CHAP. XI.
CONCLUSION.
HAVING thus far finished what I had to say on the foregoing subjects—which are not of an indifferent or trivial nature, but of the utmost importance for every body's consideration—it may be proper, by way of conclusion, to recapitulate, and to commend what has been said to every man's conscience in the sight of God. 2 Cor. iv. 2.
While our laws are what they are, and suffer men to take virgins into their possession, and then put them away, not all the devices of human wisdom, nor the most strenuous efforts of the most disinterested and best-contrived plans of reformation, can have any greater effect on the mischiefs which they would remedy, than a few buckets of water taken out of a river would have upon the stream. The water would soon unite again, and flow on with the same apparent fulness. So, though a few prostitutes may be taken from among the countless herd, and some of them so reformed as not to mix with it again, yet no apparent diminution meets the eye, no lessening of their numbers strikes the observation. The brothels were full—they are full—the streets were infested with prostitutes—they are still infested with them as much as ever—there is no more difference as to numbers, than there is in an army, from whence an hundred soldiers are discharged, and an hundred fresh recruits are listed in their room. The man who thinks it can ever be otherwise, as our laws with respect to marriage now stand, may go with Horace's rustic to the brink of a river, and expect that it will run itself dry.
——————At ille
Labitur & labetur in omne volubilis ævum.
It still flows on, and will for ever flow.
Francis.
If an expedient could be found to dry up its source, and thus stop it at the fountain-head, the streams must cease, and the bed of the river become dry ground. So if a law be devised which can prevent seduction and dereliction, and thus stop prostitution at its remotest apparent causes, the thing itself must cease.
This has not been left for the invention of man, he never could have been equal to the task.—The all-wise God Himself, who could alone be possessed of wisdom and authority sufficient for this, hath done it. His law delivered to Adam at the beginning, and afterwards in more explicit terms to Moses at Mount Sinai, stands as a record of the divine mind and will, and, if duly observed by mortals, is adequate to the prevention or remedy of all the moral evils under the sun, among the rest, the dreadful and destructive evil of prostitution.
This law has been disregarded, a system very different from it has been set up in its place. This system, being of human contrivance, must of course oppose itself to the law of God—for His ways are not our ways, nor His thoughts our thoughts. Is. lv. 8. In short, that which God hath bound, man hath loosed. The obligation which is created by God's own fiat, must now give place to the inventions of men, which declare God's ordinance of marriage null and void, unless ratified by man's authority. What are the righteous consequences of all this? Misery, ruin, desolation.—Let men but keep clear of the human ceremony, and they may bid defiance to the divine institution. The lewd, the designing, the merciless and cruel, are turned loose upon the female world, to make what ravages they can. Seduction precedes, violation follows, dereliction comes next, and prostitution closes the monstrous iniquity! Shame and disgrace attend the divine institution, honour and reverence await the human ordinance! Thus man is exalted—God despised! This is attended with the most fatal consequences to thousands, whose protection is provided for and secured by the laws of God, and whose ruin is invited and insured by the neglect of them.
What an alteration would it make in the regions of profligacy, was the whole entire law of God to be observed? If no man, let his situation be what it might, could entice a virgin, &c. and not surely endow her to be his wife? This in every case whatever? What a security would this be to the lower order of females, on which the licentiousness of the higher order of men usually falls the heaviest? It is hardly to be imagined that men of family and fortune would pay their addresses, or rather lay their snares, where the accomplishment of their desires must be attended with an union, unsuitable in all respects to their rank in life. This would force them early to match themselves with their equals; they would not gratify their lust at the expence of their pride, and we should not see so many victims of lust, treachery, and cruelty, filling the brothels, and walking our streets, till disease conveys them to an hospital, and from thence to the grave: cut off and lost to the public in the bloom of youth; when, had the protection which the law of God hath ordained for them, been afforded them by their seducers, they might have been happy in themselves, and blessings to society.
Nor does the rejection of God's law, by the substitution of man's inventions, confine its mischief even within the dreadful bounds above-mentioned, it extends itself even to murder, and that of the most foul and unnatural kind, that of infants by the hands of the mothers who bare them. As something else than God's ordinance is required to make parties one flesh, persons who are actually married in God's account, are under no legal obligation to each other. The unhappy mother of what is called a bastard-child—though as really married to the father of it as Rebekah was to Isaac, or Leah and Rachel to Jacob—is placed in such a light by the superstition of the world, as to make her prefer an act of barbarity, which her own bowels must yearn at, to the treatment which it is the custom of the world to bestow upon her. Fear unsheaths the fatal instrument of death, and shame plunges it into the vitals of the helpless innocent. The wretched mother (for concealment seldom covers the offence of murder) is apprehended, and by the hand of justice consigned to the pain and ignominy of a public death.
The father of the child looks upon himself as free; no outward ceremony had passed, and the tragical end of his gallantry deters him not from endangering a like scene of horror, with respect to the next woman he can seduce.
God's law arrests the man on his first intercourse with the woman, and pronounces them one flesh, so that he cannot forsake, or put her away all his days. Were this observed, and that deemed a marriage, which God hath made so, the woman could be under no temptation to such an act, or to any other, than that, which the law would put in her power, that is to say, making the man do her the justice which it is now so amply in his power to refuse. From what has been said, let the reader revolve in his mind every species of injury and female ruin, which he ever heard of, red of, has seen, or can conceive, and he will find that it has all originated from the abolition of the divine laws, which so amply provide for the security of women, and from the introduction of those human inventions, which have turned marriage into a mere civil contract, for in no other view does our municipal law regard it, thus vacating obligations which God hath made, and laying obligations which God hath not made.
As for appointing certain outward acts, rites, or ceremonies, for the public recognition of the marriage as to civil purposes, these are in the breast of the state to ordain or alter, as may seem most expedient; but as to marriage itself, it neither being ordained of men nor by men, but of and by the God of Heaven, no power on earth can change or alter it. It is no more within the jurisdiction of man, or the power of mortals, to do this in a moral sense, than it is, in a natural sense, to change the rising of the sun, or stop the flowing of the tide. For the same reason that a child is completely and perfectly baptized, without the sign of the cross, or without godfathers and godmothers, a man and woman, whose persons are united, are completely and perfectly married in the sight of God, without any human ceremony whatsoever; that is to say, because this is no part of God's ordinance of marriage, therefore cannot be essential to the perfection of it as in his sight.
It is therefore truth, even the truth of God, that no man can receive the person of a virgin into an union with his own (supposing her not betrothed to another man) without her becoming his אשה—woman or wife—sa femme—from that moment. This law is as general as it is absolute; though exceptions of betrothing or espousals are made on the part of the woman, no such thing appears on the part of the man: therefore, whatever his situation may be, it makes no difference—having taken the woman and humbled her, he may not put her away all his days.
That this law involves polygamy, so as even to command it, and therefore to make it a duty, where the man is married who takes the virgin, is evident from the very terms in which the law is conceived: If a man—must mean any man—every man who does so. The liberty which commentators have taken with this text, in order to accommodate it to their own prejudices, is an instance of that sort of construction which the Papists make use of in the understanding of τίμιος ὁ γάμος ἐν πᾶσι—Heb. xiii. 4.—Marriage is honourable in all: that is, say they, in all things, not in all men; for the Rhemists say, on 1 Cor. vii. 9. that "the marriage of priests is the worst sort of incontinency, and fornication, or burning." Thus we speak of polygamy, with just as much ground from God's word. We can condemn the liberty which the Papists take with one part of the scripture, little adverting to that which we have learned from them to take with others.
Had polygamy been permitted on the side of the woman, the most material part of the sacred history must have lost its evidence: as no genealogy could have been preserved with the least certainty, it could not have been proved beyond a doubt that Christ is the Messiah, of the seed of Abraham, and of the house and family of David, to whom the promises were made; consequently, that He is the prophet which was to come, and we are to look for no other. Matt. xxii. 42. and we must have been asking, in another sense than our Lord himself did—What think ye of Christ, whose Son is He? This fatal stroke to all our hopes must have been the consequence of a precarious issue. In a more private view of the matter, all modesty, decency, order, inheritance, relationship, and every bond of society, must have been broken asunder; whereas, on the man's side, polygamy is not attended with any of these things: what the wickedness and vileness of men have introduced, must be looked upon as abuse and perversion, but are no more arguments against the thing itself, when used according to God's regulation and disposition of the matter, than the murders and massacres by the Heathens of old Rome, or by the Papists of modern Rome, are to be reasonably urged (as they have been falsly by infidels) against the truth of the gospel. Had not polygamy been allowed to men, the provision made for the protection and defence of the weaker sex had been deficient; whereas God's law hath made it complete, and no man upon earth can, on the footing of that law, plead his situation, either as a privilege or a disability, against providing for, maintaining, and protecting as a wife, any or every woman whom he may chuse to seduce.
That God should establish this security, by the positive laws which have been so often mentioned—and that in all cases where the woman was free—that it should be so uniformly and openly maintained, for so many ages together, in the practice of the best people; and then, all of a sudden, it should be found out to be against the primary law of marriage, a sin against the seventh commandment, and that which was a moral duty by Exod. xxii. 16. and Deut. xxii. 28, 29. should be a damnable sin under the gospel—is either to suppose the world so much better than it was before, and therefore no such law any longer needful—or that a law-giver came under the New Testament to oppose the law-giver under the Old Testament, and to set mankind free from their allegiance and obedience to Him. The former of which suppositions is not true in point of fact any more than the latter—our own senses may convince us of the first, and Christ's own declaration, that He came not to destroy the law (καταλῦσαι, to demolish or loosen its obligation) may assure us of the second. Urging that Christ has altered the law of the Old Testament, by forbidding polygamy—which was, in all cases where marriage itself was lawful, allowed, and in some instances positively commanded—is only saying, in other words, that he lessened that security which the weaker sex have against the stronger, and facilitated the ruin and prostitution of women, by cutting off a considerable part of that protection which the law of God afforded them, and which He so strongly maintained in His whole dispute with the Pharisees on the subject of divorce, in no one part of it more strongly than Matt. xix. 9. the very verse which superstition has so long taught men to quote for an opposite purpose; for there He shews that all divorces (except what He had before excepted, ch. v. 32.) are absolutely forbidden.
So far as we believe God's law, so far must we believe that if a man (having a wife) entices a virgin, and lies with her, this last shall surely be His wife, as much as the first; and it would be equally criminal to abandon her as to put away the first. For saying this, I appeal to the whole Bible, from beginning to end. There are many instances recorded of men's taking a second to a first, but not one where such a thing was either forbidden, or where the second marriage was declared less valid than the first, or the first looked upon as a ground of divorce from the second, any more than the second was a ground of divorce from the first.
We have run into much confusion on the subject of marriage, by the terms husband and wife. The ideas which custom hath taught us to annex to them, have superseded the scripture-definition of that relation, and have substituted another, which is not to be found in the Bible. Our notion is, that when a man and woman have been at a church, and had the matrimonial service red over them, and the ceremonies therein contained observed, they are man and wife; not otherwise: whereas the scripture has no specific name for the relation, as husband and wife—but a man and his woman איש ואשתו. When a man took a virgin, she became his woman, i. e. his property, not by any outward ceremony, but by the surrendering her person into his possession; this, either anticipatively by promise or betrothing, or actually by carnal knowledge, where no betrothing or espousal went before; this, and this only, made them one flesh—this did, and it ever must have the same effect in the sight of God; for He changeth not. As she was called אשתו—his woman, by his having the possession of her person, in a sense exclusive of all other men, so in the same sense he was called אישה—her man—ίδιος ἀνηρ, (See vol. i. p. 217–222.)—the man so appropriated to her that she could give herself to no other. This was so in all cases; the woman who gave her person into the possession of a man, whatever the man's situation might be, could not go to another, nor could the man put her away all his days. Were this so with us, it would be as difficult to find a brothel, or even a prostitute, as it was in Israel, while these things were observed and kept.
That the laws of Exod. xxii. 16. and Deut. xxii. 28, 29. would sometimes be attended, in their execution, with no small inconveniences in the case of married men, must be allowed—but what are the worst of these which can be supposed, when put in competition with the tremendous and horrible mischiefs of seduction and prostitution, either to individuals or to the public? The man has it in his own option whether he will incur the danger of the former, God has graciously provided in his law, that the weaker sex shall not be exposed to the latter.
As to the murder of bastard children, as they are called, an attempt was made some years ago to prevent this, by the charitable and well-meant institution of the Foundling Hospital; if I recollect aright, this very purpose is mentioned, either in the king's charter, or in the petition which preceded it.—I wish not to remember, much less to repeat, least of all to enlarge upon, the mischief which ensued to the lives of children, from the evil practices of those who were to convey them to the hospital; this from all distances, at a time when the tenderness of their age made them unable to support the fatigue of jolting waggons, &c. by which means many died on the way:—suffice it to observe, that not one murder, of the sort above mentioned, could probably be prevented by the plan of this charity; because, in order to have the child conveyed to the hospital, somebody must be trusted with the secret, as the unfortunate mother can hardly be supposed in a condition to carry it herself, and these murders are always committed that the secret may not be divulged. Did the law of God prevail, that which no human contrivance can effect, would be done; such intercourse as we call whoredom, in contempt of God's law, and in honour of a human ceremony, would be deemed, what the scriptures deem it, a marriage, and the magistrate, as in Israel, at the woman's request, might compel the man to a public recognition of it, in any manner which should be required by the state.
Something like this once prevailed in the kingdom of France, as appears by a passage in the Causes Célébres, published 1777 at Paris, wherein one of the advocates, in Cause lxxvii. says,—"On condamnoit autrefois les jeunes gens qui abusoient de la foiblesse des filles, sous promesse du marriage, a etre pendus ou a les epouser."—"Formerly young men, who abused the weakness of girls under promise of marriage, were condemned, either to be hanged or to marry them." This was something like reverence to the law of God; for though that does not say what the punishment was to be, in case the man refused to comply with the law which said He shall surely endow her to be his wife—yet if such a case had happened, and Moses, as in the case of the man who gathered sticks on the sabbath (Numb. xv. 32.) had consulted God by Urim and Thummim, he probably would have received the same answer; disobedience to a commandment so emphatically delivered would scarcely have met with a milder punishment in this case than in the other. However, we may with certainty pronounce that death would have been the consequence on the wilful and obstinate offender, as it appears to have been a capital offence to despise the sentence of the judges, (Deut. xvii. 11, 12.) and they must have passed sentence according to law.
But the French as well as ourselves are improved in their manners, therefore the said advocate adds—"Depuis on s'est relaché de la severité de cet usage, & l'on s'est contentè de les condamner a doter ces filles, ou a leur donner de dommages interêts."—"Since then we have relaxed from the severity of that custom, and content ourselves with condemning them to give portions to these girls, or to pay them damages." So amongst us, a woman may bring an action on a breach of promise of marriage; but then actual promise must be proved, or she will be nonsuited. This therefore does not reach the original cause of the evil complained of. God does not make an actual promise of marriage necessary, Deut. xxii. 28, 29.—but the man lying with the woman was to be considered as a marriage, and as such ought to be enforced under the severest penalties.
The French advocate farther saith—that this giving a portion, or pecuniary damages—"est le seul parti qui reste, lorsque le seducteur est mariè"—"is the only thing that remains, where the seducer is already a married man." So speaks human wisdom—but not so the law of God; that made not the least difference as to the situation of the man, though it so expressly does as to that of the woman. Portioning such a woman out to marry another man, would have been causing her to commit adultery, as she was the wife of the first man, by that act which made her one flesh with him. The man who married such an unjustly-divorced woman, would also be guilty of adultery. It might seem strange to go into an house, and to see a man with two wives; but this would be much better than to go along the street, and see a number of young women perishing with disease and filthiness, some of them because the men would not, others because they could not, marry them.
I have been lately informed, that by the laws of Switzerland, though polygamy is not tolerated there, yet if a single man gets a girl with child, he is obliged to marry her, be his rank in life what it may. Here is at least a partial remedy against child-murder and prostitution; but then it must be observed, that it is only just so far extensive as it agrees with the divine law.
The Jews are more righteous and merciful in the respects above mentioned than we Christians are; for the law of God is, as far as their difficult situation will admit, observed in all cases of this kind; and if any man refuses to submit to it, he is put under sentence of excommunication; which, as they have no public government, is the utmost which can be done. On conversing with a gentleman who is a Jew, on this subject, he told me, that some time ago a rich young Jew at Amsterdam seduced a poor Jewess, who was a servant-girl: she insisted on his publicly marrying her, which he refused. She complained to the synagogue; who summoned him to appear before them, that they might enquire properly into the fact. Finding it true, they sentenced him to marry her publicly. He would not—urging the difference of his rank from her's; but this plea was not allowed, they urged the law of God against him; but he continuing obstinate in his refusal, they excommunicated him. He applied to some of the States of Holland, that they would interfere; but they refused it, saying—"the synagogue had a right to enforce their own laws." I asked the gentleman, with whom I was conversing, "what would have been the case if this young man had been before married to another woman then living?"—he answered—" Just the same—for by the law of Moses, no man can take a virgin, and afterwards abandon her at his pleasure." So that the very Jews may shame us Christians for the little respect we pay to the preservation of the female sex, or to those laws of Heaven which were made to insure it! Our saying that the Saviour of the world (whom we call Lord and Master—and in this we say well, for so he is—John xiii. 13.) came to set those laws aside, is only going a step farther out of the way of truth, and into the way of abomination.
I would observe, that if the young Jew above mentioned had lived in the days of Moses, he would not have come off so cheaply as with a bare excommunication, but death had also been the consequence of his contumacy. (Deut. xvii. 11, 12.) On which I cannot omit remarking—that what God positively commanded to be done in all cases, we Christians do not enforce in any—nay, by the marriage-act we have absolutely prohibited—that "any suit shall be instituted to compel a marriage in facie ecclesiæ, by reason of any contract of matrimony whatsoever." So that single men are absolutely released from all enforcement of the divine law—and as for married men, they are prohibited, on pain of death, to do what, under God's own government, they would on pain of death have been compelled to.
Here we find an adequate cause of female ruin, prostitution, and misery! corrupt human nature is left to itself, uncontrouled, unchecked by the power of God's positive precepts, unpunished for an avowed rebellion against them. To say that we have laws to take up a poor street-walker, and send her to Bridewell, is only saying that we have laws to make the miserable still more miserable, and the profligate more profligate; for in those places of confinement, they help to corrupt each other, and they usually come forth more abandoned than when they went in. It is a sad remedy which increases the disease. All these things considered, can it be otherwise than that adultery should increase, in defiance of God's law, when we have not a single statute to enforce that law? that whoredom and fornication should abound, when the only method of preventing them is utterly laid aside, though prescribed and enjoined by the God of Heaven?—To punish a poor deserted creature for being a prostitute, when it is put out of her power to force her seducer to provide for her as the divine law enjoins, is equally cruel and foolish: not very unlike the man who threw his child into a ditch, and then beat him for being dirty.
I pretend not to the gift of prophecy; but without that, only by comparing effects with their causes, and weighing in the balance of reason and common sense circumstance with circumstance—unless recourse be had to the remedy which God hath provided in his law—I may venture to pronounce (as all evil is of a progressive nature, the more so the less check is given to it) that all our well-meant schemes of reforming prostitutes, and all our absurd and severe methods of punishment, will end just where they began; only with this melancholy difference, that for one reformed we shall find twenty seduced, and for one reclaimed by punishment, an hundred will be made the worse. I fear we shall have to say with Seneca—de Benef. l. i. c. 10. Hoc majores nostri questi sunt, hoc nos querimur, hoc posteri nostri querentur, eversos esse mores, regnare nequitiam, in deterius res humanas & in omne nefas labi. "This our ancestors have complained of, this we do complain of, this our posterity will complain of—that morals are overturned, that wickedness reigns, that human affairs go from bad to worse, and fall into all manner of impiety." Or with Horace,
Ætas parentum, pejor avis, tulit
Nos nequiores, mox daturos
Progeniem vitiosiorem.
"More vicious than their fathers' age,
"Our sires begat the present race,
"Of actions impious, bold, and base:
"And yet, with crimes to us unknown,
"Our sons shall mark the coming age their own."
Francis.
I cannot close the foregoing observations better, than by inserting a very affecting illustration of their truth, which appeared in the General Advertiser of Oct. 16, 1778.
"Mr. Editor,
"Seeing a very young girl wandering about the streets late in the evening of yesterday, I was induced to ask her—whither she was going? She told me that an officer encamped at Coxheath had, about a fortnight since, stolen her away from her friends at Rochester, and carried her by force to his marquée, where he debauched her; and after having kept her about a week after he had satisfied his licentious inclinations, he had sent her to London with a guinea in her pocket, to get her living as she might. This wanton act of barbarity so affected me, that I could not refrain from cursing aloud the author of it, in the most vehement manner, as I walked home.
"How much more does this cruel destroyer of innocence deserve the discipline of flagellation, than a poor deserter! I hope the officer who has thus taken from a young girl that recommendation, without which she will find it difficult to earn an honest livelihood, is not quite so nearly related to the Devil, as to suffer this unhappy victim to seek her bread by prostitution."
How far the case, as above stated, may be true, I will not pretend to say; but could we know every thing of this sort which daily passes in the world, we should find much reason to credit the facts in this letter. Many men there are, whose rank, and education, and fortunes, as well as their personal endowments, might intitle them to the affections of the most respectable and exalted of their own degree in the female world, with whom they might be the happy husbands of happy wives, who, devoting themselves to the indulgence of their appetites, lay out all their time and substance to inveigle and betray the lowest of the other sex, and then serve them as the officer above mentioned is represented to have served the poor girl. Sooner than fail, they will employ their mean dependents to be their factors; and numbers there are, of both sexes, who actually live upon the spoils of female innocence.
The judges of Israel would have saved the poor girl from destruction, by forcing the officer to a public recognition of his marriage with her, on the facts appearing to them as they are stated.—But he lives in a Christian country—he is free—the poor helpless girl irremediably undone! so are thousands and tens of thousands on the same principle.
By abolishing the connected, wise, and salutary laws of God, relative to the commerce of the sexes, and setting up a law of man's device in their place, the strongest barrier which words can form, for the preservation of the weaker sex, is thrown down; the strong holds of female security are razed to their very foundations; and the following mischiefs are apparent.
Adultery has not any punishment to stand in dread of from our penal laws, therefore we can be at no loss for its bare-faced appearance, and increase beyond the example of former times—for evil of all kinds is of a progressive nature.
There being no obligation on men to marry the virgins they seduce, thousands of helpless girls are enticed, seduced, and abandoned at the pleasure of their Seducers; by which means the brothels and streets are filled with harlots and prostitutes.
These poor creatures, grown hardened and desperate in the ways of sin, are, in their turns, the seducers and debauchers of the young and heedless of the other sex who may fall in their way.
A disease little better than a plague, which Providence has seemed to set as a brand of infamy, as well as punishment, on the forbidden and promiscuous commerce of the sexes, spreads its poison far and wide, to the destruction of thousands.
Depopulation must, in its degree, ensue—not only from the ravages of the venereal disease, among young persons especially, of both sexes; but numbers of such females as would otherwise be breeding women, enervated by prostitution, rotted by disease, and consigned to the grave in the very bloom of youth, drop, like withered blossoms from the tree, leaving no fruit behind. Should they for a few, or even for many years, be able to withstand the assaults of intemperance, so as to survive them (which here and there may be the case of one in an hundred) yet, barrenness and prostitution are so usually connected, as to make it amount at least to improbability that such women should ever breed.
Another source of depopulation must arise from the temptation which men are under to a single life, from finding an easy way of gratifying their appetites—without the burden and care of a wife and family—either with women whom they can seduce, and leave at their pleasure, or by a small sum purchasing the favours of those who have been seduced and abandoned by other men. This is one grand incentive to celibacy on the side of the men, and a reason why so many young women, however beautiful and deserving they may be, pass on to old age neglected by the other sex, and die unmarried.
By putting an human ceremony in the place of the divine ordinance, and men being under no obligation to marry the women they seduce, whoredom and fornication must increase, in proportion to the numbers of profligate men, who chuse to gratify their passions at a cheaper rate than the charge of a wife and family, and to indulge their love of variety at no greater trouble and expence, than may be incurred by the seduction of youth and innocence among the lower order of females.
By representing polygamy as a sin, the word of God is discarded as the only rule of faith—the wisdom and holiness of his positive laws, for its regulation, called in question—a very considerable part of the security which they afford the weaker sex, destroyed, and of course the seducing, abandoning, and prostituting women, by married men, greatly facilitated. Vouching the authority of Christ, as forbidding polygamy under the notion of adultery, is a misrepresentation of his prophetical character, like that of Cerinthus, who taught that—"Jesus opposed the God of the Jews."
By stamping infamy on the only institution and ordinance of marriage which God ever appointed or revealed, and denying its obligation without the super-addition of an human ceremony, which was first made essential to marriage by a Pope of Rome, the murders of new-born infants have been and are frequently occasioned, and, by this means, the deaths of many women by the hands of the public executioner.
Numbers of children are destroyed, as well as women, by the wicked practice of taking medicines to cause abortion.—To this may be added,
The many instances of female suicide, which have happened in the unspeakable moments of distress and desperation, when pregnant women have been basely deserted by those who ought to have become their protection and defence, and thus exposed to infamy and ruin—defenceless—helpless—hopeless!
Such are the effects of worldly systems—such the fruits of the inventions of those who would make themselves wiser and holier than the God who made them! Nor can any thing put a check on the prevalence of such calamities, but a restoration of the whole—uniform—consistent—and beneficent Law of God. This, and this alone, is a remedy against adultery, and whoredom in all its forms. Long and sad experience has shewn us that all other schemes, whether of prevention or remedy, are vain and chimerical, and can no more stop these evils, than Jeroboam's discarding the law of Moses, and setting up the calves in Dan and Bethel, could secure the kingdom of Israel to himself and family.
Nothing can be more pernicious to the pursuit and investigation of truth, than supposing the antiquity of an opinion is a certain proof of its solidity, or that the universal reception of, or veneration for, a doctrine, is a conclusive argument of its truth. We have but to travel into China or Japan, Mexico or Peru, or into any other idolatrous countries, and we shall find the most horrible and monstrous forgeries that Satan himself can invent, all depending on the antiquity of their establishment, the universality of their reception, as well as of the veneration which is paid them. Let us not think that we are by nature wiser than the inhabitants of those countries—we are all the children of one man, the naturally-engendered offspring of fallen Adam.—He that giveth to all life and breath, and all things, hath made of one blood all nations of men, for to dwell on all the face of the earth. Acts xvii. 25, 26. The human mind, like the human nature, is in all men and in all places alike. Prov. xxvii. 19. Were the people who are born in Mexico born among us, they would not be worshippers of the idol Vitziputzli; were we born among them, we certainly should. The mind of fallen man, having no innate ideas of divine things, is impressible by the first that offer, and as he grows up, these grow up with him. Hence the Bramin is as much wedded to the adoration and worship of Vistnou, as a Papist is to the adoration and worship of the Virgin Mary. The only difference between them is, that the blind Heathen has been taught his religion by those who have no revelation, and the ignorant Christian has been instructed in his, by those who have perverted and abused the revelation which God hath given them. Such is the human mind—so fallen, so lost to the possession and love of truth that it will suffer itself to be led blindfold into the acknowledgment of propositions as true, which even the outward senses demonstrate to be false! Witness the absurd, unprofitable, self-contradictory notion of transubstantiation, whose antiquity, and universal reception and veneration in the church of Rome, have prevailed on men to relinquish the demonstration of their outward senses, and to embrace a lye, though it bears its own detection upon the face of it.
The credulity of the human mind was hardly ever more plainly evinced, than by an experiment which was tried upon the public about thirty years ago:—A certain noble Duke was conversing on this subject with some company at his own house, and said—"He was certain that no absurdity could be proposed, which mankind would not believe. I dare say," continues he, "that if it was advertised in the papers, that at one of the theatres a man would get into a quart-bottle, the house would be crowded." This was thought to be carrying the matter too far. "No," said his Grace, "if you will promise to keep my counsel, I will try the experiment." Accordingly it was announced in one or more of the papers, that "at such a theatre, on such an evening, a man, with all his cloaths on, would come on the stage, get into a quart-bottle, and there play several tunes on the German flute." The evening arrived, the experiment succeeded, the house was full from top to bottom; numbers tried to get places, but were forced to go away for want of room. The company waited patiently a considerable time, at last they grew noisy, and called, but in vain, for the artist; then they began to be angry and riotous, insisting on a return of their money, which they had paid at going in; this was equally vain, the offices were all locked up, the receivers decamped with a large sum, which, it was said, was afterwards distributed among some public charities.
If the human mind is capable of such impositions as these, in things wherein the outward senses must be supposed to be competent judges, what must it not be capable of believing, where spiritual and invisible things are the objects proposed to it? more especially when those objects are presented before it under the venerable guise of piety and religion, and are recommended to its observance by the authority of usage, custom, and law?
That there should be a set of people who could persuade themselves that "marriage is a carnal thing, which, though allowed to the Jews under the Old Testament, is unlawful for Christians under the New Testament"—that there should be others, who, though they "allowed marriage for once to be lawful, yet condemned all second marriages as only a more specious and decorous kind of whoredom and adultery"—that others should, in the very face of the scripture, hold polygamy to be a damnable sin, and even punish the having two wives at once, which the scriptures do not condemn, more severely than the defiling the wives of other men, which the scriptures do condemn to capital punishment—that the whole legislative body of this kingdom should determine it to be against the law of God that a clerk in orders should marry; that this should be made felony, in both parties, as also in those who should only maintain it to be lawful:—that all these things should gain such an ascendency over the minds of men, as, in their turns, to be believed as so many solemn truths of religion, affords, surely, reason enough for every thinking man to be upon his guard, and to examine well into the foundation of things before he makes them articles of his creed.
When the holy scriptures are applied to in a partial and desultory manner, words taken out of sentences—sentences from the entire text—texts wrested from the context—the context from the rest of the scriptures, and then the sound of the words detached from their sense—matters are still made worse, the deception is strengthened by the supposed authority of scripture, and Error, having counterfeited the seal of Truth, thus commends itself to the minds and consciences of men.
A little before our blessed Saviour left this world, He thus prayed for His disciples—(not for them only, but for them also which should believe on Him through their word—John xvii. 17, 20.) Sanctify them through Thy truth, Thy WORD IS TRUTH. Whatever contradicts that Word must be a lye, for no lye is of the truth. 1 John ii. 21. However sacred these lyes may have become, by people's espousing them as truths, under notions of purity and holiness, yet are they of their father the Devil, who, when he speaketh a lye, speaketh of his own, for he is a lyar, and the father of it. John viii. 44. Whatever will bear the test of the Hebrew scripture, must be true—but if it will not bear this, we may be certain it is false, however it may be dignified with the opinions of the learned and pious, or come recommended to us under the sanction of the highest human authority. I much question whether superstition and error owe their ascendency over the minds of professing Christians to any thing more, than to detaching the Old and New Testaments from each other, and thus looking upon the latter as an entire new system, unconnected with, and independent on, the former. Whereas, in truth and in fact, the New Testament owes its whole importance and glory to the Hebrew scriptures; it is entirely built upon them; we therefore find a constant reference to them throughout the whole New Testament. Search the scriptures, they testify of Me. John v. 39. For if ye had believed Moses, ye would have believed Me, for he wrote of Me; but if ye believe not his writings, how shall ye believe My words? John v. 46, 47. Here, by the way, I would ask, how it is possible to conceive, that our Lord should appeal to the writings of Moses for the truth of what he spake, if his words essentially differed from them? They have Moses and the prophets, let them hear them—Luke xvi. 29. And in that exquisitely fine apology of Paul before Agrippa, Acts xxvi. he declares, that he said nothing in his public ministry, but what Moses and the prophets did say should come to pass. As we find some of the books of the Old Testament refer to others preceding, so do we find the New Testament referring itself for its authority to the Old Testament; which shews, that both together form one connected scheme, one uniform plan of divine wisdom and truth. The gospel in the Old Testament, and the gospel in the New Testament, differ only as the shadow of a man upon a wall differs from the image of the same person seen in a glass; we see the representation of the same identical person in both cases, only more distinctly and plainly in the latter. The law had a shadow of good things to come, not the very image of the things. Heb. x. 1. But under the New Testament, we all with open face (the veil of the typical dispensation being removed) behold, as in a glass, the glory of the Lord. 2 Cor. iii. 18.
It is ever to be remembered, and therefore cannot be too much or too often inculcated, that though the Bible consists of different books, written at different and distant times, by different penmen, yet one and the same truth pervades the whole; one uniform design appears; nor is there, throughout, the least appearance of a departure from it;—the reason of which is, that the Author is one—his will is one—and therefore his word is one—the least real contradiction, inconsistency, or variation, must destroy the authority of the whole, and leave the infidel in full enjoyment of his triumph over the credibility of the scripture.
If this was more attended to and considered, people who profess themselves to be friends of revelation, would be very cautious of granting its enemies their favourite arguments of inconsistency and contradiction; for this they certainly do, in allowing a difference between the Old Testament and the New in point of moral obligation: little thinking that if this could once be proved, and that the latter is more pure and holy than the former—it would shake the credit of both, as the work of one and the same Spirit; and perhaps we must be led to give up one in order to support the other, or, to be entirely consistent, deny the authority of both.
Thus it was with Manes, that famous heretic of the third century.—In order to remove the obstacles which lay in the way of his monstrous system, which was a motley mixture of some tenets of Christianity, mixed with the ancient philosophy of the Persians, in which he had been instructed in his youth—and to establish a scheme of purity, holiness, and mortification, which, among other things, consisted in total abstinence from marriage, and all comforts which arise from the bonds of conjugal tenderness—he affirmed that the Old Testament was not the work of God, but of the prince of darkness, who was substituted by the Jews in the place of the true God and afterwards, finding that the New Testament would not fully answer the designs of this enormous fanatic, he threw a total discredit on the four Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, and on Paul's Epistles, and supplied their place by a gospel which he pretended to be dictated to him by God himself. See Mosheim, Maclaine's edit. vol. i. 155.
Another fanatic arose in this century, whose name was Hierax—who maintained, that "the principal object of Christ's ministry was, the promulgation of a new law, more severe and perfect than that of Moses; and from hence he concluded, that the use of flesh, wine, wedlock, and of things agreeable to the outward senses, which had been permitted under the Mosaic dispensation, was absolutely prohibited and abrogated by Christ." Mosheim, ib. 156. Mosheim also mentions a wild sect, that troubled the church during the 12th century, which he calls Catharists. "Their religion" says he, "resembled the doctrine of the Manichæans and Gnostics in many respects; particularly on the subject of marriage, from which they enjoined a rigorous abstinence, as well as from wine and animal food; they moreover treated with the utmost contempt all the books of the Old Testament, but expressed an high degree of veneration for the New, particularly for the four gospels." See Mosheim, cent. 12. part ii. c. 5. sect. 4.
Many more instances of this kind might easily be mentioned, but these may suffice to shew, whither men may be led, if once imagination sets to work, and notions of religion are entertained, which set the Old Testament and New at variance:—to maintain, therefore, their uniformity, harmony, and consistency, should be the endeavour of every writer on religious subjects; the moment we lose sight of these, we must be lost in endless mazes of contradiction and inconsistency—how can it be otherwise, if the book, from whence we must derive the matter of our discourse, be inconsistent with itself?
In vain are we all called upon—1 Cor. i. 10.—to speak the same thing—that there be no divisions among us—that we be perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment—if the sacred writers of the Old and New Testament are at variance—or if Moses said one thing and Christ another—or if God can be supposed to differ from himself; for these consequences cannot be avoided, if there be one law of less purity in the Old Testament, and another of greater purity in the New Testament.
This latter notion has filled the world with more enthusiasts, fanatics, and mad religionists, than convents and cells could contain; it has peopled desarts, caves, dens, and forests, with anchorets, hermits, demoniacs, and other wild and gloomy mortals, who have represented human nature under such a form, as almost to countenance the Manichæan notion of the creation of the world by the prince of darkness.
It were endless to attempt a recapitulation of all the mischiefs which have arisen, from setting the Old Testament and the New at variance and from contending that the holy law, or rule of life, which God revealed for the government of the Jews, is not holy and pure enough for Christians.
The condemnation of marriage, and other instances of rebellion against the wisdom of God, are but a part of that spiritual wickedness, which, through the prevalence of this notion, has taken possession of so great a part of mankind—those mischiefs which are the subjects of this treatise, all flow, as has been before observed, from the same principle, though they operate in a different manner.—I know not that the fanatic , who took it into his head to live for thirty-seven years together on the top of an high pillar, by way of devotion, hurt any body but himself, unless it were those who were mad enough to follow his example:—but when the law of justice, mercy, and truth (for such is the moral law of God) is laid aside, for a system of the most atrocious baseness and cruelty, which dissolves all marriage-contract whatsoever, and renders all security arising therefrom utterly null and void, unless ratified by human authority—then laying aside the law which was given by Moses, annihilating its obligations, and setting up a new law not of God's ordaining, but of man's device, is severely felt by those, whose aggravated sufferings are the natural and infallible consequences of it.
As for the moral law, it is founded in the relation which men bear to God and one another; and therefore, as that relation is incapable of alteration, change, addition, or diminution—but must ever remain one and the same—so must that rule of life and conduct, which was established by that law. Therefore, when our blessed Saviour, who came not to destroy, but to magnify the law, and make it honourable, Is. xlii. 21. and this by His own perfect, sinless, and most holy obedience, even unto death, is summing up the whole under two general heads, which He calls the two great commandments of the law, He says, On these two commandments hang (or depend) all the law and the prophets.—There is not ὀυκ ἐστι (not there was not in the days of Moses, but) there is not now, any other commandment greater than these. Matt. xxii. 40. Mark xii. 31.
Hence, when the primitive Christians and Fathers took it into their heads to consider the New Testament as a distinct new system of faith and manners, which abrogated the old law, and set up for itself, they laid the foundation of the heresies and errors which have infested the church of Christ, as in other things so with respect to marriage. Had they interpreted what Christ said on the subject of celibacy, not by detaching the words, and taking them by their sound, but by comparing them with the Old Testament, thus taking them by their sense, they would not have stigmatized God's holy ordinance of marriage as an impure and carnal thing, and accordingly have thought the married less holy and pure than the unmarried—they would not have treated it as merely allowable (much less, like the blasphemy of Jerome, have reckoned it, as some did, among the things quæ sunt per se mala ac vitiosa) but as a thing commendable, yea, honourable in all. Heb. xiii. 1. They would not have raved, as they did, against second marriages, calling them little better than whoredom and adultery, and holding men as heathens and publicans who entered into them; but they would have seen in the Old Testament, that when men, though already married, took second wives, such marriages were approved, blessed, owned, and even promoted by God Himself.—Thus would they have learned not to have condemned the guiltless. In short, they would have seen that marriage, in all the forms in which it appeared in the Old Testament, was an obedience to that first command uttered with the first blessing from Heaven—Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth—that their schemes of celibacy, and their other restraints of marriage, under notions of greater purity and perfection, were opposite to that command, and tended to the destruction of the human species—and that there was no more difference between their plans of feigned chastity, and murder, than between the prevention of a child's birth, and destroying it after it is born.
Our blessed Saviour (John viii. 44.) describes the arch-enemy of mankind, the Devil, as a lyar and a murderer from the beginning. His grand plan is the destruction of the human species. He brought sin and death into the world, by being the father of that lye which he induced our first parents to believe, and which stands recorded. Gen. iii. 4. His end and aim has ever since that hour been uniformly the same, therefore he is fitly styled in the Hebrew tongue, Abaddon (destruction, perdition) and in the Greek, Apollyon—the destroyer. Rev. ix. 11. In how successful a manner his plans have been carried on, by preventing the propagation of children, the history of the church, from the days of the primitive Christians and fathers, abundantly declares, especially that part of it which respects the church of Rome. The celibacy of the clergy hath for many ages been universal—millions of men and women have been taught to turn the particular and occasional recommendations of a single life, into general injunctions against marriage itself; thus changing the truth of God into a lye, forbidding to marry, and shutting themselves up in convents, cloisters, and other uncommanded retirements. Satan's grand plan is still carrying on among mankind, even where Protestantism prevails, witness the numbers of females, who are daily rendered unfit for the ends of marriage by prostitution. This would not be, if the father of lyes had not taught us to abrogate those salutary and beneficent laws of God, which were enacted in heaven, and delivered to Moses on Mount Sinai, to prevent this foul disgrace, and sad destruction of the female sex; and to substitute others, which render it more safe for a man to ruin an hundred virgins, than to steal a sixpence. As far as this is attended with depopulation—which it must be in proportion to the numbers of women seduced, and abandoned to prostitution—so far doth Satan succeed in the destruction of the human species.
In this, and in many other ways, which have been mentioned in these volumes, doth the enemy of God and man find his account, from the substitution of human invention in the place of divine legislation; which last, in every part of it, the more closely it is considered, the more it appears calculated to obviate those mischiefs, and to prevent those calamities, which, as human nature is now constituted, form so large and fatal a part of female misery.
How so considerable a portion of the Christian world could ever be brought, through a long succession of ages, to imagine it possible that a jot or tittle of the divine law could ever pass away—or that the change which has been supposed, could be derived from divine authority—or that God could be less provident for the protection and security of the weaker sex, under the New-Testament dispensation, than under that of the Old Testament—is one of those problematical questions, which I freely own to exceed all the apprehension which I am master of.—I therefore leave it to be resolved by those, whose genius for the inexplicable, may perhaps prompt them to attempt a solution of it.
All that I can say is, that if once we separate the New Testament from the Old, and set it up as a distinct system, explaining the words by the sound of them, we may prove Christ a repealer and opposer of God's law in more instances than one. As for example—Luke xiv. 26.—If any man come to me, and hate not his father and mother, and wife and children, and brethren and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple. However these words may sound, yet, when rightly understood, they are not to lessen filial duty—parental or filial affection—brotherly love—to weaken the great duty of self-preservation, or to dissolve the conjugal union and affection between a man and his wife;—but to shew that even these things, obligatory as they are in themselves, are but of secondary consideration, or indeed of no consideration at all, when they stand in competition with doing or suffering for the glory of God, in the maintenance of His truth. So ver. 33. Whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple.—This cannot mean, consistently with other scriptures, that a man cannot be a Christian without he leaves his wife and family—friends and relations, and throws his substance into the sea, and himself after it;—but that he is to prefer the cause of God, with the loss of all things (see Phil. iii. 7, 8.) to the whole world (see Matt. xvi. 26.) when in times of difficulty and danger, for the truth's sake, he must either forsake one or the other. This, however, is not merely a New-Testament doctrine, or something imposed by a new law of Christ—it is all to be looked upon as an exemplification of the first great commandment of the law—Thou shalt love the Lord thy God, with all thine heart, with all thy mind, with all thy soul, and with all thy strength. Matt. xxii. 37. Mark xii. 23. Accordingly we find examples of as eminent martyrs under the Old Testament as under the New, as may be seen Dan. ii. 14–23. Dan. vi. 10, 16. See also 2 Maccabees vi. and vii. Heb. xi. 33, &c.—who forsook all for the cause of God, and loved not their lives even to the death. Again, Matt. x. 34. Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace but a sword. For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law, and a man's foes shall be they of his own houshold, ver. 35, 36. Comp. Luke xii. 51–53. What a character doth Christ here exhibit of Himself, supposing what He says is to be understood according to the mere letter, and construed according to the sound, instead of the sense and meaning of the passage! He may be said to disclaim the character of the Messiah, who was to bring peace—to be the Prince of peace, (see Is. ix. 6, 7.) and of the increase of whose peaceful government, there was to be no end. Here then we must compare the Old and New Testament, and we shall find the true meaning of our Lord's declaration, which runs almost in the very words of the prophet Micah, vii. 6. and shews, that the spirit of opposition, and persecution of God's truth, are at all times alike, and that no obligation, even of the nearest kindred, relationship, or friendship, can shield us from the bitter effects of heart—enmity against God and His truth. We shall find the prophet's words abundantly verified in the character of persecutors—The best of them is as a briar, the most upright is sharper than a thorn hedge, ver. 4. But when people began to separate the New Testament from the Old, and to set up Christ as a broacher of a new system, established on new laws, then folly, being set at work by ignorance, pride, and self-righteousness, began to devise plans of piety and holiness, which were to be more pure and perfect than the laws of God. Hence arose vows of perpetual chastity, voluntary poverty, and numberless uncommanded mortifications, and refusals of the good creatures of God, which He hath commanded to be received with thanksgiving of those who believe and know the truth. 1 Tim. iv. 3. Hence also, as has been observed, came the disparagement of marriage—the condemnation of second marriages—the reprobation of polygamy.—These things might do very well for such dwarfs in grace as Enoch—Abraham—Isaac—Jacob—David, &c.; but as the Christians began to think, that what they called the Christian law was more holy and perfect than the law of Moses, so they invented schemes by which they were to think themselves more holy than the believers of old time, whom they esteemed to live under a less pure and holy rule of life, than what they ignorantly called the law of Christ. This blasphemy against God's most holy law (for it was no better) passed for very exalted piety, and was a part of that mystery of iniquity, which at length branched itself into so many orders of monks—nuns—friars—hermits—anchorets, among the Papists—and so many fanatical wild sects among the Protestants, well described by the ingenious author of Hudibras, where he says—
Religion spawn'd a various rout
Of petulant capricious sects,
The maggots of corrupted texts.
Nearly allied to all this was the invention of a number of human rites and ceremonies, which were to attend upon the ordinances of God, and which in process of time began to be mistaken for the ordinances themselves, or at least so essential a part of them, as that the ordinances were looked upon as nothing without them. Baptism, which simply consisted in dipping a person in water, or pouring water upon them, in the name of the ever-blessed Trinity, was to be accompanied with rites of human invention, and ceremonies of man's device, or else it was good for nothing—such as anointing—prayers—imposition of hands—the sign of the cross—exorcism—salt—spittle—and certain sureties called godfathers and godmothers.—So the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, as simple an institution as the other, and consisting in eating bread and drinking wine in remembrance of Christ's death and sacrifice, was loaded with rites and ceremonies, by which, in process of time, a piece of wafer was supposed to become the flesh—bones—body—and blood of a man, first to be worshipped and then eaten. No marvel then that marriage, when the Popish visionary, Peter Lombard, had found it out to be a sacrament, and Pope Innocent III. threw the administration of it entirely into the hands of the priests, should also have ceremonies invented and annexed to it, which, by degrees, wrought upon the credulity and superstition of the people, so as to obscure the real nature of the institution, as ordained of God, be put in its place, and, in length of time, be mistaken for the thing itself. Superstition is always ready to give an helping hand to such sort of things, by obtaining the sanction of custom for their support. Still the ordinances of God are just the same in themselves and by themselves, as well as in their validity, operation, and effect; they are not added to in these respects by the inventions of men, nor diminished by the want of them. What was baptism when Christ ordained it, is baptism still—what was the sacrament of the Lord's supper, is still the same—and that which made a woman a man's wife, when it was said they shall be one flesh, makes her so at this moment, and will do to the end of the world.—This is clearly laid down in the New Testament, as well as in the Old Testament, by Christ, Matt. xix. 6. and St. Paul, 1 Cor. vi. 16. See before, vol. i. p.
The various alterations which the superstition of some have introduced into these matters, and which the credulity of others have received, still leave the things themselves just as they were. Though the Pope denies the cup to the laity—though he strikes out the second commandment of the decalogue, and divides the tenth into two, in order to make up the number ten—though he, or any other earthly power, should invent a ceremony, without the observance of which all marriage is null and void—though they should vacate marriage on account of impediments of their own devising—still all this only proves the height of human pride and presumption—the ordinances and commandments of God are just what they were, and are equally binding on every man's conscience in the sight of God. As a man who makes to himself a graven image, and bows down before it and worships, falls as much under the condemnation of the second commandment, though it be left out of the decalogue by the authority of man, as if it had been retained; so a man, who, on human authority, can imagine himself to be at liberty to forsake the virgin which he has taken, because he has not—will not—or can not go to a church with her, and hear a form of words of man's device red over him by a priest, is as great a sinner in the sight of God, as if he had done such a thing the very moment after hearing Moses pronounce those laws, Exod. xxii. 16, and Deut. xxii. 28, 29, which positively forbid it, and which neither man nor angel can invalidate the force and obligation of.
That the observance of these laws must be attended, in some instances, with polygamy, is certain. The all-wise legislator must foresee this, as nothing can be hidden from Him—yet no exception, no qualifying clause, no restriction, is found in these laws as to the circumstances or situation of the man; and that no such thing was intended, appears, not only from the construction of the Hebrew words—כי איש—if any man—but also from the evident care which is taken of the honour of the seventh commandment, by adding the words לא ארשה—non desponsata—not betrothed—to the description of the damsel.—Some such exception must certainly have been found with regard to the man, if the honour of that law had been endangered by polygamy on his side, as on the side of the woman. Another reason why no exception is made, is, the apparent objects of these laws themselves—which were, to secure the validity and obligation of the marriage ordinance, so that no man should put away and abandon the virgin he had taken; thus also to secure and protect the weaker sex from seduction and dereliction, consequently from prostitution; thus to prevent whoredom and fornication, and all other evils arising from wanton and causeless divorces. But even polygamy itself was regulated and circumscribed: it did not follow that a man might take any number of wives he pleased, because he might take more than one. The maintenance and provision, as well as the due communication of his person, (called by Moses ענה—duty of marriage, Exod. xxi. 10. and by St. Paul, 1 Cor. vii. 3. Ὀφειλομενην Ἐυνοιαν—due benevolence) were not to be withdrawn from any first or preceding wife; so that much depended on the circumstances of the man.—All beyond this was called multiplying wives, and, like other unreasonable excesses, forbidden even to persons of royal dignity. Deut. xvii. 16, 17. What Solomon suffered for his neglect of this law, may be seen, 1 Kings xi. 1–14.
I have said so much on this subject of polygamy, because it is so little understood, owing to its being taken for granted to be sinful, because every body is taught to believe so, though the reason of this belief is not to be found in God's word, but in the imaginations of people, who derive their notions upon the subject from prejudice and vulgar error, just as the Papists do their notions of purgatory or praying to saints. However, it is highly necessary that every part of the divine plan for regulating the commerce of the sexes should be considered upon the footing of the divine law, that all stumbling-blocks may be removed out of the way of that retributive justice so strongly commanded in that law to every man, and therefore which every man owes to the virgin which he has once received into his possession. Declaring polygamy to be a sin, that it is a transgression of the law, when there is no law against it, is, to say the least of it, an horrid and unwarranted piece of presumption, and is attended with these mischiefs among many others—It furnishes the man who has no conscience, with a ready excuse for leaving to distress, prostitution, and ruin, the helpless object of his brutal lust—And it deters the man who has some conscience, from thinking it his duty to maintain, protect, and provide for as a wife, the woman whom he has made so in the sight of God, and whom, if ever it be in his power, he ought to make so in the sight of the world. Whereas the law of God, the only criterion of good and evil, leaves the former without all excuse for not doing, and the latter without all fear of doing, what, if done in every case, would save thousands from ruin both in this world and in the next.
To maintain this, is to maintain the word of God—to contend for the faith once delivered to the saints—to defend the bulwarks of female security—to throw down the strong holds of seduction, debauchery, and prostitution—and, by sapping the foundation, to demolish the whole fabric of adultery, whoredom, and fornication; which are all supported, as well as built, by systems of human invention—policy of man's device—and maxims of worldly wisdom. But again let me say, be it remembered—the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. 1 Cor. iii. 19.
Into whose-soever hands these papers may come, I must at the end, as at the beginning, enjoin the reader to take his Bible, and examine thoroughly into the truth of what has been said—to weigh it in the balance of the sanctuary—to let no prejudice or pre-conceived opinion (if possible) biass his judgment—no traditions of men usurp the place of God's commands within his conscience—no popular opinion plead, from its antiquity, a right to deceive his understanding—remembring that it is written—Let God be true, but every man a lyar, Rom. iii. 4. Therefore, notwithstanding all the plausible and seemingly pious objections, which human pride can devise and raise against God's dispensations, and all the best-connected plans, which human wit and wisdom can oppose to that uniform and holy system of moral government over men's actions, which is revealed in the Bible—as well as all the inventions of uncommanded rites and ceremonies, which have obscured, and even made of none effect, the simple ordinances of God—still God will be justified in His sayings, and clear when He is judged. Rom. iii. 4. He will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent. 1 Cor. i. 19; and it will appear at that day, that what is highly esteemed among men, is abomination in the sight of God. Luke xvi. 15.
By this time, it is to be hoped, that the reader will give the author credit, for having considered the foregoing subjects, not in a light, hasty, desultory, or careless manner, but with all the diligence and ability of which he is capable. The author for himself can truly say, that he hath not wilfully overlooked the divine testimony on either side of the question, but hath faithfully transcribed what he apprehends to be the mind and will of God, as revealed in scripture, on every subject which has been considered. Notwithstanding which, if he could suppose that second causes were at the disposal of ignorance, superstition, vulgar error, and inveterate prejudice, he could expect little more than to adopt the complaint in Is. xlix. 4. I have laboured in vain, I have spent my strength for nought and in vain.—But when he looks higher, and recollects by whose power and providence it was, that those very truths of scripture, for maintaining of which Wickliffe's bones, and Bucer's books, were publicly and ignominiously burnt, and hundreds of the wisest and best of men were committed to the flames, are now the standards of our national faith—when he recollects, that being a bigamist, or twice successively to be married, was once infamous, but now honourable—that for a clergyman to marry at all was, a little more than two hundred years ago, felony both in the man and wife—but that now the truth of scripture prevails, and marriage is honourable in all—when he reflects that if "any taught their children the Lord's Prayer—the Ten Commandments—and Apostles Creed, in the vulgar tongue, it was crime enough to bring them to the stake, as it did six men and a woman at Coventry, in the passion-week, 1519."—(See Burnet Hist. Ref. vol. i. p. 31.)—but that now, on the baptism of our children, a solemn charge is given to the sponsors, that—"they chiefly provide that the children may learn the Creed—the Lord's Prayer—and the Ten Commandments, in the vulgar tongue"—I say, when the author reflects on these and many other instances of the like kind, he owns himself inclined to adopt the advice of the wisest of the sons of men—Eccl. xi. 1.—Cast thy bread upon the waters, for thou shalt find it after many days;—and not to be without hope that a day may come—when adultery—which, though it be the most malignant species of robbery, does not amount with us to the guilt of a petty larceny—will become terrible even to think of, much more so to perpetrate, when men cannot indulge their gallantry but at the peril of their lives. A time may also come, when seduction, prostitution, and the ruin of the weaker sex, shall be put a stop to, by our adopting the salutary provisions of the divine law—when child-murder, female suicide, and all the other dismal effects of men's villainy, falshood, and treachery, shall be prevented—when fear and shame shall no longer be the concomitants of God's own ordinance, but the magistrate, as in Israel, be armed with a sufficient power to enforce a public recognition of it:—then will marriage be promoted—population increased—God honoured—millions saved from destruction!
To recommend all this is the purpose of these pages.—As for the Author—Modò hæc tibi, lector Christiane, usui sint, quemvis authorem fingito—All that remains for him, is, to endeavour not to be misunderstood. He therefore desires to conclude, with explaining himself, as to those errors, which appear to him to result from the present system of things, and which, therefore, he would wish to be rectified in the apprehensions of mankind.
1.
That the God and Creator of all things is not the sole legislative power, with respect to the moral actions of His reasonable creatures, as they relate to Himself.—Therefore,
2.
That the laws, customs, and inventions of men, are to supersede, and set aside, the obligations of the divine law, and to correct the ways of Him who is perfect in knowledge.—Therefore,
3.
That marriage is not that which God's law makes it, but that which has been established by the authority of the church of Rome—adopted by Protestants—and confirmed by act of Parliament.—Therefore,
4.
The seduction, &c. of virgins creates no legal obligation in the man to marry, or to provide for them in any wise, unless an human ceremony be performed:—on the contrary, they are to be reputed infamous—and, under the temptations of fear and shame, be reduced to the horrid and unnatural barbarity of either murdering their infants, in order to concealment, thus exposing their own lives to the hands of the public executioner—or, with the loss of friends and reputation, be driven as vagabonds on the face of the earth, to seek a wretched maintenance in common prostitution, and thus incur all the consequences of disease, misery, ruin, and destruction: while the men, who are the guilty and inhuman authors of their calamities, are under no responsibility or obligation whatsoever.
5.
The releasing and absolving men from their promises, vows, and even oaths, so that no private contract of marriage, though "becoming matrimony by consummation" (see vol. i. p. 31. and vol. ii. p. 52.) shall be binding—to the great dishonour of Almighty God—in defiance of his laws—and to exposing numbers of the female sex to ruin and destruction. And this by,
6.
Adding impediments, and laying difficulties in the way of marriage, which are not warranted by the law of God.
7.
That adultery, though a capital offence by the law of God, subjects neither party to any indictment or prosecution whatsoever, in any of our courts of criminal judicature; and is of less penal consequence to the guilty parties than the stealing a sixpence.
8.
It being held no cause of divorce from the bond of matrimony, without an act of parliament, none but the rich can do themselves justice, or be at liberty to resort to that remedy, to which they are intitled by nature, reason, and scripture.—Therefore,
9.
It may be, and doubtless is, the fate of numbers of injured husbands, either to cohabit with adulterous wives—or to be reduced to all the inconveniences and temptations of a single state, without being able to help themselves; and at the same time to all the burdens and inconveniences of a married state, yet unavoidably deprived of all the comforts of it—to the grievous and irremediable distress of the injured.
10.
That polygamy is against the law of God—or "though allowed to the Jews under the law—yet is in no case lawful to Christians under the gospel." By our law it is totally and indiscriminately prohibited, on pain of death.—Hence it follows, that men who are once married, though deprived utterly of the ends and benefits of marriage, by barrenness, distemper of mind, or disease of body, in their wives—or unavoidably compelled to separation, by the most reasonable and justifiable causes—must be content to submit to all the inconveniences of celibacy—whether it be to the extinction of their families, which is one means of depopulation, or, the being exposed to all the temptations to vice which attend an unmarried state, and to all their dreadful consequences, rather than break through the laws which men have imposed on them, by using the remedy to which they are intitled by the law of God. See before, p. 178. and n.
These, and many other consequences of our present system which regards the commerce of the sexes, equally dangerous to the peace, happiness, comfort, and welfare of society, as well as destructive, more especially to the weaker sex, and dishonourable to the government of the world, as established by the divine Legislator at Mount Sinai, are what, from visible and daily proofs, the author apprehends, call loudly for reformation. This on the basis of that wise, holy, uniform, and consistent system of moral government, which was not made for the righteous, (i. e. for man in a state of innocence and perfection) but for the lawless and disobedient, &c. (1 Tim. i. 9.) i. e. for mankind in a fallen and corrupted state—and therefore necessarily containing many positive precepts, which are wisely contrived to obviate the sad consequences of those evils, which, in a state of innocence and perfection, could not have existed.
To point out these defects—to set forth their remedy on the evidence of divine revelation—to recommend the whole to the most serious consideration of all men, but more especially to the legislative powers—is the author's real design.
How this has been executed, is left to the reader to determine.
As for favour, the author asks none.—If what he hath written be contrary to the law of God—he deserves it not—If, on the contrary, what hath been submitted to the reader, be agreeable to the divine law and testimony—the author puts himself entirely out of the question; and as for critics, cavillers, objectors, and disputers of this world—whether they be of the sect of the Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, neither angel nor spirit—or of the sect of the Pharisees, who confess both—but prefer tradition to scripture—
Quid curet Luna latratus canum?
Which, if the reader pleases, he may thus paraphrase—
As when, with radiant majesty, the Moon,
In her full orb, ascends her highest noon,
The bark of dogs, and howl of wolves, in vain
Insult the glories of her peerless reign:
Thus, beaming forth from Scripture's holy page,
Tho' scoffers cavil and opposers rage,
Fix'd in its sacred orb, the Truth will shine,
Ever be glorious—ever be divine.
I conclude the whole, with recommending to the reader's serious recollection and meditation, that most solemn, most noble, and most sublime testimony, which Moses, the man of God, under the immediate inspiration of the Holy Spirit, bare to the holiness, perfection, purity, and transcendent excellency of the Law of Jehovah.
Deut. iv. 5, &c.
Behold, I have taught you statutes and judgments, even as the Lord my God commanded me, that ye should do so in the land whither ye go to possess it. Keep, therefore, and do them; for this is your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the nations: which shall hear all these statutes, and say, Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people. For what nation is there so great, who hath a God so nigh unto them, as the Lord our God is, in all things that we call upon Him for? And what nation is there so great, that hath Statutes and judgments so righteous, as all this law which I set before you this day?
Prov. xxx. 5, 6.
Every word of God is pure—add thou not unto His words, lest He reprove thee, and thou be found a lyar.
References:
Uncharted Knowledge
Wisdom From Previous Realities
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