their enemy; that if they said Corban, it would excuse them from helping their parents?
Putting these aside then, and coming to the true Church and Gospel, I cannot see the shadow of a doubt that the same “Mind of Christ,” which from the beginning put an end to Polygamy, licensed as it was by the Jewish system, did à fortiori express and make itself felt against those unions which were forbidden to Jews as having been intolerable even in Canaanites. We are sure, from our Lord's own saying about divorce, that as in respect of the Law generally, so especially in respect of the Law of Marriage, He came “not to destroy, but to fulfil;” i.e. to perfect and make it stricter. This would be enough, if we knew no more, to shew us that it is safer and more loving towards Him to retain the Levitical restrictions, than to annul them; and if either of them be doubtful, to accept the severer alternative.
Moreover, there is no small reason to believe, that the Levitical restrictions were in a manner re-enacted, and proclaimed as binding upon all Christians, in that first Council of Jerusalem[1], when “it seemed good to the
- ↑ Acts xv. 20, 29.
