ture, because there is no express censure of them in the sacred volume; then will you come to the conclusion, that nothing is criminal but what is there distinctly and by name prohibited? If so, you conclude gambling to be no crime. If so, the cruel exposure of infants, so common in Heathen lands, in the days of the apostles, was not censured by them. If so, casting human beings to fight with beasts of prey, for the amusement of imperial and other spectators, was not reprehensible. If so, even suicide itself is defensible, being no where forbidden by name." In reply to this, I close with these arguments, and I think I can shew that they are neither sound nor analogous. A learned divine says, "Whoever expects to find in the Scriptures a specific direction for every moral doubt that arises, looks for more than he will meet with." There is no question that this is strictly true, but leading crimes and vices cannot be included as mere "moral doubts." There is no leading crime of which human nature is capable, that is not distinctly or by name prohibited in the Scriptures, and none more clearly than those which Dr. Bennett has here proposed as exceptions. What is gambling? The desire of obtaining that which belongs to another, without giving an equivalent for it. This is manifestly coveting our neighbour's

* Archdeacon Paley, Moral and Political Philosophy, Book I. c. iv.

goods, not "loving our neighbour as ourself," and therefore distinctly and repeatedly prohibited.* What is exposing an infant to perish? Infanticide, a child-murder. What is casting a man into an arena, to be devoured by wild beasts? Unless as a just sentence of established law, it is simple murder.

What is suicide? Self-murder. Now, all these are merely modifications of the same crime, and are by name prohibited in the sixth commandment, which says, "Thou shalt not kill;"† or, as it is rendered in our liturgy, in the words of the Saviour, "Thou shalt do no murder." I am aware that on the question of suicide a great authority, Archdeacon Paley, differs from this conclusion. "I acknowledge," says he, "that there is not to be found in Scripture sufficient evidence to prove that the case of suicide was in the contemplation of the law which prohibited murder; § any inference, therefore, which we deduce from Scripture can be sustained only by construction and implication: that is to say, although they who were authorized to instruct mankind have not decided a question

* See Dr. Watts on the Improvement of the Mind, Part II. c. v. where this question is argued scripturally.

† Exodus, xx. 13.

St. Matthew, xix, 18.-See Dr. Watts's "Defence against the Temptations to Self-Murder;" in which he argues, that it is included in the canon, "Thou shalt do no murder." "Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd

His canon 'gainst self-slaughter!"- Hamlet, Act i. S. 2.

D

epic poet Epimenides of Crete,* and by a very remarkable one from the Thais of the dramatic poet, Menander the Athenian, in the celebrated line, "Evil communications corrupt good manners."+ If the apostle had considered the drama as essentially vicious, and opposed to Christianity, he would scarcely, in delivering the divine oracles of God, have availed himself of the language of the Stage, however sound in its morality, or innocent in its expression. To do so, with a conviction that the source from whence he derived even truth itself was evil, would be to advocate the doctrine of expediency, and to make the end sanctify the means; a proceeding directly opposed to the Gospel he was commissioned to preach.

But let us leave the inspired authorities, and descend to the testimonies of uninspired men. Dr. Bennett, in his Appendix, quotes a powerful passage in condemnation of plays, from Archbishop Tillotson's Sermon, "On the Evil of Corrupt Communications." There are few writers whose

* "One of themselves, even a prophet of their own, said, The Cretians are alway liars, evil beasts, slow bellies: this witness is true." Titus, i. 12, 13.

† 1 Corinthians, xv. 33. There is a difference of opinion among the learned, as to whether this line belongs to Menander or Euripides; it is extant in the fragments of both writers, and in either case applies equally as a quotation from a dramatic poet. See Milton's Preface to Samson Agonistes, Doddrige's Family Expositor, &c.

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opinions are entitled to more respect than those of this eminent divine; his character reflected the highest honour on the archiepiscopal chair, and his life was a true commentary on his faith. Strange as it may appear at first sight, I am willing to join conclusions on his evidence, and am here content to rest my argument on the very witness produced to refute it. Archbishop Tillotson condemns the Theatre, not in itself, but as it was frightfully misapplied in the corrupted times in which he preached; he speaks in just reprehension of the licentious plays which then held possesssion of the Stage, but the Stage in itself he admits to be capable of innocent instruction. I subjoin the entire passage, with the context, which Dr. Bennett withholds, and which materially affects the value of the quotation. The unsoundness of drawing conclusions from partial extracts, was strongly illustrated at the trial of Algernon Sidney; some loose sheets were found in his study, which contained speculative opinions in answer to Sir Robert Filmer's Patriarcha, a book in which Filmer deduced the indefeasible claims of kings from Noah, and argued on the right divine, and other ultradoctrines of his party. Sidney's reply was unfinished; it had evidently been written many years before, and whatever might be the tendency of particular sentences, it was impossible to conclude how the book was to end. Passages from this work were cited in evidence against him, which,

when disconnected from their contexts, were entirely altered in meaning. "I pray you to read the whole," said he. "I will read as much as bears on the indictment," replied the AttorneyGeneral. On this, Sidney argued eloquently, that on that principle, truth might be made to appear like falsehood, and the Bible itself convicted of atheism. "Now, my lord," said he, "if you will make a concatenation of one thing, a supposition upon supposition, I would take all this asunder, and show that if none of these things are any thing in themselves, they can be nothing joined together." And again, "my lord, if you will take Scripture by pieces, you will make all the penmen of the Scripture blasphemous; you may accuse David of saying there is no God; and accuse the Evangelists of saying, Christ was a blasphemer and a seducer; and the apostles, that they were drunk.”*

* Vide Cobbett's State Trials, vol. ix. page 867. Sidney, as is well known, was sentenced to the block; but he was tried by a packed jury, and his judge was Jefferies. Fox, in the introductory chapter to his history of James the Second, says, in speaking of the trial of Lord William Russell, "the proceedings in Sidney's case were still more detestable. The production of papers containing speculative opinions upon government and liberty, written long before, and perhaps never intended to be published, together with the use made of those papers, in considering them as a substitute for the second witness to the overt act, exhibited such a compound of wickedness and nonsense, as is hardly to be paralleled in the history of judicial tyranny."