{"collection":"scripture-revelation","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/wikisource_Thelyphthora_Volume_3_Chapter_13/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/wikisource_Thelyphthora_Volume_3_Chapter_13","id":"wikisource_Thelyphthora_Volume_3_Chapter_13","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_3/Chapter_13","summary":null,"tags":["Pages_using_ppoem_with_custom_stanza_classes","Subpages"],"text":"CHAP. XIII.\n\nObservations on the foregoing\u2014applied to the Subjects of this Treatise.\n\nHAVING now, by a long induction of particulars, shewn how the simple ordinance of marriage, and the Creator's whole plan for regulating the commerce of the sexes, have been taken out of His hands, into the hands of men, who have dared to throw aside those laws which the Most High \u0435stablished for the propagation, continuance, and preservation of the human species\u2014and more especially for the protection of female chastity, from the ravages of ungoverned and intemperate lust\u2014by vacating all obligation between the sexes, but what arises from human contrivance\u2014it may not be improper, in this place, to make such remarks upon the evidence, as will demonstrably shew, that our whole plan is founded in error, and originates in the usurped power of Popish churchmen over the commandments and ordinances of Jehovah, as by him delivered in his most holy word.\n\nIt will then follow, that those miseries of the female sex, which have been so largely spoken of in the preceding volumes, and which it is the author's grand end and aim to prevent, or remedy, on the basis of the divine law, are the natural and inevitable consequences of Popish usurpation over the understandings and consciences of mankind, and of the abolition of that holy system of security and protection to the weaker sex, which is afforded them by the solemn and unalterable statutes of Heaven.\n\nAs in what concerns the rest of the universe in general, so with respect to the human species, the laws of Heaven are simple, unmixed with dark and hard speeches, conceived in words clear, plain, and easy to be understood: there are no sophistical distinctions about what is or is not a marriage contract, thus leaving so important a concern vague and indeterminate, as to the matter or essence of it in God's sight; there is nothing, in this respect, said about priests, surplices, altars, churches, bells, mass-books, banns, licences, dispensations, outward religious rites and ceremonies, or of any one requisite to marriage but the Creator's own appointment.\n\nTherefore, whether these things were invented by Popes, Councils, Synods, or other human power in the church of Rome\u2014or adopted by John Doe and Richard Roe, as requisites in the Reformed churches\u2014they are equally out of the question, and can no more affect the validity and obligation of God's ordinance, than they can controul the course of the sun.\n\nThe general command, when God blessed the male and female, and said\u2014\"Increase and multiply\"\u2014was evidently to be done in a way which the Creator himself was to appoint; no device whatsoever of the creature could any more interfere in this, than in the disposal and government of the universe.\n\nThat which was to be the efficient cause of propagation, was to be also the matter of indissoluble union between the male and female, so as to make them one flesh, and to create an affinity or relationship between them, even above and beyond that of parents and children.\u2014Gen. ii. 24.\n\nThus the matter stood on the original institution\u2014but as the human race increased, it seemed good to infinite wisdom, to make such regulations as should obviate the sad consequences of men's forgetting the strictness of the matrimonial union, and taking upon themselves to dissolve its obligation. The seduction of virgins, and then forsaking them for others, must be attended with consequences of the most fatal kind to themselves, as well as to society, in the confusion that would be occasioned, not only with regard to the property of the women, but also as to their issue\u2014it was therefore ordained, that whereever the marriage-union had passed, it must continue; the man could not forsake the woman, nor the woman give herself to another, during the first man's life\u2014whether the man, taking the virgin, was before in possession of another or not, it made no difference in these respects, he having become one flesh with her, made her his unalienable property from that moment, and it was not only forbidden him to put her away, but she was to be put to death if she went to another; and any man who took a woman that had become another man's property, was also to suffer death. Thus were adultery and whoredom, seduction and prostitution, provided against in the most effectual manner.\n\nThus also was a line drawn, which none could pass with impunity; and, that it might be thoroughly understood, it was delivered to Moses by Jehovah, and afterwards committed to writing, for all future generations, in that sacred and indelible system of divine jurisprudence, which bore the most solemn command, that none should add to it, nor diminish from it.\n\nSuch was the law of that kingdom, which God established over Israel, when he delivered them out of \u00c6gypt\u2014bore them on eagles wings, and brought them to himself.\u2014See Exod. xix. 4, 5; where the Lord says\u2014Now therefore, if ye will obey my voice indeed, and keep my covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto me above all people: for all the earth is mine.\n\nWhat the Jews suffered for not obeying God's voice in his commandments, their history informs us, and our own daily observation, on their present situation, evidently shews us.\n\nWhen it pleased God, in the fullness of time, to take out of the Gentiles a people for his name (Acts xv. 14.) by sending his own Son, Jesus Christ, to redeem them from all iniquity, and to purify to himself a peculiar people zealous of good works\u2014one capital and gracious promise of the covenant ran thus\u2014\"I will put my laws into their minds, and in their hearts will I write them. I will be their God\u2014and they shall be my people. See Jer. xxxi. 33.\u2014As in another place he says\u2014I will call them my people that were not my people\u2014Hos. ii. 23. Rom. ix. 25, 26.\u2014His laws then, put into their minds, and written in their hearts, were to be the statutes of that kingdom within them\u2014see Luke xvii. 21.\u2014of which the Lord himself was to be Sovereign.\u2014No other laws do we ever hear mentioned, as the rule of their obedience, but the royal law (see James ii. 8.) which had once been delivered by Jehovah, in all the awful majesty of Godhead at Mount Sinai.\n\nJesus, the great prophet like unto Moses\u2014(see Deut. xviii. 15. Acts iii. 22.)\u2014preached these laws\u2014declared that not a jot or tittle should pass from them\u2014that he who broke the least of them, and taught men to do so, should be called least in the kingdom of heaven.\n\nNotwithstanding all this, as the Jews had made void these laws by their traditions, the Christians, as we have seen, soon began to tread in their steps, and to set up a kingdom of this world, which they called the church, over which man, not God, was to govern; and in which, not God's laws, but man's devices, were to be the rule of obedience. The consequences of this may be seen in the foregoing pages of this volume, and the dreadful effects are felt, severely felt, by thousands to this hour.\n\nThere arose men, who, under notions of piety and purity, found fault with every thing God had done, with respect to peopling the world; and plainly give us to understand, that if they had been to contrive the matter, they would either have done it by some other method, or have put an end to the human race. God had said\u2014\"Increase and multiply\"\u2014this they were for confining to the times of the Jewish dispensation, and exhorted Christians to live in celibacy, assuring them that this was \"as far above marriage as the heavens were higher than the earth.\"\n\n\"Some there were of the most eminent bishops, and most zealous Christians, who, having imbibed the philosophers opinions and prejudices against marriage, as an estate in itself unclean, and so troublesome, that it was utterly inconsistent with an holy and speculative life, did ever retain such an antipathy against it, especially in the clergy, that they were inveighing against them that were married, insomuch that they brought it into general dislike.\"\u2014See Du Pin, Cent. vii. p. 9. n. \"The council of Eliberis, anno 305, can. 33, actually decreed against priests marriage. Ib.\n\nHowever, with regard to the laity, in order to sanctify the unclean as well as they could, they invented priestly benediction, where people married but once; as for marrying a second time, it was called\u2014\"only a more specious and decorous kind of adultery\"\u2014and priests were forbidden so much as to be present at second marriages\u2014which, by the way, proves that marriages were yet looked upon as valid, without a priest, only they were deemed unholy, as wanting the benediction.\n\nIn process of time, this benediction of a priest paved the way for other religious forms of words, and farther ceremonies. The reader may easily acquaint himself with their progress, by reviewing the state of the preceding evidence\u2014Chap. xii.\n\nAt length, the laws of Jehovah, which held forth the primary institution, in its whole nature and essence, as making the male and female one flesh, and as conveying an exclusive property to the man in the woman, by the simple ordinance set down Gen. ii. 24. were so far laid out of the question, as not only to establish no obligation whatsoever, simply on the footing of the Creator's own fiat; but This, without the ceremonies which the church had invented and imposed, was stamped with infamy, called fornication and whoredom, and as such is looked upon in the Christian church to this hour!\n\nThat this was not effected, but by slow degrees, is very apparent from what passed in the fourth century; when Constantine, who was a great favourer of the views of the clergy, as well as a great promoter of their power, enacted a law to discourage concubinage, and to promote matrimony, as they called it; which law provided for the legitimacy of ante-nuptial children, i.\u00a0e. such as were born of parents who had lived together simply on the footing of God's own institution, and whose children began to be deemed bastards.\u2014\"The church,\" it is said, \"meddled not with these distinctions of the civil laws, but, regarding only the law of nature, approved every conjunction of one man with a woman, if it was with one woman, and perpetual; and the more so, because the holy scriptures employ the name of wife and of concubine indifferently.\" See before, vol. i. p. 31, n. 1st edit. p. 32. 2d edit.\n\nBy what has been said, it appears, that the notion of the unlawfulness of second marriages had taken deep root, and that polygamy, of course, was indiscriminately banished from the Christian plan of marriage\u2014but, that priestly benediction, and religious ceremony, were by no means then established, as of the essence of the lawful conjunction of the man and woman.\n\nAs churchmen increased in power and wealth, the love of both increased, in every age; and, as we have already seen, by the most pregnant testimonies, marriage was entirely taken, as it were, out of God's hands, into the hands of churchmen; the Hebrew scriptures, relative to the commerce of the sexes, for certain very cogent reasons, laid out of the case; and what the Popes, councils, synods, and human laws determined to be marriage, was marriage; what they determined to be whoredom and fornication, was so; what they determined to be bastardy, was bastardy; but what God had determined to be, or not to be, any of these, signified no more than if He had never determined any thing about the matter.\n\nThe great affair of all was the invention of Peter Lombard, when he found out marriage to be a sacrament\u2014this was the means of throwing it entirely into the hands of the priests, and making it an object of the jurisdiction of ecclesiastical judges. It gave the churchmen a power of celebrating it with what rites and ceremonies they thought proper, and to declare, that, on no other terms than what they had invented, could the parties be man and wife in the sight of God\u2014so that all this may be deemed pure, true, and genuine Popery\u2014which, by leaving men and women under no obligation to each other, but on the footing of what was afterwards finally determined and settled at the council of Trent, has opened that door to female ruin, which, in all its increasing horrors, is so peculiarly the disgrace of all Christian countries in general, and of this in particular, as to call aloud for the restoration of the divine law, which is the only means of putting a stop to it.\n\nAs for the reformed church of England, it owns but two sacraments, and of course does not call marriage by that name; but when we consider, that our \"form of solemnization of matrimony\" was compiled in the days of Edward VI. by men who had been educated in the church of Rome, and who must have had their minds prejudiced and deeply tinctured with the Popish ceremonies, we are not to be surprized that our ritual and that of the Romish church should bear so strong a resemblance.\n\nIt is to be administered by a priest\u2014in a surplice (superpellicio indutus, says the Popish rubric) in the church\u2014at the communion-table\u2014\"the man and woman are to kneel down before the Lord's table\" at a certain part of the service\u2014\"Sacerdos jubeat eos invicem jungere dextras, dicens\u2014Ego conjungo vos in matrimonium, in nomine Patris, & Filii, & Spiritus Sandi. Amen.\" Rom. Rit. \"Then shall the priest join their right hands together, and say\u2014\"Those whom God hath joined together, let no man put asunder\u2014\u2014\u2014I pronounce that they be man and wife together, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.\" Ch. of Engl.\n\nThe reason which the council of Trent gave for the use of these words, was, that\u2014in a short time it might become an article of faith, that those words, pronounced by the parish-priest, were the form of the sacrament.\"\n\nNow, if an honest Quaker was to say to me\u2014\"Friend, thou dost not allow marriage to be a sacrament, that is, thou dost not call it by that name; but, how dost thou distinguish thy proceedings from those of the church of Rome? how dost thou, as to the thing itself, call it by what name thou wilt, make more or less of it in reality, than hath been made by the council of Trent?\"\u2014I do confess, that I know not know how I should get rid of my plain friend, unless he would be satisfied with a quibble, instead of an answer, or with a distinction, without difference enough fairly and substantially to warrant it.\n\nWere he to press me farther upon the subject of banns, dispensations, and licences, or to ask me to produce an authority from God's word for our ritual, or almost any thing belonging to it, I must turn him over to popes, councils, fathers, &c. and get out of his way as fast as I could, or else endeavour to silence him, by telling him, \"that the aforesaid ritual is part of the law of the land, established by act of parliament, and is also guarded by a canon, loaded with excommunication ipso facto against all impugners of it.\"\u2014To this he might reply, that in the days of Henry the king\u2014it was made felony for our priests to marry\u2014to deny transubstantiation was burning alive, with forfeiture, as in cases of high treason; but these were ungodly laws, and therefore were repealed, and so ought all other laws, which, like them, oppose the truth of the scriptures, or lead people into error and superstition, by hiding from them the true nature and obligation of God's institutions.\"\n\nThe Romish ritual is in Latin; which, rendered into English, begins thus\u2014\"The parish priest\u2014parochus\u2014who is about to celebrate matrimony (publication of banns having been made on three festival days as before said) if no lawful impediment hinder, shall come into the church, cloathed in a surplice (superpellicio) and white robe (alb\u00e2 stol\u00e2) taking with him at least one clerk, who may bring the book, and a vessel of holy water with a sprinkler, before three, or two, witnesses, shall ask the man and the woman (who for decency should be attended by their relations or neighbours) concerning their consent, severally, in this manner, in the vulgar tongue.\n\n\"N. wilt thou take N. here present, for thy lawful wife, according to the rite of holy mother church? The man shall answer\u2014I will, &c. &c.\n\n\"Then the priest is to sprinkle the parties with holy water; then he is to bless the ring, and sprinkle it with holy water in the form of a cross; and the bridegroom, receiving the ring from the priest, is to put it upon the fourth finger of the woman's left hand\" (Digito annulari\u2014a phrase borrowed from the Heathens, as the custom itself was) \"the priest saying\u2014In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.\"\n\nThe nuptial ceremony among the Hottentots is as follows\u2014\"The men squat themselves on the ground in a circle, all but the bridegroom, who squats in the center. The women, at some distance, squat themselves likewise in a circle about the bride, who likewise squats. Then the priest, or master of the religious ceremonies, who is always that of the kraal where lives the bride,\" (and so may be styled parochus) \"enters the circle of the men, and, coming up to the bridegroom, waters upon him a little\u2014the bridegroom receives the stream with much eagerness, rubbing it briskly all over his body, and making with his long nails several deep scratches in his skin, that the urine may penetrate and soak the farther. The priest then goes to the circle of the women, and coming up to the bride, waters a little upon her; she receives and rubs the urine upon her body, with as much eagerness as the bridegroom. Then goes the priest again to the bridegroom, and having watered a little more upon him, away he goes again to the bride, and again waters upon her. And so he goes from one to the other, 'till he has exhausted upon them his whole stock of urine, uttering from time to time to each of them, one of the following good wishes, till he has pronounced the whole upon them both.\u2014\"May you live long and happily together.\u2014May you have a son before the end of the year.\u2014May this son live to be a comfort to you in your old age.\u2014May this son prove a man of courage, and a good huntsman.\"\u2014\u2014\u2014This is the whole of the nuptial ceremony; after which the whole company rise, and prepare for a feast.\" See Kolben, Cape hist. vol. i. p. 153.\n\nNow, I do not suppose that the reader can peruse this account of so filthy, so ridiculous, so absurd a ceremony, without laughing, and feeling in his mind a most sovereign contempt for a people seemingly so loft to the possession of common reason. But this is not the cafe; there are doubtless as wise and understanding men among the natives of the Cape of Good Hope, as among the Europeans (why should there not?\u2014\"God hath made of one blood all nations for to dwell on all the face of the earth.\")\u2014Their fondness and respect for so beastly and absurd a ceremony, does not therefore proceed from a want of natural reason, but, from a prostitution of their rational faculties, to a certain thing called superstition; which, under the auspices of another certain thing called pristcraft, puts Christians and Hottentots upon a level, as to a blind submission of their understandings and consciences to those who have been artful enough to gain an entire ascendency over them. Lord Peter's holy water has no more to do with God's ordinance of marriage, than the Savage's urine has; but neither the Hottentot nor the Papist will acknowledge that they are mistaken; and I should suppose, that a man would stand as bad a chance for his life in a Kraal at the Cape, as in the Holy Inquisition at Rome, were he to say, in either place, what I have said upon the subject.\n\nThe Hottentot andersmaken, it must be confessed, is not quite so cleanly as the Popish ritual; but it has this advantage over the latter, that it is not lying in the name of the Lord;\u2014it is not a professed imposition upon the minds of men, in the very face of God's revelation\u2014it is not an unauthorized use of that venerable and holy name of the Lord our God, in order to make men believe, that marriage is, what God has never made it\u2014\"a sacrament, ordained by Christ\u2014appropriated to Christians.\"\n\nPerhaps my Quaker-friend might here remind me\u2014\"thou shouldst not throw stones, for thine house is also made of glass.\"\n\nIn short, wherever the simple ordinance of God is obscured, so that men are kept in the dark as to its nature and obligation\u2014wherever those wise and holy laws, which God hath made for the preservation of his creatures from mischief and ruin, are suspended, on some terms and conditions of human invention, so that they cannot operate, or answer the ends for which they were revealed\u2014wherever an human ceremony is imposed upon the understandings of mankind, as that, without which, the positive institution of God Almighty is null and void to all intents and purposes whatsoever\u2014it makes little difference, by what name the obstacle be called, or by whom invented; it is an insolent attack upon the divine sovereignty\u2014a daring invasion of the divine prerogative of legislation\u2014a downright and open rebellion against the majesty of God and, whether this be done by Christians, on this, or on the other side the Tyber\u2014Tros, Tyriusve, mihi nullo discrimine agetur. Virg.\n\nWe have seen, in the long detail of the foregoing evidence, some dreadful mischiefs, which have attended the unnatural opposition, raised against the primary decree of Heaven, relative to the propagation of the human species.\u2014The celibacy of the clergy, being contrary to nature itself, as well as to scripture, produced evils of the most horrible and destructive kind\u2014this may be concluded, from the many canons we find against sodomy, child-murder, either by causing abortion or otherwise\u2014likewise, the frequent mention of the crimes of adultery, whoredom, and fornication, particularly charged on the clergy, as also of bastards being excluded from holy orders, and the like.\n\nThese are standing proofs of the mischiefs which ensued from men's inventing schemes of holiness and purity, in order to maintain which, the word of God was thrown aside, and the wisdom of man exalted in its place. The union of the sexes, though ordained of God, as that institution by which the world should be peopled, was stamped with a degree of infamy, as impure in itself, and causing a defilement in those who engaged in it, unless priestly benediction and religious ceremony interposed: and even here, it was still too impure to be engaged in by those who ministered in holy things; and therefore forbidden to the laity, without the purification of holy water, &c. and forbidden to the clergy entirely.\n\nImpediments to marriage, which are mentioned in God's law, were dispensed with\u2014others were invented, which God's law never mentions, and made the grounds and causes of dissolving marriage\u2014such as between god-fathers and god-mothers at baptism or confirmation\u2014relatives to the seventh degree\u2014and even as far as any relationship could be traced\u2014a man's having another wife living, though she was under circumstances, by which every end of marriage was prevented\u2014the apostle's rule was inverted, it was no longer better marry than burn, but better burn than marry\u2014thus were the Christians laid under a yoke to which the Jews were utter strangers, and were taught to believe, that, whatever marriage was by the Mosaic law, it was now totally altered; it was \"a sacrament, instituted by Christ, and appropriated to Christians\"\u2014a law of the gospel, was to supersede the law of Jehovah as delivered at mount Sinai, and, in short, marriage was to be what churchmen, from time to time, were pleased to make it; for which, after some faint attempts to justify their proceedings, by, what they styled, \"the new evangelical law,\" they fairly and honestly avowed the power of the church, i.\u00a0e. of the Pope, and his coadjutors, the cardinals, archbishops, and bishops in council assembled, to be paramount to all other power whatsoever; they trampled all laws, divine and human, under foot; and not what God had said in his Word, but what the church had said in its canons and decrees, was the rule of faith and manners.\n\nThere is a passage in the Turkish Spy, on the innovations which human imagination, and church power, introduced in the place of God's laws, which I shall make no apology for quoting on this occasion, as its subject-matter, and the reflections with which it concludes, are much to our purpose, and well worthy our observation.\n\n\"By the very same rule, they introduced the use of images and pictures in their churches: and the vestments of their priests, the ornaments of the altar, the tapers, lamps, incense, flower-pots, and other religious gaieties, were fashioned according to the patterns they received from the priests of Jupiter, Apollo, Diana, and the rest of the heathen deities. Hence, the festivals of the gods and goddesses were turned to holy-days of saints; and temples, before consecrated to the sun, moon and stars, were afresh dedicated to the apostles and martyrs.\n\n\"Thus the very Pantheon itself in Rome, or temple of all the gods, in process of time, by an ecclesiastic dexterity, was converted to the church of all saints.\u2014In a word, Christianity in all things seemed no other than Gentilism in disguise. And it must be thought a pious fraud, thus to wheedle so many millions of sinners into the bosom of the church, whether they would or no.\n\n\"Oh father William! dost thou not blush at these trivial excuses, for the manifest violation of the laws of God? Can man be wiser than the Omnipotent? Or will he presume to correct the ways of him that is perfect in knowledge? Is the true religion to be propagated by imitating the idolatrous rites of infidels? Or by prostituting the sacred injunctions of Heaven to the caprices of human policy? Did any wise law-giver condescend to alter and new-model his laws, to humour a peevish captious subject? Would he add, or diminish any thing for the sake of gaining a faction or party? and can we think, that God ever designed, to have His divine laws garbled and mixed with profane indulgences, dispensations, and amendments of mortals? As if He had been ignorant what he did, when He divulged his statutes, and wanted the counsel of his creatures to help him out at a dead lift.\n\n\"Was that tenderness only to be shewn to the Jews for a time? And were they, for ever afterwards, to be scandalized? In vain does the church daily pray for the conversion of that people, whilst by her doctrines, and daily practices, she hardens them more in their infidelity.\" Turkish Spy, vol. vii. p. 304, 305.\n\nThough it be evident from the scriptures (comp. Isaiah vi. 9, 10. with Acts xxviii. 25, 26, 27.) that the rebellious obstinacy of the Jews provoked God to leave them under a judicial blindness, yet one mean of fastening it upon them is, the doctrine and practice of Christians. What must a thinking Jew conclude, from an auto de f\u00e9, where he sees, not only the disciples of Moses, but those also who are the professing disciples of Jesus, bound in one chain, tied to one stake, and tormented in the same flame?\u2014what, when he reads of the massacres of Paris and of Ireland?\u2014what, when he is told, that, above a million and an half of reasonable and innocent creatures, including all ages, conditions, and sexes, have drenched the earth with their blood, and all this, because they refused to worship a piece of wafer or a log of wood\u2014or to acknowledge the traditions and doctrines of men, as above the testimony of the scriptures?\n\nHow should the Jews ever give credit to a system, which contradicts their antient scriptures? which lays the holy laws of their Pentateuch in the dust, and treads under foot the awful majesty, the supreme and unrivalled sovereignty and authority of Jehovah? which tells them, they must renounce their lawgiver, lord, and king, (see Isaiah xxxiii. 22.) and listen only to men who have overturned the whole fabric of their \u0153conomy, with respect to marriage, and destroyed those bulwarks which the God of Israel raised, for the security of their wives and daughters from seduction and prostitution?\u2014that the protection of female chastity, which their forefathers experienced, is no longer the object of divine legislation; but, that every man is now at liberty, to ravage, as he can, upon the weaker sex, no responsibility left, no obligation created, no justice exacted?\n\nHow can they endure to hear the taunts of Christians, on their antient statutes?\u2014or bear with patience to hear the Christians speak of their honoured and venerable ancestors, as adulterers, whoremongers, and debauchees?\u2014 licentiates in sin\u2014tolerated in forbidden lewdness by their God\u2014worthy the stroke of vengeance, and only spared from it by divine connivance? All this, and more, they must be content to hear, and to submit to, or they must keep out of the reach of Christian churchmen, or shut their ears and hearts against them.\n\nSo that while Popish canons, and human laws, are to lay down principles on which the regulation of the commerce of the sexes is to depend, we can entertain no great hopes of men, who, from the giving of the law at mount Sinai to this hour, have known no other system than that delivered by Moses, and acknowledge no appeal from their antient scriptures, to the more modern inventions of the Christians.\n\nAnother article, established on the foregoing evidence, is the indiscriminate prohibition of polygamy\u2014this appears in several of the canons which have been cited, and at last, by the council of Trent, cent. 16. finally laid under a judicial curse. So that, no necessity of circumstances, no situation into which a man already married can be brought\u2014his wife's insanity\u2014distemper of body or mind, or other unavoidable deprivation of her society\u2014can turn the point-blank of this dreadful canon from the unhappy objects of its vengeance.\u2014The Protestants have added to the terror of this piece of artillery a penal statute, by which polygamy, under what circumstances of necessity soever, is prohibited on pain of death.\u2014The debauchery of the wives of others, the seduction and ruin of virgins, the incentives to procuring abortion, the murder of new-born infants, though notorious consequences of priestly celibacy, cannot prevail on their fellow-creatures to suffer them to marry; and all these, though consequences equally of that factitious celibacy, which arises from an indiscriminate prohibition of polygamy, cannot prevail for the repeal of that law, which makes it a capital felony for a man to do, what God not only allows, but in many cases commands, (see Exod. xxii. 16. Deut. xxii. 28, 29.) Add to all this, the driving men into fornication with harlots, or into other nameless and numberless inconveniences, which drown them in destruction and perdition. This is a tyranny over the consciences of men, well worthy the Popish inventors of it. It was altogether unknown to the antient people of God, who lived under the immediate government of the Divine Law.\n\nBut here methinks I hear a Jew say\u2014\"Our law has an especial care of population, and provides against the extinction of families by barrenness.\u2014Our father Abraham married Sarah, but finding she was barren, he took another wife, that he might have children by her, and this by the persuasion of Sarah herself.\u2014Our father Jacob also did the same at the persuasion of his wives Leah and Rachel.\"\u2014See Gen. xvi. 2. xxx. 3. 9. \"All this is very true, answer I; but if Abraham had lived among Christians, one sect of them would have cursed and excommunicated him, another would have hanged him, and sent him to the devil into the bargain; and so they would have served his grandson Jacob, and, for aught I know, half his generation.\"\n\nAnother observation is also to be made, as resulting from the foregoing evidence, and that is, on the subject of concubinage. When Bucer says\u2014\"legitim\u00e6 etiam erant uxores\"\u2014\"They were also lawful wives\"\u2014I firmly believe him, because the Hebrew Scriptures mention them as such.\u2014As for the New Testament, I do not find any thing said about them. The word \u03c0\u03b1\u03bb\u03bb\u03b1\u03ba\u03b7, which the LXX use for the Hebrew \u05e4\u05d9\u05dc\u05d2\u05e9, and which we render concubine, does not once occur\u2014therefore this matter must be confessed to stand singly and merely on the scriptures of the Old Testament.\n\nThe church, in the days of Constantine, clearly held, that \"the scriptures used the word wife and concubine indifferently,\" and therefore they would not enter into the distinction which that Emperor was making, between marriage and concubinage\u2014the council of Toledo, anno 400, were of the same opinion\u2014and St. Augustine also, who is styled the father of the Latin church, did not differ from them. See before vol. i. 32, n.\n\nAs the church grew more corrupt, and churchmen more insolent, and more ambitious of increasing their dominion over the minds of men, they confounded all scripture definitions and ideas of things; and suffered the people only to think as they would have them, and as might best serve for the advancement of priestly power. The poor clergy, who were forbidden to marry, endeavoured to find a refuge in concubinage, or living with women which they took as wives, but without the forms which had been arbitrarily introduced into the church\u2014however they were driven out of this, the practice itself condemned, by several canons, and, by little and little, concubinage was looked upon as infamous, and at length deemed no better than whoredom and fornication.\n\nThat polygamy and concubinage were both dispensations of God, both modes of lawful and honourable marriage, is a proposition as clear as the Hebrew scriptures can make it\u2014That polygamous and concubinary contracts are deemed by the Christians null and void, and stamped with the infamy of adultery and whoredom, is as certain as that the canons and decrees of the church' of Rome made them to be so.\u2014The consequences of the former, were, the preservation of female chastity, and the prevention of female ruin\u2014The consequences of the latter, have been, and still are, the destruction of thousands of both sexes (but more especially of the female) in this world and in the next.\n\nLeigh, Crit. Sacr. sub voc. \u05e4\u05dc\u05d2\u05e9\u2014says\u2014\"Concubina-uxor. Gen. xxii. 24. and xxv. 6. The Hebrew Pilgesh (whereof the Greek \u03c0\u03b1\u03bb\u03bb\u03b1\u03ba\u03b7 and Latin Pellex are borrowed, which we call a concubine) signifieth an half-wife, or a divided and secondary wife; which was a wife for the bed (and thereby differing from an whore) but not for honour, and government of the family, neither had their children ordinarily any right of inheritance, but had gifts of their father, (see Gen. xxv. 6.)\" On the margin, Leigh cites Grotius on Judges xix. 1. \"Quidam vocem compositam volunt ex \u05e4\u05dc\u05d2 divisit, & \u05d0\u05e9\u05d4 uxor, quasi uxor divisa. Nomen Hebr\u00e6um honestius est quam Gr\u00e6cum \u03c0\u03b1\u03bb\u03bb\u03b1\u03ba\u03b7 & Latinum Pellex, qu\u00e6 tamen inde venerunt. Pellex est uxorem habentis\u2014concubina potest esse c\u00e6libis: neque talis conjunctio contra legem & bonos mores erat illis temporibus.\"\n\n\"Some will have this to be a compound word\u2014of \u05e4\u05dc\u05d2 he divided, and \u05d0\u05e9\u05d4 a wife\u2014a divided wife as it were. The Hebrew name is of more honest import than the Greek \u03c0\u03b1\u03bb\u03bb\u03b1\u03ba\u03b7, and the Latin Pellex, which are however both derived from it. Pellex is understood in Latin to signify the woman who lives with a man that has a wife\u2014Concubina may signify her who lives with a single man.\"\u2014(These distinctions, made by different words, do not occur in the Hebrew) \"nor was such a conjunction contrary, in those times, to law or to good manners.\"\n\nThe concubines seem to have been usually of an inferior rank, as maid-servants, and the like, and to have been taken without the formality of dowry, or any other outward circumstance whatsoever\u2014but still they were certainly esteemed as the property of the man, as clearly appears from what Jacob said, Gen. xlix. 4. and a concubine was frequently styled \u05d0\u05e9\u05d4\u2014a wife. Comp. Gen. xvi. 3. with Gen. xxv. 6. See also Gen. xxx. 4. with Gen xxxv. 22 xxxvii. 2.\n\nI have before observed, that concubines are not once mentioned in the New Testament; so that concubinage stands entirely on the authority of the Hebrew scriptures. These, indeed, seem to have been entirely laid aside, and concubinage, after the fourth century, gradually became the sinful and abominable thing which we are taught to believe it. There is now no medium between whoredom and formal marriage\u2014the same Popish dexterity, which converted a piece of wafer into an human body, and marriage into a sacrament, turned a concubine into a whore, and concubinage into a damnable sin. See before p. 30. and n.\n\nIn short, concubinage brought no grist to the mill; no licences, dispensations, asking of banns, &c. enriched either the Pope's coffers, or the priest's pocket; therefore it was found better, that a poor seduced girl, and the man, who to humour his own pride, or that of his family, did not chuse the sacrament of marriage, should be separated, and she turned adrift, by \"being banished the territory;\" he at liberty to ruin as many more as he could, without any incumbrance or expence, and all these to become vagabonds on the face of the earth, rather than holy church should lose her prerogative of supremacy over the consciences of her votaries; or those darling emoluments, of power and wealth, be lessened, or interrupted, in their increase.\n\nThis has been improved into an article of faith, and has been the destruction of as many women, as would out-number the stars of heaven, and, in its consequences, of as many unborn and new-born infants, as would make the infanticides at Bethlehem, or the priests of Moloch, comparatively innocent, if the numbers destroyed are to be standards of guilt.\n\nSure these themselves from primitive\nAnd heathen priesthood do derive,\nWhen butchers were the only clerks,\nElders and presbyters of kirks:\nWhose directory was to kill,\nAnd some believe it is so still.\nThe only difference is, that then\nThey slaughter'd only beasts, now men:\nFor then to sacrifice a bullock,\nOr now and then a child to Moloch,\nThey count a vile abomination,\nBut not to slaughter a whole nation.\nHud.\n\nIt has been before observed, vol. i. 58, n. how apt all arbitrary and living languages are to gain new meanings by length of time, some instances of which are there given, and many more might be given. Mr. Warton, in his Essay on Spencer's Faery Queen, has observed, that \"words, by an imperceptible progression, from one kindred sense to another, at length obtain a meaning entirely foreign to their original etymology.\"\u2014And indeed they frequently change from a good sense to a bad one. Who would think the word imp was anciently a title of royal dignity? Lord Cromwell, in his last letter to Henry VIII. prays for the imp his son. So Henry V. is hailed, as \"Royal imp of fame.\" Now it is only used in contempt or abhorrence, as signifying an evil spirit\u2014a d\u00e6mon. See Steevens and Johnson's Shakes. vol. ii. 391, n. and vol. v. 607, n. and Phillips's Dict. sub voc.\n\nThus has it fared with the words concubinage and concubine:\u2014the ideas which have been annexed to these words by the Papists, and after them by the Protestants, are as foreign from the scripture ideas of them, as it is almost possible for one thing to be from another.\u2014Concubinage, as represented in the Hebrew scripture, was evidently one mode of innocent and lawful marriage, and concubines were, of course, innocent and lawful wives\u2014legitim\u00e6 erant uxores, saith Bucer. So late as the fourth century, the terms wife and concubine were used indifferently. So in the year 400, the council of Toledo decreed, that it was necessary for every member of the church to satisfy himself either with one wife or one concubine\u2014that he ought not to be excommunicated who has only a concubine.\"\u2014As priestly benedictions, and other ecclesiastical forms and ceremonies of marriage, increased by the inventions of men, concubinage was not only laid aside, but was looked upon as synonymous with whoredom and fornication, and a concubine was treated as a whore:\u2014they certainly had as much authority for this from the scripture, as to have burnt her for a witch.\n\nStill the thing itself, as in God's sight, remains just as it did, neither better nor worse; for no change can possibly be wrought either in the divine mind, or in the sacred language in which it is expressed.\u2014This mode of marriage being allowed of God, must be concluded to have been for the wisest reasons, not the least of which seems to have been, to preserve the lower order of females from desertion and prostitution (a thing not known among the antient Jews) but to which they have been consigned by the Christians, without mercy or remedy.\n\nI dismiss this part of the subject, with referring the reader to Martin Bucer's sound and scriptural thoughts upon it, in the Appendix to chap. ii. of this work, at the end of vol. i.\n\nAnother observation, which arises from the foregoing evidence, is with regard to those dangerous engines of priestcraft, and church-tyranny, called, in the Popish canons, ecclesiastical courts; which, together with all their officials, commissaries, and other officers thereunto belonging, were the improvements made by the church of Rome, on the power granted to bishops and councils for the internal administration of the church, by the Emperor Constantine. In short, when he and his successors became Christians, they thought it highly for the honour of Christianity, that the clergy should be invested with outward dignities, preheminences, and authorities, suitable to that kingdom of this world which then began to be erected\u2014or, as I may say, when the princes of the empire became Christians, the Christian churchmen became princes, and this begot the ecclesiastical courts; from them came the courts of inquisition, and every other mode of oppressing mankind, under colour of law, by ecclesiastical judges. These courts, under the jurisdiction of the bishops, were erected in every diocese, and, together with Popery, transplanted into this country. They were the infernal tribunals, which harrassed, persecuted, distressed, tortured, and burnt Protestants alive, and might do so still, but for the 29 Car. II. c. 9. which takes away the writ de heretico comburendo, yet reserves all other punishments but death, in as ample a manner as before the making of the act, for \"heresy, schism, and all other damnable doctrines and opinions.\" But what these are, who can define? They are vague descriptions of offences, concerning which, mankind are not agreed to this hour, and yet punishable by these courts, by any ecclesiastical censures short of death, even to excommunication itself.\n\nOutlawry in treason or felony is a civil death, but excommunication may be called a death both civil and ecclesiastical; and, when duly considered for what it may be inflicted, and by whom, and what its consequences are, can, in all reason and sense, only be looked upon as one of the most barbarous, oppressive, and iniquitous engines of church-power, that the Pope left behind him, when his immediate supremacy in this country was destroyed.\n\nAs for what it may be inflicted, it rests very much in the breasts of the ecclesiastical judges, according to the construction they may be pleased to put on the words\u2014\"heresy, schism, and other damnable doctrines and opinions.\"\u2014In some instances, indeed, there are determinate causes assigned of excommunication ipso facto, as the reader may see by turning to the \"Constitutions and Canons Ecclesiastical, treated upon by the convocation 1603,\" and affirmed afterward under the great seal of England, by that pious, wise, and patriotic prince, King James I.\n\nIn the twelve first canons, the reader will find no less than eleven causes of excommunication\u2014nine ipso facto, not one of which have the least to do with the Bible, or were offences existing 'till the inventions of men gave them birth. There are also other causes of excommunication, in others of these said canons, which have as little to do with the Bible, as those have which are before mentioned. The last three canons also denounce excommunication for causes unknown to the scriptures.\n\nThe person by whom, either the sentence of excommunication, or the excommunication ipso facto, may be awarded, is the ecclesiastical judge, who is usually a layman; and, if prejudiced against the party, or a man of a severe and bad temper, may find out interpretative causes of excommunication, so many and so various, as to leave no man safe:\u2014no jury interferes in the trial of the cause, no determinate definition of \"heresy, schism, and other damnable doctrines and opinions,\" to direct or confine the judgment\u2014but it stands on the breath of a single mortal, to determine on whom this horrid engine of excommunication shall be played off.\u2014Add to this, as all the proceedings are in writing, a man may be accused by a person he never knew, and convicted of the crime laid to his charge, without ever seeing the face of one of the witnesses against him.\n\nAs to the consequences of these excommunications, I can hardly suppose, that, as to any spiritual damage to a man's soul, any person of common sense would trouble his head about them, or give a brass farthing for his absolution; I am sure, if he did, he would give more, by all the money, than it is worth.\u2014But as to the temporal inconveniences accruing from these engines of ecclesiastical despotism, they are certainly very terrible, so much so, as to render them very serious objects of our consideration, as a free and Protestant people.\n\nThere are two sorts of excommunication, called the lesser and the greater: the lesser is the depriving the offender of the use of the sacraments, and divine worship; and this sentence is passed by judges ecclesiastical, on such persons as are guilty of obstinacy or disobedience, in not appearing upon a citation, or not submitting to penance, or other injunctions of the court. The greater excommunication, is that, whereby men are deprived, not only of the sacraments, and the benefit of divine offices, but of the society and conversation of the faithful\u2014i.\u00a0e. of all persons not excommunicated.\n\nIf a person be excommunicated generally; as if the judge say\u2014\"I excommunicate such a person\"\u2014this shall be understood of the greater excommunication. Lindw. 78. Lindwood says, that excommunication ipso facto is\u2014nullo hominis ministerio interveniente\u2014which is about as equitable as hanging a man without a trial.\n\nBy art. 33, of the church of England, \"that person, which, by open denunciation of the church, is rightly cut off from the unity of the church, and excommunicated, ought to be taken of the whole multitude of the faithful as an heathen and publican, until he be openly reconciled by penance, and received into the church by a judge that hath authority thereunto.\"\n\nBy can. 85, \"the churchwardens or questmen especially shall see, that all persons excommunicated, and so denounced, be kept out of the church.\" See Burn Eccl. Law, tit. Excommunication.\n\nThe consequences of all this are, that a man is deprived of the participation of the means of grace\u2014inhibited the commerce and communion of the faithful\u2014and moreover, after forty days, the spiritual court signifying this to the court of Chancery, by significavit, there issues a writ de excommunicato capiendo, which is all but as bad as the heretico comburendo, for it causes the man to be apprehended by the civil power, and thrown into gaol, where he may lie 'till he rots, if he has not money enough to purchase his letters of absolution, as in cases of excommunication for non-payment of costs, and the like.\n\nMoreover, it is to be observed, that the excommunicate person is so far put out of the protection of the laws of his country, as that he cannot sue an action real or personal.\n\nHe cannot make a last will and testament.\n\nHe cannot be an advocate\u2014or a witness\u2014nor a juror, if the record of the judgment be produced.\n\nHe cannot act as an executor, or prosecute any action for the testator's goods; and they which converse with an excommunicate person are excommunicate also.\n\nAnd that they may be-devil a man to the uttermost, it is ordered, by can. 68, that a minister is to be suspended for three months, who affords Christian burial to a person, against whom the court-christian (for so the ecclesiastical court is sometimes called, as the court of inquisition is called the house of mercy\u2014as lucus a non lucendo\u2014) hath pronounced the greater excommunication, which may be done by the single voice of the judge, only saying\u2014\"I excommunicate such a one,\" and that, for offences which have no foundation, but in the uncertain construction of vague and indeterminate human words, or in the canons of the church, which are the pure inventions of an ecclesiastical synod, and framed, as near as may be, to save appearances, to the canons of the church of Rome.\n\nSurely such powers as these are too great to be trusted in the hands of any man, and are such as are too inimical to public liberty and safety, to be suffered to exist any where, much less in a free and Protestant country. While the Pope was supreme head of the church of England, had set himself above all law, and could cause a learned, brave, and great king (Henry II.) to be flogged by a parcel of rascally monks, at Thomas \u00e0 Becket's tomb, like a thief at a cart's tail\u2014could lay whole kingdoms under an interdict, and cause the kings of the earth to be excommunicated, and deposed and murdered by their subjects\u2014one can account for the people of this infatuated country's submitting to the ecclesiastical tyranny of the spiritual courts\u2014but surely, after above two centuries have passed since the banishment of the Pope, it is high time for us to reflect as to the situation we are in, with respect to these dreadful tribunals.\n\nI have before, (vol. i. p. 67) spoken of these courts, and called their power \"very feeble\"\u2014this must be understood in a comparative sense, to what it was before the abolition of the high commission court, by 16 Car. I. c. 11. the taking away the writ de h\u00e6retico comburendo, by 29 Car. II. c. 9.\u2014and the passing that truly Christian law, commonly called the toleration-act, 1 W. and M. c. 18.\u2014but there is still power enough left, to make the subjects of this kingdom tremble for what may happen, in less moderate times than those we live in.\n\nWhat offences can possibly arise, which a temporal judge, and a jury of twelve men, cannot punish? What evils, which they cannot properly and duly animadvert upon? Or what laws can be imagined, which they cannot execute, on the constitutional principles of a fair and open trial on viv\u00e2 voce evidence, and on the words of determinate and certain statutes? Why are wills and testaments, matrimonial causes, and other matters of a temporal nature, to be consigned into the hands of ecclesiastical judges?\u2014I can give no other reason, than that the Pope wrested them out of the hands of the civil powers, and placed them there; which, by the way, is no bad reason for their being restored to the civil power again.\n\nMuch has been said, and much more might be said on the subject; but how we can call ourselves Protestants, or boast of our being a free people, while we are under this imperium in imperio, I cannot conceive\u2014therefore, as the parliament of England abolished the high commission court, by 16 Car. I. c. 11, it would be an act becoming an age of still greater Protestant liberty, to annihilate every power of churchmen to do mischief, and leave them no other, than that of doing good.\n\nAnother observation which may be made on the foregoing evidence, relates more immediately to the subjects of these volumes; I mean, the contrivances of the Popish canon-law, to blind people from the real and true nature of marriage as in God's sight; to make them believe that it consists in an outward ceremony, which man has invented, and not in that personal union which God ordained at the beginning; and, of course, to throw nullity, and even infamy, on the latter; thus to strip it of all obligation and validity, and by these means, leaving the seduction and dereliction of virgins wholly in the power of their betrayers. To this the church, the priest, and the other religious formalities, have so greatly contributed, that neither Papist nor Protestant have the least doubt upon the subject.\u2014The Papist calls his priest's legerdemain the form of the sacrament, but the sacrament itself is the union created by the Ego jungo vos, &c. The Protestant will tell us, that an outward ceremony is the form of the marriage, but that the marriage itself consists in the union arising from certain words spoken in English instead of Latin.\u2014Without this there is no marriage as in God's sight, as both will confess; therefore both equally make marriage as in God's sight to consist in something, which, so far from being of the essence of it, is not so much as mentioned, or even hinted at, throughout the whole word of God, no, not even as the most distant circumstance attending upon it.\n\nWe are encouraging the revival and improvement of the liberal arts; painting, sculpture, music, and other ornaments of civil society, meet with their patrons and promoters; schools and academies are erected, and busily employed, in the more noble and useful researches of navigation, astronomy, and their concomitant sciences; how is it then, that we are, with regard to the important subjects of these volumes, contented to remain where the dawning of the Reformation left us, partly delivered, partly retained in the hands of that superstition, so much of which our first reformers shook off?\u2014how is it, that the miseries of ruined females have little other effect upon us, than to provoke our contempt, or sometimes, perhaps, excite our pity?\u2014Will\u2014\"be ye warmed\"\u2014relieve them from the winter's cold?\u2014or\u2014\"be ye clothed\"\u2014cover their nakedness?\u2014Why not search into the records of everlasting truth, to see whether there is not a solid provision made against their distresses\u2014some mighty bulwark raised for their security and protection\u2014some remedy provided against the crying, ruinous, and destructive evil of public prostitution? If there be such things\u2014let them be brought forth into open daylight, let them be proclaimed on the house-tops\u2014had we Virgil's\n\nLingu\u00e6 centum\u2014oraque centum\u2014\u2014\u2014\n\nlet them be all employed upon the glorious, salutary subject\u2014let Protestant legislation destroy Popish encroachment; let it adopt the laws of Heaven for its guide\u2014rendering unto C\u00e6sar the things that are C\u00e6sar's, and unto God the things which are God's.\u2014Thus making marriage what God has made it\u2014in its nature, end, and obligation; and confirming all these, by such laws of the state, as may insure, by outward recognition, what has been commanded and established by heavenly and divine institution.\n\nFrom the foregoing long series of evidence it likewise appears, whence has been derived the whole art and mystery of sin-making, and unmaking it again, by human contrivance\u2014also saint-making\u2014cross-making\u2014creed-making\u2014the consecration of days and seasons\u2014framing calendars, which, like the Fasti of Heathen Rome, are filled with observances of superstitious veneration in honour of dead men and women.\u2014The Heathen had their Dii majorum gentium, and their Dii minorum\u2014their Gods, Demigods, and Heroes\u2014Christian church-men registered their Lady the Virgin Mary\u2014angels\u2014apostles\u2014saints\u2014martyrs\u2014confessors\u2014and each of these had his day on which he was to be worshipped.\n\nWe likewise find the true origin of those uncommanded and humanly-invented rites and ceremonies, which corrupted the simplicity of the divine ordinances, obscured the true nature of divine institutions, and fixed the eyes of Christians, not on what God had ordained, but on what men had invented.\n\nThese were guarded, in the most tremendous manner, by the ecclesiastical powers, against all contradiction and innovation.\u2014Many instances of this we have already met with\u2014but let us hear the Council of Trent, Sess. 7. Can. 13.\n\n\"Si quis dixerit, receptos & approbatos ecclesi\u00e6 Catholic\u00e6 ritus in solemni sacramentorum administratione adhiberi consuetos, aut contemni, aut sine peccato a ministris pro libitu omitti, aut in novos alios per quemcumque ecclesiarum pastorem mutari posse\u2014anathema sit.\"\n\n\"If any one shall say that the received and approved rites of the Catholic church, which are wont to be used in the solemn administration of the sacraments, are to be contemned, or, without sin, can be omitted at the will of the minister, or can be changed for other new ones by any pastor of the churches\u2014let him be accursed.\"\n\nNow let us hear the Protestant church of England, Can. 4.\n\n\"Whosoever shall hereafter affirm, that the form of God's worship in the church of England, established by law, and contained in the book of the Common Prayer, and administration of sacraments, is a corrupt, superstitious, or unlawful worship of God, or containeth any thing in it that is repugnant to the scriptures, let him be excommunicated ipso facto, and not restored, but by the bishop of the place, or archbishop, after his repentance, and public revocation of such his wicked errors.\"\n\nCan. 6. Exhibits a like sentence against\u2014\"Impugners of the rites and ceremonies established in the church of England\"\u2014Excommunication ipso facto.\n\nSo we see, that, as the Papists curse the Protestants, the Protestants curse one another\u2014and all this, for matters entirely of human invention.\u2014Surely this is a likely way to reconcile our dissenting Protestant brethren to the church as by law established! and to convince infidels, that when they laugh at us all for a parcel of fools, they are very much in the wrong!\n\nAs to marriage, the Romish ritual says\u2014\n\n\"Parochus\u2014Noverit ex probatis auctoribus, qu\u00e6 sint canonica impedimenta matrimonii contrahendi, & qu\u00e6 contractum dirimant: & qui sint gradus consanguinitatis & affinitatis, & item cognationis spiritualis ex baptismi vel confirmationis sacramento contract\u00e6:\n\n\"Habeat imprimis ipse bene cognita pr\u00e6cepta illa omnia, qu\u00e6 in matrimoniis rit\u00e8 conficiendis servari oportere, sacri canones, et pr\u00e6cipu\u00e8 sancta synodus Tridentina jussit, dabitque operam, ut illa in parochia sua accurat\u00e8 exact\u00e8que serventur.\"\n\n\"Let the parish priest know, from approved authors, what are the canonical impediments of contracting matrimony, and what things may destroy the contract: and what are the degrees of affinity and consanguinity, also of spiritual relationship, contracted by the sacrament of baptism or confirmation.\n\n\"Let him, above all things, be well acquainted with all those precepts which ought to be kept, in rightly and duly performing marriages, according to the sacred canons, and especially according to what the holy synod of Trent commanded. And he shall do his endeavour, that these shall be accurately and exactly kept within his parish.\"\n\nWe find here particularly, as before in general, from whence we derive our notions of sending people to canons, learned authors, and acts of parliament, to be taught what are or are not impediments to marriage; as likewise how totally the antient laws of Jehovah, relative to what does or does not make a valid marriage in His sight, are cashiered and laid out of the question\u2014and how the ordinances of men are substituted in the place of the institutions of God.\n\nThere is another clause in the Romish ritual, which, compared with the preceding evidence, shews how second marriages of all sorts, have, through a long succession of ages, met with the disapprobation of the church.\n\n\"Caveat etiam parochus ne quando conjuges in primis nuptiis benedictionem acceperint, eos in secundis benedicat, sive mulier, sive etiam vir ad secundas nuptias transeat: sed ubi ea viget consuetudo, ut si mulier nemini unquam nupserit, etiamsi vir aliam uxorem habuerit, nupti\u00e6 benedicantur, ea servanda est. Sed vidu\u00e6 nuptias non benedicat, etiamsi ejus vir nunquam uxorem duxerit.\"\n\n\"Let the priest also beware, lest, when married persons have in former nuptials received the benediction, he confer it on them in second nuptials, whether a woman, or even a man, passes on to a second marriage. But where the custom prevails, that, if a woman has never been married before, though the man has had another wife, the nuptials shall be blessed, there that custom shall stand. But he shall not bless the nuptials of a widow, although the man she marries never had another wife.\"\n\nIf it be asked, by what authority is all this?\u2014I answer, by as good authority as we refuse the benediction to a man who has a wife in a mad-house, and who marries another to keep himself out of a brothel. Or to one who was to do the same because he had detected his wife in adultery, and could not afford to pay the monstrous expence of an act of parliament to divorce her. Or to others who are as justly and unavoidably separated, as if their wives were dead.\n\nIn short, it is needless to cite any more authorities to prove, that the ideas which the scriptures have given us of marriage, in all the forms in which it appeared under the immediate dispensation of God, have long been changed into a very different system, and that our sentiments of the matter are to be entirely regulated by the contrivances of mortals, and not by the unerring rule of God's law. But when we consider the mischiefs with which this is attended, in the desolation and ruin of the weaker sex, and that all the inventions of human wit and wisdom are utterly disproportionate to the task of finding out a remedy, we ought to confess\u2014that \"we have committed two evils, in forsaking Jehovah, the fountain of living waters, and hewing out unto ourselves cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water.\" Jer. ii. 13.\n\nThe Papists, as we have before seen, teach, that \"marriage is a sacrament of the New Testament, ordained by Christ, and appropriated to Christians.\"\u2014This we deny in words; but how distant our system is from it, or how different in truth and in fact, or how essentially more conformable to the Bible, requires a much more distinguishing head than I can boast of to define.\n\nMy friend, the honest Quaker, says\u2014that\u2014\"a cat in a window is like a cat out of a window.\"\u2014What he means by this I leave to the reader to determine, as well as what he means by affirming\u2014\n\n\"That, if two men were to sit down to write a glossary, in which the English words\u2014Marriage\u2014Whoredom\u2014Fornication\u2014Polygamy\u2014Concubinage\u2014Divorce, &c.\u2014were to be explained;\u2014were these writers to be shut up apart in different rooms, one with the Popish system, as set forth in the determinations and decrees of Popes, councils, synods, &c. of the church of Rome\u2014the other with the statutes at large, the \"constitutions and canons ecclesiastical,\" and other muniments of this Protestant country\u2014and both these men honestly and fairly adhered to their several patterns;\u2014they would, when they came forth, produce works so like one another, and so unlike the scriptures, as to make one suspect (as has been thought of Ptolomy's seventy interpreters) that though the writers appeared to have been separated, yet they must have had some communication together, though so secret as not to be discovered.\"\n\nAs Rome was not built in a day, so neither could it be demolished in a day.\u2014The Protestant Reformers did much towards its demolition, but they could not do all.\u2014The prejudices which they had to encounter, the opposition and persecution which they endured, the controversies they were engaged in, and many other things which were inseparable from their peculiar situation, ought rather to make us wonder that they got so far as they did, rather than be surprized that they got no farther.\n\nWhen Henry VIII. quarrelled with the Pope, he yet by no means quarrelled with Popery, as the six bloody articles, which were the ground of that antichristian and bloody law, 31 H. VIII. c. 14. intituled, \"An act for abolishing of diversity of opinions in certain articles concerning Christian religion,\" fully shew.\u2014Other laws, which took the supreme power in ecclesiastical matters out of the hands of the Pope, threw it into the hands of the King; and good care was taken that the hierarchy under Henry VIII. should have all powers of co-operation with his Majesty, as they had before with his Holiness.\u2014The kingdom in the next reign (of Edward VI.) assumed the name of Protestant with much more colour of title than in the preceding\u2014Queen Mary's accession bid fair to undo all again;\u2014but in the long reign of her successor Queen Elizabeth, the Protestant establishment gained that strength and firmness, which it acquired by sundry laws made in its favour; and was still more established at the glorious Revolution, when the State found it necessary to guard, in the strongest manner, against the danger of the return of Popery, in the person of a Popish Pretender.\n\nStill marriage, and all things relative thereto, were dependent on those opinions of men, which had been the ground of antient canons, and other laws concerning them.\u2014In many great and important articles of religion, the reformers had acted upon the great Protestant axiom, that \"the scriptures are the only rule of faith.\"\u2014As to the rites and ceremonies of the church, these remained, with a very strong mixture of the old ones, which had been established before the Reformation\u2014therefore all similarity between them and those of the church of Rome, must be accounted for, partly from the early prejudices of the compilers, partly from the influence, which a more considerable alteration must have had, on certain very lucrative emoluments arising to the church, from things remaining in their present form.\u2014Henry VIII. saw how much it was for his own interest to keep marriage within the power of human legislation, and to model it as he liked, for his own convenience; and it is most probable, that the clergy would not have made it very easy for his Protestant successors, had they been inclined to it, to have wrested so profitable a branch of clerical profit and importance out of their hands. Hence it is, that things are \"as they are;\" and there is no great likelihood they should undergo the least alteration, till we are thoroughly awakened to a sight and sense of the deplorable consequences of our present system (where adultery goes without due punishment, and seduction remains without all obligation from the seducer to the seduced) and we seriously wish to reform the deplorable state of things, by the pattern delivered in the Mount; I mean, by those most righteous laws which the God of Heaven revealed, for the moral government of his reasonable creatures, in that most important of all things in this world\u2014the commerce of the sexes.\n\nReferences:\n\nErrata:","title":"Thelyphthora/Volume 3/Chapter 13","tradition":"scripture-revelation","translated_text":null,"word_count":11261}