Page:Unlawfulmarriage00jane.djvu/97

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AN ECCLESIASTICAL LAW.
93

Church, to preserve the purity of all her members. They were made, by the express words of the enactment, binding not only on native members, but on all foreigners who might become adopted members of the Church. See Lev. 18:26.

Our brethren who range these statutes under the civil code, are misled by confounding the eighteenth with the twentieth chapter of Leviticus, and by not distinguishing between the law itself and its penalties. The eighteenth chapter is entirely distinct from the seventeenth, which goes before it, and the nineteenth and the twentieth, that follow it: for each of these chapters begins with these words, "And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying," to show that each chapter contains a distinct communication to Moses to be delivered to the children of Israel. The eighteenth contains nothing of a ceremonial nature. All is moral, not excepting the 19th verse. See chap. 20:18.

The statutes appear, in the eighteenth chapter, as the ecclesiastical law, enforced by an appropriate spiritual penalty; and, in the twentieth chapter, some of the statutes are referred to, and