INTRODUCTORY NOTE.
The following article has been suggested by a debate 'which took place in the recent Synod of the Toronto Diocese, and by a correspondence which has since been published in the Church Herald. The debate in question was provoked by a motion of the Rev. Canon Beaven, seconded by the Rev. Provost of Trinity College, in condemnation of marriage within the "prohibited degrees" The motion was carried in the Synod by a large majority. In the course of the debate an allusion was made to the Rev. Mr. Punshon, who had contracted one of the marriages in question. Such an allusion had been better avoided; but the Synod was in no way implicated by the indiscretion of one of its members. The Lay-Secretary of the Synod, however, undertook on his own account to write a sort of exculpatory letter to Mr. Punshon. We may fairly call in question the propriety of such an act. It was—to speak mildly—little better than an officious and most unnecessary proceeding. As a matter of course, Mr. Punshon was delighted with the explanation offered; and in reply favoured his friend, J. G. Hodgins, L.L.D., with a laboured letter in disscussion of the question involved, which though ostensibly marked "private," was intended for publication, and accordingly forthwith found its way into the pages of our contemporary the Church Herald. It has been copied into the pages of some of the leading newspapers of the Dominion, and has thus obtained a circulation vastly disproportioned to its merits. A more fallacious and pernicious article, on a great subject, we could hardly conceive. It is utterly unworthy of Mr. Punshon's reputation as a critic and a divine. Still with the authority of his name the letter has been widely circulated, and is calculated to do much mischief. This has rendered necessary a refutation of the errors which lie at the basis of Mr. Punshon's letter. In the following article an effectual antidote is furnished to the poison so insidiously disseminated. The subject has been discussed apart from personal feeling,—simply and purely as a biblical question; and we hope those papers and periodicals which have given publicity to Mr. Punshon's argument will now publish a reply which has been written in a spirit of christian courtesy, and with the logical acuonen and learned research of a scholar and theologian. It is not unlikely that the subject will have to undergo further discussion in both Great Britain and the Colonies, before it is disposed of. In such a contingency it will be found that the Churchman's Magasine will give "no uncertain sound."
