Page:Unlawfulmarriage00jane.djvu/155

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A NATURAL LAW.
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death: I do not say that he shall pray for it." 1 John 5:16.

So it is with the law of marriage. We cannot conceive of a case in which it could be lawful for a parent to marry his daughter. But we know that, at the commencement of the human race, it was lawful for brothers and sisters to marry. And since the multiplication of the human race, affirms our brother, "God could not either allow or command it." We dislike this language; it savors of irreverence. Suppose Noah and his wife alone had been saved from the destructive deluge, and they had begotten children after the flood, would it not have been again lawful for brothers and sisters to marry? Or suppose Noah, during the three hundred and fifty years he lived after the deluge, had begotten children, would not marriages between uncles and nieces have been allowed?

The Puritan goes on, in the same paragraph to affirm: "And we repeat, that if it were a moral wrong for one to marry his brother's widow, God could not have commanded it as he