Scripture. Our Church does not accept any of the Fathers as authorities overruling Scripture, but claims them as witnesses to what has been the general assent of the Church from the time of the Apostles with regard to the interpretation of Scripture.
The case, then, stands thus. We have, as early as the commencement of the third century, direct testimony that the customary practice of Christians was against the marriage in question, though their heathen relatives allowed them. We have the custom of Christendom, I say, referred to by Basil on this head; and shortly before his testimony, and almost as soon as Christianity had been firmly established, we have a law of the Emperor Constantius, which never would have been enacted had not this Christian custom been well established also. To say that Constantius was an Arian, is an observation the force of which I confess myself unable to appreciate. The question of incestuous unions is a Scriptural and social question lying far deeper than any differences of doctrine, however important in themselves. It is, happily, not in this country a Low Church or High Church question. Such unions are abhorred in Scotland by every denomination of Christians, and in our own country by men of every division of opinion in Church matters.
There is no Christian writer before the Reformation who has been produced by Dr. M'Caul as
