We have also attempted to prove, in opposition to all the needless labor of our brother to establish what he deems the meaning of the phrase, "uncover nakedness," that it does mean sexual intercourse; that this intercourse receives its character from circumstances, and is, according to circumstances, virtuous or vicious, honorable or disgraceful; and that, in this very chapter of Leviticus, it is, in one place, applied to the commerce of married persons.
In regard to the term wife, on which the Puritan lays so much stress, it has been evinced that it does, in this chapter, mean more than wife, in the ordinary signification of the term; because the prohibition of sexual intercourse between a son and his mother, a man and his father's wife, a man and his aunt, is permanent; applying not only to the lifetime of the husband, but to the time subsequent to his death, when his wife has become a widow.
In the eighth chapter, this Levitical law is proved to be one natural law; being founded in nature, as it has for its basis the natural relations subsisting between man and his Creator, and between man and his fellow-creatures; and that
