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DR SAMUEL CLARKE ON MALACHI II. 15.

made "both one," and against their divorce that he hated "putting away;" and he warns them against the wickedness of defending their iniquity in these respects, and pretending they had done no evil, but "good in the sight of the Lord;" and, because they were not immediately destroyed, denying that there was "a God of judgment." What a perfect description and condemnation of the whole argument for polygamy, as maintained from the example of the Israelites! This, however, is anticipating the argument under another head. On the point in hand, this passage in Malachi clearly shows, that, "in the original constitution of marriage, God made one woman only, and united her to Adam, and thus appointed marriage to be the union of one man with one woman. He was able to have made more; why, then, did he create one? Because he foresaw, if more than one woman were created and given to Adam-in other words, if polygamy, and not marriage, were established that a godly seed would be impossible. This is a plain declaration, therefore, that God forbade the human race to practise polygamy, because of its immoral tendency."— Dwight.

On Malachi ii. 15, the celebrated Samuel Clarke gives the following brief but pithy notes:-" And did not he make one.-Matt. xix. 4.-One couple, which should become one flesh by marriage, against which polygamy is an offence. Residue of the Spirit.-And so could have made more souls, and put them into more women for Adam, if he had thought good to have allowed of a plurality of wives. Let none deal treacherously. -By forsaking, neglecting, or taking another." On my remarking to a party in conversation on this point, that one man to one woman was the original law, and that polygamy never was, and never could have been the normal condition of any people, he replied, that "in many countries it was the normal condition with the rich and great." Who, then, does not see the absurdity of attributing to God the repeal of his own law, merely to indulge great or rich men in a practice most certainly as destructive to themselves, as ruinous to the peace of their families, and to the best interests of humanity?

The fact is established beyond all power of contradiction, that the original law was not repealed before the time of Moses. It was from the creation till then the unrepealed law of God on the subject.

Our first argument, then, cannot be questioned. Whatever, therefore, was the character of the ante-Mosaic polygamists in other respects, they were polygamists in the face of the unrepealed law of God. Nothing, therefore, can by possibility be adduced from their conduct or example in favour of polygamy. They are condemned by that law of God under which they lived. The present agitators for the repeal of the marriage law think it a sufficient reason for condemning it, if they can discover, or by their speeches and writings make, as many breakers of the law as may be sufficient to frighten Parliament, or who have a decent name or standing in society in other respects. But surely no man, in his sober senses, will say, that any number, larger or smaller, of ante-Mosaic polygamists of a similar description, by the very fact of their breaking God's law, have repealed it?

But what are the facts as to those polygamists? They are briefly these. -Lamech was the first of them; if he was guilty of murder, as some suppose, he is no great example to follow; or if, on the supposition that his wives were under apprehension that because of his polygamy he was to be put to death, that is no great proof of its lawfulness. The only other

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antediluvian polygamists, if even they were so, were the giants, or men of violence, of whom we read in Gen. vi. 1-7, who "took them wives of all whom they chose ;" and for this and their violence brought down upon that race the overwhelming deluge. It is curious to remark how generally lust and violence, and even murder, are associated together. It is a fact so established, that I find Baron Hume, after detailing the law in certain cases of adultery followed by murder, saying " And here, in passing, it may be remarked, on these miserable cases of complicated guilt, that they furnish (if any were needed) another evidence of the wisdom of our practice in stigmatising as a crime this sinful intercourse, which thus suppresses all the feelings of nature, and leads to the mortal hatred of the nearest relations."

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There are only, then, two examples of antediluvian polygamy, and their example is not much in its favour,—that is, two cases in fifteen hundred years. From Noah to Moses, we have only other two. Nahor, Abraham's brother, had a concubine; but whether during the life of his wife or after her death, we are not told. The case of Abraham and Hagar was not one of polygamy; and the result of his connection with her, whatever it was, shows that she was not his lawful wife. His marriage with Keturah was seven years after the death of Sarah. Isaac had only one wife, and none of all the patriarchs sustained a more pious and blameless life than Isaac, "and in Isaac was the promised seed called."

Esau, "that profane person," had three wives. "And Esau said in his heart, The days of mourning for my father are at hand; then will I slay my brother." In all this there is no great argument for polygamy.

In regard to the case of Jacob, Mr Dwight says,-" Jacob, while in the family of Laban, lived among idolaters who practised polygamy. Laban and his children were idolaters, yet polygamy was no part of Jacob's plan of life. Leah was put upon him by a fraud, to which he must submit or hazard the loss of Rachel. He likewise told his father several direct falsehoods, and with extreme cruelty defrauded Esau of his birthright."

It is remarkable in the case of Jacob, that Leah, the first wife, obviously thought herself injured by Rachel becoming a wife. She claims Jacob as her husband, and reproaches Rachel for taking him-(Gen. xxx. 15)" Is it a small matter that thou hast taken my husband? and wouldest thou take my son's mandrakes also?" You have done me one great injury, will you do me another?

We have thus made good our first position. The original law of God condemned the ante-Mosaic polygamists; and nothing appears in their character or conduct to justify this violation of the law of God, still less to prove that what was their sin should be an example to others to follow, and not rather a crime to be shunned. For twenty-five hundred years we have only on record four instances of polygamy, and these condemned by the law of God. There is nothing, then, in the history of these twentyfive hundred years to prove that when we hold that Lev. xviii. 18 is a prohibition of polygamy, such prohibition is inconsistent with the law or word of God, but, on the contrary, it is entirely in accordance with what was that undoubted law for twenty-five hundred years, and in no respect repealed during all that time.

Perhaps I may anticipate an objection that might occur to some minds

* Hume on the "Criminal Law of Scotland."

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here, viz., if it was the law during twenty-five hundred years, and till the time of Moses, why re-enact it in Lev. xviii. 18? The answer is not far to seek; and we answer the question in Scotch fashion by another,—Why were the ten commandments re-enacted at Sinai ? God answers, "Moreover the law entered that the offence might abound;" in other words, that all sin might be proved exceeding sinful, because inexcusable. Besides, at Sinai the law was not only declared, but written and recorded, for the sake of all future time.

II. Our second argument needs now only to be stated, and that as having a bearing on our third. It is, that the law, as laid down by the same Supreme Lawgiver, the Lord Jesus Christ, Now is, that polygamy is contrary to the will of God, and has been so since the time that Christ interpreted it, as laid down in Matt. xix., and must be held so by every man who receives the law at his mouth.

III. I go on, therefore, to my third argument, which is, that there is no evidence to warrant the belief or assertion that God, in the Mosaic code, repealed his own original enactment prohibiting polygamy, or that Jesus Christ promulgated a new enactment, or re-enacted a statute that had been divinely repealed in the Mosaic code, or in any other way; and without evidence to this amount, there is and can be no evidence that the original law prohibiting polygamy ever was at any time, or in any circumstances or to any extent, repealed by divine authority.

Two things are clear-1. That by the original constitution of marriage God prohibited polygamy. To Adam, though it had not been expressly prohibited, it was impossible in the first instance, and thereafter only in a shape from which nature revolts; and if prohibited to him, it were strange indeed that it should be declared lawful to any or every other. 2. It is forbidden, by a law equally express, by the Lord Jesus Christ, without the smallest intimation that he is repealing an existing law, whatever might be existing practice. He announces, when dealing with another subject, the cruel abuse of a gracious permission to escape from the brutality of a cruel husband, or rather a law to be civilly enforced to bind that cruel husband, if he did put away his wife, to do it in a form that gave the legal evidence that, being separated by his cruelty, it was no fault of hers, and she might be at liberty to marry another man, but he for ever prohibited from claiming or taking her back to wife. This is the real import of that law,-viz., a restraint upon cruelty, and an escape from its unjust consequences. God declared "He hated putting away;" and no man, Christian or Deist, will plead that it is right to do what God HATES. But our Lord, while affirming the first law of marriage on this point, gives not the smallest hint that he is re-enacting a law that had ever been repealed in the case of polygamy; but he expressly declares what always was and is the law of God, without the smallest allusion to any repeal.

Malachi, we have seen, the last of the prophets, did the very same. He not only gives no hint that it had ever been repealed, but his words, as the closing intimation of the Old Testament canon, are a solemn rebuke and judgment against it.

In a case so clear and strong, therefore, we are entitled to demand the formal statute of repeal. It was an important statement made by the late Dr Wardlaw, in his Treatise on Baptism, that the repeal of an old law requires as express a statute as the enactment of a new. Those on the other side are not entitled to plead Lev. xviii. 18, in the present state of the

NO REPEAL OF THE ORIGINAL LAW OF MARRIAGE.

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argument, as a statute of repeal. The present state of the argument is, Whether the view we take of this verse as a prohibition of polygamy be correct? and they cannot assume the very point in debate,―viz., that their interpretation of it is correct, and then quote their interpretation to prove that ours cannot be correct. This were obviously absurd. They must, by strict critical evidence, and that, in such a case, of the clearest kind, as is necessary in a repealing statute, prove that our view of the text is, without all doubt, inadmissible and false. You cannot repeal an undoubted law by a criticism reduced, as theirs is, to the smallest point of probability as to its justice, a probability, as we have seen, depending on refinements scarcely tangible even in argument. This verse, then, while its meaning is in debate, cannot be pled as the proof that our view of itself is false. The proof of the repeal must be drawn from some other source than the disputed text. When their view of it is rendered indisputable by undoubted critical proof, then they may quote it as the statute of repeal. When, then, they allege against our view of it that the original law of God, which Christ appealed to, without the smallest hint that the sufferance, even of Moses, extended to polygamy, was repealed by the Mosaic code, we are entitled to demand the statute of repeal. Mere violations of the original law, by whomsoever practised, are not statutes of repeal. Yea, let God be true, and EVERY MAN a liar," saith the Scripture.

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In reply to this call for the repealing statute, three texts, says Mr Dwight, have been adduced in addition to Leviticus xviii. 18, with which we have already dealt, as containing direct or implied permissions of polygamy. These are Exod. xxi. 7-11, Deut. xxi. 15-17, and 2 Samuel xii. 7, 8, which he discusses minutely.

In regard to the first passage he makes good the following points:-That the word "please" (ver. 8) in our version should be "displease;" that the words in the tenth verse, "if he take him another wife, her food, her raiment, and her duty of marriage," &c., should be "another," wife being in italics; "duty of marriage" should be habitation, lodging, or necessaries of life, what we would call maintenance; and he gives the following summing up :

"That the word in question ought not to be rendered duty of marriage, is therefore obvious for the following reasons:

"1. As the girl was not married, and the master, because he disliked her, would not even betroth her, the duty of marriage was impossible. Any sexual duty rendered in those circumstances must have been the duty of illicit intercourse.

"2. No derivation of the word, as well as no use of the word, or of any cognate word in any other case, will associate with it the idea of lawful intercourse by marriage; it having no reference to any commerce of the sexes but what is unlawful.

"3. The weight of authorities is wholly against the rendering.

"4. The other rendering, viz., habitation, lodging, is the natural rendering of a noun derived from the verb y, to dwell, and the actual rendering of another noun derived from the same verb, has the weight of authorities in its favour, and is consistent with the declaration in the eighth verse that the girl was not betrothed, as well as with common decency.

"The whole passage, thus corrected, will read as follows:"Ver. 7. And if a man sell his daughter to be a maid-servant, she shall not go out as the men-servants do. 8. If she please not her master, so that

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BEARING OF EXOD. XXI. 7-11-DEUT. XXI. 15-17.

he doth not betroth her to himself, then he shall suffer her to be redeemed (i. e., when the opportunity of establishing her in marriage has arrived); to sell her unto a strange nation he shall have no power, seeing he hath rejected her himself. 9. And if he betroth her to his son, he shall deal with her after the manner of daughters. 10. If he marry another person, he shall furnish her with food, clothing, and lodging (or the necessaries of life.) 11. And if he do not furnish those three, he shall let her go out free, without money.

"The verb, in the seventh verse, rendered sell, according to Gesenius, usually denotes to receive a marriage portion for. The master, by paying it to the father, had a right to the services of the daughter as a maid-servant, and if he were a single man to marry her; the right of choice on the part of females not being known in the East. If the master were

If

married, or chose not to marry her himself, he had a right, if she was of the proper age, to betroth her to his son, without paying an additional portion. If neither of these were done, her friends, by paying back the portion received, had a right to redeem her, and to marry her to another man. she was not redeemed, and her master chose not to marry her, and married another woman, he was bound to furnish her with the customary food, clothing, and lodging; and, on failure of these, she was at liberty to go back to her friends unredeemed.

"This passage, therefore, contains no sanction of polygamy, and no permission of the gross immorality and cruelty apparently authorised by the English translation." *

Those who decline to receive this view, must disprove it by disproving Mr Dwight's arguments in arriving at it.

The next text is found in Deut. xxi. 15-17, " If a man have two wives, one beloved, and another hated, and they have borne him children, both the beloved and the hated; and if the firstborn son be hers that was hated: then it shall be, when he maketh his sons to inherit that which he hath, that he may not make the son of the beloved firstborn before the son of the hated, which is indeed the firstborn: but he shall acknowledge the son of the hated for the firstborn, by giving him a double portion of all that he hath: for he is the beginning of his strength; the right of the firstborn is his."

The argument of our opponents, and it seems to be considered a strong one, is, that Moses legislates, not in favour of polygamy, that they cannot say, but about certain other things which imply its existence, and that so legislating he sanctions polygamy. This argument has never had the smallest weight in my mind. That, however, is small reason for other minds. But ought it to have weight in any mind competently informed? I think not; because it will occur to every mind of any competent information, that multitudes of laws are in every country framed to prevent the extension of the mischief of unlawful acts, or to regulate matters arising out of them. It is just the carrying out in a specific case of the principle in Ezekiel xviii. 20, "The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father.” In God's providence he often is made to bear the effects of it; and human laws, as in cases of great crimes, to deter from their commission, take advantage of natural feelings to make the commission of them more terrible; but in the case before us that principle could not come into play. The loss of the inheritance to the son of the hated woman would be no bar to the mind of

* Dwight's "Hebrew Wife," pp. 14-16.