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empire became Christian, these marriages were prohibited by force of law”. If we are surprised at the “absence of early canons on the subject,” we may reflect that “there was no need of canons of the Church when there was a Divine law”. (Dr. Pusey, I., p. 27.) These brief remarks which I have made, may serve to indicate the tone of the early Church on the subject of these marriages, and the mind of the reformed Anglican Church is clearly and distinctly set forth in the table of prohibited degrees “ordered to be set up in Churches by Archbishop Parker in 1563” (see Forster's sermon, p. 21), which has the imprimatur of the English canons of 1604, made by the convocation of the Province of Canterbury, and afterwards passed by the Province of York. (See Perry's History of the Church of England, Vol. I, pp. 120-123.) Canon 99 declares “no person shall marry within the degrees prohibited by the laws of God, and expressed in a table set forth by authority in the year of our Lord 1563. And all marriages so made and contracted shall be adjudged incestuous and unlawful, and consequently shall be dissolved as void from the beginning, and the parties so married shall by course of law, be separated. And the aforesaid table shall be in every Church publicly set up and fixed at the charge of the parish.” This table is headed “A table of kindred and affinity, wherein whosoever are related are forbidden in Scripture and our laws to marry together,” and by this table a man is forbidden to marry 10 persons related to him by consanguinity, and 20 by affinity, among whom is “a wife's sister”. If we are prepared to alter our table of prohibited degrees, “at least (says Keble, p. 32), let us distinctly understand what sort of course we are committing ourselves to. We cannot, I apprehend, make this or any similar change, without virtually accepting the principle, that the Gospel precepts in such matters are less strict than those of the law: although our Divine Master has distinctly and repeatedly intimated, in the kindred matter of divorce, that concessions were made to the Jews, ‘because of the hardness of their hearts,’ which could in no wise be allowed to us Christians: although St. Paul, in the other kindred matter of polygamy, has once for all told us the mind of Christ, saying, 'Let every man have his own wife, and let every woman have her own husband':
