Page:Unlawfulmarriage00jane.djvu/47

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HISTORICAL FACTS.
43

doubt, it had been given to them, for it was written on their hearts.

"And Rom. 3:2 shows," says the Judge, "that this law, called the Oracle of God, was committed to the Jews only." What an interpretation of Scripture! The oracles of God is the law!!

If the opinion delivered by the Chief Justice, from which these extracts have been taken, displays learning and legal acumen, the extracts speak little in favor of his acquaintance with the Scriptures and ability to interpret them.[1]

Grotius, we have seen, maintained the law in Levit. 18:6–18, to be, in all its parts, binding, by an express order of the Divine Will, not only on the Jews, but on all mankind; and had Chief Justice Vaughan followed him whom he styles, in his discussion, "the greatest of human authorities," he would have arrived at a very different opinion on this important subject.

With this opinion, delivered in the 22d year of Charles II, the reader may compare a recent opinion, delivered Feb. 1804, by Sir William

  1. See 2 Vent. pp. 16–22.