obferved, we read of no adultery, whoredom, and common prostitution of women among the daughters of Ifrael: no brothels, ftreetwalking, venereal difeafe: no CHILDMURDER, and thofe other appendages of female ruin, which are too horrid to par-1 ticularize. Nor were these things poffible, which, fince the revocation of the divine fyftem, and the establishment of human fyftems, are become inevitable. The fuppofing our bleffed Saviour came to destroy the divine law, or alter it with respect to marriage, is to fuppofe Him laying a foundation for the mifery and destruction of the weaker fex; whereas no being lefs wicked than Satan himself, could ever have devised the almoft total departure from GOD'S LAW, which, from even the earliest ages of the church fince the Apostles'

* Much has been faid concerning the antiquity of this difeafc. The fubject is ably handled, and indeed exhaufted, in that learned and laborious work of Johannes Aftruc, de Morb. Ven. lib. i. I will only here obferve, that as the divine law punished adultery, or the defilement of another's wife, with death in both parties-and whoredom was, on the part of the woman, alfo a capital offence-the confequences of prostitution muft of courfe be prevented, by the prevention of the thing itself. Befides, the almost univerfality of marriage among the Jews (for celibacy was a difgrace) and the fixing the virgin on the man who first took her, fo that he could not put ber away all his days, left little room for prostitution, had their laws been even lefs fevere against it.

times, is to be found among the Chrif

tians.

I now put an end to this long chapter, in which polygamy, divefted of all the nonsense of human reasonings, is fet in its true fcriptural light, as not finful in itself, but, in fome cafes, highly expedient-in others-duty; and in this laft view of it, forming one link in that divine chain of beavenly legislation, on which the fecurity and protection of the weaker fex is fufpended; it being, upon the footing of God's law, as impoffible for one man as another, to feduce and abandon to proftitution and ruin, thofe who have a moft indefeasible claim upon him for their fafety and fupport.

If among us, as among the Jews, and as formerly in France, and now in fome other parts of the world, a fingle man, be his rank and ftation what they may, was constrained to marry publicly the woman he seduces; and if the spirit of the divine law was fo far complied with, as to compel the man already married, to give fecurity for the maintenance and provifion of fuch woman as he feduces, and, if his prefent engagement fhall determine, to marry publicly her whom, in God's account, he has married privately-it would be fuch a check upon the licentiousness

of mankind, fuch a restraint upon what is called gallantry-fuch a fecurity for female chastity-and fuch a preservative against proflitution, as might make those who live to fee it fay

Jam redit & virgo, redeunt Saturnia Regna.

VIRG.

Now Justice and the Golden Age again return. Doubtless, irregularities there always were, and always will be, while human nature is buman nature. Still, a vast difference there must be found, between a system which is formed as a check to the luft, treachery, and cruelty of mankind, and one which, in numberless inftances, lets them loofe to act without controul.

APPENDIX TO CHAP. IV.

INCE the preceding chapter went to the prefs, the author has been favoured with a tranfcript from a tract in the British Mufeum, which contains the whole of Bishop Burnet's opinion on polygamy. The reader has before feen it partially quoted; but the whole is here inferted verbatim.

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"IS polygamy in any cafe lawful under the gospel?

"For ANSWER. It is to be confidered, "that marriage is a contract founded up"on the laws of nature, its end being "the propagation of mankind; and the formality of doing it by churchmen, is only a fupervenient benediction, or pompous folemnizing of it; and there"fore the nature of marriage, and not any form used in the celebration of it, "is to be confidered. It is true, the case "is harder, when any is married by fuch a form, as binds him to one woman,

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❝ than

*The Bishop here doubtlefs alludes to that part of our form, where the priest is to ask the man"Wilt thou have this woman to thy wedded wife— " &c.—and, forfaking all other, keep thee only unto "her, fo long as ye both fhall live?

The man fhall anfwer,

I WILL.

Here is no decent qualification, as in the ordination of minifters-"I will endeavour fo to do, the LORD "being my helper"-" I truft fo"-" I think fo"

"I have fo determined, by God's grace"—or the like; but, with the peremptorinefs and confidence of a Stoic, who held-ἐφ' ἡμῖν ἐσιν ὅσα ἡμετερα έργα "all our own actions are in our own power"-ill fuited to a frail and fallible creature, who knows not what a day may bring forth-(fee Prov. xxvii. 1. comp. Jer. x. 23.) the answer is to be-I WILLI-REX DOMINUSQUE MEI-I WILL.

The man is afterwards to take her-" for better and for worse"-but, be fhe ever so much worse

X 4

than

"than where he is bound only by the tie

of marriage, conceived in general terms. "The cafe of mankind, fince the fall, "varies very much from what it was in "innocence; for then the foundnefs of "their bodies, and purity of their minds, "did keep out of the way all the ha"zards of barrenness, fickness, uncleanness,

or croffness of humours, which made "the former law not fo proper for man"kind; yet ftill a fingle marriage was "the perfecter, as being nearer the ori¬ ginal.

"Before the flood, we find Lamech a polygamist; fuch were Abraham and Jacob after it; not that this was not indulged by Mofes; for all that he did

than he took her for, fhort of actual adultery, ftill he is to groan under the fore bondage of what is called HIS VOW; which his fellow-creatures have juft as much right to impose upon him, from any authority in fcripture, as another fet of people had, to make a man vow voluntary poverty-perpetual chaftity-and implicit obedience to a fellow-mortal-on becoming a monk.

There was a time when, if fuch a one had married, the law (fee 31 Hen. VIII. c. 14.) would have fent him to the gallows, and no doubt the church would have fent him to the devil. TEMPORA MUTANTUR —well if we could fay, as touching all the foolish and unfcriptural fnares, which mankind have invented, and laid for one another's confciences-ET NOS MUTAMUR IN ILLIS.

"relating