1817 Sept. 2

Not Paul

12 2 o

Ch. 9. Paul’s Doctrines

1 §. Causes of Paul’s Asceticism

§. 4. Paul against Jesus as to marriage &c.

§. 4. Paul led into opposition to Jesus by anxiety to obtain female married converts

What All men? Yes: all men. For rather than the dominion / empire / of Paul should lose a single subject, and in that one subject the degree of obsequiousness should by any rival pursuit or propensity lose any thing of its compleatness, content is he yea and desirous―so at least does he express himself―that the whole of the human species should come to an end / perish / that with the longest lives of / among / those who at that time were alive the whole of the species of the human species yea of his own species―should become / be / extinct / that with the then present generation the human species should become extinct /.

Another case. Marginal note at this point: ‘ib. I. Cor. VII. 15’, i.e. ‘But if the unbelieving depart, let him depart. A brother or a sister is not under bondage in such cases: but God hath called us to peace.’ Suppose man and wife: one of them a believer viz. a believer in Paul: the other not. Displeased with the union purely spiritual as it is thus formed with Paul, the wife / husband / suppose wishes to part from her husband / his wife /. Shall he use any endeavours to detain her? Oh no: let her go / depart /, as let him go and welcome.―’What God hath joined together let no man put asunder’ (says Jesus). Bentham note at this point: ‘Mark X. 9.’ This is / Behold there / what was said by somebody. But that somebody, who was he? Oh it was only Jesus: Lord Jesus: the Jesus in whose name Paul was for ever preaching―preaching whatsoever happened from time to time happened to suit that same Paul’s purpose. Here rather than that the dominion of Paul should risk the loss of a subject any marriage that ever had been contracted every marriage that ever had been contracted should be dissolved. And so, at so easy a price as the saying I believe in Jesus―i.e. I believe in Paul, at the pleasure either of the / a / husband alone or of the wife alone, a divorce from bed and board at least―a divorce the extinction of all the comforts, and thereby to all the use / sweets / of matrimony―a separation having nothing but some of the bitters[?], was to be effected.
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