MARRIAGE.

(St Paul on that of Bishops.)

Reihing, professor of Divinity at Tubingen in the sixteenth century, and the author of his funeral oration, explain the words of St Paul, wherein he seems to command the bishops to marry, as a precept. They pretend that the apostle commands the ministers of the gospel to marry, and to take but one wife. 1 Epist. to Timothy, c. iii. v. 2. “ A bishop then must be blameless, the busband of one wife, vigilant, sober, of good behaviour, given to hospitality, apt to teach.” ⁸³ This would be certainly the meaning of St Paul’s words, if they were understood literally, that is, according to the rules of grammar; for the terms, which denote the marriage of the bishop with one wife, are as much governed by the word must, as those that denote the bishop’s blameless life, sobriety, prudence, gravity, modesty, equity, moderation, and disinterestedness. As therefore it were absurd to pretend that St Paul leaves it to the liberty of the ministers to be sober, modest, blameless, &c. or not; so it is absurd to pretend that he leaves it to their choice to marry a wife, or to marry none; I mean that it would be absurd, if we adhered to the literal sense, and supposed that St Paul actually observed grammatical rules. I do not mean a rigorous exactness, such as is observed in the articles of a treaty of peace, wherein all the expressions are narrowly considered, to prevent the abuses that might arise from an equivocation, or the omission of a particle. Neither do I mean the rigid exactness of those

scrupulous pedantic grammarians, who had rather spend three hours in mending a period, than let it pass with some carelessness. I mean a method of explaining ourselves clearly and distinctly, as a man of sense would do in a letter to a tutor, containing some directions. If he should write to him, I will have my children say their prayers twice a day, go to church twice a week, forbear swearing and quarrelling, be dutiful to their mother, and go every Monday to the play-house, he would take all these several things as so many injunctions; he would not think that it is left to his discretion to carry his pupils every Monday to the playhouse, or not. In such a case, he must suppose that there is no connexion between these words, I will, and to go to the play-house; and that the father of his pupils made use of another verb, as to this last thing, and said for instance, and I give you leave to carry them to a play-house every Monday. It must be therefore granted, that if a Sophist should obstinately maintain, that whatever St Paul says concerning the qualifications of a bishop is obligatory, it would be no easy thing to confute him; and that we should be obliged to beg of him not to take it ill, that we departed from the grammatical strictness, since it is not likely that the apostle designed to exclude from episcopacy, those who would live a single life, though they were endowed with all the talents requisite for the performance of episcopacy.

This shews, that too scrupulous an adherence to the literal sense of the scripture, would very often prove the cause of many illusions, and that there are many cases in which the interpreters ought to remember the axiom, summum jus summa injuria. It proves at the same time, that we ought to do, not what the apostles command, according to the grammatical sense, but what common sense teaches us they intended to command. St Paul, according

to the grammatical rules, commands the bishops to marry; but reason shews us, that he intended only to forbid them polygamy. We must therefore abide by this. Reihing and others are in the wrong to find in St Paul’s words an injunction to marry; they contain only a permission: but their mistake is much more excusable than the intolerable boldness of forbidding clergymen to marry. The Christian people will never be able to justify before God, the base compliance wherewith they have permitted that the laws of St Paul should be abrogated, though never so plain, clear, and intelligible. They have been severely punished for it, by the overflowing lewdness wherewith their families have been polluted, and they are not yet free from it. I must observe by the by, that the holy scripture has been handled by the Christians much after the same manner as Justinian’s code. They are well pleased when the common-law agrees with the written law; but if the common law serve their turn better than the written law, they can very well dispense with the want of conformity. Christendom has not been for many ages governed by the written law.—Art. Reihing.