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vex, to uncover her nakedness upon her in her lifetime'. Such a conjunction had been seen in the house of their forefather Jacob, and might seem to be recommended to the Israelites by his example; and therefore the Legislator may have deemed it necessary to provide specially against it (St. Augustine). It has been inferred by some, that the Legislator by prohibiting a man from bringing in a wife to her sister in her lifetime, allows him to marry his wife's sister after his wife's death. But this deduction is not well grounded; and no one ought to act upon an inference which rests on so precarious a foundation. Because a man may not take his wife's sister to wife while his wife is alive, it by no means follows that he may take his wife's sister to wife when his wife is dead. As Richard Hooker well says, 'It is a mistake to suppose that a thing denied with special circumstance doth import an opposite affirmation when once that circumstance is expired ' (Hooker V., xlv. 2)." It is as well to refer here to the marginal rendering of this passage in Leviticus, which is, instead of 'a wife to her sister,' 'one wife to another,' which contains a simple prohibition of polygamy. And this is the view taken by the learned Dr. Henry Hammond, Archdeacon of Chichester and Canon of Christ Church, who had been selected for the Bishopric of Worcester, but did not live to reach his consecration, for he died at the house of Sir John Pakington, April 25th, 1660. On this point the Ecclesiastic says (Vol. VII., p. 185): "Dr. Hammond grounds his argument against marriage with the wife's sister upon the law of propinquity, and upon the rule a pari, which we should hardly have thought it possible that any thinking person could have called into question. Accordingly he does not build any of his conclusions upon the text so much disputed in this controversy, Lev. xviii. 18: 'Neither shalt thou take a wife to her sister to vex her, to uncover her nakedness, beside the other in her lifetime'. By reasoning which, to our mind, has long since been conclusive, Hammond shows that this passage does not relate to marriage with a wife's sister, but contains a simple prohibition of polygamy." Dr. Hammond thinks that the prohibition of marriage with the sister of a deceased wife follows, by parity of reason, from the prohibition of marriage with a
