Thelyphthora/Volume 1/Introduction

TO call in question the truth of long-received opinions, is a sort of employment which few chuse to be engaged in; not only from the natural indolence and supineness of the human mind, but from the reception which such attempts are likely to meet with from the generality, who are always jealous of whatsoever may seem an attack on principles which have the sanction of antient custom; and from thence, even of laws themselves, for their support.

We need but look ^[1] back to the times of the Reformation, in order to see this ​abundantly verified. Our Reformers no sooner began the salutary work of enquiry after truth, and its infallible consequence, the detection of error, than the whole Christian world, so called, was in arms against them. Councils were summoned, synods held, and their sentences were, in substance, what that of the "men, brethren, and fathers," of the Jews was against that supposed innovator, Paul of Tarsus, when they said, "Away with such a fellow from the earth, for it is not fit that he should live." Acts xxii. 22.

When Paul and Silas were apprehended, and carried before the magistrates at Philippi, the charge against them ran in the following terms:—"These men, being Jews, do exceedingly trouble our city, and teach customs which are not lawful for us to observe, being Romans,"

But why was it not lawful for the Romans to observe what Paul had been teaching? Because of the contrariety of the Roman laws ​and superstitions to God's word—for a like reason, the Reformers taught things which it was not lawful for the subjects of this kingdom to observe, because the system of the laws of church and state were opposite to the Bible—and, as far as they are so still, so far will a writer against them be deemed no better than a troubler of the land, and a teacher of customs which it is not LAWFUL for us to observe. He likewise stands fair for being called one of those, who would turn the world upside down. See Acts xvi. 20, 21. xvii. 6.

Had not Luther quarrelled with Pope Leo X. and brought himself into difficult and dangerous circumstances, it is not impossible but that the light of that great reformer had remained hidden under the ^[2] bushel of monkery. However, it pleased God to order it otherwise, and, in his gracious providence, to over-rule Luther's situation, for the investigation and promulgation of the faith once delivered to the saints. Jude 3. This extraordinary man was led to search, think, and judge for himself; and (drawing his artillery from the inexhaustible arsenal of the holy scriptures) first to ^[3] attack, and then to ​overthrow, errors, which had been received as the most sacred truths for ages, and which had been maintained, by every support, which the credulity and superstition of mankind, aided by laws and powers ecclesiastical and civil, could give them.

From whence I would infer, that no opinions or doctrines whatsoever, receive any conclusive proof of their truth, from the suffrages of men, however wise, learned, or however supported by human maxims, customs, or laws. To take it for granted, that truth must be where there are these supports, is at once to give up our privilege of enquiring and judging for ourselves; and, if so, we might as well have been born without reason and judgment as with them. Upon such a principle as this, a Mohammedan has as good ^[4] a reason for the truth of the Koran, as we have for the truth of the Bible; for the former hath as much the customs and laws of Turkey ​for its support, as the latter has those of England. "Idolatry at Pekin (says a late writer) Mohammedism at Constantinople, Popery at Rome, and orthodoxy at Westminster, will be all equally right. The earth will turn round in England, and stand still in Italy; and our holy religion will be true in Europe, but an arrant falsehood throughout all the continent of Asia." Humanum est errare, is too true respecting every man and all men, as fallible creatures. Churches and councils, as well as other communities ^[5], are ​therefore liable to be mistaken, as is modestly confessed by the Church of England in her 21st article, "Of General Councils."

"When they be gathered together (forasmuch as they be an assembly of men whereof all be not governed by the Spirit and word of God) they may err, and sometimes have erred in things pertaining to God. Wherefore things ordained by them as necessary to salvation have neither strength nor authority, unless it may be declared that they are taken out of the Holy Scriptures."

The writer of the following pages would humbly hope, that, having so venerable an authority for calling in question the truth of certain matters, which are most assuredly believed amongst us, he shall not be deemed impertinently contentious, if, touching some points, he differs from the generality of his countrymen, who, contenting themselves with notions and opinions received by tradition from their fathers, have never thought of looking after the foundations on which they are grounded, and have therefore mistaken the fallible authority of men like themselves, for the divine and infallible authority of truth itself.

That our brothels are filled with harlots, our streets with prostitutes, and our land with ​impurity, is too dreadfully true. Magdalens, Asylums, and all the kind and benevolent interpositions of public charities, however we may suppose them, with respect to some few individuals, to answer their benevolent designs, are inadequate to the cure of so crying an evil. A tree is not to be destroyed by plucking off a few leaves, or by cutting away here and there a branch; nor can so general an evil, as we have spoken of, be reformed by so partial, so precarious a remedy, as, from the nature of things, it is in the power of the best disposed, as matters are now constituted amongst us, to administer.

The ax must be laid to the root—this is the divine wisdom. The truth is, that the evil above mentioned, as all others, arises from the neglect and contempt of the divine law, and the substitution of human ^[6] laws in its stead. The wisdom and goodness of God, which He has shewn in the provision graciously made for the protection and defence of the weaker sex, from the villainy, treachery, and cruelty of the stronger, are disregarded. God's laws are laid aside, for that system of baseness and barbarity, which ​permits men, with impunity, first to seduce, and then to betray, to infamy, want, misery, disease, and even death itself in many instances, thousands and tens of thousands of unhappy women, who (were the laws of Heaven regarded, as they ought to be, and made the foundation of our municipal laws) instead of becoming nuisances, and reduced to the state of Devils ^[7] incarnate, might have been the comforts of their families, the delight of their friends, the ornaments of civil society.

As to what shall be advanced on these, and on the other subjects of the following discourse, the author is not wild enough to imagine that, what he has to say, will meet with any better reception than that book does from whence he takes his authority; or that any person who does not regard the Bible so far as to pay an implicit regard to its sacred ​dictates, will be in the least persuaded by what will be offered: much less that there will be any alteration in our national system of laws, 'till, as a nation, we practically adopt, as we certainly profess to believe, and as it is evidently true, that God is to make laws for man, 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 since Christ charged the Jewish Rabbies 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 those of whom he complains Is. 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 ^[8] just the same now that it was then, and the same leaven has run through human systems, more or less, to this hour.

Our laws concerning marriage, especially since the famous marriage-act, are full ​of this, and hence in part arises the mischief complained of. By substituting a human ceremony of man's invention, in the place of the only ordinance of marriage which God ever instituted or revealed, we have reduced the most solemn of all ties to a sort of civil institution, the most sacred 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 express 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 shall surely endow her to be his wife. Exod. xxii. 16. And again, Deut. xxii. 29. She shall be his wife; BECAUSE HE HAS HUMBLED HER, he may not put her away all his days.

Will any say—"these laws are ^[9] 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 strength of Israel is not a man that He should repent נחם change his mind, opinion, or purpose. I Sam. xv. 29. I am Jehovah, I change not, is the character ​which he records of himself, Mal. iii. 16; and to shew that he hath stamped the same unchangeableness upon his laws, he says, Deut. iv. 2. Ye shall not ADD unto the word which I command you, neither shall ye DIMINISH ought from it, that ye may keep the commandments of the Lord your God. And again, Deut. xii. 32. What thing soever I command you, observe to do it, thou shalt not ADD thereto nor DIMINISH from it.

Now, I do take it for granted, that He, who, speaking to the people of Israel, calls himself the Lord your God, is also the Lord our God. Is he the God of the Jews only? Is he not also of the Gentiles? Yes—of the Gentiles also. Rom. iii. 29. For which very evident reason, I do conclude, that both Jews and Gentiles are equally subject to those 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 testimony of the Apostle of the Gentiles under the New Testament, Gal. iii. 10. as well as from Moses under the Old Testament, Deut. xxvii. 26.) Cursed is every one, that continueth not in ALL things which are written in the Book of the Law, to do them.

These laws therefore stand on the same footing with what we usually call the Ten Commandments—and are no more subject to decay or alteration than they are. I say they stand on the same footing, because they were equally delivered by God to Moses, on the ​same divine veracity, the same awful, and indisputable authority, and are guarded by the same tremendous sanction.

That the merely ceremonial laws are waxed old, and vanished away, Heb. viii. 13. is certain, because they were only established for the time then present, 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, so far from arguing any change of mind or will in God, is one of the highest and most illustrious proofs of the uniformity, and consistency, with which he has laid down, carried on, and perfected the same one design from the beginning.

But the moral laws which respect the well-being of society, the prevention of disorder, confusion, and all other appendages of moral evil, must 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 sanctions of the moral law from the Old Testament, he shews very clearly, that it still 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 person therefore, in his sober senses, imagine that it was unlawful in the sight of God (because expressly by a positive 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 less offensive in the eyes of God, than at the instant He forbad it? or that God's law is only binding on the consciences of men, where it has the sanction of human ^[10] institutions to inforce it? If it be time which wears out the malignity of such an evil, or the obligation of the divine law against it, we may as well imagine that other crimes stand in the same predicament, and the most atrocious violations of the security and happiness of mankind, will have a prescriptive innocence to plead in their excuse.

That all such reasonings are not only without foundation, but directly opposite to the divine truth, we learn from that truth itself, which hath assured us, that "it is easier for heaven and earth to pass, than one tittle of the law to fail." And that we may be assured He stamped the most permanent authority on that law, and particularly on that part of the law of which we have now been speaking, He adds, in the very next words—"Whosoever putteth away his wife, and marrieth another, committeth adultery; and whosoever marrieth her that is put away from her husband, committeth adultery." This is no new law enacted by our blessed Saviour on the subject, ​but an application and explanation of that very law which he had, immediately before, said, "could never fail," and which was given to Moses at mount Sinai. See Luke xvi. 17, 18.

When our Lord in his sermon on the mount, as recorded by St. Matthew, is about to explain the moral law, and vindicate it from the false glosses which the Scribes and Pharisees had put upon it, he prefaces his explanation with these remarkable words—"Verily I say unto you, 'till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle (one, even the most seemingly inconsiderable part of a single letter) shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled." ἕως ἂν παντα γενηται. Until all things be done. Which, with the learned Dr. Hammond on Matth. v. 18, I would thus paraphrase: "Till the world be destroyed, and all things come to an end, no one least particle shall depart from the law, or be taken away, or lose its force and obligation." "Whosoever, therefore, saith Christ, ver. 19, shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven; but whosoever shall do, and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. After such a testimony as this to the ^[11] ​immutability of the divine law, it would hardly be decent in me to attempt an addition to its force, by any further arguments.

I will therefore now proceed to examine the subjects proposed, which I shall do singly on the authority of God's word; and this, not by detaching one text here and there from the rest of the sacred scriptures; but by examining carefully the whole throughout, comparing spiritual things with spiritual, 1 Cor. ii. 13. and thus allowing the word of God to be, what God doubtless intended it should be, the best comment upon itself.

Nor shall I venture to rest any one point on the authority of even the best ^[12] translations, but constantly have recourse to the original scriptures, being desirous to follow that sensible maxim, that "nothing should be received in proof, but on the best testimony which the nature of the thing will admit of." If, in matters of civil property, "a copy will not be admitted in evidence, where the original can be come at," how much doth it behove us, in matters of eternal concern, to have the best evidence for our determinations? Satius est petere fontes quam sectari rivulos.

I have endeavoured to clear my imagination of all worldly systems, and human inventions ​whatsoever, whether Popish or Protestant, and to allow no authority more modern than the sacred scripture, less weighty than inspiration itself, to amount to a proof of what is true or false. As for the writings of primitive ^[13] fathers, Christians, &c. the whole rabble of schoolmen, together with the decrees of councils, churches, synods, &c. a man, who wishes to know the truth, should no more receive a matter of doctrine on their authority, than he should a matter of fact on the testimony of a Popish legend. Nay, I will ​go farther and say, that the ^[14] dying words, and unshaken constancy of saints, martyrs, and confessors, ought to prove no more than that "they themselves believed what they said," unless the holy scriptures bear testimony to their opinions.

However clear the spring is, yet, when it divides itself, flowing from the fountainhead into different channels, it will naturally present to the eye the colour, and to the palate the taste, of the different soils through which it may happen to take its course. I have therefore found little encouragement to rest any thing on the authority of commentators; who, being prejudiced by education, influenced by custom, and misled by others that have gone before them-instead of thinking as the Bible speaks, too frequently make the Bible speak as they think. The conclusion of the matter therefore ought to be—To the Law and to the Testimony! Is. viii. 20.