Review of a Pamphlet from the Churchman's Magazine, Entitled Marriage With a Deceased Wife's Sister/Paper One
PAPER ONE.
Such is the title of an article which appeared lately in the Churchman's Magazine for August, and which is now put forth in pamphlet form — purporting to b a reply to a letter from the Rev. W. M. Punshon, addressed to Dr. Hodgins, and communicated by him to The Church Herald, and inserted in our paper on the 6th ult. It will be recollected that Mr. Punshon's name, as well as Dr. Ryerson's, was improperly dragged before our last Synod in a discussion on the question of marriage with a deceased wife's sister. With the Churchman's Magazine writer's personal attacks upon Mr. Punshon we have nothing to do; but to his attacks upon the most distinguished dignitaries and members of our Church, his Colenze-method of destroying all confidence in the authorized version of the Scriptures, and his Romanizing idiosyncracies in the matter, we have something considerable to say.
CAUSE OF AGITATION IN ENGLAND ON THIS SUBJECT.
But before we enter upon the discussion of this subject, we think our readers would like to know the cause of the agitation respecting it in England during the last thirty years. It has arisen from an Act of Parliament passed in 1835, declaring all marriages with a deceased wife's sister, contracted after that date, to be illegal, but legalizing those which had taken place before it. Previous to that time the civil law of England was like that of Canada at the present time; marriage with a deceased wife's sister was not forbidden by the civil law, though contrary to the ecclesiastical law, subjecting the parties to prosecutions before Ecclesiastical Courts, whose decisions had to be enforced by civil authority—Courts which do not exist in Canada. The origin of the Imperial Act of 1835 (not in force in Canada) is as follows: Two sisters, nieces of the Duke of Wellington, had married Henry Somerset, seventh Duke of Beaufort. The first marriage took place on the 25th July, 1814; the second marriage of the Duke of Beaufort with his deceased wife's sister took place on the 29th June, 1822. The issue of the second marriage was Henry Charles Fitzroy Somerset, the present Duke of Beaufort, late Her Majesty's Master of the Horse. In 1835 Lord Lyndhurst introduced a Bill into the House of Lords to legitimate, ecclesiastically as well as civilly, the present Duke of Beaufort; though to do so the provisions of the Bill were of course general. The section of the Lords spiritual and temporal, having most sympathy with Rome, finding that they could not successfully resist the powerful influences brought to bear in favour of Lord Lyndhurst's Bill, prepared an amendment, as a ryder to it, declaring illegal all future marriages of that kind. Lord Lyndhurst was strongly opposed to the amendment or ryder; but finding that the rejection of it would endanger the passing of his Bill, admitted it; and it is this invidious and obnoxious provision of the Bill which has caused the agitation in England for its repeal from 1835 to the present time. Some time since an influential English paper. after stating the above facts, remarked:—
"His grace the Duke of Beaufort attended Her Her Majesty in the Royal carriage on the opening of Parliament; he sits in the House of Peers with an unblemished title; takes precedence of the Bishop of London by forty-and-one degrees; is patron of twenty-six livings, and has, indeed, every privilege that an Englishman can enjoy; while the issue of similar marriages, differing only in the time they were contracted, are held to have no civil rights at all, tens of thousands of them being declared illigitimate. By a recent decision of the House of Lords, Charles Armitage Brook, the issue of an exactly similar marriage, born in 1864, is declared illigitimate, and his inheritance forfeited to the Crown. We utter not a word of reproach against His Grace, or the amiable and estimable ladies of the Beaufort family; but the public welfare demands that the existence of such an anomaly should be clearly made known, in order to its being immediately remedied."
The British House of Commons have repeatedly, and by large majorities, passed a Bill to repeal the partial and self-contradictory Act of 1835; but the House of Lords, by varying majorities, have persisted in rejecting it. Every just man must feel and say that there can be no justice or principle in an Act which declares the same marriage illegal if contracted since 1835, and which robs a child of his inheritance if born since 1835, while it gives him, if born before that period, vast wealth, the patronage of 26 Church livings, the first rank in the peerage, and even exalts him to be an officer of Her Majesty's household.
FUTILE EFFORTS OF THE WRITER—HIS IGNORANCE OF FACTS.
We are mistaken if the Churchman's Magazine, with all the writers it can command, will be able to delude any considerable number of the clergy or laymen of our Church to countenance a course characterized by legislative partiality and injustice, and at variance with the plain teachings of the Bible and the unvarying voice of antiquity.
The writer in the magazine pamphlet-article alluded to at the commencement of these remarks, seems, in his rural isolation, to be in blissful ignorance of what has been transpiring in the mother country on this subject during the last quarter of a century. He says: "It is only of late years that the present subject has been brought into the region of controversy." (p. 3.) "The first sounds of the conflict at home have at length reached us." (p. 4.) Our rural clerical friend appears not to know that scores of publications have been issued, and opposing associations have been in active work on this subject during the ordinary life of man; that the "Marriage-Law-Defence Association," formed with the late Bishop of Exeter (Dr. Philpotts) and Dr. Pusey at its head, has been upwards of twenty years issuing more tracts and appeals on the subject than there are letters in the alphabet; and that as long since as 1848 a Royal Commission was appointed to inquire into and report upon the whole question.
The writer says again:—
"The great bulk of Englishmen are against any alteration of what is and has been the law of the Church and the law of the land, and which forbids a man to marry his deceased wife's sister. The Presbyterian bodies are all pledged against it. The Roman Catholics are immovably opposed to it; and only a certain portion of English Nonconformists, with some loose and wordly-minded Churchmen, are to be found to give it a shadow of religious support." (p. 3.)
His statement is not true as to the Presbyterian bodies in the United States, nor as to a large number of their members and most distinguished ministers in Canada, nor as to such illustrious names as those of Dr. Chalmers and Dr. Eadie in Scotland; it is not true as to English Nonconformists generally. Cardinal Wiseman said the Roman Catholic Church did not hold that such a marriage was prohibited in Scripture, but "is considered a matter of ecclesiastical legislation;" and when no less than seven hundred clergymen of the Established Church petitioned at one time for the repeal of the Act of 1835, including such men as the Archbishops of York and Dublin, the late Primate of all Ireland, and the present Archbishop of Canterbury, any one may judge of even the decency, much less truth of the statement, that only "some loose and worldy-minded Churchmen are to be found to give it a shadow of religious support."
THE WRITER'S RECKLKSS STATEMENT IN REGARD TO NON-CONFORMISTS, AND HIS SLANDER ON CANADA.
We shall hereafter present the earnest and learned words of many illustrious Prelates of our Church on this subject; we will merely note here, as an example of this writer's reckless statements, what he says in regard to "only a portion of the English Nonconformists." The London Central Board of the Three Denominations in England adopted a resolution saying, "Such marriage (with a deceased wife's sister) is not only in itself perfectly allowable, but may often be the best which an individual may contract." The Board of Baptist Ministers in London and Westminster adopted a resolution declaring: "In the judgment of the Board, the marriage of a widower with the sister of his deceased wife is Scripturally lawful, and ought not to be prohibited by any human legislation." The famous Wesleyan minister, the late Dr. Bunting, said in his evidence before the Royal Commission: "That the enactments of the Levitical law are entirely misrepresented when applied in condemnation of marriage with a deceased wife's sister was the decided judgment of Mr. Wesley, the founder of our Societies; and I believe that similar views are entertained by many among us, who have been led by circumstances carefully to examine the matter, and whose competency to judge of such a question has given great weight to their conclusions."
This writer says:—"The general contempt for religious, as opposed to secular law, characterizes the looseness of Colonial populations." This statement is not only untrue, but a calumny upon our Colonial population, which regards religious law as everything, and looks with comparative indifference upon all secular law in religious matters. Such an utterance is the characteristic language of some who come to the colony for the improvement of their own condition, and then magnify themselves by speaking contemptuously of everything Colonial and its population.
VIEWS OF DISTINGUISHED CHURCHMEN OPPOSED TO THE MAGAZINE WRITER.
We shall hereafter expose the dangerous criticisms and absurd borrowed fallacies of this writer. We will close these preliminary observations at present with the remarks of two or three distinguished churchmen respecting the Act of 1835. The late Robert Southey said, in a letter to a friend,—"But has it never occurred to you, my dear Wynn, that this law is an abominable relic of ecclesiastical tyranny? Of all second marriages, I have no hesitation in saying that these are the most suitable." The late Lord Francis Egerton, (afterwards Earl of Ellesmere), said, in a speech in the House of Commons: In 1835 a most important Statute had been passed by that House, under somewhat peculiar circumstances, and he might say, of haste, and want of due deliberation, materially affecting the marriage laws of this country. In this case, the voice of Heaven was silent, and that of man had been given with a hesitation and confusion of utterance that deprived it of its due authority." Lord Houghton observed, on the same occasion:—"That our Established Church should select one point of the Canon law, and establish an arbitrary limit without giving any power of dispensation, was, he was sorry to say, a very great tyranny, and one which be felt convinced the true principles of the Church of England did not sanction." We will merely add here the words of the late Dr. Lee, Professor of Hebrew in the University of Cambridge, and afterwards Bishop of Manchester: "From all I have been able to learn on the question, 'Whether a man may marry a deceased wife's sister,' my opinion is that neither does Holy Scripture any where forbid it, nor ever did the Jews."