In the Mosaic law, immediately before _this_ institution Numbers, chap. 5., comes another, by means of which every man, who was tired of his wife, might, in another way, with the assistance of a priest--and, for aught that appears, any priest--clear himself of that incumbrance. All the man had to do was--to _say_ he was "_jealous_" of her: the priest thereupon took charge of her. If priest and husband were agreed, "_the water of jealousy_" did its office: if not, the woman remained imprisoned. Against the superhuman evidence, afforded by the purifying process here in question, no quantity of human evidence was to be available. In like manner, to warrant this poisoning process, not any the smallest particle of human evidence was necessary: the case in which it is to be performed, is "_if there be no witness against her, neither she be taken_," says the text, _Numbers_ 5. 13. Verily, verily, not without sufficient cause, did Jesus, from first to last, take every occasion, to weaken the attachment of the people, to a system of law, of which those institutions afford two, among so many samples. Yet, while in the very act of depreciating it, is he represented as declaring his purpose to be the _fulfilling it_: Matt. 5. 17. for, such was the verbal veil, which the prejudices he had to encounter, rendered it necessary to him at the moment, to throw over the tendency of his endeavors. Fulfill the very law he was preaching against? Yes: but in one sense only: namely, by fulfilling--not the real purpose of it,--the establishment of the corrupt despotism of the priesthood,--but the professed purpose of it, the good of the community: in regard to the law, fulfilling, in a word, whatever there was that was good in it, whatever there was that deserved to be fulfilled. Jesus, in whose opinion death was too severe a punishment, for a wife, in the case of a breach, on _her_ part, of a contract, the breach of which was by the _other_ contending party practised with impunity--Jesus, who accordingly, in saving the offender, exposed to merited disgrace the sanguinary law--was doubtless still further from approving, that parish priests, in unlimited numbers, should poison innocent women for the accommodation of their husbands, or sell licenses to commit every imaginable wrong by perjury. _Vow_ is _oath_: this is not the only occasion, in which the self-constituted Apostle, if his historiographer is to be believed, took the benefit, whatever it was, of this ceremony. In Acts 18:16, he "_shaved his head_," it is said, at Cenchrea:--why?--"for he had a vow upon him." What the vow was, we are not told; this, however, we know, as well from Acts 21:26, as from Numbers 6, he could not have got anything by it, had the parson of the parish of Cenchrea been otherwise than satisfied with the "_offering_" that was made.