Page:Unlawfulmarriage00jane.djvu/137

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RELATE TO MARRIAGE.
133

na-." This objection he has himself, in effect, answered by a quotation from Turrettin; from which it appears, that some precepts of the Divine law are so founded in the nature of God and the nature of things which he has constituted, that they cannot be altered, and must remain unchanged; and that others are not so founded, but "founded in the nature of things constituted in a particular way." Such precepts may be changed by the exercise of God's sovereign authority. (See his p. 8, last par.)

And were we to admit the marriage in question was "not abhorrent to nature," in the sense attached to the phrase by the Puritan, it would not follow that it is now lawful. Can Jehovah forbid no marriages but such as nature abhors? or, in other words, his short-sighted, erring, and misguided creatures see and allow to be improper and wrong? In commemoration of his resting from his works of creation, He enacted the fourth commandment in the Decalogue, which required the Hebrew people to sanctify the seventh day; and violations of this day were, by his judicial law, punishable with death, by the civil magistrate, as long as the