présent purpose and duty was to preserve himself from a captious and malicious question; but in such a manner as might consist with truth and innocence, and even with a tender concern for the moral state and condition of those questioners themselves.

No man will then expect, that, in such circumstances, he should expatiate, to the bystanders, on the heinous crime of adultery, objected to this unhappy woman: a point, concerning which they deserved not, from any virtuous indignation they had conceived against it, which they wanted not, from any ignorance they were under of its general nature, to be further satisfied or informed. They deserved, and they wanted to be made sensible of their own guilt and wickedness; and of this they derived from Jesus the fullest conviction. This was the sole purport of our Lord's reply to them: any other had been unseasonable and improper; and therefore no man will now be surprized to find the issue of this remarkable conference in the mild dismission which he gives to the unhappy person, who had furnished the occasion of it.

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When Jesus had lift up himself, and saw none but the woman, he said to her, Wo

where are those thine accusers? Hath

no man condemned thee? She said, No man,

"Lord: Jesus said to her, Neither do I gon

ན

"demn thee; go, and sin no more."

The story concludes in the very manner we should now expect from the preceding circumstances. The accusers of the woman had withdrawn themselves; being convicted in their own minds, by the divine energy of Christ's reproof, of the very same crime, as some suppose, but certainly of some crime of equal malignity with that, which they had objected to this sinner. Their accusation had not been formed on their zeal for the honour of the law, or any antipathy they had conceived to the Erime in question, but on the wicked purpose of oppressing an innocent man. When they failed of this end, they thought not of carrying the criminal before the proper judge, or of prosecuting the matter any further. To the question then which our Lord put to her, hath no man condemned thee, i. e. hath no man undertaken to see the sentence of the law carried into execution against thee? she answered, No man, Lord. Neither do I, continued Jesus, condemn thee: I, who am a private man, and have no authority to execute the law; I, who

came not to judge the world, but to save the world, I presume not to pass the sentence of death upon thee. I leave this matter to thine accusers, and to the proper judge. But what my office of a divine instructor of mankind requires, that I am ready to perform towards thee. Let me admonish thee, then, of thy great wickedness in committing this act, and exhort thee to repentance and a better life for the future; Go, AND SIN NO MORE!

Every thing here is so natural and so proper, so suitable to the circumstances of the case, and to the character and office of Jesus, that no shadow of blame can fall upon our Lord's conduct; nor has any man of sense, who considers the history, the least reason to conclude that any countenance is hereby given to the horrid sin of adultery. The mistake (if it be purely a mistake) has arisen from the ambiguous sense of the words, I CONDEMN THEE NOT; which may either signify, I blame thee not, or I pass not the legal sentence of death upon thee. But they cannot be here taken in the former sense, because Christ immediately charges the woman with her guilt, and bids her sin no more: Nay, they can only be taken in the latter sense, because that was the sense in which her ac

eusers had "not condemned her for otherwise, by bringing her to Jesus, and by their vehe ment accusation of her, they had sufficiently testified their sense of her crime. When Jesus therefore said, Neither do I condemn thee, he could only be understood to mean, "Neither ❝ do I take upon me to do that which thine ac❝cusers have omitted to do; that is, I do not ❝ condemn thee to be put to death; a sen"tence, which however thou mayest deserve

by the law of Moses, I have no authority to pronounce against thee,"

It should further be observed, that although the turn here given by Jesus to this famous accusation bé indeed favourable to the criminal (and it could not be otherwise, consistently with his own safety, or even duty) yet it in sinuates nothing against the propriety of a legal prosecution, nor gives the least countenance to the magistrate to abate of his rigid execution of the law which is entrusted to him. The mixture of mercy and humanity in Christ's deeision is indeed very amiable and becoming in a private man; but had the question been, "Whether it were not fit to prosecute so great "a crime in a legal and regular manner," there is no reason to believe that his answer would

have given any check to the course of public justice.

We see then from the whole narrative, and from this comment upon it, That here is no encouragement given to any man to think more slightly of the sin of adultery, than other passages of the Gospel, and the reason of the thing, authorize him to do. The sin is unquestionably of the deepest dye; is one of the most flagrant that men can commit in society; and is equally and uniformly condemned by nature itself and by the Christian morals. If, besides condemnlig, that is, expressing his abhorrence of the sin, as Jesus did, he further made an adultetous multitude sensible of their iniquity and savage inhumanity in calling for the sudden and tumultuary punishment of one, who had deserved no worse than themselves, this benefit Was accessary and incidental to the circumstances of the story; and, while it gives one edcasion to admire the address and lenity of our divine master, takes nothing from the enormity of the crime itself, or from the detestation which he had of it. In short, one cannot well conceive how Jesus could have done more in the case, or have expressed his displeasure at the crime more plainly, unless he had become -100 two modu „stalling move to „zommarjoll

"