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Authority. The Ceremony then being truly Religious, and an Ordinance of GOD, it goes with GOD's other Ordinances, away to the Priest, whose Business it is to exercise all religious Offices; and this among the rest.
Also here, if you will allow me to Preach, it shall be against the Plurality of Wives: From this Pattern in Paradise Poligamy seems to be utterly condemned; and though in the Times of After-Ignorance many Things were practised, which, as the Text says, GOD winked at, yet in the Beginning it was not so; and we may as well Argue for marrying two Sisters, as Jacob. and perhaps several others did, till it was especially prohibited, as for marrying many Wives at once, which 'tis evident our Saviour forbids, and the Argument against them are alike, as I said above, (viz.) That in the Beginning it was not so.
I know 'tis alledged, that the encrease of Mankind, in those early Ages of Time, made it necessary; but might it not be much more a Reason in Adam's Case when he was alone? And why did not GOD, for the immediate Propagation of the kind, and encrease of the World, make his Rib into half a dozen Wives for Adam or as many as he had pleas'd.
But 'tis evident, one Wife to one Husband was thought best by his Maker, who knew what was best, and most calculated for his temporal Felicity; as to the encrease of People, 'twas evident the Race soon multiplied; and, after the Interruption of the first Growth, and the Disaster of Abel's Death, the long Life of the Antediluvians also considered, the Numbers of People soon encreased, and that in a prodigious manner; for, if you will believe the learned
