demns whoredom, fornication, and adultery, and hold those marriages to be illegal, which the law of Mofes hath made fo, on account of affinity and confanguinity; but we renounce the pofitive law which binds for ever the virgin to the man who has bumbled her, though this very law was evidently enacted to prevent thofe mifchiefs which arise from Seduction, and is, in the very terms of it, clearly in affirmance of that primary and univerfal law, They fhall be one flesh: but as there is the fame reafon for the continuance of this law, as there was for giving it at firft, namely to prevent whoredom and fornication, and all the mifchiefs which are the confequences of taking women and then abandoning them, it is doubtless among those indelible statutes, which are as unalterable as the reasons on which the all-wife LAWGIVER founded them. As nothing can make a marriage in God's fight but His own inftitution, fo nothing can make a divorce lawful before Him but His own authority. To affert the contrary, is to set man's law above GoD's law; which is in effect to take part with the man of fin,

*

* The Council of Trent actually pronounced an anathema against any who should say, that the "church "might not difpenfe with fome of the impediments " mentioned in Leviticus, or add others." Brent, Tranfl. of Polano, 784.

the

the fon of perdition, who oppofeth and exalteth himself above all that is called GOD, or that is worshipped; fo that he, as GOD, fitteth in the temple of GOD, fhewing himSelf that he is GOD. 2 Theff. ii. 4. One character of this man of fin was, that he fhould think to change times and laws. Dan. vii. 25.-Our LORD's oppofite character to this is very apparent in all He faid and did, but no where more fo, than in what He said on the fubject of divorce, in His dispute with the Pharifees, Matt. xix. 4, &c. He there fhews from the divine law, what makes a marriage, and, taken in connection with chap. v. 32. what diffolves it, and authorizes divorce-while we, like the Pharifees, make and unmake marriages. just as we please, and, if we do but fteer clear of a priest and an human ceremony, may take and put away as many women as we can feduce.-Methinks a few might exclaim against us in the words of Shylock

"O father Abraham, what these Chriftians are!" Efpecially if he took his bible, and contrasted the law of Heaven to our laws, as they now ftand, relative to the fubject of marriage...

Even the antient Goths may serve to fhame us-for they obliged him who debauched a virgin, to marry her, if she was equal to him in rank; if not, he was constrained to give her a fortune equal to

his

his own condition; if he could not give her fuch a fortune, he was condemned to death, because a woman thus difhonoured had no chance of obtaining an husband without a fortune, and because it was by marriage only that a ftate could be properly peopled. See Alex. Hist. Wom. vol. i. p. 148.

So in the bufinefs of adultery:-the antient Germans allowed the husband to affemble the relations of the adulterefs, in their prefence to cut off her hair, strip her naked, turn her out of his house, and whip her from one end of the village to the other. A woman thus publicly expofed, could never wipe away the stain of fo foul an infamy, nor could any motive ever prevail on another to marry her, though youth, beauty, fortune, and every advantage combined to allure him. Ib. p.

151.

We CHRISTIANS, reward the adulterefs with a divorce, which enables her to become the legal property of the adulterer; that is to fay, if the injured husband can afford the enormous expence of it, if not, he must be plagued with the woman during life. But to return

The mischiefs arifing from unlawful divorce, (for fuch I call all putting away which is not authorized by the divine law, are dreadful to think of, none can enumerate them, unless they could distinctly

count

count the miseries of prostitution. This can exist on no other foundation than men taking women, and putting them away just ás and when they pleafe; a practice as contrary to the primary law of nature eftablished at the beginning, as to every thing CHRIST laid down on the footing of that law in His difcourfe with the Pharifees. I will allow, that, here and there, inftances may be found of females, who owe their ruin to their own vicious inclinations, and who have nobody to blame but themselves but for one inftance of this fort, hundreds owe their deftruction to the bafeness and treachery of their feducers. The divine law was levelled at both these cafes-if a virgin played the whore by proftituting herself, it was a capital offenceif a man enticed a virgin, &c. he was to endow her to be his wife, and not put her away all his days. While thefe laws were ́ in force and vigour amongst the Jews, as to the observance of them, there could be no whore among the daughters of Ifrael, Deut. xxiii. 17. When Mofes found it neceffary in fome cafes, mentioned Deut. xxiv. 1. to fuffer them to put away their wives, the fame hardness of heart which occafioned this measure of policy, (for fo it certainly was) led them to abuse it to purposes of great licentioufnefs, of which adultery grew to be the confequence, as

may

may appear from Deut. xxiv. 4. a fcripture little confidered and understood, but the bafis of what CHRIST faid to the Pharifees, Matt. xix. 9.-Still we read of no brothels, no public prostitutes of the daughters of Ifrael. If the wife, who was unjuftly divorced, married another man, fhe committed adultery, the man who married her committed adultery, and the first husband, by being the caufe, was liable to the guilt of fuch adultery; and though the feverity of the law, as to the temporal confequences, was fufpended by the bill of divorcement, yet in God's account the primary law of marriage was violated, the law of the feventh commandment broken, and the delinquents were answerable at the bar of the divine justice, as tranfgreffors of the divine law. So faid the law itself, as explained by CHRIST, Matt. v. 32. xix. 9. Mark x. 11. Luke xvi. 18.

Now to apply this. The obligation created by the law of marriage is one and the fame for ever, fo muft all thofe laws be, which God gave by Mofes to explain and enforce it; as Exod. xxii. 16. Deut. xxii. 28, 29 *. Our laws and cuftoms

* Dr. Alexander, Hift. of Wom. vol. ii. p. 236. fpeaking of the privilege of divorce among the Jews, adds, in allufion to the law of Deut. xxii. 28, 29."But he who deflowered a virgin forfeited it, and "the law obliged him, in compensation for that in❝ jury,

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