Volume 1

Thelyphthora; or, a treatise on female ruin, in its causes, effects, consequences, prevention, and remedy; considered on the basis of the divine law under the following heads, viz. marriage, whoredom and fornication, adultery, polygamy, divorce, with many other incidental matters, particularly including an examination of the principles and tendency of Stat. 26 Geo. II. c. 33, commonly called The marriage act / [Anon].

  • Martin Madan
Date:
1780-1781
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Thelyphthora; or, a treatise on female ruin, in its causes, effects, consequences, prevention, and remedy; considered on the basis of the divine law under the following heads, viz. marriage, whoredom and fornication, adultery, polygamy, divorce, with many other incidental matters, particularly including an examination of the principles and tendency of Stat. 26 Geo. II. c. 33, commonly called The marriage act / [Anon]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    88/448 (page 58)
    Maker is thine husband. Jer. iii. 14. ףίunι, O backjliding children, for I am married to you. Then God complains, ver. 20. Surely as a wife treacheroufy departs from her huf~ band, fo have ye dealt treacheroufy with me, O houfe of Ifrael, faith the Lord of hofis. It׳ is the misfortune of ours, as of all arbitrary languages, to want * precifion ; fo Openly revealed. To imagine, as many do, that this fundamental of true religion was referved to the days of the ]slew T'ejlewient^ is one of thoie confequences of ignorance with refpedl to the Hebrew feriptures, under which we Chrifiians content ourfelves. * One great reafon of which is, the aptnefs of fuch languages to acquire new meanings by length of time. This is remarkably the cafe with ours ; for inilance, the word knave formerly meant a boy—a male child— then a fervant hoy,^ and by degrees, any fervant ?nan, Thefe meanings are obfolete, and now it fignifies a petty rafcal^ a fcoundrel^ a diJhoneβfellow, Phillips's Diil. and Johnfon, Other inftances of fuch mutation might be given. But this cannot be the cafe with the Hebrew language ; if it could, it muft ceafe to be the word of God, and become the word, the uncer- tain word, of man. In iliort, it would amount to a creation of new laws, which ftill muil vary with the new ufe of words, and thus, from time to time, create new offences, in proportion to words acquiring new meanings. But the 7nind of God hath been graciouily delivered to us in a language as unchangeable and fixed as itfclf Therefore, what the words meant when recorded by the facredpenmen, they mean to this hour, and will mean for ever—for which very conclufive reafon, it is impoifible that any word of the Old Teilament can acquire a new meaning under the New Teilament. Wherefore the word נאף adultery, can never admit of