ftrefs would not have been laid upon it, if we were to confider good works, as the Solfidian is inclined to do, merely as the test of that faith, from which alone he expects juftification.

Mofes

XLVII.

Mof, becaufe of the hardness of your hearts, fuffered you to put away your wives; but from the begin ning it was not fo.-Matthew xix. 8.

WHEN the Pharifees afked our Saviour his

WHE

opinion about divorces, and then urged against that opinion, the liberty which Mofes had allowed, our Saviour replied in the words I have juft read, that Mofes gave that liberty for the hardnefs of their hearts; but from the beginning it was not fo.

Our Saviour's folution of this cafe furnishes an anfwer to fuch exceptions to the new Teftament, as have been taken from its difcountenancing certain indulgencies, which are allowed in the old.In the following difcourfe I fhall first confider the objection, and then the anfwer.

You allow, fays the objector, the old Teftament to be of the fame authority as the new. You allow alfo, that God is ever uniform in his actions.

I fee not then on what principle you can defend the difference between the two teftaments; or how it comes, that the new Teftament gives us fuch ftrict injunctions in certain matters, which were permitted in the old; and which from that permiffion, one should fuppofe, might be confidered as innocent. What liberties the patriarchs indulged, we all know. Their amours were not matters of privacy. Plurality of wives, and concubinage were in open, common, and avowed ufe among them-under the fanction, as it appears, even of divine authority. If it be faid, as it is fometimes faid, that these indulgencies were merely permitted in the infancy of the world, as the means of a speedier population; it may be anfwered, firft, that the means do not appear efficient of the end, as it is found the fexes are pretty nearly on an equality in point of numbers. It may fecondly be answered, that in future times, when the chofen people were become as numerous as the ftars in heaven, or the fand upon the fea-fhore, this licentious practice ftill continued. It is ftill more worthy of remark, that in the inftitutions given by God to Mofes, inftead of an abrogation of this licence, we are furprized at a toleration of it at leaft-if not a permiffion. Had indulgencies VOL. II,

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of this kind been of fuch baneful confequence, as we are taught to believe from the gospel, furely God would in this new inftitution of his law by Mofes, have reftrained fuch grofs immoralities; efpecially as matters of fuch trivial import are noticed in it, as the mode of weaving and putting on a garment. If the patriarchs and their defcendents, in a flux of years, had deviated into a vicious prac tice, this was the time furely to have regulated thefe enormities. But we find no fuch thing. This licence is again permitted. Indeed God gives it not only his toleration, but his fanction. By the folemn mouth of a prophet we find him telling David, that he had given him his master's wives into his bofom.-Laying all these things therefore together, it appears either that the author of the new Teftament has ftrained his inftitution fomewhat farther than God Almighty defigned; or at least, that we may fafely, under the fanction of the old Teftament, ufe a little more indulgence, than is allowed under the new. Such indulgencies cannot furely be difpleafing to God. What was permitted in early times to Abraham, the father of the faithful; and in later times to David, the man after God's own heart, cannot certainly be confi dered among very heinous tranfgreffions.

I think I have put the objection as forcibly as

It can well be put.

as in the text; that

To all this the gospel replies

God fuffered these things for the hardness of men's hearts; but from the beginning it was not fo.

In these words, it may be observed, we are referred to two great periods-the primeval fate of man's innocence; and the intermediate ftate from that time till the gofpel. Now in this intermediate ftate God fuffered many things for the hardness of men's hearts, which he never meant to fanction afterwards. But the time was not yet ripe for that greater ftrictnefs, which he intended. It was neceffary that a courfe of ages fhould intervene between the fall of man, and the gospel-ftate, to give fcope to prophecy-to give mankind time to accuftom themselves by the use of sacrifice, to the idea of that great facrifice, which Chrift fhould afterwards offer for fin-to fhew mankind the neceffity of a Saviour, and divine inftructor-and for various other reasons probably, which we cannot investigate.

Now this intermediate ftate between the fall of man, and the gofpel, is that time of ignorance, which St. Paul fays, God winked at. He winked at it, not because he approved it; for the phrafe plainly

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