Page:Cihm12428.djvu/24

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19

hibition, which prevents the heir to a title or an estate from assuming it during the life of the owner, ceases on his death. Examples could be multiplied without number. And thus the prohibition of a man from marrying his wife's sister during his wife's life, implies the lawfulness of his doing so after his wife's death. In, therefore, concluding our review of the magazine writer's absurd sayings, (for arguments they cannot be called), on this point, we may remark in the language of the learned Dr. A. McCaul:—"The inference drawn from the limitation in Leviticus xviii. 18, 'in her life-time' is as old as the days of Philo, has been drawn by the great body of the Jewish nation ever since, and by the most learned and thoughtful Christians, of various nations and opposing creeds, down to the present time—not only of those who draw it in favour of marriage with a deceased wife's sister, but of those who, opposing that marriage, interpret Leviticus xviii. 18, of polygamy. Both assert that the words, 'in her life-time' is a limitation, and that when the wife is dead, a second marriage as lawful; and thus the united strength and learning of both parties—and there are only a few individual commentators who do not belong to the one or the other—are combined in affirming the validity of this conclusion."

We have thus, we think, sufficiently replied to the magazine writer on the interpretation of Leviticus xviii. 18, though we have employed but a small part of the authorities and illustrations which we had prepared to expose his crude and absurd criticisms. We shall next, in one more paper, notice his misquotations of authorities from Jewish and Christian antiquity, and conclude with adducing modern Church and other authorities which can neither be gainsaid nor resisted by any sound Protestant.