would thereby be prohibited, was formerly permitted, as may be proved from innumerable instances. And all the Rabbis too -concur in this view of the question; for in examining their opinions from the Mishna, (Jebamoth iv. 13) downward, to the Shulchan Aruch, Eben Ezer (Sect. 15, § 26), we find that they prohibit marriage with a woman after the divorce of her sister, but expressly permit it after her death. The same conclusion must be arrived at by searching the Jewish Commentators, from Philo (see his Special Laws of Moses, p. 303) down to Zunz; so that, to the best of my knowledge, not a single opinion can be met with throughout all the Rabinnical writings, which would even appear to throw any doubt on the legality or propriety of the marriage of a widower with his deceast wife's sister."

It is little better than trifling, to answer, as Mr Keble does (p. 23), to such testimony as this, with regard to the simple meaning of a law, exprest in half a dozen words, which surely ought to be intelligible to the people it was designed for,-" What Christian would follow the Talmudists in such matters? they being the very interpreters, of whom our Lord said, Except your righteousness exceed theirs, ye shall not enter into the Kingdom of Heaven, the blind guides who taught men that they were not answerable for evil thoughts,-that they should love their neighbour, but might hate their enemy,-that, if they said Corban, it would excuse them from helping their parents." In other words, because the Judges in James the Second's time wrested the law, therefore the consentient interpretations of our lawyers for ten or twelve centuries is unworthy of attention. Yet the matter in question is no way connected with the great pervading errour of the Jews: nor is there the slightest intimation in the New Testament that the Jewish lawyers were in errour on this point; though, had their practice been a perversion of the law, opportunities for reprehending it would easily have occurred.

On the other hand Selden, looking at the question with judicial calmness of judgement, and with a mind strengthened and trained by all manner of learning, says (De Jure Naturali et Gentium juxta Disciplinam Hebraeorum, lib. v. c. 10), that the

Talmudists held it unlawful to marry "uxoris sororem sive uterinam sive germanam, dum illa superstes, tametsi fuerit repudiata : nam de uxoris sorore, jam demortuae, nunquam dubitarunt, cum verba legis de uxore sint, Dum ipsa adhuc vivit."—He had said previously (v. 6), "Haeresis habita est, nec toleranda, Sadducaeorum opinio, qua binas simul haberi jure uxores negabant, ex lege illa male intellecta, Uxorem sorori suae non accipies in ejus afflictionem.-Caeterum de sororibus binis, idque dum in vivis tantum fuerit utraque, locus ille passim Magistris capitur." This too was a main object of his Uxor Ebraica, to defend the views of the Talmudists against "stupenda et Christianis quasi inaudita Karaeorum seu Judaeorum Scripturariorum de incestu dogmata."

The opinion ascribed to the Talmudists in the first passage by Selden, that the prohibition against the marriage of two sisters extended during the whole life of the first, even though she should be divorced, is that exprest by Philo, in his Treatise on the Laws connected with the Seventh Commandment (p. 303, Ed. Mang.). Πάλιν δύο ἀδελφὰς ἄγεσθαι τὸν αὐτὸν οὐκ ἐπιτρέπει, οὔτ ̓ ἐν τῷ αὐτῷ, οὔτ ̓ ἐν διαφέρουσι χρόνοις, καν τύχῃ τις ἣν προέγημεν απεωσμένος. Ζώσης γὰρ ἔτι τῆς συνοικούσης, εἴτε καὶ ἀπηλλαγμένης, ἐάν τε χηρεύσῃ, ἐάν τε καὶ ἑτέρῳ γαμηθῇ, τὴν ἀδελφὴν οὐχ ὅσιον ὑπέλαβεν ἐπὶ τὰ τῆς ἠτυχηκυίας παρέρχεσθαι, προδιδάσκων ταύτας τὰ συγγενικὰ δίκαια μὴ λύειν, μηδ' ἐπιβαίνειν πταίσμασι τῆς οὕτω ἡνωμένης κατὰ γένος, μηδ' ἐναβρύνεσθαι καὶ ἐντρυφῶν θεραπευομένην ὑπὸ τῶν ἐχθρῶν ἐκείνης, καὶ ἀντιθεραπεύουσαν αὐτούς· ἐγείρονται γὰρ ἐκ τούτων χαλεπαὶ ζηλοτυπίαι, καὶ δυσπαρηγόρητοι φιλονεικίαι, φορὰς ἀμυθήτους ἄγουσαι κακῶν. His arguments turn on the supposition that, if the second sister were married during the life of the first, the first would be grievously vext; and thus they shew how the law was understood by the Alexandrian Jews in our Lord's time.

NOTE G: p. 29.

It has appeared sufficiently from the last three Notes, that there is nothing like a general consent in favour of the opinion that every member of a Christian community is prohibited from marrying his wife's sister by any positive precept in the Levitical Code.

For in the first place it has been held by a large body of divines in various ages and Churches, that the particular precepts in the 18th chapter of Leviticus retain no greater force over Christians, than the rest of the Book. Indeed this seems to have been the assumption on which the Church acted in the main down to the time of the Reformation, deeming, and rightly so, that power was granted to Christ's Church to determine such questions for herself, according to the light vouchsafed to her by the Spirit of God. Hence she thought herself warranted in carrying out the principle of the Levitical prohibitions, as exprest in the 6th verse, into more numerous details, erring however in this, as in so many other things, from giving way to the natural temptation of exerting her power by enacting ordinance after ordinance. At the Refor

mation, when this heavy yoke of ecclesiastical ordinances was cast off, as in other respects the Reformers shook it off by returning to the simplicity of Scripture, so did many of them in this respect also. Few saw so clearly as Luther, that Christianity is a law of freedom, not of forms and ordinances, and that the Christian State has the power of framing ordinances for itself. In England the peculiar controversy, which unhappily exercised so great an influence over the origin of our Reformation, led many of our divines almost unconsciously to attach a special value to the Levitical Table. Thus it came

to pass that, while Bellarmin and Caietan denied the obligatoriness of that Table, our own divines, as well as Chemnitz and Gerhard, asserted it.

Still this view is more favorable to those who impugn the propriety of a marriage with a deceast wife's sister, than that of those who assert the permanent obligatoriness of the Levitical Table. For that, as we have seen, was understood by the Jews in the time of Philo, and has been so by their chief doctors ever since, directly to sanction such marriages. Nor can I see how any one, looking at the terms of the law in Leviticus xviii. 18, without a predetermination to extort his own meaning out of them, can well come to a different

conclusion.

So far as Augustin's words (Quaestiones in Leviticum, lxiii.) enable one to form a judgement, his opinion seems to have coincided with Philo's. "Uxorem super sororem ejus non accipies, in zelum. Hic non prohibuit superducere, quod licebat antiquis propter abundantiam propagationis: sed sororem sorori noluit superduci.-Hoc autem quod ait, in zelum, utrum ideo positum est, ne sit zelus inter sorores, qui inter illas quae sorores non essent contemnendus fuit? an ideo potius, ne propter hoc fiat, id est ne hoc animo fiat, ut in zelum sororis soror superducatur." This passage, from the omission of the clause, adhuc illa vivente, would almost seem to have been mutilated, more especially as in his question on the 16th verse, he asks, “quaeritur utrum hoc vivo fratre, an mortuo sit prohibitum; et non parva quaestio est;" a question still more important with regard to the 18th verse. At all events the remark about zelus implies that the first wife must be alive.

That which is implied by Augustin, is expressly stated by Nicolaus de Lyra, in his note on the verse. "In Hebraeo habetur, Sororem uxoris tuae non accipies ad anxiandum, quia, si una sit magis dilecta quam alia, oritur invidia minus dilectae ad magis dilectam et per consequens odium et anxietas vitae inter illas; cum tamen inter sorores debeat esse pax et concordia et amor: et propter hoc subditur, Adhuc illa vivente: quia, si prima soror sit mortua, talis invidia non oritur, et ideo alia soror tunc accipi non prohibetur."

Gerhard, who in his Loci Theologici (xxvi. c. v.), has a

very prolix dissertation on this verse, maintaining an opposite interpretation, quotes Fagius, Bellarmin, and Cornelius a Lapide, as concurring with that of De Lyra (§ cccxlvii.). Fagius says, "Etsi in Lege Mosaica polygamia fuit concessa, tamen non licuit duabus simul sororibus conjungi, ne videlicet altera alteram perpetuo affligeret, quod in conjugio Jacobi patriarchae factum. Est igitur sensus : Ne accipias mulierem aliquam pro uxore cum sorore ejus,-praesente sive vivente ea uxoris sorore; nam demortuae uxoris sororem ducere licebat." To the same effect Bellarmin (De Matrimonio, c. xxvii.) wrote, "Moses in Levitico quaedam conjugia prohibuit, et quaedam permisit in eodem gradu. Prohibuit enim conjugium cum uxore fratris etiam defuncti ; et non prohibuit conjugium cum sorore uxoris, nisi ea vivente." In like manner Cornelius a Lapide, in his Commentary on the passage, says, "Uxore mortua potes accipere ejus sororem in conjugem hoc enim lege veteri licuit."

So again Willet, in his Sixfold Commentary on Leviticus, while he looks upon the law as a prohibition of Polygamy, admits that "the received opinion is, that this law is understood of two sisters, that one sister is not to be taken to another while they live; but after the death of the one sister it was lawful to take the other. And that Jacob married two sisters beside his intention, and as yet this positive law was not made: Tostatus, Lorinus." He mentions a curious mystical interpretation suggested by Hesychius: "It is not fit to join together the Jewish and Christian profession, as the Pasch and the Eucharist, Circumcision and Baptism."

On a question of this sort the learning and good sense of Grotius would of course lead him to a right conclusion. "Sicut acerrima dicuntur esse fratrum odia, sic et aemulationes sororum. Reprehendit hic Pesichtha non immerito Caraitarum sententiam, quia volebant vetari hic duas habere eodem tempore uxores.

- Eamque sententiam et nostro saeculo renovarunt viri non ineruditi, nempe quia nolunt quicquam in Evangelio esse vetitum, quod in Lege licuerit.-Lex in Deuteronomio satis clara est, plures uxores permittens. Accedit optima legis interpres