[8]
As to what shall be advanced on these, and on the other subjects of the following discourse, the author is not wild enough to imagine that, what he has to say, will meet with any better reception than that book does from whence he takes his authority; or that any person who does not regard the Bible so far as to pay an implicit regard to its sacred dictates, will be in the lead persuaded by what will be offered: much less that there will be any alteration in our national system of laws, 'till, as a nation, we practically adopt, as we certainly profess to believe, and as it is evidently true, that GOD is to make laws for man, and not man for GOD; or, in other words, that the world is to conform to the Bible, and not the Bible to the world.
[9]
It is now long since Christ charged the Jewish Rabbis with making void the law of GOD through their traditions, and teaching for doctrines the commandments of men, hereby proving themselves the children and followers of those of whom he complains Is. xxix. 13. This people draw near me with their mouth, and with their lips do honour me, but have removed their heart far from me, and their fear towards me is taught by the precept of men. Human nature is *just the same now that it was then, and the same leaven has run through human systems, more or less to this hour.
Our laws concerning marriage, especially since the famous marriage-act, are full of this, and hence in part arises the mischief complained of. By substituting a human ceremony of man's invention, in the place of the ordinance of marriage which GOD ever instituted or revealed, we have reduced the most solemn of all ties to a sort of civil institution, the most sacred of all obligations to a mere civil contract; and where the latter can be avoided, the former is totally vacated, as if it had never been.
* "August 1, 1543. The Parisian divines assembling the people by the sound of a trumpet, published five-and-twenty heads of Christian doctrine, proposing the bare conclusions, and determinations, without adding reasons, persuasions, or ground, but only prescribing, as it were by authority, what they would have believed. These were printed, and sent through all France, confirmed by the King's letters under most grievous punishments against whomsoever spake or taught otherwise." Brent. Hist. Coun. Trent. 105.
[10]
By GOD'S express command from Mount Sinai, where the laws concerning moral good and evil, were eternally and unalterably fixed, no man could take a virgin and then abandon her. He shall surely endow her to be his wife. Exod. xxii. 16. And again Deut. xxii. 29. She shall be his wife; BECAUSE HE HAS HUMBLED HER, he may not put her away all his days.
Will any say �?"these laws are antiquated?" I answer, "they are as unchangeable as the God that made them." His law is His will, and therefore can no more change than Himself. The strength of ISRAEL is not a man that He should repent נחם change his mind, opinion, or purpose. 1 Sam. xv.29. I am JEHOVA, I change not, is the character which he records of himself, Mal. iii.6.; and to shew that he hath stamped the same unchangeableness upon his laws, he says, Deut. iv. 2. Ye shall not ADD unto the word which I command you, neither shall ye DIMINISH ought from it, that ye may keep the commandments of the LORD your GOD. And again, Deut. xii. 32. What thing soever I command you, observe to do it, thou shalt not ADD thereto nor DIMMINISH from it.
[11]
Now, I do take it for granted, that He, who, speaking to the people of Israel, calls himself THE LORD YOUR GOD, is also THE LORD OUR GOD. Is he the God of the Jews only? Is he not also of the Gentiles? Yes �?/FONT> of the Gentiles also. Rom. iii. 29. For which very evident reason, I do conclude, that both Jews and Gentiles are equally subject to those laws which the LORD THEIR GOD once revealed and established for the moral government of the world : and therefore (as we may learn from the testimony of the Apostle of the Gentiles under the New Testament, Gal. iii. 10. as well as from Moses under the Old Testament, Deut. xxvii. 26.) Cursed is every one, that continueth not in ALL things which are written in the BOOK OF THE LAW, to do them.
These laws therefore stand on the same footing with what we usually call the Ten Commandments �?/FONT> and are no more subject to decay or alteration than they are. I say they stand on the same footing, because they were equally delivered by GOD to Moses, on the same divine veracity, the same awful, and indisputable authority, and are guarded by the same tremendous sanction.
[12]
That the merely ceremonial laws are waxed old and vanished away, Heb. viii. 13. is certain, because they were only established for the time then present, Heb. ix. 9. to point out, and prefigure things to come. They had their end and accomplishment in CHRIST, and of course their utter abolition. This so far from arguing any change of mind or will in GOD, is one of the highest and most illustrious proofs of the uniformity, and consistency, with which he has laid down, carried on, and perfected the same one design from the beginning.
But the moral laws which respect the well-being of society, the prevention of disorder, confusion, and all other appendages of moral evil must endure on the face of the earth. When St. Paul, Gal. iii. 10. and Rom. x. 5. cites the sanctions of the moral law from the Old Testament, he shews very clearly, that it still remains as an invariable rule of conduct, from which all the people of GOD, whether Jews or Gentiles, are equally forbidden to depart.
[13]
Can any person therefore, in his sober senses, imagine that it was unlawful in the sight of GOD (because expressly by a positive law forbidden) three thousand years ago, to take a virgin and then abandon her, but that now it is lawful? or, because there is no law of this land against it, it is there - fore less offensive in the eyes of GOD, than at the instant He forbad it? or that GOD'S law is only binding on the consciences of men, where it has the sanction of human* institutions to inforce it? If it be time which wears out the malignity of such and evil, or the obligation of the divine law against it, we may as well imagine that other crimes stand in the same predicament, and the most atrocious violations of the security and happiness of mankind, will have a prescriptive innocence to plead in their excuse.
That all such reasonings are not only without foundation, but directly opposite to the divine truth, we learn from that truth itself, which hath assured us, that " it is easier for heaven and earth to pass, than one tittle of the law to fail." And that we may be assured [that] He stamped the most permanent authority on that law, and particularly on that part of the law of which we have now been speaking, He adds, in the very next words �?/FONT>"Whosoever putteth away his wife, and marrieth another, commiteth adultery ; and whosoever marrieth her that is put away from her husband, commiteth adultery." This is no new law enacted by our blessed Saviour on the subject, but an application and explanation of that very law which he had, immediately before, said �?nbsp;"could never fail," and which was given to Moses at mount Sinai. See Luke xvi. 17, 18.
* We may say of human laws, ceremonies, and institutions, which interfere with the obligation of GOD'S ordinances or commandments, as Henry II. King of France said of the papal dispensations, that �?/FONT> "they are not able to secure the conscience, and are nothing but a shadow cast before the eyes of men, which cannot hide the truth from GOD."
[14]
When our Lord in his sermon on the mount, as recorded by St. Matthew, is about to explain the moral law, and vindicate it from the false glosses which the Scribes and Pharisees had put upon it, he prefaces his explanation with these remarkable words �?"Verily I say unto you, 'till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle (one, even the most seemingly inconsiderable part of a single letter) shall in no wise pass from the law, ''till all be fulfilled." ἕω�?/SPAN> ἂ�?/SPAN> πάντ�?/SPAN> γένητα�? Until all things be done. Which, with the learned Dr. Hammond on Matth. v. 18. I would thus paraphrase: ""Till the world be destroyed, and all things come to an end, no one least particle shall depart from the law, or be taken away, or lose its force and obligation." "Whosoever therefore, saith Christ, ver. 19. Shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven; but whosoever shall do, and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven." After such a testimony as this to the immutability of the divine law, it would hardly be decent in me to attempt an addition to its force, by any further arguments.
[15]
I will therefore now proceed to examine the subjects proposed, which I shall do singly on the authority of GOD'S word; and this, not by detaching one text here and there from the rest of the sacred scriptures; but by examining carefully the whole throughout, spiritual things with spiritual, 1 Cor. ii. 13. and thus allowing the word of GOD to be, the best comment upon itself.
Nor shall I venture to rest any one point on the authority of even the best * translations, but constantly have recourse to the original scriptures, being desirous to follow that sensible maxim, that "nothing should be received in proof, but on the best testimony which the nature of the thing will admit of." If, in matters of civil property, "a copy will not be admitted in evidence, where the original can be come at,"how much more doth it behove us, in matters of eternal concern, to have the best evidence for our determinations?
* Whosoever reads the scriptures on or rather against, the sacred scriptures, of that ignorant and malicious reviler of them, M. de Votaire, may see how he has been led into his mistakes by some of the Latin and French translations.
10
CONTINUE TO CHAPTER ONE
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