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mission of an equal crime under equal circumstances, and possessing also a reciprocal remedy: "Whosoever shall put away his wife, except for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth Adultery." Here is the case of the man. "And whosoever marrieth her which is put away," (except for fornication,) "doth commit Adultery." Here is the parallel case of the woman, involved in that of him who marries her thus illegally put away. The husband of the second wife commits Adultery with her; the wife of the second husband commits Adultery with him. The description is complete, and the unity of sense preserved in both situations; and the precept respecting the woman was necessary. Chrysostom reasons well upon it: if divorced on other grounds, comparing her innocence with her ejection, she would feel a self-satisfaction, and others no reluctance to receive her; and she might hasten to a second marriage. But the law stops her; she cannot marry again. Why? Because she is not divorced; she is merely sent away, and the tie of the first marriage still continues in force. She was no adulteress; she had not committed fornication; if so, the marriage would have been dissolved, but it remains in force. But take now the presumption of her guilt,

What is the situation of the man? Does his tie of matrimony with his first wife remain unbroken? Clearly not. He can therefore be legally united to a second. Then, what is the situation of the wife? Clearly, she also is at liberty; for, how can she, by any remarriage, continue to commit Adultery against one who has not only ceased to be her husband, but is now the proper husband of another? Marriage is continually necessary to the very notion of Adultery. Take away this, and the very nature and name of the offence are gone. How then can a woman, thus legally divorced, commit Adultery? She may be guilty of fornication before she marries again; but any other name would suppose a perpetual Adultery against a husband no longer existing; and this would be equally repugnant to the rules of sound criticism. The essential relation of the propositions in the law of Christ would be destroyed the first clause of his statement would be read with a restriction, the last, without one; and this, as Doddridge carefully remarks, is an incorrectness ever to be avoided, because it occasions the necessity of supposing the term (μoxeuw) to be used in two different senses so near together The reservation clause (except for fornication) is not

expressed in the second part of the law, but it must be understood, otherwise all the evils just noticed will flow from its omission. This fulness, in one sentence, explaining the more limited mode of expression in the reversed order of the preceding, or subsequent one, is familiar to every reader of Scripture. A very plain one occurs in St. Matthew: "Whosoever will save his life, shall lose it; and whosoever will lose his life, for my sake, shall find it."* Here it is evident, that the quo intuitu, the spirit and meaning of the act, as expressed in the latter clause, are to be taken in explanation of the former. The ellipsis, in the first part of the sentence, must be supplied by an analogy with the last, as the conditions of the promise, in both cases, are precisely the same. Temporal interests, or an overweaning attachment to this world, are placed in one scale; and spiritual interests, or a supreme attachment to the Saviour, in the other, and the preponderance of these attachments is the subject of the statement in both divisions of the sentence. Whosoever, then, will save his life, by violating his duty, shall lose it; and whoso shall lose his life, by doing his duty, shall find it, in the heavens. And so it is in

* Matt. xvi. 25.

the Adultery law; the particular clause, "except for fornication," mentioned in the first, is dropped in the second part of the sentence: but the mind prepared to retain the impression of it must understand it to qualify the second as much as it did the first. It is then sufficiently clear, that the power of remarriage follows the use of Divorce; Divorce, for this cause of Adultery, to which it is now limited, working a dissolution of the marriage bond; that is to say, the dissolution of the first contract, and the power of re-marriage, are so far effected as to render the marriage of the innocent party, as Dr. Hammond carefully states it, but as we contend, if of one, it must be of either party, not adulterous; while he that should marry again after any other Divorce, save for this one cause, would be guilty of a most unchristian sin. The sexes, too, are both placed on the same footing; this was very important; the restraint was placed equally on the husband and the wife, and the remedy equally imparted to the wife with the husband. Some have carried this sentiment beyond, perhaps, its legitimate bounds; so as to infer, that the husband could not support his claim to a separation on account even of Adultery, unless he himself stood clear and exempt from all imputations of the same kind.

This reasoning was soon afterwards deduced from the doctrines of Christ: "Periniquum esset ut pudicitiam vir ab uxore exigat quam ipse non exhibet; quæ res potest et virum damnare, atque ob compensationem mutui criminis rem inter utrumque componere vel causam acti tollere." We shall have occasion to notice, in a subsequent part of the Essay, the doubts that have arisen on the legal soundness of this construction. For the present, it may be sufficient to observe, that no place in Scripture appears to have stated, that a woman, who was an adulteress, should be deemed otherwise, because her husband had committed the same crime.

This explanation of the laws of Christ appears the most satisfactory and reasonable of any that have been put upon them; the most free likewise from all inconsistencies, and the most likely to surround the temptation to the crime, and the use of the remedy, with all necessary guards.

In consequence of this, no view of the matter has been so approved and adopted by the learned and pious writers, who have commented upon it. So Eusebius, so Chrysostom, Hammond, Benson, and Dr. Clarke, have paraphrased, criticised, and explained it.

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