ture, to enter more largely into the nature of both these institutions. The subject, however treated, will have somewhat of antiquity in it, and will be necessarily remote from those which engage your ordinary attention. But I trust to that patience of investigation, and that solidity of judgment, which Parliament has so often manifested. If, therefore, my reasoning should appear now and then too scholastic, or too critical, I hope you will give me credit for making it finally subservient to the purpose of your debate; and you will pardon me (since these authorities are essential to the cause I have to treat) if some father of the church partakes, from time to time, in the argument, or if a General Council is called in to assist the deliberations of a British Senate.

It has been usual with too many writers to represent the Law of Moses as a system, not only of moral laxity, but almost of profaneness itself, when compared with that of

Christ. This unfavourable opinion seems to have arisen from the difficulty of reconciling the operation of one of these institutions with that of the other. The view of two revelations in succession, the latter correcting, but corroborating, the former,the Gospel crowning the local provisions of the law with a scheme of universal benefit, and combining its apparent opposition of doctrine with a substantial agreement of design; this, I say, has been of too extensive and complicated a nature, not to be misunderstood by some, and misrepresented by others. The completion necessary to the earlier dispensation has been regarded as the condemnation of it; hostility has been supposed where a real union has subsisted; and in this sense also it has happened, that “what God has joined together, man has ventured to put asunder."

There can be no question as to the great difference of the outward provisions of the

two systems; but the earlier of them will acquire a considerable degree of veneration with us, and be found to approach much nearer to the object of the Gospel, if viewed, as it ought to be, not merely in comparison with the more perfect system which has succeeded it, but with the preceding customs, upon which it was itself a restraint, of great moral importance. Eusebius, who is always so eloquent when he describes the simplicity and purity of the patriarchal ages, informs us, that the minds of the ancient servants of Heaven were tempered with so much sanctity, that they were in no need of those strict regulations which the progress of corruption afterwards made so necessary; and which we see so cautiously stated in the law of the Israelites. Their own piety was their unwritten law;* and (to apply this to the present purpose) they were

* Φυσικοῖς λογισμοῖς, καὶ νόμοις ἀγράφοις. Euseb. Præp. Ev. Lib. vii. c. 8.

safely trusted with that power of marriage and divorce which, it was certain, they would not abuse. What is more observable, after the communications of Heaven with some of them, tending to the final covenant between God and man, they circumscribed themselves in the use of the nuptial liberty which they might have indulged. And this we see in the significant action of Abraham (when now the child of promise was to be born), and in the voluntary forbearance from repeated marriages by Isaac,* and others. It was the intervening time between these holy men and Moses, and the impure connection with the Egyptians, which brought with it the corruption of manners

* Μια γαμετῇ, μιᾷ χρήσασθαι παιδοποιΐα, &c. ibid. There was a general notion in the early church, as to the Polygamy of the Patriarchs, that it was practised "donec mundus repleretur." This expression of Tertullian, Exhort. ad. Cast. c. 4. would not have much influenced me, if I had not observed the same sentiment in another part of Eusebius, Dem. Evang. lib. i. c. 9. and in Cyprian, de Habit. Virg.

already alluded to; and till the law threw a better restraint upon their practice, they indulged a vicious and excessive polygamy, without any sufficient solemnities of marriage, and dismissed their wives, and even their children,* from their houses whenever they pleased. In short, the important power of repudiation was not only left to the chance of personal motives on the part of the husband, but (an important consideration) to his sole and personal execution.

When a nation was at length to be established in the Land of Promise, the licentiousness which had perverted the sound use of marriage, was to be corrected. Personal caprice was restrained, in subservience to that gradual amelioration of the moral and

*The succession to property, amid the change of wives, was well guarded by the law, in favour of the children of the first bed. Deut. xxi. 15. It prevented, also, the rash dismissal of the child by the father. If he had a complaint against his son, he was to bring him before the Judge. Ibid. ver. 18.