is no less true, that others ought to bear a large share of that odium, which is generally thrown exclusively on the disciples of Christ; and that it is not Christianity, but human nature, that is chargeable with the guilt of persecution. It is beyond a doubt, that a large part of those bitter dissensions and sanguinary contests which have been usually styled "religious," and with the entire guilt of which Christianity has been very unjustly loaded, were altogether, or at least in a great measure, owing to political causes; and that difference of opinion in matters of faith has much oftener been the ostensible, than the real, cause of those calamities which have been ascribed to it. But allowing it to have been in some cases the real cause, still the Gospel itself stands perfectly clear of all blame on that account. Whatever mischief persecution has done in the world, (and it has, God knows, done full enough,) it was not Christ, but some mistaken followers of Christ, that brought this sword upon earth; and it would be as injurious to ascribe to Christianity the false opinions and wrong practices of its disciples, however pernicious, as to impute to the Physician the fatal mistakes of those who administered his medicines. The very best laws are liable to be misinterpreted and perverted. It was the fate

of the evangelical law to be so. Its spirit was misunderstood, and its precepts misapplied by some of its avowed friends; and its authority made use of as a cloak for ambition, resentment, cruelty, and oppression, by some of its secret enemies. But the Gospel all the while was guiltless of this blood. It disclaimed and abhorred such unnatural supports, which it was as far from wanting, as it was from prescribing. It authorized the use of no other means of conviction, but gentleness and persuasion; and if any of its disciples have, by a misguided zeal, been betrayed into violent and sanguinary measures, the blame is all their own; and it is they must answer for it, not Jesus or his religion.*

But this is not all. The defence of our divine religion against the charge of cruelty must by no means rest here. We contend not only that it has never been the real source of any misery upon earth, but that, on the contrary, it has added most essentially to the sum of human happiness; that it is not only in its own nature calculated to promote the peace, the welfare, and

To impute crimes to Christianity, says the celebrated King of Prussia, in his Posthumous Works, is the act of a novice. His word may fairly be taken for such an assertion.

the comfort of mankind, but that it has actually done so; that its beneficial effects are in a greater or a less degree visible throughout the Christian world; and that, considered in all the various points of view in which it presents itself to our observation, and in all its different bearings on the several conditions and relations of human life, it appears evidently to be the greatest and most substantial blessing, even in the present state, that Heaven in its bounty ever conferred upon the sons of men.

In order to establish the truth of these assertions, I must beg the reader's attention to the following plain statement of facts, which the most determined and most ingenious adversary of the Gospel will not, I apprehend, find it very easy to controvert.

I. It is on all hands admitted, that from our domestic relations flows a very large proportion of the misery or the comfort of human life. Among these, the first in order, and from which the others take their rise, is the state of MARRIAGE. And here Christianity first displays its beneficent spirit.

The two great banes of connubial happiness among the ancient Pagans were polygamy and divorce. The first of these, it is well known,

The

prevailed, and does at this hour prevail, through almost every region of the eastern world. other was allowed for the most trivial causes, and exercised with the most wanton cruelty, in the later ages of Rome, not only by the worthless and the profligate, but by some of the most distinguished characters in the republic: * and both of them evidently tended to destroy that mutual confidence, harmony, and affection, that constant union of interests and of sentiments, which constitute the supreme felicity of the matrimonial state. Besides this, the treatment of married women in general, among the ancients, was harsh, ungenerous, and unjust. And at this day (for the spirit of Paganism is at all times, and in all places, the same) the savages of North America, as well as those of the new-discovered islands in the South Seas, consider their wives

Among many others, Cato Minor, Cicero, and Augustus, were all highly culpable in this instance. But the brutal inhumanity of Pompey towards his wife almost exceeds belief, and drew after it a long train of most tragical consequences. For the sake of connecting himself with Sylla, he repudiated his wife Antistia, and married Æmilia, the daughter-in-law of Sylla, and then living with her husband. Antistia's father

had before been murdered on account of his attachment to Pompey; and her mother, shocked at the cruel treatment of her daughter, destroyed herself. Æmilia soon after died in childbed in Pompey's house.-PLUT. in Pomp.

as little better than slaves and beasts of burden, and use them accordingly.

To all these cruelties Christianity (wherever it is received and professed with any degree of purity) has put an effectual stop. It has entirely cut off that grand source of domestic wretchedness, polygamy; and has confined the dangerous liberty of divorce to one only cause, (the only cause that can justify the dissolution of so strict and sacred a bond,) namely, an absolute violation of the first and fundamental condition of the marriage contract,-fidelity to the marriage-bed.* It

* The historian of "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" has been pleased to observe, (vol. iv., p. 380,) that "the ambiguous word which contains the precept of Christ respecting divorce is flexible to any interpretation that the wisdom of a legislator can demand, and that the proper meaning of the original word Toрveia cannot be strictly applied to matrimonial sin." But if that author would have given himself the trouble to look at 1 Corinth. v. 1, he would have perceived that the word Topvela not only may be applied to matrimonial sin, but is actually so applied sometimes by the sacred writers; and in the place just cited can scarcely admit of any other sense. In this sense it is also used by our Saviour, Matt. v. 32; xix. 9. And this being incontrovertible, it is, I confess, past my understanding to comprehend, how this precept of Christ can be flexible to any other meaning than that plain and obvious one which it bears upon the very face of it, and in which it has been hitherto constantly understood; namely, that the only legitimate ground of divorce is adultery.