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"comers, but by the best men that could "be found."

This custom was far from being reckoned criminal or adulterous, it was ap→ plauded greatly; and "fo far were wo"men from that scandalous liberty which

has been objected to them, that they "knew not what the name of adultery "meant." "-"A proof of this we have in Geradas, a very antient Spartan,

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who, being afked by a firanger what punishment their law had appointed "for adultery? answered-" My friend, "there are no adulterers in our country.'

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*The community of wives cannot be conceived to have escaped the lewd Corinthians, when we confider how it fpread far and wide among the Gentiles. This is faid to have been the custom of the Troglodytes, Agathyrfi, the Maffagete and Scythians, of whom Strabo faith-" they had their wives "in common, agreeably to the laws of Plato."

Puffendorf has given a long lift of other nations, which had the fame cuftom among them, fuch as the antient inhabitants of Britain, the Sabeans, those of the kingdom of Calecut, the antient Lithuanians, &c. See Leland, vol. ii. p. 129, note r.

Diogenes, whom Epictetus celebrates with the epithet of divine, held that "women ought to be com"mon"-looking upon marriage to be nothing; "that every man and woman might keep company "with whom they liked beft, and that therefore "children ought to be in common." Ib. 132. the Stoics held that women ought to be in common among the wife, 133.

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So

But,

"But, replies the ftranger, fuppofe "there were one, how would you punish " him?" He answered-" The offender "must pay to the plaintiff a bull, with "a neck fo long, that he might drink "out of the river Eurotas, from over "the top of mount Taygeta." Why, " 'tis impoffible to find fuch a bull, faid "the man." Geradas fmiling replied""Twas just as impoffible to find an "adulterer in Sparta." It is endless to obferve on the total blindness of such people, with refpect to the law of GOD: but when the Corinthians were awakened to a sense of divine things, though, as well as others in that part of Greece, they had been infected with this Spartan leaven, and followed the practices, as they had imbibed the principles of their neighbours; yet neither custom, example, nor prejudice of education, could filence, or any longer fatisfy their confciences, and therefore they seem to have written to the apoftle, to know his fenfe of the matter; which he clearly gives them in the words of the text, and which evidently reprobate this

Lycurgus eftablished his laws in Lacedæmon almoft 900 years before CHRIST, fo that they had full time to circulate and grow into customs, not only in Greece, but also in many other parts of the world.

horrid cuftom. Having, in the preceding chapter, difcuffed at large the fubjects of whoredom and fornication, and lewdness in general, he begins this feventh chapter with an answer to the particular queftions propofed to him in the letter which he had received from them. The paffage may be thus paraphrased :— Now concerning the things whereof ye wrote unto me-" I fay, firft in general, though "not for the reasons which fome of your

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philofophers have given, nor for those "which the Gnostics have fuggefted, as if

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marriage was wrong or finful in itself, "but for prudential reafons, arifing from "the fituation of things at this time (ver. 26.) it is good, nanov, useful, pro

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fitable (ver. 8 and 26.) for a man not "to touch a woman-to have no dealings "with the other fex. (See Matt. xix. †

* By the manner of St. Paul's expreffing himself, 1 Cor. v. 1. he seems to infinuate, that, one man's taking or having another's wife, was a matter by no means unheard of amongst the Gentiles; though a man's having his father's wife was.

See an inftance of this fort of degeneracy among the Jews, Amos ii. 7.

+ un amiodar yuvaina is conftrued, by fome learned men, by ducere uxorem-to marry a wife ; but I rather think our tranflation right-not to touch a woman-for, as the word av0pwww denotes man in a general fenfe, fo, to make both parts of the fentence correfpond with each other, the fuyaina muft be general alfo.

VOL. I.

"II, 12.

II, 12. But with respect to the for"nications you mention, and concerning "which you defire to know my fenti"ments; I answer, conformably to the "law of GOD, which ordains, that a man "fhall cleave to his wife, &c. (Gen. ii. 24.) "and that no woman fhall depart from "her husband, and go to another man (see “Rom. vii. 1, 2, 3). Let every man have " his wife-Tuv yuvama Eaurs-the woman "who belongs to him-and not lend "her out, or fuffer her to marry another, 66 nor let him take a woman who is not yuvy έaut8, his wife, but another man's,

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There is no neceffity to reftrain the word Topveras in this place, as our tranflators feem to have done, to the idea of what is ufually meant by that. term, that is to fay, commerce with harlots; for it is a general word, expreffive of adultery, as well as what is called fornication. Thus the apostle ufes it but a little before in this very epistle, chap. v. 1. to denote not only adultery, but also inceft. It is ufed as fignifying adultery, Matt. v. 32. xix. 9; for though it may there fignify lewdnefs committed before marriage, but not found out till afterwards, yet it must neceffarily alfo be understood to mean fuch acts done after marriage; for our LORD cannot be fuppofed to mean that the former was a just cause of divorce, and not the latter-fo that the word opvela must include both. Topvelas being plural, well denotes the complicated crimes of the husband's lending his wife to another man, and the wife's going to another man befides her husband, including alfo the crime of him who took her,

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to himself. So alfo let every married woman have her own proper husband

ε τον ίδιον ανδρα—the man appropriated to "her, exclufively of all other men upon "earth, and not depart, or fuffer her"felf to be lent or given to any other

"man.'

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I would here obferve, that there is a very remarkable difference of expreffion, which, though preserved in many other tranflations, is not in ours. We render the two clauses juft alike, whereas they are not fo in the original, but-T 'EAYTOY γυναικα, and τον ΙΔΙΟΝ άνδρα. The Latin translations preferve this difference of expreffion-fuam uxorem-proprium virum. Leufd. ex Mont. So the old and new translations in Beza's Teftament, and Barker's Eng. Teft. 1615, and the Geneva, 1557. Let every man have HIS WIFE, and every woman her own bufband. If all feripture be given by infpiration of GOD, (2 Tim. iii. 16.) and holy men Spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost, (2 Pet. i. 21.) I cannot but think that there is fome weighty reafon for the difference of expreffion, in giving the epithet 'Idov to the bufband, with refpect to the wife, and not to the wife, with refpect to the husband. This is obfervable, not Q2

only

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