CHAP. IX.
Of God's Jealousy over His Laws.
THIS title may be said to form a considerable part of the subject of holy writ, and indeed to pervade, and, like the warp through the woof, to run throughout the whole. The more we contemplate those authentic records of the mind and will of God, the more awfully shall we find this truth illustrated both by precept and example.—I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the sins of the fathers upon the children, unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me. Exod. xx. 5.—and again, Nah. i. 2. God is jealous, and the Lord revengeth; the Lord revengeth and is furious, the Lord will take vengeance on His adversaries, and He reserveth wrath for His enemies.
An exemplification of this character of the holy God, began with the first act of man's disobedience—By one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin. Rom. v. 12.—The wages of sin is death. Rom. vi. 23.—In the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die. Gen. ii. 17. Nor was this death a mere personal punishment, inflicted merely on the person of the first offender—but on his whole posterity:—In Adam all die. 1 Cor. xv. 22.
When men multiplied on the earth, transgression multiplied, till God's jealousy was awakened and provoked to destroy the whole world, except eight persons, (1 Pet. iii. 20.) by a flood of waters.
Afterwards we see Sodom and Gomorrah, with the five cities of the plain, together with their inhabitants, destroyed by fire and brimstone rained down upon them from the Lord out of heaven. Gen. xix. 24.
Not to dwell on general topics, let us for a while descend to particulars, and we shall find God's jealousy over His laws displayed throughout the scripture. Even the ceremonial institutions furnish us with examples of this. For instance, in the case of Nadab and Abihu, Lev. x. 1.—of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, and all that appertained unto them, Numb. xvi. 32, 33. who were swallowed up by the earth—the 250 who were consumed by fire, for burning incense—and beside these, 14,700 who died of the plague, ver. 35, 49. In 1 Chron. xiii. 10. we see Uzza struck dead for only touching the ark, which belonged alone to Aaron and his sons to do. Numb. iv. 5, 15. To these instances may be added that of 50,070 men struck dead for looking into the ark at Bethshemesh, 1 Sam. vi. 19. Comp. Numb. iv. 19, 20. See 1 Chron. xv. 13. So that, even in respect of breaches of the ceremonial law, the men of Bethshemesh might well say—who is able to stand before this holy Lord God!
Likewise on the breach of positive precepts, though but occasional and temporary, the jealousy of God over his laws is terribly manifested; as in the case of Achan, Josh. vii. 25.—in the case of Saul, king of Israel, 1 Sam. xv. 23. of the disobedient prophet, 1 Kings xiii. 21. of Ahab, king of Israel, 1 Kings xx. 42.
From hence let us look to the moral law, which was ordained to be a rule of life to all nations, people, and tongues upon the face of the earth, whithersoever the word of God should come. This can never vary nor decay, because it is founded in the very nature of that relation which men bear to God and each other. The commandment which stands first, and is evidently the ground of all the rest, saith—Thou shalt have no other Gods but me. How all contempts of this law were punished may be seen in the fearful destruction of the seven nations in the land of Canaan—also in God's delivering the Gentiles into the hands of those worst of tyrants and destroyers, their own vile affections, so strikingly described by the apostle, Rom. i. 21, &c.—As to what the Jews suffered for turning from God to idols, it is so often mentioned, as to form a chief part in the history of all the calamities which were brought upon them by the righteous judgment of God. Not only the actual breach of this commandment, but even the enticing another to it, whether the enticer prevailed or not, was punished with death, and that without mercy, even though the enticer was a man's dearest friend, his nearest relation, the wife of his bosom. See Deut. xiii. 6, &c.
As the first commandment was to secure God's honour, as the only object of worship, so the second was like unto it, for it was to secure that worship's being paid Him in the way which He Himself had appointed. Hence the worship of Him under the form of images, molten or graven by art and man's device, was expressly forbidden. What His jealousy over this law was, may be learned from Exod. xxxii. when the people changed their glory into the similitude of an ox that eateth grass. (Ps. cvi. 19, 20.) And there fell in that day about 3000 men (ver. 28.) besides what fell by the plague afterwards, ver. 35. Nay God would have destroyed them (all) had not Moses His chosen stood before him in the breach, to turn away His wrath, lest He should destroy them. Ps. cvi. 23.
All image-worship was absolutely forbidden by this law, whether the idol was meant as representative of the true God, as in the case of the golden calf (see Exod. xxxii. 4, 5,) or of the deities of the Heathen, as was the case of the Israelites in the matter of Baal Peor. The apostle (1 Cor. x. 8.) alludes to this, when he says—Neither let us commit fornication, as some of them committed, and fell in one day 23,000. The words πορνεύωμεν and ἐπόρνευσαν here, answer to the word לזנות Numb. xxv. 1. which we translate committed whoredom—but the word whoredom in this place, said to be committed with the daughters of Moab, and the fornication spoken of by the apostle, are not to be understood in the common acceptation of those terms, as merely signifying intercourse with harlots, but also an idolatrous prostitution of the women in honour of the idol, which among many nations was looked upon as a religious rite. This was the case with the Moabites, as appears from the whole chapter; and the sin of the Israelites was, first, their yielding to the temptation of the Moabitish women, ver. 1. and then their mixing in the idolatrous impurities which were practised in honour of the Moabitish idol. Comp. Numb. xxxi. 16. Hence the holy zeal of Phineas, who slew Zimri and Cozbi, is marked with such applause, ver. 11, 12, 13. Ps. cvi. 30. as he thereby vindicated the honour of Jehovah, in being an instrument in his hands of punishing those monstrous defilers of his law. And indeed their sin was a complicated insult on the first and second commandments. How God's jealousy over His laws operated on the occasion, may be learned from the judgment He inflicted. Numb. xxv. 3, 4, 5, 9. To this we may add the history of Jeroboam, king of the ten tribes of Israel, whose devilish policy led him to set up two calves, one in Bethel, the other in Dan, that the people might worship there, and not go to Jerusalem, thinking hereby to prevent their being drawn into a revolt from him to the king of Judah; but his sin is marked, as it were, with a pen of iron, as cutting off and destroying the house of Jeroboam from the face of the earth. 1 Kings xiii. 34.
The third commandment was to secure the honour due unto the holy and reverend name (Ps. cxi. 9.) of Jehovah Aleim—the Lord God—that it should not be mentioned in a vain, irreverent, or profane manner. In Lev. xxiv. 10. we find a man, by God's express order (solemnly delivered by Urim and Thummim) stoned to death for a breach of this commandment, though seemingly not done in a deliberate, but hasty manner, while striving with another man.
The fourth commandment, which, as to the moral intendment of it, was to secure a stated portion of our time to be set apart as hallowed, and sacred to the more immediate worship of God, was not less an object of God's jealousy; for we find the same judgment as before, delivered and inflicted in the same solemn and awful manner, and terribly executed, for a breach of this law, and that too in the instance of a man, who only gathered a few sticks on the sabbath-day.
God having, in the first table of the law, provided for His own glory, worship, and service, proceeds in the second to publish His will concerning those relative duties, which men owe each other as children of one common Father. Accordingly—the fifth commandment enjoins duty to parents—Honour thy father and thy mother, &c. God's jealousy over this law is such, that when the curses from mount Ebal were solemnly pronounced, Deut. xxvii. one of them runs thus—Ver. 16. Cursed is he that setteth light by his father or his mother; and all the people shall say—Amen. In what a dreadful manner disobedient children were to be punished, appears from Deut. xxi. 18–21. Lev. xx. 9. See Prov. xxx. 17. The fearful example of Absalom is recorded 2 Sam. xviii. 9, 14.
The sixth commandment forbids murder. The breach of this law stands marked with the heaviest doom on the offender, Gen. ix. 6. Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed.—Numb. xxxv. 31. Ye shall take no satisfaction for the life of a murderer which is guilty of death, but he shall be surely put to death. Here is another instance of the reduplicatory emphasis in the Hebrew language—מות יומת—Moriendo moriatur—dying he shall die—noting the certainty of what is said. See the terrible examples of Agag, 1 Sam. xv. 33. Ahab and Jezebel, 1 Kings xxi. 19. xxii. 34, 35, 38. xxi. 23, 24. 2 Kings ix. 30, &c.
The seventh commandment saith—Thou shalt not commit adultery—We have already observed, that the uniform and unvaried use of the word נאף—which we have as uniformly and unvariedly translated adultery, relates to the defilement of a betrothed or married woman—that this word is used to denote the turning from God, who is the husband of His church, to idols, called strangers, Jer. iii. 13. So that it carries its own single idea with it wherever it occurs throughout the whole Hebrew scripture. That the seventh commandment therefore prohibits a woman's taking or going to any man but her own, one, proper husband, is too plain to admit of the least doubt. God's jealousy over this law appears from the penalty inflicted on the breakers of it, which is certainly death, both of the woman who was defiled, and of the man who defiled her. Lev. xx. 10.
So jealous is God of the honour of this law, that even a bare suspicion which a man entertained of the chastity of his wife, subjected her to a most severe and awful trial, where, if she was guilty, God pledged Himself to discover it even by miracle—by turning a little harmless dust and innocent water into a deadly and destructive poison. Numb. v. 17, 22. None of this ever happened to a man who had taken, or was suspected to have taken, a second wife to his first—But why not, if the law equally reached his case? Can God be supposed to be less jealous of His law, if a man was guilty, or suspected to be guilty, of a breach of it, than in the case of guilt, or suspicion of guilt, on the woman's side? Why is she to suffer shame, the most excruciating torments, and even death itself, and the man on his side be free from even the least reprehension? Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right? Gen. xviii. 25.—But one good reason can be assigned for this difference, which is, that the woman was condemned by the law, the husband was not. This apparent distinction meets us every where throughout the Bible. If a wife took a second husband, living her first, they were called adulterer and adulteress, and both the wife, and the man who took her, were to be stoned to death, and if any issue was born of such commerce, it was to be excommunicated from the congregation of the Lord, even to the tenth generation. Deut. xxiii. 2. Where is there any thing of this to be found on the man's side?—So far from it, the issue of a second wife, living a first, was expressly, by God's positive law, to be looked upon as legitimate as the issue of the first, Deut. xxi. 15. No excommunication of the issue followed.—The direct contrary appears from the instances of the twelve sons of Jacob, who were equally heirs to, and inheritors of the land of Canaan—of Samuel, who ministered to the Lord in the tabernacle in his very childhood—of Solomon, who built and dedicated the temple of God—and, in short, in every other instance, without exception, which we meet with in holy writ.
When David took the wife of Uriah, he was severely reprimanded by the prophet Nathan; but after Uriah's death, he takes the same woman, though he had other wives before, and no fault is found with him; nor is he charged with the least flaw or insincerity in his repentance on that account. The child which was the fruit of his intercourse with Bathsheba, during her husband Uriah's life, God struck to death with His own hand, 2 Sam. xii. 15. Solomon, born of the same woman, begotten by the same man in a state of polygamy, is called Jedidiah, or beloved of the Lord—acknowledged by God Himself as David's lawful issue, 1 Kings v. 5. and as such set upon his throne. All this, and much more which might be, and indeed has been mentioned, shews that polygamy is not, nor ever was, an object of the seventh commandment.—To assert that it is, is not only without evidence, but against all the evidence which the word of God affords us on the subject. Had this been an equal offence on the man's side as on the woman's, the jealousy of God over His laws would not have suffered Him to have been silent on a subject so important to the glory of His holy law. Had it indeed been any breach of that law whatsoever, we must have found some traces of His anger against it, not every where have met with His entire acquiescence and approbation. Otherwise I know not how we can say with David, or how he, of all men, could say—Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path. Ps. cxix. 105. There is not a single breach of the divine law that is not marked out, somewhere or other, either directly or by consequence, with tokens of God's disapprobation and displeasure: but this is no where so marked; therefore we must either conclude, that we are left in the dark concerning the meaning and import of the seventh commandment, or that polygamy is no sin against it: to conclude the first, is an impeachment of the holiness, wisdom, and justice of God; to infer the second, is to establish the consistency and harmony of the scriptures, in the character which they have given us of the blessed God, who is to judge His reasonable creatures by that law, which He hath commanded, and made known unto them. To imagine that the holy Lord God—whose jealousy over His laws is such, as to command a man to be stoned to death for a single breach of the fourth commandment, and that only in gathering a few sticks on the sabbath-day—should allow, bless, own, and promote a breach of the seventh commandment, without a single instance to the contrary for fifteen hundred years together—and of the original institution of marriage (which is as positive a law as the other) for about four thousand years together—is wholly irreconcileable with the scripture-account of Him, whose glory it is to be of purer eyes than to behold evil, and who cannot look on iniquity. Hab. i. 13. Comp. Ps. v. 4.
Superstition itself seems abashed at the idea, and, in order to maintain its empire over the minds of men, to retire behind those intrenchments of error, which, even in the days of the apostles, began to be thrown up by the heretic Cerinthus, in that horrid position, that "the blessed Æon, who took on him the person of the man Jesus, constantly opposed the God of the Jews." However shocking this may sound in words, yet in truth and fact it is maintained in substance, by those who represent the Lord Jesus Christ as a new lawgiver, and as enacting laws contrary to, or inconsistent with, the laws of the Old Testament; or who say with Socinus, that "Christ's mission upon earth was to exhibit to mortals a new law, distinguished from all others by its unblemished sanctity and perfection."—Let us weigh the position, that "God allowed polygamy under the Old Testament—but Christ forbad it as adultery under the New Testament," in this balance, we shall find, in all sense and reason, their avoirdupois is so equal, that the weight of an hair, or the breath of a fly, would turn the scale.
Such is God's jealousy over His laws, that He positively commanded—none should add to them, or diminish from them. Deut. iv. 2. Whosoever did either, would be guilty of a breach of this express command; as such would be a sinner; for sin is the transgression of the law. To fix this on Christ, is an horrible blasphemy; and could it be proved, that in any one instance Christ added to or diminished from the law of God, by ordaining any thing contrary to or inconsistent with it, it would, as before observed, be making Him a greater impostor than Mahomet, who openly declared that he was sent to "destroy the law of the scripture, and to set up another of his own:"—whereas Christ declared, He came not to destroy the law, but to fulfil it, and that not one jot or tittle should pass from the law. But how could this be so, if Christ made that sinful which God made lawful?—if He repealed the old moral law, and set up a new one of His own? Those who can imagine such things, little consider the scripture-character of that jealous God, who declares so peremptorily by the pen of Divine inspiration—I am JEHOVAH, that is My name, and my glory I will not give to another. Is. xlii. 8. The power of the divine legislation is an essential part of His glory, which is incommunicably His own, and which never was, or will, or can be communicated to any other. When one of the persons in Jehovah covenanted to take on Him the name and office of a Son (see Heb. i. 5. latter part, with Matt. iii. 17.) and was to assume the human nature as the second Adam, He was to be made of a woman, made under the law (Gal. iv. 5.) not above it. He was so under the bond of the law, that He was a debtor to do the whole. Comp. Matt. iii. 15. with Gal. iii. 3. This ill suits with the idea of His abrogating, changing, altering, or repealing any part of it. It is said, Phil. ii. 7. that He—ἐκενωσε—emptied Himself—that is, of the glory which He had with the Father before the world was (John xvii. 5.) and was made man—took on Him the form of a servant (Δουλου—of a slave) not of a sovereign and lawgiver. So far from exercising such a power, He even refused to interfere in determining a question of private property, Luke xii. 13, 14. saying—Man, who made me a judge, or a divider among you? And so far from aiming at kingly power (a main branch of which is legislation) when He perceived that they would come and take him by force, and make Him King, He departed into a mountain Himself alone. John v. 15.—He had indeed a kingdom, but not of this world. John xviii. 36. not an earthly, but an heavenly kingdom, where they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God. Matt. xxii. 30.
The small attention which the primitive Christians and fathers paid to the jealousy of God over His laws, was greatly owing to their ignorance of the Hebrew scriptures, consequently of the true meaning of the Old Testament. They too much separated the New Testament from it, making the latter a sort of new system by itself, and governing themselves by what they called the precepts of Christ, not considering that these precepts had their foundation and authority from what was written in the Old Testament. Hence, for want of comparing the New Testament with the Old, they got into their extravagant and wild opinions about marriage. For instance—Christ said—There be eunuchs which have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake; he that is able to receive it, let him receive it.—This was presently turned into a discouragement of marriage, as less pure and holy in itself than a single life, insomuch that the famous Origen, who allegorized all the rest of the New Testament, took this passage literally, and actually castrated himself. His example was followed by many others, till the practice was condemned, under the name of autophony, or self-murder. Those who committed this violence on themselves, "were called by the Apostles Canons, Ἀυτοφονέυται, self-murderers—Ἐχθροὶ τῆς του Θεοῦ δημιουργίας, enemies of God's workmanship." See Hammond on Matt. xix. 12. Others, who did not go so far as this, yet held marriage to be a carnal thing, and unfit for the chastity and purity of Christians . Thus, to avoid what the Devil, transformed into an angel of light, taught them to esteem a filthiness of the flesh, they fell into the spiritual filthiness of making themselves wiser and holier than God. Had they gone to the only fountain-head of all true interpretation, the Old Testament—had they enquired by whom, and for what purposes, marriage was instituted—they would have seen that the law was holy, and the commandment holy, just, and good which ordained it. They would have likewise seen that the first blessing which ever came from Heaven to earth, after the creation of man upon it, was annexed to that command—Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth. Gen. i. 28.—that, so far from a single life being more holy than a married life, the Lord God said—It is not good for man to be alone, I will make him an help meet for him. Gen. ii. 18.—that marriage itself was ordained by God Himself, as consistent with the perfect innocence of man's state in Paradise, while he stood in the likeness and image of God, therefore no impurity or defilement could belong to it. For all these reasons, it is impossible that Christ should mean by what He said, that marriage is less holy and pure than a state of celibacy, or less becoming the Christian profession. This He did not mean. What He did mean, Matt. xix. 12. was (as we may humbly suppose) that in the times of the infancy of the church, when surrounded by persecution, and every opposition that earth and hell could give it, even death itself threatening on all sides the profession of the gospel, it was expedient that those who were to preach and profess it, in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation (Phil. ii. 15.) should keep themselves disentangled from worldly engagements as much as possible (see 2 Tim. ii. 4.) and especially from those ties which might tempt them to withdraw from the work they were called to, by attention to family concerns (see 1 Cor. vii. 32, 33, 35.) or perhaps to deny the faith, if they were called to suffer for it. Now, whoever preferred these considerations before even the lawful indulgence of a married life, for the sake of the gospel, so as to remain single on this account, might truly be said to make himself an eunuch for the kingdom of heaven's sake. This exactly harmonizes with 1 Cor. vii. in which the apostle says so much in favour of a single life, but explains the whole drift of his discourse, ver. 26. to relate to the then distressed state of things:—but as for marriage itself, he says, Heb. xiii. 4. It is honourable in all . Had it not been so, we should hardly have seen our Saviour beginning His miracles at a marriage-feast—thus sanctifying by His presence this primary ordinance of God. John ii. 1–11.
From this want of comparing spiritual things with spiritual, they ran into all those extravagancies about second marriages, looking on them as abominable, forbidding ecclesiastical persons to be present at them, and counting little better than whoredom and adultery a man's marrying a second wife after the death of a first; thus making out notions of purity and holiness, which consisted in nothing better than calling that which God hath cleansed, common and unclean. Acts x. 15. All this, in part at least, is what we may suppose the Apostle to mean by τα πνευματικα της πονηριας ἐν τοις ἐπουρανιοις—literally—spirituals of wickedness in heavenlies—such as spiritual pride, hypocrisy, error, and deceit relating to heavenly things, (Eph. vi. 12.) which are all the works of darkness, more eminently so when dignified with the name of sanctity or holiness. These things led the way to monkery, nunnery, and schemes of unnatural celibacy, which have been attended with practices too unnatural, beastly, and abominable to mention particularly.
Nearly allied to their disparagement of marriage, and condemnation of second marriages, and indeed the natural consequence of their wild opinions on these subjects, was their rage against polygamy, ranking it under the sins against the seventh commandment, and vouching Christ's authority for their proceedings; wresting that text Matt. xix. 9. to their own purposes, and making it contradict the whole united testimony of the Old Testament. In this particular we have trodden in their steps, the generality of our commentators make it adultery, and our municipal law, which does not punish adultery, yet adjudges a polygamist as worthy of death, actually makes him a felon, and ranks him, in this respect, with thieves and murderers. This wise law was made in the wise reign of the wise James I. and stands in the statute-book next before the act which forbids persons to "consult with, covenant with, entertain, employ, feed, or reward any evil and wicked spirits."—This was repealed 9 Geo. II. though it had some countenance from scripture but polygamy has still the brand of felony remaining upon it, though there is not a tittle in the word of God against it. Exod. xxii. 18. saith—Thou shall not suffer a witch to live: but no where does the law of God forbid polygamy: so that all that has been written, spoken, or enacted against it, from the days of the primitive Christians and fathers to this hour, or may continue so to be, is as void of all warrant from God's law, nay, is as opposite to it, as hanging a priest for marrying at all, under the statute of 31 Hen. VIII. c. 14. while it remained in force—or the ousting a man of his clergy under the stat. Ed. 1. for having been twice married—or for roasting a fellow-creature alive under the writ de hæretico comburendo. All these things were most highly honoured, and most piously respected in their day, however inhuman, barbarous, antiscriptural, and unjustifiable, they may now appear to us.
Had the jealousy of mankind over the law of God, been at all times what it ought to have been, that divine rule of right had never been deformed and disgraced by human invention, and we never should have found men taking upon themselves to sport with the consciences and lives of their creatures, as the humour, fashion, or superstition of the times dictated. What the answer of the Barons was to the request of the Prelates, as related in the famous statute of Merton, 20 Hen. III. would, with a small, but important variation, have been the language of every succeeding parliament, and, instead of Nolumus leges Angliæ mutare—it would have been said Nolumus leges Dei mutare.
Still the Lord is King—His dominion is over all—the laws of His kingdom, both in heaven above, and in the earth beneath, are as unchangeable as Himself—they are the transcripts of His mind and will, and the unalterable rule of His moral government over His reasonable creatures. No time, place, or age can change their obligation. As His law is the same, so is His jealousy over it.—Were the first causes of public and private distress and calamity more attended to than they are, men might see this truth, written in legible characters on all their afflictions and miseries—God is a jealous God.
I have before spoken on the notion of antiquating the laws of God, and leaving them out of our system, as "having nothing to do with the more modern days of Christianity; that Christians are governed by another rule, and people are not to do now as they did under the Jewish law." This may appear plausible to those who want to break His bonds asunder, and cast away His cords from them—Ps. ii. 3.—without the trouble and vexation of a guilty conscience; or who are ignorant enough of the nature, use, and properties of the divine law, to imagine that it is superseded by what they call the law of the gospel. This idea is so general, that it would ill become a writer on the subject of this chapter, to spare the pains of once again considering these dangerous but fashionable tenets.
It is a true and solid maxim, with respect to the laws of God, as well as in human jurisprudence, "ubi eadem ratio ibi idem jus—where there is the same reason for it, there the law must be the same." This is a good criterion by which we may judge between those laws which are waxed old and vanished away, and those whose obligation must ever remain. According to this rule, we may safely determine on the obsoleteness of the whole ceremonial law—as likewise on that of those particular laws, which could only relate to the peculiar situation of a peculiar people. But there is the same reason now as ever, why we should have no other Gods but Jehovah—why we should not make images and worship them—why we should not take the name of the Lord our God in vain—why we should set apart a portion of our time for the immediate service and worship of Him that made us—why we should honour our parents—do no murder—not commit adultery, by defiling our neighbour's wife—why we should not steal—bear false witness, or covet that which is another's:—we have therefore very properly adopted these commandments into our public service, read them in the ears of the people every sabbath-day, and pray for mercy on account of our sins against them, and that God would write all these His laws within our hearts, inclining our hearts to keep them. We have made other commands of God the ground of some of our penal laws—such as those against unnatural lusts—and doubtless there is the highest reason why this should be so. Why then do we make void other laws? why make other commandments of God of none effect through our traditions? Why is a virgin, who gives her person into the possession of the man of her choice, less one flesh with him now, than when God said—She shall be his wife, &c? Why do we now put asunder those whom God then joined together? Is there not the same reason of their indissoluble union now as when it was said—They shall be one flesh; because he has humbled her, he may not put her away all his days? Is the divorcing or putting away the woman less against God's ordinance, or attended with less mischief and inconvenience, than it was three thousand years ago? Let the poor, deluded, helpless, and forsaken wretch, who is wasting with disease, perishing with cold and nakedness, fainting with hunger, give the answer!—let thousands, that, like her, have been deceived and ruined, declare what answer can be given. Could the unhappy, desperate creature, who is sharpening her knife for her new-born infant's throat—the wretch whose horror makes her forget her own child, so that she has no compassion on the fruit of her womb, Is. lix. 15.—could she be asked the reason of her cruelty, she would tell us that it originated from shame and fear (fixed on her by the inventions of men) which prompt her to avoid the censure of the world so as to overwhelm every other consideration. Nor could it be made to appear, that such misery finds more alleviation from the want of power in a married man, than from the want of will in a single man, to prevent it.
All this is owing to the frame of our laws—to the unscriptural and antiscriptural power assumed by man in things relating to God—to our making marriage and its obligation consist, not in what God hath made them to consist, that is to say—simply in the union of the parties—but in the words of a priest, in the sanction of an human outward ceremony, in a lye , invented at Rome, adopted by the ambition and avarice of Pope Innocent the IIId. and his clergy, and from them handed down and received, by the credulity of mankind, ever since. Hinc illæ lachrymæ! Hence flow the tears of the seduced, the deserted, the ruined female—hence heave those sighs which affect none but the heart they come from, and which serve to little other purpose than to grace the triumphs of lust, perfidy, and treachery, over justice, mercy, and truth. Custom has fixed the odious name of whore, on her whom God accounts a wife—whoredom and fornication on that which he esteems marriage, by positively establishing it as such in His word—bastardy is stamped on those whom God legitimates and those are put asunder whom God for ever joins together.
The Hebrew זונה—which we translate an harlot or whore—like the Greek πορνη, denotes a woman, who from a principle of lust, idleness, or avarice, bestows or sells her favours promiscuously to all men alike: whereas the virgin who bestows her person on the man of her choice, with an intent to be his and his alone, so long as both shall live—or being enticed, or even on a more sudden occasion seduced—is in the language of scripture the אשה—or γυνη—the woman or wife of that man from that moment. He is bound to maintain, protect, and provide for her as such; and no ceremony of man's invention can add to this obligation, or the want of it make any diminution from it, in the sight of God. Our ideas of bastardy are derived from the former error, and are very consistent with it: we first, without all warrant from scripture, make the woman an whore, and then as unwarrantably stamp the name of bastard on the issue: whereas the word ממזר denotes the issue of a זונה or harlot (ἐκ πορνης—say the LXX, Deut. xxiii. 2.) who by having promiscuous intercourse with different men, must render the issue spurious, and uncertain to whom it belongs. For this reason the issue of an adulteress is also properly a bastard; because if a wife gives her person to others besides her husband, the issue must be as uncertain to whom it belongs as the issue of an harlot.
Nor was a man who, having one wife, took another, ever called or reckoned an whoremonger or adulterer—nor was the woman which he so took called an whore, or said to commit adultery with the man—nor was the issue of such woman by that man deemed a bastard; but the whole was by the divine law ratified, confirmed, and deemed lawful and right, as hath already been shewn at large.
In short, the whole system of our laws, in these respects, is like the systems of the Scribes and Pharisees, who took as much of God's law as suited with their own traditions, and rejected all the rest. The passage Mark vii. 9, &c. is very striking—He said unto them, Full well ye reject the commandment of God, that ye may keep your own traditions. For Moses said, Honour thy father and mother, and whoso curseth father or mother, let him die the death;—But ye say, If a man shall say unto his father or mother, it is Corban, that is to say a gift (bestowed and devoted by me to the temple-treasury, for the repairs or service of the temple, according to King Jehoash's institution, 2 Kings xii. 9.) by whatsoever thou mightest (otherwise) be profited by me, he shall be free; and ye suffer (or permit) him no more to do aught for his father or mother, making the word of God of none effect through your traditions which ye have delivered: and many such-like things do ye. Let us modernize this—Moses said, that if any man (כיאיש) entices a virgin not betrothed, and lies with her, he shall surely endow her to be his wife. She shall be his wife; because he hath humbled her, he may not put her away all his days. But ye say, that if a man entice a virgin, &c. and say unto her—"I have not been married by a priest at church, according to act of parliament—therefore I have no more to do with thee"—he shall be free, and ye suffer him no more to do aught for her, nor permit her to claim him as her husband.
Again, Moses said—If a man have two wives, the one beloved, and the one hated, and they have borne him children, &c. then it shall be, when he maketh his sons to inherit that which he hath, he may not make the son of the beloved first-born, before the son of the hated, which is indeed the first-born. But he shall acknowledge the son of the hated for the first-born, by giving him a double portion of all that he hath; for he is the beginning of his strength, and the right of the first-born is his. But ye say, that if a man, having a wife, marrieth another, such marriage is null and void; that the issue is not inheritable, but shall be bastardized.
Again, Moses said—The man who committeth adultery with another man's wife, even be that committeth adultery with his neighbour's wife, the adulterer and adulteress shall surely be put to death. But ye say, that if a man hath two wives of his own, he shall be deemed a felon, and suffer death as such—whereas if he committeth adultery with another man's wife, he shall be free:—thus condemning those whom God acquits, and acquitting those whom God condemns, making the word of God of none effect, through your traditions which ye have delivered: and many such-like things do ye.
Still God is a jealous God; that is His character with respect to His laws, indelibly written on the sacred page, and awfully manifested throughout the volume of divine revelation. So those wretched Jews found it in the dreadful destruction which He sent upon them. They could not justify themselves by appealing to their traditions, nor repair the dishonour which they had done to the divine law, by vacating its obligations in order to establish their own inventions. However pious or pure they might seem in their own eyes, or in the eyes of those who were deluded into as high an esteem for human tradition as they themselves were, yet they found to their cost—and so will every one, sooner or later, who sets up human wisdom against the wisdom of God, and human inventions against the ordinances of Heaven—that the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God, (1 Cor. i. 20.) and—that which is highly esteemed among men is abomination in the sight of God. Luke xvi. 15.
Happy those whose passions have so little power over them, and those who have so much power over their passions, as to steer clear of all difficulties. But this is not the lot of all. The apostle, speaking on this subject, 1 Cor. vii. 7. says—Every man hath his proper gift of God, one after this manner, and another after that. So His Divine Master, speaking also on the gift of continency, saith—Matt. xix. 11—All cannot receive (οὐ χωροῦσι, do not receive) this saying (viz. it is not good to marry, ver. 10.) save they to whom it is given. The scriptures shew us, that no one, while in a body of sin and death, is out of the reach of temptation: therefore let him that is thinking to stand (ὁ δοκῶν ἐστάναι) take heed lest he fall. 1 Cor. x. 12. Comp. Gal. vi. 1. Yet when persons are involved in difficulties, by means of any of the things heretofore discoursed upon; let them not consult with flesh and blood, and, by following vulgar error, under the influences of superstition and prejudice of education, endeavour to right themselves by wrong methods, and be led, under a notion of repentance, to act contrary to God's word, and to every principle of humanity, gratitude, truth, benevolence, and even common honesty, by abandoning and forsaking those who have a right to their assistance, comfort, and protection:—Let them, under the guidance of real prudence and sound discretion, regulate their outward conduct so as to avoid all needless offence; but let the inward conduct of the conscience be subject only to the law of God.
As to the world, it loves its own (John xv. 19.) its own maxims, customs, and inventions, and, above all, its own ease, too well to give itself the trouble of enquiring into the foundation on which either what it believes or professes is built. The Papist jogs on with his Mass-book—the Turk with his Koran—the Persian with his Zendavesta—the Gentoo with his Shaster—the Chinese with his Confucius—the Englishman with his Marriage-Act; and nothing is so ill received—because nothing so attacks the pride and exposes the ignorance of one part of mankind, and the knavery of another—as the discovery of the superstition, folly, and opposition to God, which cleaves to worldly systems, especially those of the religious kind. Still individuals may be profited, and thankful, to be shewn, by some diligent enquirer after truth, that, in many things, perhaps the most important, whereon the preservation of millions may depend, they have been taught to believe a lye, and that while they have been following the opinion of the world, even of what passes (like the Pharisees) for the devout and pious part of it, they have been only following a multitude to do evil. Exod. xxiii. 2.
References:
Uncharted Knowledge
Wisdom From Previous Realities
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