6
Our rural clerical friend appears not to know that scores of publications have been issued, and opposing associations have been in active work on this subject during the ordinary life of man; that the "Marriage-Law-Defence Association," formed with the late Bishop of Exeter (Dr. Philpotts) and Dr. Pusey at its head, has been upwards of twenty years issuing more tracts and appeals on the subject than there are letters in the alphabet; and that as long since as 1848 a Royal Commission was appointed to inquire into and report upon the whole question.
The writer says again:—
"The great bulk of Englishmen are against any alteration of what is and has been the law of the Church and the law of the land, and which forbids a man to marry his deceased wife's sister. The Presbyterian bodies are all pledged against it. The Roman Catholics are immovably opposed to it; and only a certain portion of English Nonconformists, with some loose and wordly-minded Churchmen, are to be found to give it a shadow of religious support." (p. 3.)
His statement is not true as to the Presbyterian bodies in the United States, nor as to a large number of their members and most distinguished ministers in Canada, nor as to such illustrious names as those of Dr. Chalmers and Dr. Eadie in Scotland; it is not true as to English Nonconformists generally. Cardinal Wiseman said the Roman Catholic Church did not hold that such a marriage was prohibited in Scripture, but "is considered a matter of ecclesiastical legislation;" and when no less than seven hundred clergymen of the Established Church petitioned at one time for the repeal of the Act of 1835, including such men as the Archbishops of York and Dublin, the late Primate of all Ireland, and the present Archbishop of Canterbury, any one may judge of even the decency, much less truth of the statement, that only "some loose and worldy-minded Churchmen are to be found to give it a shadow of religious support."
