Sura.iv.3.

Some regulation, it may be prefumed, every person would acknowledge to be neceffary hardly will it be maintained, that there is no other rule of chastity than inclination. And if we must be confined within fome limits; the narrowest, in this inftance, may be the most juft, and most commodious.

In the first place, we may venture to affert, that, though the Chriftian precept should not be deducible from the light of reason, it is at least not contrary to it; if it be not enjoined by the dictates of nature, it is as conformable to them, as any other law would be.

Mary wives, fays the law of Mahomet, two, three, or four. But why, we may afk, fo many? or why no more? What reason, when we have once begun to number, for stopping exactly in this place? Indeed this precept of the Koran has admitted of a latitude in the interpretation;

pretation; and however precife the words of the command, the practice is by no means confined within the bounds prescribed.

Secondly, the number of males and females brought into the world, according to the course of nature established by Almighty God, is not greatly unequal: which is fome intimation, that the allotment He intended, was that of one, to one. There seems to be no opportunity for polygamy, without danger of injustice.

Experience alfo ftrengthens these apprehenfions. In those countries, where the greatest latitude is allowed in marriage, there is the greatest oppreffion in government: in order to maintain an indulgence, for which nature has not made provision, and to fecure to a few perfons a licentious intercourse with the other fex; a great part of our own is enslaved and mutilated.

Thirdly, fuppofe we knew no more, than that Almighty God, in the beginning, made a human pair, one man and one woman, to be the parents of the whole race: this fingle fact, would it not be a kind of precept? an admonition to us, what is the moft fuitable to our nature, in the eftimation of Him that made us?

But when we find it the declared will Gen.ii.24. of our Creator, that a man fhall leave his father and mother, and fhall cleave unto his wife, and they fhall be one flesh, we must own it clearly taught, as our Lord himfelf indeed explains it, that this fociety was originally meant to comprehend but two perfons, and be compleated between them; and that, at the very first marriage, polygamy was forbidden.

Divorce too, at least for

reafon, for fancy, difguft,

affection, is comprehended

every little

or a new

under the

fame

fame prohibition: nothing indeed less than unfaithfulness, a violation of what is most effential in this contract, it may fairly be inferred, will justify the diffolution of so strict an union, established by fuch authority.

Difficulties there will be always: many occafions of felf-denial will meet us, whatever course we take; and they will meet us the oftener, the more anxiously we strive to fhun them. There may also be cafes, where particular persons are found to fuffer by regulations, which yet are for the good of the whole: but the queftion is, whether, as a general inftitution, the perpetuity of the marriagecontract be not beneficial to mankind.

We have in our compofition a principle, to which we are much indebted : use makes easy to us many things, which we fancy intolerable: we learn first to acquiefce in what we cannot alter, and then

04

then to like what we are accustomed to. The defire of change requires fome probability of fuccefs, to keep it alive and active: our wishes must be fed with hopes, to become, ftrong enough to difturb us; they decay naturally and are extinguished, when we are once thoroughly perfuaded, that they cannot poffibly be gratified.

How many desires are thus checked, and strangled in the birth; which might have grown up to an enormous strength, and proved fatal to those that conceived them! What conflagrations had arisen from sparks, which are thus happily extinguished! It is a kindness, to keep us back from these great dangers; to shut us up in a fecure and quiet haven; and not to suffer us to expose ourselves to the perilous conflict with boisterous paffions, and a restless curiofity.

If we permit fancy to be our leader,

there