Page:The old paths, or The Talmud tested by Scripture.djvu/451

 men. "God is not a man that he should lie; neither the son of man that he should repent: hath he said, and shall he not do it? or hath he spoken, and shall he not make it good?" (Numbers xxiii. 19.) Men may be wicked enough to promise what they do not intend to perform, or after promising, may change their mind, and refuse to fulfil their engagements; but God is too holy to deceive wilfully, or to alter what has proceeded out of his mouth. A religion, therefore, which in any wise tends to lessen our reverence for truth, or encourages men to alter a solemn engagement, or, what is still worse, teaches how to absolve from oaths, cannot proceed from the God of truth; and this is what the oral law does in certain cases. We do not mean to accuse it of teaching, as the religion of Rome does, that dispensation may be had from every kind of oath. On the contrary, the rabbies assume the power of dispensation only in the case of, "rash oaths;" but we mean to assert, that even that assumption is contrary to the Word of God, and injurious to the cause of truth; and, therefore, sufficient to overthrow the credit of the oral law as a religion given by God. The doctrine itself is as follows:—

"If any man swear a rash oath, and afterwards repent of it, because he sees that if he keep this oath it will cause him grief, and therefore changes his mind; or if something should occur to him which was not in his mind at the time when he swore, and he repent on that account; behold, a person, in such circumstances, is to ask one wise man (rabbi), or three common men in any place where there is not a wise man, and they absolve him from his oath; and then it will be lawful to do a thing which he had sworn not to do, or to leave undone a thing which he had sworn to do: and this is what is called