desires. Thus the notions of the later Church concerning marriage would, without intentional fraud, be imputed to the earlier; and the errour would naturally increase and be confirmed through each succeeding generation.

Basil's first argument is the custom of his Diocese, having the force of law, as having been handed down by holy men (rò παρ' μīv ἔθος, νόμου δύναμιν ἔχον, διὰ τὸ ὑφ ̓ ἁγίων ἀνδρῶν τοὺς θεσμοὺς hμiv τарadolñva). This however, though an irrefragable proof of its own existence, is not so either of its origin and antiquity, or of its positive worth; though with regard to the latter there is ever a certain presumption in favour of possession. But customs and laws, we know, are subject to the same processes of mutation with everything earthly; and the custom which he adduces, that, if a man married two sisters, such a marriage should be null, and that the parties should be excluded from the congregation till it was dissolved, plainly belongs to an age much later than the Apostles, nay, later than the so-called Apostolic Canon cited above, and even than the Council of Eliberis.

His next proposition,-that, with regard to things very evident, our preconceptions are more valuable than reason,—though there is some degree of truth in it, yet, when stated in this broad generality, becomes false and mischievous; the whole history of the world bearing witness that men's notions and preconceptions are often taken up hastily and presumptuously, and, even when better grounded, are apt to become distorted or to wither away, and perpetually need Reason to purge, to correct, and to reanimate them.

On the passage of Leviticus (xviii. 18) he observes, first, that what the Law says, it says to those under the Law. This is quite true, and, if we abide by it, leaves the whole question to be decided by the reason and moral sense of the Church. But he then tries to invalidate the inference from the limitation of the prohibition to the wife's lifetime, by saying that the Law does not command a person to marry his wife's sister, and that we have no right to draw an inference from its silence. Now of course we have no right to assume that whatsoever is not

expressly prohibited, is allowed: but when, as in this case, a positive prohibition is accompanied by an express limitation to a particular case, we are quite justified in inferring that the purpose of the Legislator was not to extend his prohibition beyond that case. Had the limiting clause been omitted, the prohibition would have been general. Why then was it added, except to define the extent of the prohibition? Basil goes on to argue that the Levitical Table was merely designed to condemn the incestuous practices prevalent among the Canaanites and the Egyptians, and that this may not have been among the number. But such a supposition is wholly gratuitous, and only shews the weakness of the cause which he tries to prop up by it. Equally irrelevant is what he urges about the decorum observed in Scripture, which abstains from enumerating forms of impurity needlessly. He assumes that this is impure and yet, if the more impure form of the union is mentioned, why not the less impure? especially when the mention of that alone would remove the necessity of mentioning the other. In this chapter, above all, such an argument is a manifest sophism. The next argument, that the marriage is prohibited by the general prohibition in the sixth verse, may be valid: but then the whole ground of controversy is removed; and we are merely to take the general principle of the Levitical Law, without recognising any binding force in its particular precepts.

Other modes of evading the force of this verse have been devised by those who will not see the permission of a marriage with a deceast wife's sister so manifestly implied in it. Coming to the verse with the persuasion that its plain meaning cannot be the true one, they try to wrest it into accordance with their own views. So Jewell says, "Thus you ground your reason: a man may not marry his wife's sister, while she is alive: Ergo he may marry her after she is dead. This reason, a negativis, is very weak, and makes no more proof in logic than this doth, Corvus non est reversus ad arcam donec exsiccatae erant aquae: Ergo he returned again after the waters were dried up." But the good Bishop forgets that there is a material

difference between the force of such limiting clauses in historical statements and in general propositions. Even in the statement of a fact, the meaning will be materially affected by the circumstances. It may be, that the negative fact under this limited form is all that the narrator desired to state, as, for instance, that the raven did not return while Noah was in the ark. But if one were to say that Cesar did not reach Alexandria till Pompey was dead, this would be understood to imply that he did reach it afterward. Now in a law, which of all modes of writing requires the utmost precision, and is construed with the utmost strictness, and which in old times was exprest with the utmost brevity, a clause of this kind is not to be regarded as a mere surplusage, but should be interpreted according to its plain meaning.

Hammond, with his usual aptness for running on a wrong sent, adopts the notion that our verse was intended to be a prohibition of polygamy; a position which we have already seen to be untenable. Patrick, who is far superior to him in intelligence, perceives this, though the solution of the difficulty which he himself proposes, in consequence of his being under the same erroneous prepossession, is not happier. "These words, in her lifetime, are to be referred, not to the first words, neither shall thou take her, but to the next, to vex her, as long as she lives." It would be a waste of words to refute this.

I may here add, that the most eminent living canonical lawyer among the German Romanists, Walter, in his Kirchenrecht § 312, note a, says that, "by the Mosaic Law, a marriage with a wife's sister, after the death of the former, was not forbidden," referring to Levit. xviii. 18, as his authority for the assertion. On the other hand Eichhorn, in his Grundsaetze des Kirchenrechts (v. iii. 3. B.), the first Protestant treatise on Ecclesiastical Law, says, “ A marriage with a deceast wife's sister is nowhere forbidden in the Mosaic Law; on the contrary, by the prohibition against marrying two sisters at the same time, it is indirectly sanctioned."

NOTE I: p. 29.

That such cries should be frequent and vociferous from persons who can do nothing except clamour, is not surprising but it is painful to see these dealers in empty noise supported by men whom one has been accustomed to respect. In the debate on the Marriage-Bill on the 4th of last May, Sir Robert Inglis, according to the report in the Times, is made to say: "We are told that many of the clergy hold different opinions on the point; but the clergy must look to the Church to which they belong. If they remain in the Church, and accept its wages, and profess to perform its services, they must accept the interpretation which the Church puts upon the Scriptures. They may be better than the Church of England; but, if they do not agree with that Church, they ought to leave it." I would fain hope that Sir Robert Inglis can never have uttered anything like the sentences here ascribed to him, that the zealous, persevering champion of English Protestantism cannot wish to fetter our understandings and consciences by a bondage which is among the most debasing oppressions of Popery,-that he does not seriously desire to tighten and narrow the noose cast over the necks of our clergy by that hateful clause in the Caroline Act of Uniformity, that he who has always shewn himself such a true English gentleman, cannot have descended to the vulgar slang of taunting the clergy who do not adopt his interpretation of the Levitical Law, with the wages they receive from the Church. If he did really use the words here put into his mouth, or any words of like purport, one must suppose he merely meant that the clergymen, whom he bids leave the Church of England, ought to resign their preferment, and retire into lay communion; not that they should really quit the Church, and join the Romanists, or some other body of Dissenters. Surely he cannot have intended, though the words would seem to imply it, that a man who will not wrest a verse of Leviticus into

meaning the very opposite of what its plain words declare, ought not to remain within the pale of our Church. It is sufficiently dismal that a good man, a kind man, a pious man, should think that a person who has devoted his life, his heart and soul and mind, to the ministry of reconciliation in our Church, ought to leave her ministry, because he cannot bring himself to say that black is white at her bidding. Shamefully as such taunts have been bandied about of late years by the minions of opposite parties in our Church, I know no instance in which they have been cast forth on so trivial a plea.

What is the nature and extent of the submission, which the individual minister ought to pay to the authority of his Church, and without which he is not qualified to be her minister? To speak briefly and summarily, as he is to be invested with the ministry of reconciliation, the first, indispensable condition is, that he should have a living faith in those central, cardinal truths, which constitute the Gospel of salvation, and an earnest desire to win his brethren to a living reception of those truths. In connexion with this, and in subordination to it, as his office demands that he should execute the various ordinances of his Church, he should have a satisfactory conviction of those truths, which are involved in her ordinances, and without which he But on cannot execute them honestly and conscientiously. the other hand the rulers of the Church are bound by a corresponding duty not to impose any dogmas on her ministers, beyond those which are necessary for her great work of bringing her children through Christ to the Father. The limits of Christian communion ought to be as large as is compatible with a saving reception of the truth; those of ministerial communion as large as is compatible with the preservation of the truth in its integrity and purity. In these respects the practice of the Church has often erred greatly. People are ever apt to fancy that their own opinions are absolutely certain and irrefragable, and that nothing but wilful blindness and perversity prevent their neighbours from adopting them. Herein they fail to recognise their own fallibility, and that of their neighbours,-their own, which