ftate of Devils incarnate, might have been the comforts of their families, the delight of their friends, the ornaments of civil fociety.

As to what shall be advanced on thefe, and on the other fubjects of the following difcourfe, the author is not wild enough to imagine that, what he has to fay, will meet with any better reception than that book does from whence he takes his authority; or that any perfon who does not regard the Bible fo far as to pay an implicit regard to its facred dictates, will be in the leaft perfuaded by what will be offered: much less that there will be any alteration in our national fyftem of laws, 'till, as a nation, we practically adopt, as we certainly profefs to believe, and as it is evidently true, that Gop is to make laws for man,

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*This expreffion will not be thought too ftrong, when the appendages, and concomitant-vices of proftitution are confidered; fuch as profane curfing and fwearing-blafphemy — obscene talking-drunkennesslying-thieving and even the unnatural crime mentioned Rom. i. 26. This is fo frequent, as even to have become common. When fuch are the gradual confequences of eradicating every principle of modesty and virtue from the female mind, how ought that law to be reverenced, which was ordained of Heaven for their protection! Montefquieu, L'efprit des Loix, vol. i, Liv. 16. c. 12. obferves, that "there are fo many evils attending the lofs of virtue in a woman, the whole foul is fo degraded by it, and fo many other faults follow upon it, that, in a popular ftate, public incontinence may be regarded as the greatest of

misfortunes,"

and

and not man for GOD; or, in other words, that the world is to conform to the Bible, and not the Bible to the world.

It is now long fince Chrift charged the Jewish Rabbis with making void the law of God through their traditions, and teaching for doctrines the commandments of men, hereby proving themselves the children and followers of thofe of whom he complains If. xxix. 13. This people draw near me with their mouth, and with their lips do honour me, but have removed their heart far from me, and their fear towards me is taught by the precept of men. Human nature is * just the fame now that it was then, and the fame leaven has run through human fyftems, more or lefs, to this hour.

Our laws concerning marriage, efpecially fince the famous marriage-act, are full of this, and hence in part arifes the mifchief complained of. By fubftituting a human ceremony of man's invention, in the place of the only ordinance of marriage

August 1, 1543. The Parifian divines affembling the people by the found of a trumpet, pub"lifhed five-and-twenty heads of Chriftian doctrine, "propofing the bare conclufions, and determinations, "without adding reafons, perfuafions, or grounds, "but only prefcribing, as it were by authority, what

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they would have believed. Thefe were printed, and fent through all France, confirmed by the King's "letters, under moft grievous punishments against "whomfoever fpake or taught otherwife." Brent. Hift. Coun. Trent. 105.

which

which Gon ever inftituted or revealed, we have reduced the most folemn of all ties to a fort of civil inflitution, the most facred of all obligations to a mere civil contract; and where the latter can be avoided, the former is as totally vacated, as if it had never been.

By God's exprefs command from Mount Sinai, where the laws concerning moral good and evil, were eternally and unalterably fixed, no man could take a virgin and then abandon her. He fhall furely endow her to be his wife. Exod. xxii. 16. And again Deut. xxii. 29. She fhall be his wife; BECAUSE HE HAS HUMBLED HER, be may not put her Will any fay-"these laws are antiquated?" I answer, "they are as unchangeable as the God that made them." His law is His will, and therefore can no more change than Himself. The ftrength of ISRAEL is not a man that He should repent on change his mind, opinion, or purpose. 1 Sam.

away all his days.

XV. 29. I am JEHOVAH, I change not, is the character which he records of himself, Mal. iii. 6.; and to fhew that he hath ftamped the fame unchangeableness upon his laws, he fays, Deut. iv. 2. Ye shall not ADD unto the word which I command you, neither fhall ye DIMINISH ought from it, that ye may keep the commandments of the LORD your GOD. And again, Deut. xii. 32. What thing

foever I command you, obferve to do it, thou fhalt not ADD thereto nor DIMINISH from it.

Now, I do take it for granted, that He, who, fpeaking to the people of Ifrael, calls himself THE LORD YOUR GOD, is alfo THE LORD OUR GOD. Is he the God of the Jews only? Is he not alfo of the Gentiles? Yes-of the Gentiles alfo. Rom. iii. 29. For which very evident reafon, I do conclude, that both Jews and Gentiles are equally subject to thofe laws which the LORD THEIR GOD once revealed and established for the moral government of the world: and therefore (as we may learn from the teftimony of the Apoftle of the Gentiles under the New Teftament, Gal. iii. 10. as well. as from Mofes under the Old Testament, Deut. xxvii. 26.) Curfed is every one, that continueth not in ALL things which are written in the BOOK OF THE LAW, to do them.

Thefe laws therefore ftand on the fame footing with what we ufually call the Ten Commandments-and are no more fubject to decay or alteration than they are. I fay they ftand on the fame footing, because they were equally delivered by GoD to Mofes, on the fame divine veracity, the fame awful, and indifputable authority, and are guarded by the fame tremendous fan&tion.

That the merely ceremonial laws are waxed old and vanished away, Heb. viii. 13. is certain, because they were only eftablished

blished for the time then prefent, Heb. ix. 9. to point out, and prefigure things to come. They had their end and accomplishment in CHRIST, and of course their utter abolition. This, fo far from arguing any change of mind or will in GoD, is one of the highest and most illuftrious proofs of the uniformity, and confiftency, with which he has laid down, carried on, and perfected the fame one defign from the beginning.

But the moral laws which respect the well-being of fociety, the prevention of diforder, confufion, and all other appendages of moral evil, muft endure, as long as the objects to which they relate endure on the face of the earth. When St. Paul, Gal. iii. 10. and Rom. x. 5. cites the fanctions of the moral law from the Old Teftament, he fhews very clearly, that it ftill remains as an invariable rule of conduct, from which all the people of GOD, whether Jews or Gentiles, are equally forbidden to depart.

Can any perfon therefore, in his fober fenfes, imagine that it was unlawful in the fight of GOD (because expreffly by a pofitive law forbidden) three thousand years ago, to take a virgin and then abandon her, but that now it is lawful? or, because there is no law of this land against it, it is therefore lefs offenfive in the eyes of GoD, than

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