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reserve, yet the principle of arguing from analogy, and from a case to its converse, in regard to sex, appears to be admitted. And I think I do not misrepresent the whole tone and sense of the two letters of Dr. M'Caul, when I say that I am convinced, but for the 18th verse of the xviii. chapter, he would himself readily have allowed the full weight of Mr. Keble's statement, and considered these unions to be absolutely prohibited.
But next as to the exception claimed. It is true that there is an exception to the working of the law laid down in verse 16, concerning the brother's wife, by a positive enactment in Deuteronomy (chap. xxv. v. 5—10), where provision is made for a man "raising up seed unto his brother," by taking to him his widow to wife, if the brother have died childless, that" the first-born which she beareth" may "succeed in the name of his brother, which is dead, that his name be not put out of Israel" (v. 6.) But I feel justified in saying that this alone would have been no difficulty to Dr. M'Caul (nor to any man of his reasoning powers), as to the prevalence of the general law in all cases but the special one excepted, and that but for the 18th verse of the xviii. chapter of Leviticus, our 99th Canon and the table of prohibited degrees would have been almost or quite universally accepted as the true enunciation of the will and law of God in this matter of unlawful marriages.
It is, then, to that particular passage of Holy Scripture that it is necessary to draw attention. And here, my lord, I must take up a word, which I find in your speech before referred to, which seems to me to be emphatically a word "of truth and soberness." You say, "To over-ride a command, which is distinct and precise, you must have a very clear verse and a very clear interpretation."[1] Dr. M'Caul quotes these words, with a distinct approval of their
- ↑ Speech of Sir W. P. Wood, pp. 5, 6.
