The Protestant - v. 2 Author:William M'Gavin Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: He who created man, declared concerning him, while yet in a state of innocency, " It is not good that the man should be alone ; I will make him a help meet for h... more »im." Marriage was accordingly instituted in paradise, before sin entered into the world ; and must, therefore, be considered as perfectly consistent with the most entire devotion to the service of God. After sin had entered, neither the man nor the woman was so capable of serving him as before ; neither of them, indeed, could serve him at all, till renewed by faith in the promised Saviour, and sanctified by the grace of the Holy Spirit ; but being so renewed, they were as capable of serving him while living together asman and wife, as if they had divorced each other, and a great deal more so. This union we find approved and blessed by God from the very beginning. How, indeed, could it be otherwise, seeing it was appointed by himself, for the preservation of the species, until the Messiah should come of the seed of the woman ; and thereafter, until all the spiritual seed of the Messiah should be born into his family, which supposes their being first born into the world ? Christ himself honoured the union, by sanctioning the formation of it, on one occasion, by his presence ; which we may be sure he would not have done, had there been any thing unlawful, or necessarily unholy in it ; his inspired apostle, in the plainest language, asserts the lawfulness of every man having his own wife, and every woman her own husband ; and the laws of Christ laid down with regard to the duties of man and wife, clearly imply the lawfulness of the connexion. I know it will be replied, that this is not the question. The church of Rome, I shall be told, does not deny the lawfulness of marriage in general ; but only that of the priests. Bu...« less