tinued in the open and avowed practice of living with more wives than one, if the very firft pofitive law, which is evidently the foundation of all others upon the fubject, was intended to forbid or prevent fuch a practice; as little is it to be conceived, that He fhould make laws for the regulation of it, if He had forbidden the very thing itself to be done at all.

As to the divorces which Mofes permitted, it was a mere toleration, to avoid worfe confequences, if thofe hard-hearted Jews had been forced to keep their hated wives. It was no repeal, or even fufpenfion, of God's pofitive law, but only operated as an exemption from the cenfure and animadverfion of the magiftrate *; it was no lefs a breach of GoD's law in those who did it, than if fuch permiffion had never been given; as OUR LORD evidently fhews in His difcourfe with the Pharifees, in his expofition and application of the antient law of GOD, and in the conclufion which He draws from it. So, though our ecclefiaftical courts take upon them to pronounce a contract null and void, which is entered into with a fecond

*It would have been very injurious to have punished the women who left their husbands under a bill of divorce, even though they went to another man, leeing this was by the husband's own act and deed; for-Volenti non fit injuria.

wife, living a firft, yet this does not affect the matter in the fight of GOD, they are not the lefs husband and wife; for being joined together according to His inftitution, and thus being pronounced by Him one flesh-the command is-let not man put them afunder.-All fuch divorces are therefore null and void, and as ineffectual to diffolve a marriage in the fight of GOD, as Mofes's bill of divorcement was. On the footing of God's law, Jacob could no more have abandoned Rachel, his fecond wife, than Leab his first *; nor could Elkanab have any more divorced Hannah than Peninnah-nor could King Jehoash have put away either of thofe wives which Jehaiada the high-priest had taken for him.

* Abraham's putting away Hagar, is not the least exception to the rule here laid down, for this was done by the IMMEDIATE COMMAND of Heaven, not only to deliver Sarah from the infolence of Hagar, and Ifaac from the perfecution of her fon Ishmael, (comp. Gen. xxi. 9. with Gal. iv. 29.) but to hold forth, in a prophetical type and figure, what was to come to pass in the latter days, when the feed of Abraham, according to the flesh, fhould be rejected for their unbelief, and perfecution of the true Ifaac, and the fpiritual children of Abraham (fee Gal. iii. 7.) be called to inherit the promises. See this whole matter opened and explained-Gal. iv. 22, &c.

Befides, it may be obferved, that here is nothing faid of a bill of divorce, the word made ufe of is — which fignifies to expel, drive, or thrust out, or, as we fhould phrafe it-turning her out of doors-and is applied to Ishmael as well as to Hagar, ver. 10.

Why? becaufe GOD's primary law was, that a man fhall cleave to his wife, and they shall be one flesh; or, as it is expreffed in that explanatory paffage, Deut. xxii. 29. She fhall be his wife, BECAUSE HE HATH HUMBLED HER, he may not put her away all his days. This pofitive command of GOD ftands unrepealed, for the reafon on which it is apparently founded must be the fame for ever, and bears a direct and abfolute teftimony against all divorces of human invention, whether by thofe of old who made the law of GOD void through their traditions, and taught for doctrines the commandments of men, or by their fucceffors of more modern date, and actually confines them to thofe cafes only which are mentioned in the word of GOD. It cannot be fhewn from that word, that a man's having a wife, and afterwards (living the first) marrying another, is a caufe of divorce from either, or that fuch marriage was deemed null and void, or forbidden, or even found fault with, much less condemned, in any one fingle inftance; but it is very easy to thew the direct contrary, that is to fay, that wherever any man received the perfon of a virgin into his poffeffion, he (if fhe was not betrothed or ef poufed to another) by that fingle act made her his wife, and was abfolutely forbidden to put ber away all his days: this, let the man's fituation be what it might. GoD

made

made no difference, and those who do, not only have no authority but their own, but ufe that authority (like the Pharifees of old) in direct oppofition to, and defiance of, GOD's exprefs command. They may be faid to make the hearts of those fad, whom God hath not made fad, Ezek. xiii. 22. by making that finful which God hath not made finful, (for where there is no law, there is no tranfgreffion) and this by their lyes-and to frengthen the hands of the wicked, by releafing them from the indif foluble obligations which God's law lays them under, and thus facilitating the defigns of feduction, lewdness, and debauchery, which God's law was evidently made to prevent.

One fafe rule whereby we may judge of the laws delivered by Mofes, as binding or not on chriftian men, I take to be thisnamely the confiderations on which fuch laws were given; and the reasons on which they are grounded. For inftance-the reafon for establishing the ceremonial law, was to fet out and shadow forth good things to come-Heb. x. 1.-therefore when those good things did come, that law had done its office, anfwered its end, therefore waxed old and vanished away. Heb. viii. 13. there were many political inftitutions, adapted particularly, fome to the fituation of the Jews during their journeyings through

So

the

the wilderness-others to their fubfequent abode in the land of Canaan-calculated for their government with respect to the peculiarity of their fituation, not only with regard to themfelves, but to that of the nations about them. Thefe being local, and peculiar to their difpenfation, as well under the theocracy administered by Mofes, Joshua, and the following judges, as under the government of their kings, are not binding on chriftian men, whofe fituation, from the very nature of the thing, can never be the object of thofe local, or temporary ftatutes.

But when we find a law given, which is of perpetual and univerfal concern, fuch as relates to the prefervation of millions from deftruction-to the defence of the weak against the strong, and the fupport of GOD's moral government in the world, in one of the greatest of all concerns to fociety, the commerce of the fexes, there, as the reafons of those laws can never cease, thofe laws themselves must be of univerfal and perpetual obligation. Otherwise it would be making laws which are not commenfurate with the reafons on which they are founded, or, in other words, GoD's governing His people for a limited time, and then leaving them without any government but their own.

We admit that Gon's law ftill condemns