with a distinguished lustre; I am Jehovah, faith He, I change not. Mal. iii. 6. GOD is one-His will is one-therefore this, no more than Himself, can know any alteration, diminution, or change - What was law * at the beginning will be law to the end; and therefore what that law is, as touching the point in question, I will now proceed, with the confidence which the love of truth inspires, and with a proper difregard for the fallacious and unfcriptural reasonings of men, in the freest manner to confider. : * This is true even of the ceremonial law, as to its meaning and fubstance. It cannot be less true of the moral law, which is founded in the relation which mankind bear to God and each other. 1 : CHAP. CHAP. IV. Of POLYGAMY. PROMISED the Reader, that the I proofs for what I advance, should be drawn from the word of GOD; and, for my own fake, as well as that of the truth, I find myself more especially bound to keep this promife, with refpect to the fubject before us: for if I were to go to human authorities, I should wander into such an endless labyrinth of difference and contradiction, as to lose fight of every thing but fruitless * difputation. That * Fruitless indeed! For the great Puffendorf, B. vi. c. 1. § 17. fays - "Whether or no this practice " be repugnant to the law of nature, is a point not " fully fettled among the learned." He then gives the arguments on both fides, "leaving the decifive "judgment to be passed by the reader." So that upon the footing of human wisdom-adhuc fub judice lis est. The author therefore only confiders it on the footing of the divine law, conceiving it impossible to determine its lawfulness or unlawfulness in GOD'S fight by any thing else. According to this law will all men be judged at the last day: therefore, to ap peal to any other, in matters of confcience, is absurd to the last degree. There is no other principle or means of discovering the mind and will of Gon touching That the mischiefs which must inevitably attend polygamy on the woman's fide, do not accrue from it on the part of the man, is very clear: and on this principle, we may account for the total difference which is put between them in the divine law - the one punished with death, the other not so much as mentioned in a criminal light. So far from being prohibited or condemned by the law, we find it allowed, owned, and even blessed of GOD: and in no one instance, amongst the many recorded in fcripture, so much as difapproved. By polygamy, I would be understood to mean *, what the word literally imports, the having and cohabiting with more than one wife at a time. Whether taken toge 1 touching this, or any other religious truth, no other rule or measure of judging and determining any thing about it or concerning it, but only the writing from whence it is taken, it being wholly of divine revelation, and that revelation being only exprefied in that writing. See Dr. Owen on the Scriptures, p. 18. * Polygamy, strictly speaking, is of two forts; either when one woman promifcuously admits of more husbands than one, or when one man is at the same time joined in marriage to more than one womanThe former of these is too aborrent from nature, reafon, and fcripture, to admit of a single argument in its favour, or even to deserve a moment's confideration. The author therefore, by the word polygamy, only means the latter, throughout this treatise. ther, * לא גרע-not withhold-withdraw-keep back-sx ἀποσερησει, LXX; much less thall he put her away. ther, as seems to be the case of king Jeboafh, 2 Chron. xxiv. 3. or first one and then another, as JACOB, Gen. xxix. 28. or DAVID, I Sam. xxv. 43; it was this which was allowed of God, consequently practifed by His people. The putting away or divorcing one woman, in order to take another, was as much forbidden in the Old Teftament as in the New. GOD says, Deut. xxii. 29. She shall be his wife; he may not put her away all his days. So before, ver. 19; and again, Exod. xxi. 10. If he take him another wife, her food (i. e. of the first wife) her raiment, and her duty of marriage, he fhall not * diminish. Putting away or divorcing a first, in order to take a fecond, is a palpable breach of these laws, and therefore treated by the great and infallible interpreter of them as a heinous offence against God, it being a breach of that obligation, laid upon the man, to confider his wife as one flesh with himself, and, as fuch, to cleave to her for life, as bone of his bone, flesh of his flesh, Gen. ii. 23; which our Lord cites, and reasons upon, to prove the abomination of fuch a proceeding, as absolutely contrary to the original inftitution of the marriage-bond. This, however, was the common prac tice of the profligate Jews of that day, who abused the liberty of divorce permitted by Mofes, in certain cafes, to the most licentious purposes, so as to make marriage little better than a pretence for gratifying their lufts, divorcing one, in order to take another, and thus profaning the holy ordinance of God, by giving it no higher place in their esteem, than as a means of indulging their depraved appetites. A monstrous practice! against which CHRIST'S discourse, Matth. xix. 4. &c. is levelled, not against polygamy, as confidered fimply in itself. If we interpret this passage as such an explanation of God's law from the beginning, as will serve to prove all polygamists are * adulterers, we must condemn a large generation of God's dearest servants and children; and instead of believing that all these died in faith, Heb. xi. 13. we must fay, that many of them died in a state of unbelief and disobedience; and instead of looking for Abraham, Jacob, David, &c. in the kingdom of heaven, we must look for them in the kingdom of Satan; for his they were, and him they served, if polygamy be an offence against the law from * Adultery is marked as a mortal fin, Gen. xx. 3. in the history of Abimelech king of Gerar; and polygamy therein stands as utterly diftinguished from itthis in the judgment of JEHOVAH himself. See post. |