The Seventh Commandment
Deuteronomy 5:18
Neither shall you commit adultery.


I. THE AGGRAVATIONS, MORE ESPECIALLY, OF THE SINS OF FORNICATION AND ADULTERY; which may also with just reason be applied to all other unnatural lusts.

1. They are opposite to sanctification, even as darkness is to light, hell to heaven.

2. These sins are inconsistent with that relation we pretend to stand in to Christ as members of His Body, inasmuch as we join ourselves in a confederacy with His profligate enemies.

3. They bring with them many other sins, as they tend to vitiate the affections, deprave the mind, defile the conscience, and provoke God to give persons up to spiritual judgments, which will end in their running into all excess of riot.

II. THE OCCASIONS OF THESE SINS, to be avoided by those who would not break this commandment; and these are —

1. Intemperance, or excess in eating or drinking (Genesis 19:31).

2. Idleness, consisting either in the neglect of business, or indulging to much sleep, which occasions many temptations (2 Samuel 11. I, 2).

3. Pride in apparel, or other ornaments, beyond the bounds of modesty (Isaiah 3:16, etc.; 2 Peter 2:7, 8).

4. Keeping evil company (Proverbs 6:27, 32).

III. As for THE REMEDIES AGAINST IT, these are: as exercising a constant watchfulness against all temptations thereunto; avoiding all conversation with those men or books which tend to corrupt the mind, and fill it with levity, under a pretence of improving it; but more especially a retaining a constant sense of God's all-seeing eye, His infinite probity and vindictive justice (Genesis 39:9).

(Thomas Ridglet, D. D.)



Parallel Verses
KJV: Neither shalt thou commit adultery.

WEB: "Neither shall you commit adultery.




The Seventh Commandment
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