utmost importance to the point in question, I will lay a full and clear explanation of it before the reader.\n\n\u05d0\u05d9\u05e9 \"This word has no relation to kind or species, though, according to its different genders, it has to sex; but is applied to almost any distinct being or thing; as, for instance, to man. &c.\" See Parkhurst's Heb. Lex. sub voc. \u05d9\u05e9\u05d4\u2014\" which,\" saith he, \"denotes existence, subsistence, reality.\"\n\nI will next subjoin the interpretation of Calasio, who, in his valuable Hebrew Concordance, gives us some hundreds of texts in which this word occurs.\n\n\u05d0\u05d9\u05e9 \"Persona, creatura\u2014nomen generale quod essentiam rei non distinguit\"\u2014A person, a creature\u2014a general name; which doth not distinguish the essence of the thing spoken of.\n\n\u05d0\u05d9\u05e9 \"Homo generaliter complectens masculum & f\u0153minam.\" Man generally, including male and female.\n\n\u05d0\u05d9\u05e9 \"Quis\u2014quilibet\u2014aliquis\u2014unusquisque\u2014quisque\u2014alter.\"\u2014Who\u2014whosoever\u2014any one\u2014 every one\u2014 every man\u2014any other\u2014\n\n\"unus\n\nSome one\n\nullus\"\n\nany one.\n\n\u05d0\u05d9\u05e9 \"Sexus masculus in qualibet animantium specie\" cum \"mentio f\u0153min\u00e6 additur.\" Ut Gen. vii. 2. (xxiv. 16.) The male sex in any species of animals where the female is also mentioned.\n\n\u05d0\u05d9\u05e9 \"Vir\u2014maritus\u2014si cum uxore conferatur.\" Gen. iii. 6. An husband, a married man, where joined with wife.\n\nThe reader has now before him the meaning of the word \u05d0\u05d9\u05e9, wheresoever it may be used, as applicable to, or significant of, mankind; and by this may see the use of it throughout the Bible where man is mentioned. He may also see that the phrase \u05db\u05d9 \u05d0\u05d9\u05e9\u2014If a man, &c. so far from carrying any exception with it, as to a man's situation of being married or unmarried, excludes all exception whatsoever wherever we meet with it; therefore as much in the texts of Exodus and Deuteronomy as elsewhere. Let the reader take the Hebrew, or even the English concordance, and try the experiment: he will find that \u05db\u05d9 \u05d0\u05d9\u05e9 in Hebrew, and If any man in English, are in the scriptures, as in every other book I ever met with, as indefinite as words can be, with relation to the subject in question.\n\nBut if no exception as to the situation of the man is expressed, is it not implied?\u2014So far from that, the Holy Ghost (in this passage particularly) has demonstrably guarded against any such implication, and this by adding the words not betrothed to the description of the virgin or damsel, which is done in both places. Expressio unius est exclusio alterius\u2014the expressing an exception with regard to the woman, but none with respect to the man, proves, as far as the soundest rules of construction of all laws can prove, that none was intended.\n\nHad any restriction of this law with regard to the situation of the man been intended, it might easily have been expressed, by only adding some restrictive expression or epithet to the description of the man as to that of the damsel. But, instead of any thing of this sort, we find the indefinite \u05d0\u05d9\u05e9; and therefore our translators have rightly rendered it a man indefinitely; so the LXX\u2014\u1f11\u03b1\u03bd \u03b4\u03b5 \u03c4\u03b9\u03c2\u2014but if any man;\u2014the Latin\u2014si vir\u2014if a man;\u2014the French of D. Martin\u2014si quelqu'un\u2014if any one. Though all the translators of the Bible which I have met with, have modestly, humbly, and faithfully represented the mind of God as He has been pleased to reveal it, yet some expositors have ventured to interpret \u05db\u05d9 \u05d0\u05d9\u05e9\u2014if a man\u2014by\u2014If an unmarried man\u2014thus corrupting the passage by an interpolation, not only unwarranted by the Hebrew text, but by every translation of it extant. This method of interpreting scripture, not by scripture, but by our own prejudiced imaginations, is making the word of God to mean any thing and every thing which fancy may invent; and rendering it\u2014instead of a sure word of prophecy, to the which we do well to take heed, as unto a light that shineth in a dark place, 2 Pet. i. 19\u2014a sort of ignis fatuus, by no means to be depended on for a director and guide, in so awful a concern as therein is proposed to every man to whom that word shall come.\n\nThe only shadow of excuse for such an interpretation, or rather corruption of the passages above mentioned, is the being able to produce some positive law against a man's having more wives than one at a time; and then, in order to make God's laws agree together, it may be thought reasonable to restrain the indefinite expression \u05db\u05d9 \u05d0\u05d9\u05e9\u2014if a man, in Exodus and Deuteronomy, to unmarried men only. But as the first is impossible, the second is without, and indeed against, all authority from the law of God; for that it allowed polygamy, is just as clear as that it allowed marriage. Therefore the consequence is, that the expression in question being general, without limitation or exception with respect to the situation of the man, as married or unmarried, it must in some cases command polygamy, and therefore make it a duty. This consequence must be allowed, if we let scripture speak for itself; it could not be avoided by any other means than a man's refraining entirely from the other sex, or, if he married, contenting himself with one wife. If a man went farther than this, he must take the consequence.\u2014But as God would not suffer a whore of the daughters of Israel, so he made these laws to prevent their being exposed to prostitution by men's taking them, and then putting them away. This was just as likely to be the case where married men were concerned, as where others were; therefore positively forbidden as to both alike.\n\nThat there were some ingredients in these laws, of the ceremonial, local, or temporary kind\u2014as the payment of the fifty shekels to the father\u2014we do not deny; but that the morality of these laws must survive as long as morality itself exists, is as clear, as that exposing a woman to prostitution and ruin must at all times be equally hateful in the sight of God, and therefore at all times equally provided against by these humane and salutary laws.\n\nIn confirmation of what is here said, I would lay it down as a rule in all cases, that wherever a moral intendment appears to be involved in the words of a ritual, ceremonial, or local and temporary institution, there, though the letter of the law itself can have no place among us, yet the spirit and moral intention must survive as long as the world endures. For instance, it is written, Deut. xxv. 4. Thou shalt not muzzle the ox when he treadeth out the corn. By this we must suppose, that it was the custom in those days, and in that part of the world, to lay the sheaves on the floor, and to get the corn out by the treading or trampling of oxen. We get the corn out of the sheaves by threshing with flails; therefore the letter of the law above mentioned has nothing to do with us. But the spirit of this law being of a moral nature, and to teach us, that those who labour in the word and doctrine are to live of their labours, for that the labourer is worthy of his reward\u2014this law is itself quoted by St. Paul, 1 Cor. ix. 9. 1 Tim. v. 18. as a proof that they who preach the gospel should live of the gospel. 1 Cor. ix. 14. From whence, as from other instances which might be mentioned, I infer, that though a law itself, or some part of it, may have vanished as to the letter, yet it may, or rather must, survive as to the spirit of it.\n\nShall we say, that we must construe the words\u2014if any man\u2014to mean unmarried men only, because, though God's laws do not forbid polygamy, yet ours do? To imagine that our laws are to controul the laws of God, is a blasphemous arrogance, in comparison of which, Cardinal Wolsey's\u2014Ego et Rex Meus\u2014is humility itself in the very abftract. The law of the land is such, that a married Englishman cannot publicly and openly marry the virgin he has seduced or taken; he cannot obey the letter therefore of these laws of God, as the Jews could have done; but he can and ought to make them the law of his conscience; and if he has taken a virgin, &c. he can, according to the spirit of these laws, maintain, protect, and provide for her, and, if he survives his present engagement, marry her publicly in preference to all other women upon earth.\u2014Thus would one great end of this law be answered, and millions be preserved from destruction. If indeed the woman is profligate enough to forsake the man, and voluntarily unite herself with another, she is guilty of transgressing these laws of God, as in other cases of adultery: for, the same reason which is given why the man shall not put her away all his days, viz. because he hath humbled her, goes to what is also said of the woman\u2014she shall be his wife\u2014she certainly therefore is his wife in God's sight, and whosoever toucheth her shall not be innocent. Prov. vi. 29.\n\nI some time ago met with two sermons, which were preached, and afterwards printed, on occasion of passing the marriage-act. The learned author, speaking of polygamy, expresses himself as follows:\u2014\"We find likewise in those early times, and afterwards, that polygamy was partly indulged, but only upon certain typical occasions, and then only among the patriarchs and some of the kings, who were all express types of Christ in their several marriages; and in this respect they each typified and prefigured Christ's marrying the Jewish church, and the several churches of the Heathen nations, which, under the gospel, were all designed to make but one church or one spouse; therefore, under the gospel, polygamy ceases, and but one wife is allowed.\"\n\nIf this author will examine his Bible a little more closely, he will find himself mistaken both in his premises, and in his conclusion. In the first place, it cannot be true that \"polygamy was partly indulged, only upon some typical occasions, and then only among the patriarchs and some of the kings.\"\u2014This appears from the law, Deut. xxi. 15. which was enacted after the patriarchal age had ceased, and many ages before there was a king in Israel. That law is framed in general terms, so as to include any and every man\u2014that has two wives:\u2014it does not say, if a patriarch or king hath two wives\u2014but\u2014\u05db\u05d9 \u05ea\u05d4\u05d9\u05d9\u05df \u05dc\u05d0\u05d9\u05e9 \u05e9\u05ea\u05d9 \u05e0\u05e9\u05d9\u05dd\u2014literally\u2014\"if there be to a man\"\u2014or\u2014as we translate it\u2014\"if a man have\u2014two wives\" See Taylor Concor. sub voc. \u05d4\u05d9\u05d4, No 82. It is apparent, then, that the law being general, it was meant to regulate a general practice. It is also untrue in point of fact, that \"polygamy was partly indulged only to patriarchs and some of the kings;\" witness Elkanah, who was neither patriarch nor king, but a Levite, descended from Kohath, the son of Levi, 1 Chron. vi. 27, 28; and yet we find, by his history, 1 Sam. i. 1, &c. that polygamy was indulged to him as evidently as to any patriarch or king that ever lived. From all which it appears, that our author's conclusion\u2014\"therefore, under the gospel, polygamy ceases, and but one wife is allowed\"\u2014falls to the ground. But let us look back again to Deut. xxi. 15.\u2014That law was evidently made to regulate the disposal of a man's inheritance who had two wives, and to prevent the disherison of the first-born through favour and affection towards the child who was not so, because born of the favourite wife. This could not concern the patriarchs, who had all been long dead\u2014nor (immediately at least) the kings, who did not exist till near four hundred years afterwards\u2014nor the priests and Levites, who could have no inheritance to dispose of. Numb. xviii. 20, 21. Deut. x. 9. xii. 12. latter part. Deut. xviii. 1, 2.\u2014If then it did not concern the people at large, it was nugatory, for it concerned nobody at all.\u2014This is surely a very sufficient proof that polygamy was an allowed practice of the Jews in general. The all-wise God cannot be supposed to enact so positive a law, if there were no persons who could be objects of it; and this law to regulate certain circumstances which did not exist; nor is it easy to imagine, that if those circumstances were sinful, they would not have been as explicitly condemned, as they are here plainly allowed and regulated. What has been observed above, concerning the law of Deut. xxi. 15. holds equally true of Exod. xxi. 10. which had as little to do with patriarchs and kings as the other had.\n\nI cannot conclude this part of my subject without mentioning a case, which those would do well to consider, who confound polygamy with adultery, and plead the authority of the great and infallible interpreter of God's mind and will for so doing; I mean the case of Abimelech, King of Gerar; who, having already a wife of his own, sent and took Sarah the wife of Abraham, Gen. xx. 2. But God came to Abimelech in a dream by night, and said to him\u2014behold, thou art but a dead man, for the woman which thou hast taken\u2014for she is a man's wife. Here God plainly set forth His thoughts of adultery, or taking a man's wife; that it is a sin to be punished with death.\u2014However, Abimelech had not actually defiled her, and shews that, if he had not been deceived by Abraham's saying that Sarah was his sister, he would not have taken her at all.\u2014Said he not unto me, She is my sister? and she, even she herself said, He is my brother. In the integrity of my heart, and innocency of my hands, have I done this. And God said unto him in a dream, Yea, I know that thou didst it in the integrity of thine heart, for I also witheld thee from sinning against Me, therefore suffered I thee not to touch her. The sin of adultery is certainly marked very strongly, but here was a fair opportunity to have as strongly marked polygamy, if that was a sin also. How could Abimelech, having a wife, ver. 17, take any other woman innocently? and yet God allows this to have been done, in his answer to the plea of Abimelech. Though he was innocent as to an intentional adultery, being ignorant that Sarah was Abraham's wife, yet Abimelech must know that he had a wife of his own, and therefore could not innocently, and in the integrity of his heart, take any other woman of any kind, if polygamy was a sin. But supposing this poor heathen was ignorant, and therefore said this knowing no better, yet God could not be ignorant of His own mind and will, when he said\u2014Yea, I know that thou didst this in the integrity of thine heart, for I also witheld thee from sinning against Me. Rather, why did he not say\u2014Thou wicked wretch, how canst thou dare to talk of the innocency of thine hands, and of the integrity of thine heart?\u2014supposing thou didst not know Sarah to be another man's wife, yet the taking any woman, as thou hast already a wife of thine own, is against the law of marriage, and therefore a mortal sin.\" Instead of this, God allows his plea, and the moment Abimelech restored Sarah to her husband, God graciously removes every mark of his displeasure, ver. 17, 18. So Abraham prayed unto God, and God healed Abimelech, and his wife, and his maid-servants\u2014\u05d5\u05d0\u05de\u05d4\u05ea\u05d9\u05d5 (which seem to have stood in the same relation to Abimelech, as the \u05d0\u05de\u05d4\u2014Hagar (See Gen. xxi. 10. Comp. Judges viii. 31. with ix. 18.) did to Abram, chap. xvi. 3, 4.) and they bare children\u2014\u05d5\u05d9\u05dc\u05d3\u05d5\u2014pepererunt, Mont.\u2014they brought forth: for the Lord had fast closed up all the wombs of the house of Abimelech, because of Sarah, Abraham's wife. It should seem by the context, that God had witheld Abimelech from sinning against Him, in a criminal access to Sarah, by inflicting a judicial disability of some kind upon him; also, to mark the more strongly His holy indignation against him, for taking another man's wife, He rendered Abimelech's wife, then great with child, (as also such of his maid-servants, who it should seem, from what is said, ver. 17, 18, were probably his concubines, and some of them also great with child) unable to bring forth\u2014but when Sarah was restored, Abimelech was restored to his own women, and they to him.\u2014All this by the immediate hand of God.\n\nI would only say, that any person who can attentively consider the several circumstances of this history of the divine interposition, and talk of the sinfulness of polygamy in the sight of God, even putting it on the same footing with adultery, will appear to differ very widely, in his judgment of the matter, from this authentic record of the mind and will of the Most High.\n\nHow early an abhorrence of the sin of adultery was impressed on the minds of men, and of the punishment which awaited it, may likewise be gathered from the history of Isaac and Abimelech king of Gerar, which is recorded Gen. xxvi. particularly at ver. 10, 11.\n\nIt is to be remarked also, that throughout the whole scripture, the same approbation; many like circumstances which evidenced that approbation; also, like answers to prayer, and like miracles, in token of that approbation, attended equally on a second, or after-taken wife, under a polygamous contract, as on a first or only wife. This may be said to be uniformly the case, as may appear from the following\n\n\u00a0\n\nPARADIGM.\n\nSarai was barren\u2014she had no child\u2014Gen. xi. 30.\nAnd Abram said, Lord God, what wilt thou give me, seeing I go childless?\u2014Behold to me thou hast given no seed.\u2014And He brought him forth abroad, and said, Look now towards heaven, and tell the stars, if thou be able to number them; and He said unto him\u2014So shall thy seed be. Gen. xv. 2, 3, 5.\n\nAnd Sarai said unto Abram, Go in unto my maid; and she gave Hagar to her husband Abram to be his wife. And he went in unto Hagar, and she conceived\u2014and the angel of the Lord said, I will multiply thy seed exceedingly, that it shall not be numbered for multitude. Gen. xvi. 2, 4, 10. Yea,\n\nAnd God said unto Abraham, As for Sarah thy wife, I will bless her, and give thee a son of her. Yea I will bless her, and she shall be a mother of nations; kings of people shall be of her. Gen. xvii. 15, 16.\n\nGod said, As for Ishmael, behold I have blessed him, and will make him fruitful, and multiply him exceedingly; twelve princes shall he beget, and I will make him a great nation. Gen. xvii. 20.\n\nGod said\u2014Sarah thy wife shall indeed bear thee a son, and thou shalt call his name Isaac. Gen. xvii. 19.\n\nAnd the angel of the Lord said unto Hagar, Behold thou art with child, and shalt bear a son, and shalt call his name Ishmael.\n\nAnd Sarah conceived and bare Abraham a son in his old age\u2014and Abraham called his name Isaac. Gen. xxi. 2, 3.\n\nAnd Hagar bare Abram a son, and Abram called his son's name, which Hagar bare, Ishmael. Gen. xvi. 11, 15.\n\nIsaac was forty years old when he took Rebekah to wife and Isaac intreated the Lord for his wife, because she was barren; and the Lord was intreated of him, and Rebekah his wife conceived. Gen. xxv. 20, 21.\n\nJacob took Leah and Rachel\u2014but Rachel was barren. Gen. xxix. 31. And she gave him Bilhah her handmaid to wife; and Jacob went in unto her; and Bilhah conceived and bare Jacob a son. And Rachel said, God hath judged me, and hath also heard my voice, and hath given me a son. Gen. xxx. 4, 5, 6.\n\nManoah's wife was barren and bare not; and the angel of the Lord appeared unto the woman, and said unto her, Behold, now thou art barren and barest not, but thou shalt conceive and bear a son-and the woman bare a son, and called his name Samson; and the child grew, and the Lord blessed him. Judg. xiii. 2, 3, 24.\n\nAnd Bilhah, Rachel's maid, conceived again, and bare Jacob a second son, and Rachel said, \u05e0\u05e4\u05ea\u05d5\u05dc\u05d9 \u05d0\u05dc\u05d4\u05d9\u05dd \u05e0\u05e4\u05ea\u05dc\u05ea\u05d9 \"By the agency (Heb. twistings) of the Aleim I am intwisted with my sister\u2014i. e. my family is now interwoven with my sister's, and has a chance of producing the promised seed.\" See Park. Heb. Lex. \u05e4\u05ea\u05dc.\nWhen Leah saw that she had left off bearing\u2014she took Zilpah her maid, and gave her to Jacob to wife. And Zilpah, Leah's maid, bare Jacob a son.\nAnd Zilpah, Leah's maid, bare Jacob a second son.\n\nFrom henceforth all generations shall call me blessed. V. M. Luke i. 48.\n\nAnd Leah said\u2014Happy am I, for the daughters will call me blessed.\nAnd God hearkened unto Leah, and she conceived and bare Jacob a fifth son. And Leah said, God hath given me my hire, because I have given my maiden to mine husband. And God remembered Rachel, and God hearkened to her, and opened her womb, and she conceived and bare a son, and said, God hath taken away my reproach. And she called his name Joseph, and said, The Lord shall add to me another son. Gen. xxx. 24. See also Gen. xxxv. 9\u201312.\n\nThere was a certain priest named Zacharias, and his wife's name was Elizabeth\u2014and they had no child, because Elizabeth was barren, and they both were well stricken in years. And the angel said unto him, Fear not, Zacharias, for thy prayer is heard, and thy wife shall bear thee a son, and thou shalt call his name John\u2014and he shall be great in the sight of the Lord, &c. And his wife Elizabeth conceived, and said\u2014Thus hath the Lord dealt with me in the days wherein he looked on me to take away my reproach among men. And she brought forth a son, and his name was called John, &c. Luke i. 5, 7, 13, 25, &c.\n\nThere was a certain man of Ramathaim Zophim (a Levite of the family of the Kohathites, see 1 Chron. vi. 33, 34, &c.) and his name was Elkanah. And he had two wives\u2014the name of one was Hannah\u2014and of the other Peninnah.\u2014Peninnah had children; Hannah had no children\u2014the Lord had shut up her womb.\u2014And her adversary also provoked her sore for to make her fret, because the Lord had shut up her womb. And she was in bitterness of soul, and prayed unto the Lord, and wept sore\u2014and she vowed a vow, and said, O Lord of Hosts, if thou wilt indeed look upon the affliction of thine handmaid, and remember and not forget thine handmaid, but wilt give unto thine handmaid a man-child, I will give him unto the Lord all the days of his life\u2014&c. Then Eli (the high priest) answered, and said\u2014Go in peace, and the God of Israel grant thee thy petition that thou hast asked of Him, &c. Wherefore it came to pass, when the time was come about, after Hannah had conceived, that she bare a son, and called his name Samuel, saying, Because I have asked him of the Lord, &c. And Hannah said\u2014For this child I prayed, and the Lord hath given me my petition that I asked of Him. 1 Sam. i. 1, &c. See also chap. ii. 20, 21, 26.\n\nSong of the Virgin Mary.\n\nHannah's Song.\n\nMy soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour.\nFor he hath regarded the low estate of his handmaiden.\n\nMine heart rejoiceth in the Lord, mine horn is exalted in the Lord, my mouth is enlarged over mine enemies, because I rejoice in thy salvation.\n\nHe that is mighty hath done to me great things, and holy is his name.\n\nThere is none holy as the Lord.\n\nAnd His mercy is on them that fear Him from generation to generation.\n\nHe will keep the feet of His saints.\n\nHe hath shewed strength with His arm, He hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.\n\nThe bows of the mighty men are broken, and they that stumbled are girt with strength\u2014the wicked shall be silent in darkness.\n\nHe hath put down the mighty from their seats, and hath exalted them of low degree.\n\nThe adversaries of the Lord shall be broken to pieces\u2014the Lord maketh poor and maketh rich, He bringeth low and lifteth up.\n\nHe hath filled the hungry with good things, and the rich He hath sent empty away.\n\nThey that are full have hired themselves out for bread, and they that were hungry ceased.\n\nHe hath holpen His servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy, &c.\n\nHe shall give strength unto His king, and exalt the horn of His anointed.\n\n\u00a0\n\nThe conclusion of all which appears to be, that either we do not worship the same God which the Jews did, or the God we worship doth not disallow nor disapprove polygamy. Miraculous blessings bestowed of God, in answer to the prayers of people living in open breach of His law, are totally contradictory to the whole scripture-character of God. The way of the wicked is an abomination to the Lord, but the prayer of the upright is His delight. Prov. xv. 9. He that turneth away his\near from hearing the law, even his prayer shall be abomination. Prov. xxviii. 9. Comp. Ps. lxvi. 18, 19, 20.\n\nIn what has been said on the subject of this chapter on polygamy, I should think arguments enough have been brought to prove that it was not sinful in the sight of God, under the Old Testament, and that the blessed God, by becoming man (1 Cor. xv. 47.) and condescending to appear on earth for us men, and for our salvation, in the likeness of sinful flesh, Rom. viii. 3; made of a woman made under the law, Gal. iv. 4; came not to destroy the law, by lessening the security which it was evidently made to afford the weaker sex against the stronger. That the treachery which was so positively forbidden, and so amply provided against, among the Jews, should be allowed to Christians (who are children of the same Heavenly Father, subjects of the same Almighty King) and even commanded them in some cases, is a monstrous supposition!\u2014repugnant to the positive institution of God, They shall be one flesh\u2014contradictory to all sound reason\u2014and abhorrent from every generous, honourable, and humane principle. Whatever the situation of the man may be, the danger arising to the woman from the consequences of seduction and dereliction is equal, therefore equally provided against by the law of God.\n\nHow polygamy became reprobated in the Christian church is easily accounted for, when we consider how early the reprobation of marriage itself began to appear. The Gnostics, whom Epiphanius derives from Simon Magus, condemned marriage in the most shocking terms, saying that it was \"of the Devil;\" but this was to support themselves in their horrible tenet, that \"all women should be common amongst them.\" Better people soon afterwards condemned marriage as unlawful to Christians, and this under a wild notion of greater purity and perfection, in keeping from all intercourse with the other sex. This opinion divided itself into many sects, and gave great trouble to the church before it was discountenanced. Still second marriages were held infamous, and called no better than lawful whoredom. Nay, they were not ashamed to write, that, \"a man's first wife being dead, it was adultery, and not marriage, to take another.\" Amidst all this, polygamy must necessarily receive the severest anathema\u2014for if it could be supposed unlawful for Christians to marry at all, and then so detestable to marry a second time, after the death of a wife, the having two at once must be, a fortiori, accounted more horrible than all the rest. All these several opinions had texts of scripture pressed into their service, by the ingenious zeal of their several abettors: the Old Testament was of no authority in the matter; the New Testament was made to speak what it did not mean, concerning what it does mention; and construed so as to condemn what, when rightly understood, it does not mention. The two first of these conceits about marriage have been long exploded, except with respect to the Romish clergy, who, to this hour, are forbidden to marry. But polygamy throughout the Christian church, the western part of it at least, is looked upon as a sin against the seventh commandment, though there is not a syllable in the whole Bible which makes it so. When I mention polygamy, I would always be understood to mean on the man's side, for on the side of the woman, the whole scripture shews it to be a capital offence.\n\nWhy this distinction should be made, He best knows who made it; but, in part, we may suppose, from the consequences attending on one side, which cannot be on the other; these are finely touched by the strong and masterly pen of the son of Sirach\u2014Ecclus xxiii. 22, 23. Having spoken of the adulterer, he saith, (agreeably to Lev. xx. 10.) This man shall be punished in the streets of the city, (see also Deut. xxii. 24.) and where he suspecteth not he shall be taken. He then proceeds\u2014Thus shall it go also with the wife that leaveth her husband, and bringeth in an heir by another\u2014For, first\u2014she hath disobeyed the law of the Most High\u2014secondly\u2014she hath trespassed against her own husband\u2014and thirdly\u2014she hath played the whore in adultery, and brought children by another man. She shall be brought out into the congregation, and inquisition shall be made of her children.\u2014Her children shall not take root, and her branches shall bring no fruit. She shall leave her memory to be cursed, and her reproach shall not be blotted out. Though these be the words of an apocryphal writer, they deserve the highest regard, because they are exactly consonant with the law of God. But it is very extraordinary, that in a discourse against fornicators, whoremongers, and adulterers (which commences, ver. 16. and is continued to ver. 26. inclusive) not a word should be said against polygamists, if polygamy were a sin as much on the man's side as on the woman's.\u2014He most likely would not have passed it over in silence had there been any law against it.\n\nHis description of the adulteress is very fine, and the aggravations of her offence, by bringing forth a spurious issue, strongly marked; but they are such as cannot exist on the man's side, and therefore hence, in part at least, arises the difference.\n\nWhat he says of the adulterer is also remarkably striking, and evidently taken from Job xxiv. 15. We lose much of its propriety, from our mis-translation of \u1f49 \u1f08\u03bd\u03b8\u03c1\u03c9\u03c0\u03bf\u03c2 \u03c0\u03b1\u03c1\u03b1\u03b2\u03b1\u03b9\u03bd\u03c9\u03bd \u1f00\u03c0\u03bf \u03c4\u03b7\u03c2 \u03ba\u03bb\u03b9\u03bd\u03b7\u03c2 \u1f00\u03c5\u03c4\u03bf\u03c5\u2014A man that breaketh wedlock, we call it; but this is not a translation of the words\u2014they literally are\u2014the man who transgresseth from out of his bed\u2014like the murderer, Job xxiv. 14. who, rising with the light, is in the night as a thief\u2014So the adulterer. Saith Job\u2014the eye of the adulterer waiteth for the twilight, saying, No eye shall see me, and disguiseth his face. The son of Sirach represents the adulterer as \"leaving his bed, stealing out of it, as it were, to execute his plans of wickedness, at a time when he thinks the unseasonableness of the hour, and the darkness of the night, will conceal him from the eyes of all.\" This man is, in Job, called \u05e0\u05d0\u05e3\u2014an adulterer, or defiler of other men's wives.\u2014That the same character is meant by the son of Sirach, is evident, from comparing, Ecclus xxiii. 18. with Job xxiv. 15; and the punishment said to await him, Ecclus xxiii. 21. with that assigned to adulterers, Lev. xx. 10. Deut. xxii. 22, 24.\n\nAnother reason of the difference, that is to say, why polygamy should be allowed to the man, and no such liberty belong to the woman, arises also from the inferiority evidently stamped upon the woman by the God of nature, by whom she is placed under the absolute power of her husband, so that she cannot dispose of her person, on any occasion, or to any purpose whatsoever, to any other but to himself, as may appear from Gen. iii. 16. She is not at liberty to make any contract whatsoever, without her husband's consent\u2014even religious vows are utterly void; she cannot perform them if the husband disagreeth thereto. Numb. xxx. 8. The wife is\u2014\u1f51\u03c0\u03bf\u03c4\u03b1\u03c3\u03c3\u03bf\u03bc\u03b5\u03bd\u03b7 \u03c4\u03c9 \u1f31\u03b4\u03b9\u03c9 \u1f00\u03bd\u03b4\u03c1\u03b9\u2014subjected to her own proper husband, 1 Pet. iii. 1. The apostle Paul uses the same expression, when he says, Rom. xiii. 1. Let every soul be subjected (\u1f51\u03c0\u03bf\u03c4\u03b1\u03c3\u03c3\u03b5\u03c3\u03b8\u03c9) to the higher powers. But none of these things are said on the side of the man\u2014even in teaching in the congregation, the apostle marks out the woman's inferiority\u20141 Tim. ii. 11. Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection\u2014I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence. Again, the same apostle saith\u2014The head of the woman is the man\u2014the man is not of the woman, but the woman of the man; neither was the man created for the woman, but the woman for the man. 1 Cor. xi. 3, 8, 9. It appears then from the nature of things, as constituted by the Creator himself, that the man hath powers which the woman hath not, and therefore may use a freedom of action which the woman cannot. The apostle's saying, the man was not created for the woman, but the woman for the man, reminds me of the manner in which Christ vindicated his disciples, when they were accused by the Pharisees of breaking the sabbath, because they plucked some ears of corn on the sabbath-day\u2014He said unto them, The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath, wherefore the Son of Man is Lord also of the sabbath. The reader may transfer this argument, by parity of reason, to the other subject which we have been speaking of; and it furnishes a proof, by no means inconclusive, why a man may be a polygamist, but a woman not.\n\nBut we may go farther, and observe, that without this difference, the grand ends of God's moral government, with respect to the commerce of the sexes, would not have been provided for. The very laws themselves, which were made to secure those ends on both sides, must have become mere cyphers. If polygamy had been permitted on the woman's side, what must become of that law\u2014Deut. xxii. 22. If a man (\u05db\u05d9 \u05d0\u05d9\u05e9\u2014if any man whatsoever) be found lying with a woman married to an husband, then they shall both of them die, both the man that lay with the woman, and the woman. So thou shalt put away evil from Israel? If the having more wives than one at a time had been forbidden the man, what, in numberless instances, must have become of Deut. xxii. 28, 29. If a man (\u05db\u05d9 \u05d0\u05d9\u05e9 as before\u2014if any man whatsoever) find a damsel that is a virgin which is not betrothed\u2014and lie with her\u2014she shall be his wife; because he hath humbled her, he may not put her away all his days? The first of these laws (as that of Lev. xx. 10.) was apparently to secure the man against the treachery of the woman\u2014the second (as Exod. xxii. 16.) to secure the woman against the treachery of the man\u2014and both to secure the world from that confusion and mischief which must be brought upon it (and are daily brought upon it by our disregard of these laws) by the treachery of either.\n\nAs the woman had the business of parturition allotted to her, she must necessarily be looked upon as the repository of those bonds and cements of human society, without which it cannot subsist; such as family descents, pedigrees, genealogies, inheritances, and all communications and distinctions of relationship. Therefore the Creator did, in his infinite wisdom, set bounds to the commerce of the sexes, on the part of the woman, which could not be passed under pain of death.\n\nWhoredom and fornication are, for the same reasons, also inimical to those bonds of human society above-mentioned, introductory of all manner of confusion and wickedness, inconsistent with the law of marriage, and the probable causes of ruin and destruction to the female sex.\u2014Therefore, as seduction and dereliction must, in the very nature of things, lead to these, the positive law of God forbids any man to take a virgin, and then abandon her.\n\nAs to what has been said touching the harmony of the Old and New Testaments, and the perpetual obligation of the moral law as to its immutability, so that what it once forbad it always forbids, and what it did not forbid can never be forbidden\u2014it is a point of such infinite consequence, as to deserve a recapitulation and as I cannot sum up the matter in words more clear and forcible, than our church has done in her seventh article, I will introduce the conclusion of this chapter with that sound and scriptural account of the matter:\u2014\n\n\"The Old Testament is not contrary to the New; for both in the Old and New Testament everlasting life is offered to mankind by Christ, who is the only mediator between God and man. Wherefore they are not to be heard, which feign that the old fathers did only look for temporary promises.\n\n\"Although the law of God, given from God by Moses, as touching ceremonies and rites, do not bind Christian men; nor the civil precepts thereof ought, of necessity, to be received into any commonwealth\u2014yet, notwithstanding, no Christian man whatsoever is free from the obedience of the commandments which are called moral.\"\n\nNo one can consider aright the divine institution of marriage, and not see that it is founded in the very nature of things, and that by the God of nature. This is as self-evident, as that if mankind were to increase and multiply, and replenish the earth, there must be an appointed means by which this was to be brought to pass. Therefore the laws concerning marriage cannot be reckoned a mere object of those rites and ceremonies which were to vanish away. Heb. viii. 13.\n\nNor can they be reckoned among the objects of that civil polity, which was only calculated for the government of a particular people, in a particular part of the world, and that under particular circumstances, such as never were or can be known to any other people on the earth\u2014unless marriage itself can be supposed to be confined to them, and not equally to concern the whole human race.\n\nThe moral law hath therefore marriage as its object, as concerning, in the highest and most material points, the moral actions of men. This clearly appears, not only from the very nature of the thing itself, but from the very words of the seventh commandment\u2014Thou shalt not commit adultery; and again of the tenth\u2014Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife. These are moral laws, equally binding at all times\u2014in all places\u2014over all persons. And as the seventh commandment is a moral law founded on the divine institution of marriage itself, so are all the expositions of it which are to be found in the scripture, unless we can be absurd enough to imagine, that the letter of a law can be of a moral nature, and that the sense, meaning, and intendment of it are only of a ceremonial or civil tendency.\n\nWhat is meant by the word \u05e0\u05d0\u05e3\u2014adultery, is not to be determined by the conceits, inventions, customs, or laws of men, but by the mind and will of God, as revealed to us in the precepts and examples which are recorded in His word for our instruction; and especially from the uniform and unvaried idea annexed to the use of that word throughout the writings of Moses and the prophets. If these have failed in giving us the true sense of it, then is it not true that their writings are profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction (\u1f10\u03c0\u03b1\u03bd\u03bf\u03c1\u03b8\u03c9\u03c3\u03b9\u03bd\u2014the amendment of what is wrong) for instruction in righteousness, so that the man of God (i. e. the believer) might be perfect, thoroughly furnished (both as to knowledge and practice\u2014nothing less can be the sense of \u1f00\u03c1\u03c4\u03b9\u03bf\u03c2) unto all good works, 2 Tim. iii. 16, 17. The scriptures which are spoken of in this passage are the scriptures of the Old Testament, or those holy scriptures which Timothy had known from a child\u2014before a single line of the New Testament was written, ver. 15. If therefore polygamy does not stand recorded as a sin against the law of God, either by Moses or the prophets, but as a matter owned, blessed, allowed of God, we must say, unless we pretend to be wise above what is written, that it is no sin, for sin is the transgression of the law. As to the common notion, that it was made sinful by some new law of Christ, and absolutely forbidden in the New Testament, it is one of the three pious lyes which owed their invention to the ignorant zeal of some professors and writers in the very early ages of Christianity. One was \"\u2014that marriage was a carnal thing, inconsistent with the purity and perfection of a Christian, and therefore unlawful under the gospel.\"\u2014Another was\u2014that if a man, on the death of his wife, married again, it was no better than adultery.\"\u2014The third, begotten between the other two, was\u2014that \"polygamy, though allowed to the Jews under the Old Testament, is forbidden to Christians under the New.\" The two first (among the Protestants at least) are come to nought\u2014the last is as generally believed among Christians of all sorts, as the lye of transubstantiation is in the Romish church. And there can be little doubt, but that a man who has two wives, under whatever circumstances they might be taken, would be looked upon to be as impious, and as much a child of the devil, among us, as a person would be among the Papists, who wickedly refused to give up his outward senses, and to believe that a small piece of wafer, after certain words said over it by a priest, is the body, flesh, blood, and bones, of a man six feet high\u2014or as a priest, bishop, or pope, who married at all.\n\nAs these things will be farther considered under the head of Superstition, I will now hasten to the examination of a notion, which I fear is too common among us, and on which what is usually said and thought on the subject of polygamy, is for the most part built; I mean that of representing Christ as appearing in the world, as \"a new lawgiver, who was to introduce a more pure and perfect system of morality, than that of the law which was given by Moses.\"\u2014This horrible blasphemy against the holiness and perfection of God's law, as well as against the truth of Christ, who declared that He came not to destroy the law, but to fulfil it\u2014this utter contradiction both of the law and the gospel\u2014was the foundation on which the heretic Socinus built all his other abominable errors. From whence he had it, will appear in the sequel. In the mean time, I cannot help stopping a while to lament the progress which Socinianism is daily making among us\u2014with many, among the Dissenters especially, it is called new light\u2014but, thank God! there are yet some remaining, who call it by its true name\u2014old darkness\u2014and as such oppose it.\u2014As it is coincident with the main subject of the following chapter, it will fall in my way to say something, which I hope will thoroughly apprize the reader of the mischiefs which must result from Socinianism in all its shapes. In the course of what I shall have to say, it will appear, that, so far from Christ's ever condemning polygamy, which, as a new lawgiver, he is supposed to have done, He never mentioned it during the whole course of His ministry, but left that, as He did all other moral actions of men, upon the footing of that law under which He was made, and to which He, for us men, and for our salvation, became not only subject, but even obedient unto death. Phil. ii. 8.\n\nUpon the whole, I take the truth to be, that the first general institution of marriage, accompanied with the first general blessing, is to be found in those words of Gen. i. 28, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth.\u2014The special manner of this, together with the indissolubility of the obligation created by it between the parties, is revealed, Gen. ii. 24. where it is said\u2014A man shall be joined\u2014\u05d3\u05d1\u05e7\u2014\u03c0\u03c1\u03bf\u03c3\u03ba\u03bf\u03bb\u03bb\u03b7\u03b8\u03b7\u03c3\u03b5\u03c4\u03b1\u03b9\u2014agglutinatus erit\u2014to his woman\u2014and they, as in consequence thereof, shall become one flesh, i. e. inseparable from each other. Gen. iii. 16. reveals the entire subordination and subjection of the wife to the husband\u2014and the rest of the Bible shews us, that virgins could not be seduced, and taken as appetite might prompt, and then abandoned and forsaken as licentiousness might incline\u2014but that monogamous and polygamous contracts were equally valid and binding, equally lawful as to the inheritableness of the issue, and all other marks of legitimacy, that is to say, on the man's side; but that, on the woman's, polygamy was, for the most apparently-wise reasons, forbidden under pain of death.\n\nWhile this system was reverenced and observed, we read of no adultery, whoredom, and common prostitution of women among the daughters of Israel: no brothels, sreet-walking, venereal disease: no child-murder, and those other appendages of female ruin, which are too horrid to particularize. Nor were these things possible, which, since the revocation of the divine system, and the establishment of human systems, are become inevitable. The supposing our blessed Saviour came to destroy the divine law, or alter it with respect to marriage, is to suppose Him laying a foundation for the misery and destruction of the weaker sex; whereas no being less wicked than Satan himself, could ever have devised the almost total departure from God's law, which, from even the earliest ages of the church, since the Apostles' times, is to be found among the Christians.\n\nI now put an end to this long chapter, in which polygamy, divested of all the nonsense of human reasonings, is set in its true scriptural light, as not sinful in itself, but, in some cases, highly expedient\u2014in others\u2014duty; and in this last view of it, forming one link in that divine chain of heavenly legislation, on which the security and protection of the weaker sex is suspended; it being, upon the footing of God's law, as highly criminal for one man as another, to seduce and abandon to prostitution and ruin, those who have a most indefeasible claim upon him for their safety and support.\n\nIf among us, as among the Jews, and as formerly in France, and now in some other parts of the world, a single man, be his rank and station what they may, was constrained to marry publicly the woman he seduces; and if the spirit of the divine law was so far complied with, as to compel the man already married, to give security for the maintenance and provision of such woman as he seduces, and, if his present engagement shall determine, to marry publicly her whom, in God's account, he has married privately\u2014it would be such a check upon the licentiousness of mankind\u2014such a restraint upon what is called gallantry\u2014such a security for female chastity\u2014and such a preservative against prostitution, as might make those who live to see it say\u2014\n\nJam redit & virgo, redeunt Saturnia Regna.\nVirg.\nNow Justice and the Golden Age again return.\n\nDoubtless, irregularities there always were, and always will be, while human nature is human nature. Still, a vast difference there must be found, between a system which is formed as a check to the lust, treachery, and cruelty of mankind, and one which, in numberless instances, lets them loose to act without controul.\n\n\u00a0\n\n\u00a0\n\nAPPENDIX to CHAP. IV.\n\n\u00a0\n\nSINCE the preceding chapter went to the press, the author has been favoured with a transcript from a tract in the British Museum, which contains the whole of Bishop Burnet's opinion on polygamy. The reader has before seen it partially quoted; but the whole is here inserted verbatim.\n\n\"IS polygamy in any case lawful under the gospel?\n\n\"For answer. It is to be considered, that marriage is a contract founded upon the laws\nof nature, its end being the propagation of mankind; and the formality of doing it by churchmen, is only a supervenient benediction, or pompous solemnizing of it; and therefore the nature of marriage, and not any form used in the celebration of it, is to be considered. It is true, the case is harder, when any is married by such a form, as binds him to one woman, than where he is bound only by the tie of marriage, conceived in general terms.\n\n\"The case of mankind, since the fall, varies very much from what it was in innocence; for then the soundness of their bodies, and purity of their minds, did keep out of the way all the hazards of barrenness, sickness, uncleanness, or crossness of humours, which made the former law not so proper for mankind; yet still a single marriage was the perfecter, as being nearer the original.\n\n\"Before the flood, we find Lamech a polygamist; such were Abraham and Jacob after it; not that this was not indulged by Moses; for all that he did relating to these affairs, was only to allow a divorce, which was a proviso for the hardness of the hearts of the Israelites. Every man was bound to maintain whom he had first married; lest, therefore, such as designed another wife, and could not maintain a former, might use indirect ways to be rid of them, this fair one of divorce was allowed by God; and their polygamy was practised, without either allowance or controul, as the natural privilege of mankind. Neither is it any where marked among the blemishes of the patriarchs; David's wives, and store of them he had, are termed by the prophet, God's gift to him: yea, polygamy was made in some cases a duty by Moses's law;\u2014when any died without issue, his brother, or nearest kinsman, was to marry his wife, for raising up seed to him; and all were obliged to obey this, under the hazard of infamy, if they refused it; neither is there any exceptions made for such as were married. From whence I may faithfully conclude, that what God made necessary in some cases to any degree, can in no case be sinful in itself; since God is holy in all His ways.\n\n\"But it is now to be examined, if it is forbidden by the gospel. It is certain, that our Lord designed to raise mankind to the highest degrees of purity and chastity; and therefore our Lord and St. Paul do prefer a single life to a married state , as that which qualifies us for the kingdom of heaven, and was loaded with the fewest incumbrances; and by this rule, a single marriage being next to none at all, was certainly more suitable to the gospel,\" [he means the times of the gospel.] \"But a simple and express discharge of polygamy is no where to be found.\n\n\"It is true, our Lord discharges divorces, except in the case of adultery; adding, that whosoever puts away his wife upon any other account, commits adultery: so St. Luke and St. Matthew in one place have it\u2014or commits adultery against her: so St. Mark has it\u2014or causes her to commit adultery: so St. Matthew in another place.\n\n\"'If it be adultery then to take another woman after an unjust divorce, it will follow that the wife has that right over the husband's body, that he must touch no other.'\u2014This is indeed plausible, and it is all that can be brought from the New Testament, which seems convincing; yet it will not be found of weight.\n\n\"For it is to be considered, that if our Lord had been to antiquate polygamy, it being so deeply rooted in the men of that age, confirmed by such fashions and unquestioned precedents, and riveted by so long a practice, he must have done it plainly and authoritatively, and not in such an involved manner, as to be sought out of his words by the search of logick.\n\n\"Neither are these dark words made more clear by any of the apostles in their writings: words are to be carried no farther, than the design upon which they were written will lead them to; so that our Lord being, in that place, to strike out divorce so explicitly, we must not, by a consequence, condemn polygamy; since it seems not to have fallen within the scope of what our Lord does there disapprove.\n\n\"Beside, the term adultery may be taken in general, for such a breach of wedlock as is equivalent to adultery; and such is an unjust divorce. This may be the importance of the phrase used by St. Mark, viz.\u2014he committeth adultery against her; or all may be better explained by the phrase St. Matthew uses about it, in one place\u2014he causes her to commit adultery; since he that exposeth or tempteth to sin, shares in the guilt with the person that succumbs: and from this it appears, that polygamy is not declared adultery, neither in the place cited, nor any other that I know of.\n\n\"'But it is true that polygamy falls short of the intendment of marriage, in innocency, to which state, we that are under the gospel must return as near as it is possible.'\u2014It is to be confessed that polygamy was much condemned by the ancients, though I think I have met with something about it, that is little noticed; but of that I can adventure to say nothing at this distance from my books and papers.\n\n\"But all that being granted, it is to be considered that the antients were unjust and severe against marriage (itself), and did excessively favour the celibate, or single (life); so that in some places, they who married a second time, were put to do penance for it; and, indeed, both Jew and Gentile had run into such excess by their free commixtures, that it is no wonder if the holy men of those ages, being provoked to a just zeal, against such unjust practices, must have been carried, through immoderate swaying of the counterpoize, into some extremes on the other hand.\n\n\"Therefore, to conclude this short answer, wherein many things are hinted, which might have been enlarged into a volume, I see nothing so strong against polygamy, as to balance the great and visible imminent hazards that hang over so many thousands, if it be not allowed.\"\n\n\u00a0\n\nThe author cannot help expressing the highest satisfaction in finding, that in what he has written on the subject, he has had the honour of coinciding in so many points, with the sentiments of this learned, judicious, and excellent Bishop. But, on the other hand, he must express his sorrow, that his Lordship was so far \"distant from his books and papers,\" otherwise, it is most probable, that he would have produced some valuable testimonies from the antients, concerning what he hints at as\u2014\"little noticed.\"\n\nAnother thing is also to be lamented, which is, that the good Bishop did not proceed to explain what he meant by those \"great and visible imminent hazards,\" mentioned in the last paragraph.\n\nIf so small and inconsiderable a person as myself may venture to guess at the meaning of so considerable and great a man as Bishop Burnet, I should suppose, that his Lordship has here a reference to his observation before made, concerning the difference between the state of innocency, and that of mankind since the fall, and to those evils which he mentions as the consequences of the latter\u2014which could not exist during the former. Such as \"barrenness, sickness, uncleanness, or crossness of humour.\" What \"great, imminent, and visible hazards hang over thousands,\" from these causes, has been observed before, p. 175\u2013177. To vindicate, therefore, the lawfulness of polygamy is, as the world is now constituted, in such cases at least, to act as a good citizen of the world, by vindicating the \"natural privileges,\" and necessary rights of mankind; and it is, at the same time, to act as a sincere believer of divine revelation, to set forth, openly and without disguise, that heavenly system, by which those rights are established and secured. To vindicate also that universal law, which had the good of the whole for its object\u2014to shew that its wisdom and beneficence are too vast to be confined to a single people, or a single period of particular dispensation\u2014to free it from that obscurity which monks and priests, and other enthusiasts and fanatics, have involved it in, to the distress and destruction of millions\u2014is a task reserved alone for those, who, for the sake of truth, are willing to sacrifice their ease and reputation to the malevolence of ignorance and prejudice.\n\nReferences:\n\nErrata:","title":"Thelyphthora/Volume 1/Chapter 4","tradition":"scripture-revelation","translated_text":null,"word_count":43943}