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argument, or, perhaps I should say, to a portion of the Scriptural argument against the change proposed, viz.—to the due sense and application of the 18th verse of the xviii. chapter of Leviticus.
There is, I suppose, no room for reasonable doubt that the case of the advocates of a change in our law which may sanction the marriage of a man with his deceased wife's sister, rests mainly, so far as the Scriptural argument is concerned, upon the 18th verse of the xviii. chapter of Leviticus. "Neither shalt thou take a wife to her sister, to vex her, to uncover her nakedness, beside the other, in her life time," where, the translation being assumed to be correct, the interpretation put upon it is that if such a union is forbidden in the life time of the first wife, there is a tacit sanction of the same after her decease. If it were not for this one verse thus translated and thus interpreted, there would, I think, hardly be a question raised or a doubt felt by one in a thousand that such unions are prohibited, denounced as incestuous, and forbidden under God's general law, just as we find them set down in Archbishop Parker's table of prohibited degrees.
The importance, then, of this verse being admitted as to the right understanding of God's will in this matter, I propose briefly to call attention to some points connected with it which I think have not received the consideration to which they are entitled. My aim will be to show, even conceding the whole demand as to the correctness of the translation found in the Text of our authorized version, and not disputing the inference that there is a certain tacit sanction of such a Union with the second sister after the death of the first, yet that upon a careful consideration, it may most reasonably be maintained that the sanction does not extend to any general permission of the same, but that the enactment or permission is made
