Page:Dissertationonma00livi.djvu/87

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SECTION V.

LEVITICUS XVIII. 16.

IN discussing this article, attention must be paid to — the object and scope of the Law in Leviticus, xviii. 6 — 17 : — the rules to be adopted for explaining that law — the particular precept which forbids a marriage with a sister in law — and the extent of all these prohibitions. If it shall appear that this law exclusively respects the crime of incest — that, agreeably to the rules of just interpretation, the marriage of a deceased wife's sister is actually forbidden in the 16th verse — and, that this Law is not ceremonial but moral, and as binding, in its prohibitions, upon Christians, as it was upon the Jews; the question will be decided by an authority, which it would be impious to contradict, and dangerous to disobey,

I. The object and scope of this Law is obvious from—its connection with the other laws contained in