Page:Vindicationoflaw00hath.djvu/72

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64
LETTER II.

adding to the law, and making it a burden grievous to be borne by forbidding what God has not forbidden." (The italics are Dr. M'Cauls.) Now certainly, as a mere English reader of my Bible, I had understood the Sermon on the Mount, as well as the denunciation of the traditions illustrated by the "Corban," to be reprimands by our Blessed Lord of the narrow view that the Jews took of the Divine law. "Ye have heard that it hath been said. Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy[1]," I always understood to refer to their traditional interpretation of the command to love our neighbour; as our opponents hold of verse 18, in the 18th of Leviticus, that the prohibition of one case allows all others. The Rabbinical interpreters said, " We are told to love our neighbours, therefore we may hate our enemies." Thus it is now said, "We are told not to marry the wife's sister in her lifetime," therefore we may marry her afterwards[2]. But as I am no Hebrew scholar I will call in the aid of Lightfoot to show how the Rabbis narrowed the law on the matter of divorce, a subject nearly akin to that in hand. That they also added superstitious rules, and so endeavoured by rigour in outward observances to compensate for laxity of moral conduct, is no doubt very true, but is no answer to my argument.

  1. Matt. v. 43.
  2. See Dr. Pusey's very learned pamphlet of 1860 above referred to. He observes that a heresy was built on the words, "Sit Thou on my right hand until I make Thine enemies Thy footstool," as if our Lord's kingdom was then to end.