"this child the good man loves as tenderly as if he was his own getting.-On "the other hand, a worthy man, who was "in love with a married woman upon ac"count of her modefty, and well-favoured"nefs of her children, might, without for

mality, beg of her husband a night's lodging, "that he might, like flips of a fine tree, "planted in a goodly garden, have children "of a good race, and well related. For Ly

curgus was of opinion, that children were "not fo much the propriety of their parents, "as of the whole commonwealth; and there"fore he would not have them begotten by "the firft comers, but by the best men that could be found.'

This custom was far from being reckoned criminal or adulterous, it was applauded greatly;

* The community of wives cannot be conceived to have escaped the lewd Corinthians, when we confider how it fpread far and wide among the Gentiles. This is faid to have been the cuftom of the Troglodytes, Agathyrfi, the Maffagetæ, and Scythians, of whom Strabo faith"they had their wives in common, agreeably to the laws "of Plato."

The natives of Ruffian Lapland were confusedly known to the antients under the name of Troglodytes or northern pigmies. They are, for the moft part, not above four feet and an half high, and dwell in caverns; they are just the fame people they were formerly-they are faid to intreat ftrangers to lie with their wives and daughters, as an honour done to them, and from a defire of amending, by their means, the defects of their own race. See Volt. Works. Tranf. by Franklin, vol. xxviii. p. 10, 12.

Puffendorf has given a long lift of other nations, which had the fame cuftom among them, fuch as the antient inhabitants of Britain, the Sabeans, thofe of the

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kingdom

greatly; and fo far were women from that fcandalous liberty which has been objected to them, that they knew not what the name of adultery meant."-"A proof of "this we have in Geradas, a very antient "Spartan, who, being asked by a stranger "what punishment their law had appointed " for adultery? answered-" My friend,

"

there are no adulterers in our country.' "But, replies the ftranger, fuppofe there "were one, how would you punish him ?” He anfwered-"The offender must pay to "the plaintiff a bull, with a neck fo long, "that he might drink out of the river Eu

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rotas, from over the top of mount Taygeta." Why, 'tis impoffible to find such a bull, faid the man.' Geradas fmiling replied"'Twas just as impoffible to find an adulterer "in Sparta." It is endless to observe on the total blindnefs of fuch people, with refpect to the law of GOD: but when the Corinthians were awakened to a sense of divine

things, though, as well as others in that part of Greece, they had been * infected with this

kingdom of Calecut, the antient Lithuanians, &c. See Leland, vol. ii. p. 129, note r.

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Diogenes, whom Epictetus celebrates with the epithet of divine, held that " women ought to be common"-looking upon marriage to be nothing; "that every man and woman might keep company with whom they liked " beft, and that therefore children ought to be in com"mon." Ib. 132. So the Stoics held that women ought to be in common among the wife, 133.

Lycurgus eftablished his laws in Lacedæmon almost 900 years before CHRIST, fo that they had full time to circulate and grow into cuftoms, not only in Greece, but alfo in many other parts of the world.

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Spartan

Spartan leaven, and followed the practices, as they had imbibed the principles of their neighbours; yet neither cuftom, example, nor prejudice of education, could filence, or any longer fatisfy their confciences, and therefore they seem to have written to the apoftle, to know his sense of the matter; which he clearly gives them in the words of the text, and which evidently reprobate this horrid cuftom. Having, in the preceding chapter, difcuffed at large the fubjects of whoredom and fornication, and lewdness in general, he begins this feventh chapter with an answer to the particular queftions propofed to him in the letter which he had received

from them. The paffage may The paffage may be thus paraphrafed-Now concerning the things whereof ye wrote unto me-" I fay, firft in general, though not for the reafons which fome of your philofophers have given, nor for those "which the Gnoftics have fuggefted, as if

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marriage was wrong or finful in itself, but "for prudential reasons, arifing from the fi"tuation of things at this time (ver. 26.) "it is good, nanov, useful, profitable (ver. 8 "and 26.) for a man not to touch a woman

*By the manner of St. Paul's expreffing himself, 1 Cor. v. 1. he seems to infinuate, that, one man's tak✩ ing or having another's wife, was a matter by no means unheard of amongst the Gentiles; though a man's having his father's wife was.

See an inftance of this fort of degeneracy among the Jews, Amos ii. 7.

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" to

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“to have no dealings with the other † sex. (See Matt. xix. 11, 12.) But with respect "to the * fornications you mention, and concerning which you defire to know my fen"timents I anfwer, conformably to the law of GOD, which ordains, that a man fhall cleave to his wife, &c. (Gen. ii. 24.) "and that no woman fhall depart from her bufband, and go to another man (fee Rom, . vii. 1, 2, 3). Let every man have his wife-τn yovama auT8-the woman who belongs to him—and not lend her out, or

+ Mn å ledai governa is conftrued by fome learned men, by ducere uxorem-to marry a wife ;-but I rather think our tranflation right-not to touch a woman-for, as the word apa denotes man in a general fenfe, fo, to make both parts of the fentence correspond with each other, the yuvaina feems to be general alfo. The word dla anfwers to the Hebrew ya, which fometimes means to touch or meadle with, in a carnal fenfe. See Gen. xx. 6.

*There is no neceffity to reftrain the word opvelas in this place, as our tranflators feem to have done, to the idea of what is ufually meant by that term, that is to fay, commerce with harlots; for it is a general word, expreffive of adultery, as well as what is called fornication. Thus the apostle ufes it but a little before in this very epiftle, chap. v. I. to denote not only adultery, but also inceft. It is ufed as fignifying adultery, Matt. v. 32. xix. 9; for though it may there fignify lewdnefs committed before marriage, but not found out till afterwards, yet it must neceffarily alfo be underflood to mean fuch acts done after marriage; for our LORD cannot be fuppofed to mean that the former was a juft cause of divorce, and not the latter-fo that the word opvela muft include both. opveras being plural, well denotes the complicated crimes of the hufband's lending his wife to another man, and the wife's going to another man befides her hufband, including alfo the crime of him who took her. "fuffer

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"fuffer her to marry another, nor let him "take a woman who is not yun kauтs, his wife, but another man's, to himself. So alfo let every married woman have her own proper husbandτον ίδιον ανδρα-the man appropriated to her, exclufively of all other men upon earth, and not depart, or suffer "herself to lent or given to any other man.” I would here observe, that there is a very remarkable difference of expreffion, which though preferved in many other tranflations, is not in ours. We render the two claufes juft alike, whereas they are not fo in the original, but—την ἙΑΥΤΟΥ γυναικα, and τον ΙΔΙΟΝ άνδρα. The Latin tranflations preferve this difference of expreffion-fuam uxorem-proprium virum. Leufd. ex Mont. So the old and new tranflations in Beza's Teftament, and Barker's Eng. Teft. 1615, and the Geneva, 1557. Let every man have HIS WIFE, and every woman her own husband. If all fcripture be given by infpiration of GOD, (2 Tim. iii. 16.) and holy men Spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghoft, (2 Pet i. 21.) I cannot but think that there is fome weighty reafon for the difference of expreffion, in giving the epithet '18ov to the husband, with refpect to the wife, and not to the wife, with refpect to the husband. This is obfervable, not only in this place, but in * many others. Leigh,

Rom. viii. 32. we meet with a very material proof of the emphatical import of the word 'Idios, to denote CHRIST's being God's own proper fon, in fuch a sense as no creature is or can be. So, in the paffage under confi

deration,