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could not then have been expatiated. Where there is no generation, there can be no regeneration. Nature makes us creatures before grace makes us christians. If the loins of men had been less fruitful, the death of Christ would have been less successful. It was a witty question that one put to him that said, “Marriage fills the earth, but virginity fills the heavens:" How can the heavens be full if the earth be empty? Had Adam lived in innocency without matrimony, there would have been no servants of God in the church militant, nor no saints with God in the church triumphant. But I will not sink this vessel by the over-burthen of it, nor press this truth to death by laying too great a load upon its shoulders. There is one knot which I must untie, before I make a farther progress, viz.
1 Cor. vii. 1. It is good for a man not to touch a woman. Do all the scriptures proceed out of the same mouth; and do they not all speak the same truth? The God of unity will not indite discord; and tho God of verity cannot assert falsehood. If good and evil be contraries, how contrary then are these two scriptures? Either Moses mistakes God, or Paul mistakes Moses, about the point of marriage. To which I shall give a double answer.
1. There is a public and a private good. In respect of one man, it may be good not to touch a woman; but in respect of all men, It is not good that man should be alone.
2. Moses speaks of the state of man created; Paul of tho stato of man corrupted: Now, that which by institution was a mercy, by corruption may become a misery; as pure water is tainted by running through a miry channel, or as the sunbeams receive a tincture by shining through a coloured glass. There is no print of evil in the
