31
required such union, and it does not permit anything as against the laws of the 6th and 16th verses. Were Dr. M'Caul's view, and the view of the promoters of the alteration of our law of marriage correct, we should at least have the anomaly of a permissive precept foisted in, if I may so say, among the prohibitory sentences of this chapter, dealing in all else with prohibitions only. For, it is plain, to read the verse as meaning a man may marry two sisters, if it be not simultaneously, is a permission upon the previous restriction; whilst to say a man may not marry two sisters simultaneously, even when the law of the Levirate would seem to demand it, is a prohibition. The law of Deuteronomy, therefore, (the law of the Levirate,) being a permission or command, not a prohibition, makes it no marvel that that injunction is not found among the prohibitions, whilst that the prohibitional exceptional decree of the 18th verse of Lev. xviii., should be found where it is, among the prohibitions, is no marvel either.
I would reply, fourthly—
That to find the law of the Levirate in this place in the Book of Leviticus would have been to find a provision solely and simply of the Jewish economy and polity, most unnaturally intermixed with the provisions of God's general moral law:—that is, what is applicable solely to Moses and the people under him, confused with the law intended for all nations and people, as witnessed by the denunciations of that chapter of the book of Leviticus with which we have been concerned. How is it possible to suppose the Leviratical injunction of Deuteronomy could have found a place among the things prohibited and condemned as the abominations of the Canaanites and Egyptians?
I would reply, fifthly—
That if any further answer to the above objection be
