but from the predominance of vicious inclination, were so averse from acknowleging much less from reduc ing to practice; some higher authority than that of man was necessary ;-some personage was wanted whose influence were paramount to the edicts of Princes, or the speculations of philosophers-some universal Teacher carrying on his precepts some universal lawgiver bear ing on his laws, the immediate, the refulgent stamp of Heaven.

licence of the dispensers of their laws. Not that all the Jewish doctors concurred in a lax interpretation of the Jaw of divorce. The school of Sammai who lived a short time before our Saviour, taught that a man could not lawfully be divorced from his wife, unless he had found her guilty of some action which was really infamous. But the school of Hillel, a disciple of Sammai, taught on the contrary, that the slightest reasons were sufficient to authorize a man to put away his wife-if, for instance, she neglected, in any degree, the business of the house-if-in short-he found any other woman whom he liked better. He translated the text of Moses thus; if he hath found any thing in her, or an uncleanness."*-That this loose construction of the passage, had gained assent from almost all ranks and

• See Comber on the Common Prayer, fol. edit. p. 667.— Salome, at variance with Costobarus her husband, sent him bill of Divorce, and dissolved her marriage with him. But, according to the Jewish law, a wife if she depart from her busband, cannot, of herself, be married to another: Her former husband must put her away. Joseph. B. xv. e. vii. 8. 10. The marriage of Drusilla with Azizus was dissolved in favour of Felix. See Acts, xxiv. 24. and Joseph. B. xx. c. vii. 1,2-To crown all-it appears, (in his Life) that Josephus himself married a virgin at Vespasian's command, and repu diated her, as having been a captive woman, and then mar. ried another, (s. 75,) and then divorced her also, as not being pleased with her behaviour, though the mother of three children, and then married a third wife, &c. &c. (s. 76.) Notwithstanding all this, conjugal fidelity was respected, and the fidelity that endured beyond the grave, still more reverenced. See Joseph. B. xvii. c. xiii. ■. 4, and B. xviii, c. vi. s. 6.

1

denominations of men, it were easy to determine. And its popularity was something more substantial and durable, than the breath of opinion: It was not recognized in speculation, but in action. It was rendered palpable in the practice of common life-in transactions the most unprincipled-in the indulgence of legalized lasciviousness—in the gratification of every evil passion.

It should seem, then, that the Jewish, as well as the Gentile world, were labouring under a weight of corruption, which no mortal hand could remove or alleviate. He only, whom "God had anointed with the Holy Ghost "and with power," could "command the unclean spi"rits to come out"-denouncing the wrath of God "against a sinful and adulterous generation."-It was only our Saviour Jesus Christ;-whose appearance at this crisis of universal degeneracy was more peculiarly seasonable-whose advent must have been justified even in the eyes of unbelievers by the call for a miraculous interposition to restore woman to her rights-it was He only, speaking as "never man spake," could "rea"son" with effect "on" chastity and fidelity as indispensible in marriage; could insist on its obligations as inviolable; could set forth its sacred character immutable through ages; could vindicate the divinity of its origin.

ON THE

SCRIPTURE DOCTRINES

OF

MARRIAGE, ADULTERY, AND DIVORCE ;

AND, ON THE

Criminal Character of Adultery,

UNDER THE

CHRISTIAN DISPENSATION.

SECTION III.

FROM

ROM the Heathen we again turn our attention to the Jews; still noticing, in their domestic intercourse, those features of incontinence, which the last of their prophets portrayed with such a strength of colouring scarcely, indeed, should we conceive, that they were God's "peculiar people."

But their dissolute manners and immoralities, in respect at least to wives and husbands, had even the