Since, then, illicit cohabitation produces such great calamities, adultery is very naturally a detestable thing hated by God, and has been set down as the first of all transgressions.


 The second commandment of this second table is to do no murder. For nature, having produced man as a gregarious and sociable creature, and the most easily domesticated of all animals, has invited it to a fellowship of opinion and partnership, giving him reason, as a means to lead to a harmony and admixture of dispositions. And he who slays any man must not be ignorant that he is overturning the laws and ordinances of nature, which have been beautifully established for the common advantage of all men. Moreover, let him be aware that he is liable to the charge of sacrilege as having plundered the most sacred of all the possessions of God; for what is a more venerable or more


 


 sublime offering to God than man? For gold, and silver, and precious stones, and all such other valuable materials, are only an inanimate ornament of inanimate erections;