VIII.

' of their God.-That the Lord would be pleased to CHAP accompany his own ordinance with his blessing, 'particularly with the comforts and fruits of mar'riage."

36. Hence they pretend that their motive in marrying is, "to increase the church with an holy seed." But their confession, in the postcript of their creed, is, that they "beget children and keep families, merely for the world and the flesh :" and the same confession says, that their masters of families, morcover, "educate their children for the world and the flesh"betraying the souls of their children to the Devil."

Westa.

Edit.

37. Lastly, the end of their holy marriage, they say, is "for preventing of uncleanness and may be cont performed at any time except on a day of public hu- Amer 'miliation. And we advise that it be not on the 'Lord's day." Which is a further evidence that they conceive nothing either sacred or solemn in it. Then it only remains to enquire, what uncleanness it is instituted to prevent?

38. The reformers have not left in the dark, what they mean by uncleanness in general; it is the same that Luther called popish lust, or those lawless gratifications of the flesh which have no kind of respect to a posterity. And does the Protestant marriage prevent all such uncleanness?

39. Does that solemn ordinance (as they call it) bind them to such times and seasons as nature prescribes for conceiving seed? If it does not, have they sufficient authority to count that cleanness, which both law and gospel call uncleanness? Are the decrees of their most dread sovereign, or of their sovereiga Lady, and all their church guides sufficient to forbid and disannul that sacred light of heaven, which excludes from the kingdom of Christ, every lustful and lawless propensity? Is there no uncleanness committed between the Protestant man and wife?

40. The fact is, the Reformation opened the very last and most effectual door for the unrestrained and full gratification of every unclean, and worse than brutal lust, both in man and woman, under the name of a holy ordinance, by making the woman a proper object of worship, or setting her up, openly and avowedly, above all that is truly called God.

CHAP.

VIII.

2. Tin. i. 17.

41. Therefore, according to the Protestant faith and practice, every sacred rule of chastity, every degree of light, tending to continency, or gospel purity, has been anathematized out of countenance, and driven from their kirks and realms with the most furious zeal.

42. They have enjoined it upon all, as a solemn duty to marry, in their way, and have established marriage in a way which indulges the licentious prospect of living in the full gratification of their lusts, with full liberty to defile and abuse each other in the most scandalous, incestuous and debauching manner, without any respect to times or seasons: not even regarding the dictates of modesty and prudence, and much less those interposing commands of heaven, which, under the law of Moses, exempted the woman from every such lawless abuse, while in a state of pregnancy, and throughout the days of her separation.

43. Then what have the Protestants to charge upon the Papists? Was it not they themselves that încreased unto more ungodliness, and whose words have eaten out the very marrow of the gospel, as doth a canker; among whom is Hymenius or Hymen, i. e. the defender of nuptials, and Philetus, the carnal lover?

44. And who can be so justly charged with departing or standing off from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits and doctrines of devils, speaking lies. in hypocrisy, &c. as those very false swearers, those perjured apostates, who not only renounced the profession of chastity and continence, but publicly declaimed against that innocent manner of life?

45. In the heat of their reformed lust, they went on pulling down and destroying those buildings, which both they, and their respected forefathers, and good old mother church had deemed most sacred, and which had been professedly erected, and, in their way, solemnly dedicated for the accommodation of such as chose to adopt the profession of continency. And lastly, to fill up the measure of their character, they have forbidden holy marriage in truth, and out of manifest contempt to every thing sacred, have con

temned continency, and given the title of holy marriage to their lascivious and vain ceremony.

46. These charges cannot apply to any civil government, in itself considered; for the members of such never were, nor ever can be forbidden to marry in their way, by the followers of Christ; nor have such ever prohibited the marriage and spiritual union of the saints. It is, therefore, that apostate priesthood who corrupted civil government with their hypocritical and obscene forms of religion, to whom the charge of forbidding marriage properly belongs.

47. Nor is every individual, who has been called by the name of Protestant, to be ranked with those hypocritical liars, who set out to sap the very foundation of truth. Amidst the darkness of established systems, there have been men of candour and discernment, who were willing to give the scriptures their due weight on the side of gospel holiness. To instance this, a few sentences from their writings may be sufficient.

CHAP.

VIII.

Religion,

48. "Mortify the flesh with its affections and lusts, Wilber'is (says Wilberforce,) the Christian precept; a soft force on "luxurious course of habitual indulgence, is the prac- p. 112. 'tice of the bulk of modern Christians; and that con'stant moderation, that wholesome discipline of re'straint and self denial, which are requisite to prevent 'the unperceived encroachments of the inferior appe'tites, seem altogether disused as the exploded aus'terities of monkish superstition."

Notes on

20.

49. Again, says John Wesley, "There are eunuchs Wesley's who have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom Mat. xis. of heaven's sake-Happy they! who have abstained from marriage (though without condemning or des'pising it) that they might walk more closely with • God! He that is able to receive it, let him receive it-This gracious command [for such it is unquestionably, since to say, such a man may live single, is saying nothing. Who ever doubted this?] is not 6 designed for all men; but only for those few who ' are able to receive it. O let these recieve it joyful. "ly!"

CHAP.
IX.

Dodr. in

Loc.

F

CHAPTER IX.

The Subject continued.

ASTING is another article of the Reformation. The Protestants charge the Papists with commanding to abstain from meats, although they themselves have been as positive in their commands of that kind as the Papists; but the word commanding in 1 Tim. iv. 3-is put into the text by the translators.

2. Blackwell, and after him Doddridge, observes, that "the original words contain one of the boldest 'ellipses in the whole New-Testament, where a 'word is to be understood, contrary to that which is 'before expressed." But admitting the propriety of such a bold ellipsis, they can make nothing out of it to condemn the Papists that will not apply to themselves. To observe days of fasting (say they) we Ch. iv. judge both scriptural and rational," and "a religious fast requires total abstinence from food."

Pbn. Directory,

20-29.

3. Then if a temporary abstinence from meat or common food is meant, the charge falls upon them equally with the Papists. If they make it signify a perpetual abstinence, either from meat, or other common food, they will find no people on earth to whom it will apply; then it must follow that the abstinence respected something else: and what should it more likely be than that from which the followers of Christ univerally abstained?

4. Upon this principle, that text of scripture would read with propriety, and in harmony with others, Acts xv. without the bold ellipsis. "But that we write unto 'them, that they abstain from pollutions of idols, and 'fornication, and things strangled, and blood.-For it 'seemed good to the Holy Ghost, and to us-That 'ye abstain from meats offered to idols, &c. For this is the will of God, even your sanctification, that ye 'should abstain from fornication."

.1 Thes. N. 3.

1 Pet. ii.

11.

5. "Dearly beloved, I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts.-Forbidding to marry, to abstain from meats, &c." Here the forbidding of these hypocrites is directly contrasted

IX.

with what Christ Jesus and his apostles commanded, CHAP. or enjoined.

6. The doctrine and practice of the saints, was to marry only in the Lord, or in the spirit,-to abstain from fleshly lusts-from fornication, and from meats offered to idols: these were inseparably connected; and both were inseparably forbidden by the menacing tone of the Protestant perjured reformers, and their politic magistrates.

18.

7. No life of continency was tolerated; no absti nence from fleshly lusts permitted, nor any suffered in the realm, that would not offer their meats, yeasċe all their worldly goods to that insatiable idol, which 1 Cor. vi they set up as an object of bodily worship. Here was the forbidding to abstain from meats which, they say, God created to be received with thanksgiving of them that believe and know the truth: but they neither knew nor believed the truth nor used the creature of God according to its original end when it was very good.

32, 34.

8. The meat which Christ Jesus spake of eating, was that of abstaining from his own will, and doing the will of God. "I came not to do mine own will,” are his words" I have meat to eat that ye know not John. of My meat is to do the will of him that sent me." vi. 38. And the same that was his meat, became also the meat of his followers. Their meat was to take up their cross, and abstain from fleshly lusts, and do the will of Christ Jesus, as he did the will of his Father. This was the true meat, which God had appointed to be received with thanksgiving by them that believed and knew the truth.

9. But on the contrary, the meats which satisfied the licentious appetites of the Gentiles, were the gratification of their fleshly lusts. Hence said the apostle to the carnal Corinthians," Meats for the 1 Cor. belly, and the belly for meats: but God shall destroy both it and them. [Or more properly, Fleshly lusts for their pleasure, and their pleasure for fleshly lusts :* but God shall destroy all these things.] For the body

*Whoever compares this sense with what follows to the end of the chapter, may easily perceive that it is the true sense of the apostle: besides it is incon sistent with the nature of God to destroy that which is good-Destruction is denounced only against that which in its very nature is evil.

13.