Page:The old paths, or The Talmud tested by Scripture.djvu/72

 reside in the land of Israel, and that their piety consisted in receiving and practising the seven commandments. What these commandments were, we are informed in the next chapter of the same treatise.

"The first Adam was commanded concerning six things—idolatry, blasphemy, shedding of blood, incest, robbery, and administration of justice. Although we have all these things as a tradition from Moses, our master, and reason naturally inclines to them, yet, from the general tenour of the words of the law, it appears that he was commanded concerning these things. Noah received an additional command concerning the limb of a living animal, as it is said, 'But flesh in the life thereof, which is the blood thereof, ye shall not eat.' (Gen. ix. 4.) Here are the seven commandments, and thus the matter was in all the world until Abraham." (Ibid. ix. 1.)

Now, without stopping to dispute about the command given to Noah, we cannot help saying that the above tradition is very defective, and certainly not derived from Moses, for it is opposed to the history which he himself has given us. In the first place, that command, on which, the oral law lays such stress, "Be fruitful and multiply," was originally given to Adam (Gen. i. 28), and was renewed to Noah, after the deluge. If the Rabbies reckon this as a separate command in the case of the Jews, as may be seen in the Hilchoth Priah Ureviah, it is only fair to reckon it as a separate command in the case of the Gentiles, and thus we get an eighth command. In the second place, God ordained marriage as a holy state. "The Lord God said, It is not good that man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him." "And the rib which the Lord God had taken from man made he a woman, and brought her unto the man." Here is God's holy institution, and in the following verses we have the obligations of marriage distinctly acknowledged. "And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of man. Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife, and they shall be one flesh." Here, then, is a ninth commandment. We know,