Page:Unlawfulmarriage00jane.djvu/102

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98
LEVITICAL LAW

of the municipal code of the country or state in which they live. But these statutes of which we speak are binding on all Christians, whether adopted or not as the municipal law of the land in which they live; because they were given to the Church, and have not been repealed.

The Puritan thinks differently. Let us hear him. Page 5, second paragraph, he speaks thus: "As this is an important point, let us be well understood. As the Jewish code, as a code, expired by its own limitations, at the coming of Christ, none of its precepts have any force, derived from the circumstance that they stand in that code. The force which any of its precepts has, comes from the inherent justice and adaptedness seen to reside in those precepts."

Let us examine this passage. Jeremy Taylor, whom the Puritan brings forward as advocating his cause, but without sufficient reason, would condemn such language. He, speaking of the marriage of a man with his mother, in his Ductor Dubitantium, (p. 223,) says, after showing it to be contrary to nature, "But all this was not sufficient to make it to become a natural law, without the authority of God intervening. This