{"collection":"scripture-revelation","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/wikisource_Thelyphthora_Volume_2_Chapter_6/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/wikisource_Thelyphthora_Volume_2_Chapter_6","id":"wikisource_Thelyphthora_Volume_2_Chapter_6","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_2/Chapter_6","summary":null,"tags":["Pages_using_ppoem_with_custom_stanza_classes","Subpages"],"text":"CHAP. VI.\n\nOf Divorce.\n\nSTILL on this subject, as on all the rest, we must keep the holy scriptures alone in our view; as the will of God, touching this, and all things else, is only to be known from the revelation which He hath been pleased to make of it in His word.\n\nThe first marriage we read of, was between our first parents Adam and Eve, and on that occasion, we find the will of the most High, with respect to the indissolubility of the marriage, declared by the mouth of Adam, Gen. ii. 23, 24\u2014This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man. Therefore (or, for this cause) shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall cleave unto his wife, and they shall be one flesh. These are not to be looked upon merely as the words of Adam, but of Him that made them male and female, declared by Adam. See Matt. xix. 4, 5; where Christ quotes this primary law of marriage, and absolute prohibition of divorce, thus\u2014Have ye not red, 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 be joined (\u03c0\u03c1\u03bf\u03c3\u03ba\u03bf\u03bb\u03bb\u03b7\u03b8\u03b7\u03c3\u03b5\u03c4\u03b1\u03b9) unto his wife, and they twain shall be one flesh. Comp. 1 Cor. vi. 15, 16. The conclusion which Christ draws from this institution is as follows\u2014Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh: what therefore God hath joined (\u03c3\u03c5\u03bd\u03b5\u03b6\u03b5\u03c5\u03be\u03b5\u03bd, yoked as it were) together, let not man put asunder. By this it appears, that when once a man and woman have become one flesh, they, by this act, though two distinct and independent persons before, are so indissolubly one, in consideration of the divine law, that neither the parties themselves, nor any other person, or power upon earth, can put them asunder. It is not by the ordinance of man that they are joined together, but by the ordinance of God; therefore our Saviour saith, What God hath joined together (by pronouncing them one flesh) let not man put asunder.\u2014But was this rule to be understood in so absolute a sense as to admit of no relaxation or exception whatsoever?\u2014No: We read of one, which was allowed to be a dissolution of the marriage-bond, and that was\u2014the woman's uniting herself to another man than her husband; this is the true scriptural idea of \u05e0\u05d0\u05e3\u2014adultery. The moment this happened, the husband was totally released from all obligation to her, or union with her; and, as appears also from the mind of God, afterwards declared in the farther promulgation, and more explicit revelation of His law, might not only put her away, but, if he chose to bring her to a public trial, have her, and the man who defiled her, put to death. This, as appears from the whole tenor of the law as delivered by God to Moses, and by him delivered and explained to the people, was the only legal cause of divorce, where the marriage was at first just and lawful. This certainly was, as well where the woman's act of incontinency was committed before marriage, and found out afterwards, as where it was committed afterwards.\n\nThe word \u03c0\u03bf\u03c1\u03bd\u03b5\u03b9\u03b1, which the Evangelist makes use of Matt. v. 32. and not \u03bc\u03bf\u03b9\u03c7\u03b5\u03b9\u03b1, which more particularly answers to the Hebrew \u05e0\u05d0\u05e3\u2014adultery, has occasioned some to think, that it relates to an act done by the woman before marriage, but found out afterwards, for which he might put her away, and not only that, but might have her stoned to death, if he chose to make her a public example, as appears Deut. xxii. 21. However this supposition may be true, yet it cannot be the whole truth, for the word must equally relate to an act done after marriage or espousals, as appears from Joseph's intention with regard to his espoused wife Mary .\u2014He being a just and holy man, and therefore not willing to marry a woman whom he thought to be an adulteress, yet unwilling to expose her to public shame, or to make her a public example, was minded to put her away privily. Matt. i. 19. I take \u03c0\u03bf\u03c1\u03bd\u03b5\u03b9\u03b1, which we render fornication, to be like the word \u1f00\u03ba\u03b1\u03b8\u03b1\u03c1\u03c3\u03b9\u03b1\u2014uncleanness, a general term inclusive of all illicit commerce between the sexes, of which adultery is a species; therefore used by our Lord to include every species of criminality in the wife, which is mentioned in the Old Testament: as\u2014First\u2014her having had commerce with another man before any betrothment, espousals, or marriage with her present husband. See Deut. xxii. 13\u201321. Secondly\u2014after being betrothed, ver. 23, 24. Thirdly\u2014after marriage, ver. 22. \u03a0\u03bf\u03c1\u03bd\u03b5\u03b9\u03b1 has evidently this sense, 1 Cor. v. 1. As Christ most probably spake in Hebrew, it is to be supposed, by the Evangelist's delivering to us the word \u03c0\u03bf\u03c1\u03bd\u03b5\u03b9\u03b1, that Christ expressed Himself by the word \u05d6\u05e0\u05d4, which signifies whoredom in general.\n\nWhen we speak of divorce, we must always pre-suppose a lawful marriage, I mean such a one as is lawful according to the law of God. Those which were forbidden of God in those positive laws, Deut. vii. 3. with respect to connections with the heathen, as well as those which we find prohibited Lev. xviii. by reason of consanguinity and affinity, were not only voidable, but void in themselves, after they were forbidden by those positive laws. But amongst all those laws, there is not the least trace of forbidding marriage, or enjoining divorce, on account of any pre-engagement whatsoever on the man's side\u2014nor was such a thing ever known, till the Church of Rome first invented, and then established it by Canon Law. Wherefore all our divorces on that account, which we derive from human invention and church-power, are without God's authority, therefore unlawful in His sight, as putting asunder those who ought not to be separated. Had the law of God forbidden a man to have more than one wife at a time, all but the first must have been put away, and that by the sentence of the magistrate, for the same reason that the Jews, in Ezra's time, were commanded to put away the idolatrous women whom they had married; because it would have been contrary to God's positive law to have kept them\u2014see before vol. i. p. 133. So John the Baptist told Herod, who had married his brother Philip's wife\u2014\"It is not lawful for thee to have her.\" Matt. xiv. 4. \u1f10\u03c7\u03b5\u03b9\u03bd \u03b1\u03c5\u03c4\u03b7\u03bd\u2014to retain her. He was doubtless bound to put her away, since God himself had, as it were, forbidden the banns (Lev. xviii. 16.) even supposing the brother had been dead; for he had a daughter by Herodias living, named Salome, who would have been heiress to Philip. Numb. xxvii. 7, 8. See Josephus, Ant. Lib. xviii. 6, 4. Doddridge, vol. i. 166. note a. But as Philip was then living, Herod also sinned against the seventh commandment, in taking her at first; and therefore it was unlawful for him to have her at all. So in the case of Abimelech, who had taken Sarai the wife of Abram, he is commanded to put her away, and restore her to her husband, on pain of death. Gen. xx. 7. In all cases where the taking was forbidden, as well in heathen and idolatrous, as in incestuous connections, the retaining seems to be unlawful, as a constant repetition, and continuation of the forbidden act: but where the taking is no where forbidden, there is no allowed cause of divorce, or putting away, except for the cause of fornication, or the woman's having suffered herself to be defiled by another man, either before or after their coming together.\n\nIf we take the words of the primary institution merely by themselves, and judge of them by their sound (as the Papists do\u2014Hoc est corpus meum\u2014in support of the ridiculous lye of transubstantiation) they may be said to intimate that a man shall have but one wife, not only at once, but, as some have contended, as long as he lives; and thus second marriages are forbidden: but if we consider them as explained by God himself in the subsequent parts of the scripture, they appear to mean that a man shall cleave to any and every woman that he marries, and not put her away except for fornication. I conclude this to be the import of the law, because, if it was meant to forbid polygamy, and to enjoin the divorce of a second woman taken, living a first, we should somewhere have met with an explicit determination of the matter; but such a thing, or even an hint or trace of it, is not to be found. So far from it, God, in that declarative law, Deut. xxi. 15. absolutely ratifies the second marriage as much as the first, not only by declaring the issue of the second equally inheritable, but even to take place of the other as to the right of the first-born, if born first. This could not be, if taking the second was a forbidden act; such second taking, being prohibited, would have been null and void, as in other instances, and the man would have been commanded to have put away the second wife and her children, as was done in the case of other forbidden contracts. See Ezra x. 3. The direct contrary appears, for on the footing of that law, the man could no more divorce the second than he could the first; God calls them both \u05e0\u05e9\u05d9\u05dd\u2014which word, though, when it stands by itself, it denotes the female sex in general, like the French Femmes, yet in the connection it stands here, like the word Femmes also, denotes women in a marriage relation, or wives as we translate it. God likewise determines the issue of both to be equally legitimate, by making them equally inheritable. This law was subsequent to the Adamic law, could not contradict it, therefore must be looked upon as entirely consonant with its whole intention; for God cannot contradict himself. That God made general laws subject to certain exceptions, on particular occasions, and for particular purposes, is very plain; we have an instance of this, Deut. xxv. 5. where a brother was to marry his brother's widow, though against the general law, Lev. xviii. 16; but this particular case was excepted out of that general law, for a particular purpose, which appears in the law itself (see before vol. i. chap. iv.) but where this was not the case, there the general law was to be observed. The permissions of divorce which respected the bondmaids, Exod. xxi. 11. the captive-women, Deut. xxi. 14. seem also exceptions to the general law; but these are things peculiar to the Jews at that time, and cannot concern us. Therefore, as we live under the general law against divorce, delivered Gen. ii. 24. which equally binds all mankind, it is most assuredly as unlawful to abandon one wife as another, except for the cause of fornication. All divorces of human invention, fall as much under the interdict of God's law now, as in the days of Christ's dispute with the Pharisees; wherefore a divorce, which declares the nullity of a polygamous marriage, is not only without all foundation from God's word, but is an arraignment of the wisdom and holiness of God, as well in permitting, as in ratifying, blessing, and owning such contracts to be valid in all respects. That He did all this is manifest, as hath at large been proved, nor is there a single instance to the contrary throughout the whole bible.\n\nThis matter is not a mere speculative point, but of the most important concern; for if women, taken by men already married, were not lawful wives in God's sight, then commerce with them was illicit, and the issue must be illegitimate, and, if so, uninheritable.\u2014Whither will this carry us? Farther, I dare say, than the most zealous anti-polygamists mean it should, even to the bastardizing the Messiah Himself. Unless an after-taken wife be a lawful wife to the man who takes her, notwithstanding his former wife be living, whether we take our Lord's genealogy on His supposed father's side with St. Matthew, or on His mother Mary's side with St. Luke, Solomon the ancestor of Joseph, and Nathan the ancestor of Mary, through whom our Lord's line runs back to David, being the children of Bathsheba (whom when David married he had also other wives by whom he had children) must fail in their legitimacy, consequently all that could be claimed from the common ancestor David must be defeated; for if there be a failure here, nothing can set it right even to the latest posterity. We must therefore either allow that polygamous marriages were valid and lawful in the sight of God, or deny Christ to be the son of David; for in the language of scripture, a bastard, or one corruptly born, is not a son . So the apostle, Heb. xii. 8. Then are ye bastards and not sons\u2014\u03bd\u03bf\u03b8\u03bf\u03b9 \u03ba\u03b1\u1f76 \u03bf\u1f50\u03c7 \u1f51\u03b9\u03bf\u1f76.\u2014Nor could he be hereditary king of Israel. To make out His title to this, all his ancestors up to David must be proved to be David's lawful and inheritable issue, for that is one meaning of the seed of David according to the flesh. Rom. i. 3; as we should say, in modern language\u2014heir of his body lawfully begotten. This could not be on any other footing than a polygamous marriage being as lawful as any other in the sight and judgment of the most high; otherwise Solomon was \u03bd\u03cc\u03b8\u03bf\u03c2 \u03ba\u03b1\u1f76 \u03bf\u1f50\u03c7 \u1f55\u03b9\u03bf\u03c2\u2014a bastard and not a son\u2014through whom must be derived the heirship to David on Christ's supposed father's side. So likewise was Nathan a bastard and not a son, through whom Christ's heirship to the throne of Israel must be derived on the side of His mother the Virgin Mary. It is sufficient to prove one link in the chain of Christ's genealogy from David faulty, to defeat all His title to the appellation of Son of David\u2014King of Israel. We might go farther, and say that Rehoboam, the immediate descendent from Solomon, was also a polygamist. He took Mahalah, then Abihail, then Maachah the daughter of Absalom (whom, it is said, he loved above all his other wives) by whom he had Abijah, his successor in the throne of Israel, and who stands on record as a lawful descendent of David. Matt. i. 7. See 2. Chr. xi. 18, 21, 22.\n\nWe might also reckon the good king Josiah among the polygamous kings of Judah; we read of two of his wives, 2 Kings xxiii. 31, 36. the name of one was Hamutal, the daughter of Jeremiah of Libnah, by whom he had Jehoahaz; and the name of the other was Zebudah, the daughter of Pedaiah, of Rumah, by whom he had Jehoiakim, the father of Jeconiah, who is found, Matt. i. 11, 12, in the line of Christ's ancestors from David. For the character of Josiah, see 2 Kings xxiii. 25. Like unto him there was no king before him, that turned to the Lord with all his heart, and with all his soul, and with all his might, according to all the law of Moses, &c.\n\nNow, to go no farther, if a polygamous marriage was unlawful, and of course null and void before God, then was not Christ legally descended of the house and lineage of David, but from a spurious issue, not only in the instances abovementioned, but also in others which might be mentioned. So that when Christ is supposed to condemn polygamy as adultery, contrary to the institution of marriage, and to the seventh commandment, He must at the same time be supposed to defeat his own title to the character of the Messiah, concerning whom God had sworn to David, that of the fruit of his loins, according to the flesh, He would raise up Christ to sit on his throne. See Acts ii. 30. with Ps. cxxxii. 11. The fruit of his loins in this place, and the seed which shall proceed out of thy bowels, 2 Sam. vii. 12. are expressed, 1 Chr. xxii. 9. by\u2014Behold a Son shall be born unto thee\u2014which, though primarily spoken of Solomon, ultimately points to Christ, as 2 Sam. vii. 14. with Heb. i. 5. demonstrably shew. Therefore Christ is emphatically styled the Son of David.\n\nHow would all this stand by our law? Decius, a nobleman of large estate, having this, as well as his honours, limited to him and the heirs of his body, marries Decia, by whom he has no issue; then, living Decia, he marries Portia, by whom he has a son. Decius dies. This son cannot inherit the estate and honours of Decius, as heir of his body, nor can this be done by any of the descendents of that son to the latest posterity. The reason of which is, that we deem a polygamous marriage no marriage at all, but null and void to all intents and purposes whatsoever; but not so the law of God: which is wisest and best, must be left to the consideration of the judicious reader.\n\nThere is a remarkable circumstance in David's history, which I cannot help observing on this occasion, which is, that the adulterous offspring of David by Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah, begotten by David during the life-time of Uriah, is mentioned twelve times in eight following verses, 2 Sam. xii. 15, &c. and is not once called \u05d1\u05df\u2014a son, but \u05d4\u05d9\u05dc\u05d3\u2014the man-child. The prophet Nathan indeed says, ver. 14.\u2014\u05d4\u05d1\u05df \u05d4\u05d9\u05dc\u05d5\u05d3 \u05dc\u05da\u2014the son which is born unto thee\u2014which carries with it a sharp reproof of David, who, before he came to a sight and sense of his sin, might have called it so himself; but after he was awakened to a due sense of his iniquity, not all the torments which he endured while the child was sick, nor the news of its death, ever induced him to call it \u05d1\u05e0\u05d9 \"my son,\" but \u05d4\u05d9\u05dc\u05d3\u2014the man-child. How differently did he express himself on the news of the death of Absalom, 2 Sam. xviii. 33. and 2 Sam. xix. 4. where eight times in two verses he repeats\u2014O Absalom, my son! my son! &c. I'll venture to suppose that, if David had been asked the cause of this distinction, we should have reason to think he saw a most important difference, between a child begotten in adultery, and a son begotten and born under polygamy.\n\nI think the prophet Nathan used the word son in an improper sense, as abovementioned, and for the reason there given; because the child, being begotten in adultery, was a bastard, not a son, in the legal sense of the word. \u05d1\u05df\u2014a son, is from the root \u05d1\u05e0\u05d4, which signifies to build, as an house, a city, &c. therefore \u05d1\u05df\u2014a son, is so called, in the true legal and proper sense of it, because he builds up or continues his father's house or family . The child therefore of David's adulterous intercourse with Bathsheba, was not properly a son. And the Holy Spirit, ver. 15, when He returns to the narrative of God's dealings with David for his iniquity, saith, And Jehovah struck, (not \u05d4\u05d1\u05df\u2014the son, but) \u05d4\u05d9\u05dc\u05d3\u2014the man-child, (see Exod. i. 17, 18.) which Uriah's wife bare unto David: and we do not find this unhappy offspring ever mentioned afterwards, either by David or his servants, by any other name. We use the word son much in the same sense with the Hebrew \u05d1\u05df, to denote lawful issue. If a man makes a will, and leaves his estate and effects to his son or sons, no bastard could take under this description, the word son only denoting lawful issue. Hence no bastard can have any ancestors to whom he can inherit or be an heir\u2014but, as saith the apostle, Gal. iv. 7. If a son then an heir, which explains what he means (Rom. viii. 17.) by saying\u2014If children then heirs, &c.; for it is as true in the scriptures as in our law\u2014\"qui ex damnato coitu nascuntur, inter liberos non computantur\"\u2014\"those who are born from illicit commerce are not reckoned amongst children.\" It follows, therefore, that our Lord's ancestors, Solomon, Nathan, Abijah, &c. in the direct line from David, must all be deemed of God the issue of lawful marriage, otherwise He is not the Son of David\u2014the King of Israel. The lawfulness of polygamy must of course be established, or the whole of Christianity must fall to the ground, and Christ not be He that was to come, but we must look for another. Matt. xi. 3.\n\nOur divorces, caus\u00e2 pr\u00e6contract\u00fbs, or because of an antecedent contract on the man's side, are without the divine authority, and stand wholly on the inventions of men upon the subject of polygamy; these originate from the received notion that though polygamy was \"allowed under the Old Testament, it is forbidden under the law of the New Testament;\"\u2014wherefore all polygamous contracts are null and void in themselves, and the parties entering into them are to be divorced. But as there is no law in the New Testament which is not in the Old Testament, the latter must for ever remain as the invariable rule of right; wherefore all divorces whatsoever, which have not their grounds and reasons in the divine law which was delivered by Moses, are encroachments on the divine prerogative, and amount to the sin of\u2014putting asunder those whom God hath joined together.\n\nPolygamy on the man's side (for that is the sense in which I would be understood to use the word throughout this whole book) is no cause of divorce, either with regard to the former or to the after-taken woman; had it been so, we surely should have found some instance of it in the History of the Church, from Adam to the time of the prophet Malachi, that is to say, in the space of about 3600 years. Nor is it to be imagined, that God should suffer His own chosen people to have continued in the open and avowed practice of living with more wives than one, if the very first positive law, which is evidently the foundation of all others upon the subject, was intended to forbid or prevent such a practice; as little is it to be conceived, that He should make laws for the regulation of it, if He had forbidden the very thing itself to be done at all.\n\nAs to the divorces which Moses permitted, it was a mere toleration, to avoid worse consequencss, if those hard-hearted Jews had been forced to keep their hated wives. It was no repeal, or even suspension, of God's positive law, but only operated as an exemption from the censure and animadversion of the magistrate ; it was no less a breach of God's law in those who did it, than if such permission had never been given; as our Lord evidently shews in His discourse with the Pharisees, in his exposition and application of the antient law of God, and in the conclusion which He draws from it. So, though our ecclesiastical courts take upon them to pronounce a contract null and void, which is entered into with a second wife, living a first, yet this does not affect the matter in the sight of God, they are not the less husband and wife; for being joined together according to His institution, and thus being pronounced by Him one flesh\u2014the command is\u2014let not man put them asunder.\u2014All such divorces are therefore null and void, and as ineffectual to dissolve a marriage in the sight of God, as Moses's bill of divorcement was. On the footing of God's law, Jacob could no more have abandoned Rachel, his second wife, than Leah his first ; nor could Elkanah have any more divorced Hannah than Peninnah\u2014nor could King Jehoash have put away either of those wives which Jehoiada the high-priest had taken for him. Why? because God's primary law was, that a man shall cleave to his wife, and they shall be one flesh; or, as it is expressed in that explanatory passage, Deut. xxii. 29. She shall be his wife, because he hath humbled her, he may not put her away all his days. This positive command of God stands unrepealed, for the reason on which it is apparently founded must be the same for ever, and bears a direct and absolute testimony against all divorces of human invention, whether by those of old who made the law of God void through their traditions, and taught for doctrines the commandments of men, or by their successors of more modern date, and actually confines them to those cases only which are mentioned in the word of God. It cannot be shewn from that word, that a man's having a wife, and afterwards (living the first) marrying another, is a cause of divorce from either, or that such marriage was deemed null and void, or forbidden, or even found fault with, much less condemned, in any one single instance; but it is very easy to shew the direct contrary, that is to say, that where-ever any man received the person of a virgin into his possession, he (if she was not betrothed or espoused to another) by that single act made her his wife, and was absolutely forbidden to put her away all his days: this, let the man's situation be what it might. God made no difference, and those who do, not only have no authority but their own, but use that authority (like the Pharisees of old) in direct opposition to, and defiance of, God's express command. They may be said to make the hearts of those sad, whom God hath not made sad, Ezek. xiii. 22. by making that sinful which God hath not made sinful, (for where there is no law, there is no transgression) and this by their lyes\u2014and to strengthen the hands of the wicked, by releasing them from the indissoluble obligations which God's law lays them under, and thus facilitating the designs of seduction, lewdness, and debauchery, which God's law was evidently made to prevent.\n\nOne safe rule whereby we may judge of the laws delivered by Moses, as binding or not on Christian men, I take to be this\u2014namely\u2014the considerations on which such laws were given; and the reasons on which they are grounded. For instance\u2014the reason for establishing the ceremonial law, was to set out and shadow forth good things to come\u2014Heb. x. 1.\u2014therefore when those good things did come, that law had done its office, answered its end, therefore waxed old and vanished away. Heb. viii. 13. So there were many political institutions, adapted particularly, some to the situation of the Jews during their journeyings through the wilderness\u2014others to their subsequent abode in the land of Canaan\u2014calculated for their government with respect to the peculiarity of their situation, not only with regard to themselves, but to that of the nations about them. These being local, and peculiar to their dispensation, as well under the theocracy administered by Moses, Joshua, and the following judges, as under the government of their kings, are not binding on Christian men, whose situation, from the very nature of the thing, can never be the object of those local, or temporary statutes.\n\nBut when we find a law given, which is of perpetual and universal concern, such as relates to the preservation of millions from destruction\u2014to the defence of the weak against the strong, and the support of God's moral government in the world, in one of the greatest of all concerns to society, the commerce of the sexes, there, as the reasons of those laws can never cease, those laws themselves must be of universal and perpetual obligation. Otherwise it would be making laws which are not commensurate with the reasons on which they are founded, or, in other words, God's governing His people for a limited time, and then leaving them without any government but their own.\n\nWe admit that God's law still condemns whoredom, fornication, and adultery, and hold those marriages to be illegal, which the law of Moses hath made so, on account of affinity and consanguinity; but we renounce the positive law which binds for ever the virgin to the man who has humbled her, though this very law was evidently enacted to prevent those mischiefs which arise from seduction, and is, in the very terms of it, clearly in affirmance of that primary and universal law, They shall be one flesh: but as there is the same reason for the continuance of this law, as there was for giving it at first, namely to prevent whoredom and fornication, and all the mischiefs which are the consequences of taking women and then abandoning them, it is doubtless among those indelible statutes, which are as unalterable as the reasons on which the all-wise law-giver founded them. As nothing can make a marriage in God's sight but His own institution, so nothing can make a divorce lawful before Him but His own authority. To assert the contrary, is to set man's law above God's law; which is in effect to take part with the man of sin, the son of perdition, who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he, as God, sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God. 2 Thess. ii. 4. One character of this man of sin was, that he should think to change times and laws. Dan. vii. 25.\u2014Our Lord's opposite character to this is very apparent in all He said and did, but no where more so, than in what He said on the subject of divorce, in His dispute with the Pharisees, Matt. xix. 4, &c. He there shews from the divine law, what makes a marriage, and, taken in connection with chap. v. 32. what dissolves it, and authorizes divorce\u2014while we, like the Pharisees, make and unmake marriages just as we please, and, if we do but steer clear of a priest and an human ceremony, may take and put away as many women as we can seduce.\u2014Methinks a Jew might exclaim against us in the words of Shylock\u2014\u2014\u2014\"O father Abraham, what these Christians are!\"\n\nEspecially if he took his Bible, and contrasted the law of Heaven to our laws, as they now stand, relative to the subject of marriage.\n\nEven the antient Goths may serve to shame us for they obliged him who debauched a virgin, to marry her, if she was equal to him in rank; if not, he was constrained to give her a fortune equal to his own condition; if he could not give her such a fortune, he was condemned to death, because a woman thus dishonoured had no chance of obtaining an husband without a fortune, and because it was by marriage only that a state could be properly peopled. See Alex. Hist. Wom. vol. i. p. 148.\n\nSo in the business of adultery:\u2014the antient Germans allowed the husband to assemble the relations of the adulteress, in their presence to cut off her hair, strip her naked, turn her out of his house, and whip her from one end of the village to the other. A woman thus publicly exposed, could never wipe away the stain of so foul an infamy, nor could any motive ever prevail on another to marry her, though youth, beauty, fortune, and every advantage combined to allure him. Ib. p. 151. We Christians, reward the adulteress with a divorce, which enables her to become the legal property of the adulterer; that is to say, if the injured husband can afford the enormous expence of it, if not, he must be plagued with the woman during life. But to return\u2014\u2014\u2014\n\nThe mischiefs arising from unlawful divorce, (for such I call all putting away which is not authorized by the divine law) are dreadful to think of, none can enumerate them, unless they could distinctly count the miseries of prostitution. This can exist on no other foundation than men taking women, and putting them away just as and when they please; a practice as contrary to the primary law of nature established at the beginning, as to every thing Christ laid down on the footing of that law in His discourse with the Pharisees. I will allow, that, here and there, instances may be found of females, who owe their ruin to their own vicious inclinations, and who have nobody to blame but themselves; but for one instance of this sort, hundreds owe their destruction to the baseness and treachery of their seducers. The divine law was levelled at both these cases\u2014if a virgin played the whore by prostituting herself, it was a capital offence\u2014if a man enticed a virgin, &c. he was to endow her to be his wife, and not put her away all his days. While these laws were in force and vigour amongst the Jews, as to the observance of them, there could be no whore among the daughters of Israel, Deut. xxiii. 17. When Moses found it necessary in some cases, mentioned Deut. xxiv. 1. to suffer them to put away their wives, the same hardness of heart which occasioned this measure of policy, (for so it certainly was) led them to abuse it to purposes of great licentiousness, of which adultery grew to be the consequence, as may appear from Deut. xxiv. 4. a scripture little considered and understood, but the basis of what Christ said to the Pharisees, Matt. xix. 9.\u2014Still we read of no brothels, no public prostitutes of the daughters of Israel. If the wife, who was unjustly divorced, married another man, she committed adultery, the man who married her committed adultery, and the first husband, by being the cause, was liable to the guilt of such adultery; and though the severity of the law, as to the temporal consequences, was suspended by the bill of divorcement, yet in God's account the primary law of marriage was violated, the law of the seventh commandment broken, and the delinquents were answerable at the bar of the divine justice, as transgressors of the divine law. So said the law itself, as explained by Christ, Matt. v. 32. xix. 9. Mark x. 11. Luke xvi. 18.\n\nNow to apply this.\u2014The obligation created by the law of marriage is one and the same for ever, so must all those laws be, which God gave by Moses to explain and enforce it; as Exod. xxii. 16. Deut. xxii. 28, 29 . Our laws and customs may be compared to the bill of divorcement, which put asunder those whom God hath joined together; so that if a man take a virgin, (not betrothed) and lie with her, he is under no obligation to her whatsoever, he may put her away for every cause\u2014she may go and be another man's wife; and this, so far from being reckoned adultery, as by God's law it certainly is, is accounted a virtuous action; it makes her an honest woman, as the phrase is; such a marriage (though doubtless adultery, in the sight of God, in the man who by putting her away caused her to commit it\u2014in the man who marries her who is so put away\u2014and in the woman who marries another man, living the first who possessed her) is accounted a cleanser, as it were, of all former defilement, takes out the spots from the woman's character, and has been by some ludicrously styled \"the fuller's earth of reputation.\" All this monstrous wickedness is, as to the guilt of it, as much kept out of our sight, by our laws and customs, as the guilt of the divorcing Jews was kept out of theirs by the bill of divorcement. Well might our Blessed Lord say, Luke xvi. 15. That which is highly esteemed among men is abomination in the sight of God! The place which those words stand in, shews them to relate in a particular manner to what He says at the 18th verse, touching the point of unjust divorce, they stand in the same context; which plainly reaches from the words\u2014And He said unto them, ver. 15. to the end of ver. 18.\n\nAs to the consequences of such taking and unjust divorcement, with respect to far the greater number of seduced females, who (abandoned to all that infamy, want, disease, and even death itself can bring upon them) are\u2014\n\nAt once the prey and scorn of all they meet,\nSwarm in each brothel, and infest each street\u2014\n\nas I shall consider their situation, with its effects and consequences, both to themselves and the public, in the conclusion of this work, I will say no more of it here, but proceed to consider the commerce of the sexes, as it concerns society in general, and is therefore the object of human laws, more particularly with regard to marriage as a civil contract.\n\nReferences:","title":"Thelyphthora/Volume 2/Chapter 6","tradition":"scripture-revelation","translated_text":null,"word_count":6220}