ページの画像
PDF
ePub

CHAP. XI.

CONCL

CONCLUSION.

HA

AVING thus far finished what I had to say on the foregoing fubjectswhich are not of an indifferent or trivial nature, but of the utmost importance for every body's confideration-it may be per, by way of conclufion, to recapitulate, and to commend what has been faid to every man's confcience in the fight of GOD. 2 Cor. iv. 2.

pro

While our laws are what they are, and fuffer men to take virgins into their posfeffion, and then put them away, not all the devices of human wisdom, nor the most ftrenuous efforts of the most difinterested and beft-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 ftream. The water would foon unite again, and flow on with the fame apparent fulness. So, though a few prostitutes may be taken from among the countless herd, and fome of them fo reformed

reformed as not to mix with it again, yet no apparent diminution meets the eye, no leffening of their numbers ftrikes the obfervation. The brothels were full— they are full-the streets were infested with profitutes-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 foldiers are discharged, and an hundred fresh recruits are lifted in their room. The man who thinks it can ever be otherwise, as our laws with respect to marriage now ftand, may go with Horace's ruftic to the brink of a river, and expect that it will run itself dry.

-At ille

Labitur & labetur in omne volubilis ævum.
It ftill flows on, and will for ever flow.
FRANCIS.

If an expedient could be found to dry up its fource, and thus ftop it at the fountain-bead, the ftreams must cease, and the bed of the river become dry ground. So if a law be devised which can prevent feduction and dereliction, and thus ftop proftitution at its remoteft apparent causes, the thing itself must cease.

This has not been left for the invention of man, he never could have been equal

to

to the task.

The ALL-WISE GOD Himfelf, who could alone be poffeffed of wif dom and authority fufficient for this, hath done it. His law delivered to Adam at the beginning, and afterwards in more explicit terms to Mofes at Mount Sinai, ftands as a record of the divine mind and will, and, if duly obferved by mortals, is adequate to the prevention or remedy of all the moral evils under the fun, among the reft, the dreadful and deftructive evil of prostitution.

This law has been difregarded, a fyftem very different from it has been fet up in its place. This fyftem, being of human contrivance, must of course oppofe itself to the law of GoD-for His ways are not our ways, nor His thoughts our thoughts. If. lv. 8. In fhort, that which Gop hath bound, man hath loofed. The obligation which is created by God's own fiat, muft 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 confe

*"As if the links of that eternal chain, whose "beginning is in the breast of the FIRST CAUSE of "all things, could ever be difunited by the infti"tutions of men !" Effay on Crimes and Punishments, chap. xvi.

quences

quences of all this? Mifery, ruin, defolation.-Let men but keep clear of the human ceremony, and they may bid defiance to the divine inftitution. The lewd, the defigning, the mercilefs and cruel, are turned loose upon the female world, to make what ravages they can. Seduction precedes, violation follows, dereliction comes next, and proftitution clofes the monftrous iniquity! Shame and difgrace attend the divine inftitution, honour and reverence await the human ordinance! Thus MAN IS EXALTED GOD DESPISED! This is attended with the most fatal confequences to thoufands, whofe protection is provided for and fecured by the laws of GOD, and whose ruin is invited and infured 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 obferved? If no man, let his fituation be what it might, could entice a virgin, &c. and not furely endow ber to be his wife? This in every cafe whatever? What a fecurity would this be to the lower order of females, on which the licentiousness of the higher order of

men

ufually falls the heavieft? It is hardly to be imagined that men of family and fortune would pay their addresses, or

rather

rather lay their fnares, where the accomplishment of their defires must be attended. with an union, unfuitable in all refpects to their rank in life. This would force them early to match themselves with their equals; they would not gratify their luft at the expence of their pride, and we fhould not fee fo many victims of luft, treachery, and cruelty, filling the brothels, and walking our streets, till disease conveys them to an hofpital, and from thence to the grave: cut off and loft 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 feducers, they might have been happy in themselves, and bleffings to fociety.

Nor does the rejection of GoD's law, by the substitution of man's inventions, confine its mifchief 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 fomething elfe than God's ordinance is required to make parties one flesh, perfons who are actually married in GOD's account, are under no legal obligation to each other. The unhappy mother of

what

« 前へ次へ »