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long and most important interval, during which the Church was founded, endured its bloodiest persecutions, and achieved its noblest triumphs. At its foundation, as Dr. Alexander McCaul observes, "If Christians were to resist the prevailing practice, a special interposition was necessary. The Jews thought it lawful to marry a wife's sister. The Gentiles thought it lawful to marry a wife's sister. Converts of both classes would, unless instructed to the contrary, carry their previous ideas into Christianity. Is there any evidence to show that they were so instructed? There is none in the Gospels or Epistles—there is none (as has been shown) in the translations of the Scriptures used by the Jewish, Syrian, Greek and Latin Churches. These versions are all favourable to the marriage with a wife's sister."—" Having given the concurrent testimony of the three greatest Bible-scholars of their age, and that age the end of the fourth and beginning of the fifth century, in addition to the Septuagint, the Syraic and the Italic versions, I have done enough to show the opinion of the Church for the first 400 years. My witnesses do not, like yours, fall short of the foundation of the Christian Church by 300 years. The Septuagint dates 280 years before it. Onkelos and Philo are contemparaneous with the Church's foundation. The Mishna, the ancient Italic, and the Syraic versions witness as to the interpretation in the second century. Theodore and Augustine show the reception in the Syrian and African Churches, much about the same time that Jerome arose to make the ancient interpretation the heritage of the Western Church for many centuries." (Letter to Sir Page Wood, pp. 37, 99.)
THE MAGAZINE WRITER ON THE XIX. APOSTOLIC CANON.
The first testimony of the magazine writer "as to the judgment of the church," on the subject is " The XIXth of the Apostolic Canons, allowed by all to be ante-Nicene, which says, 'He who hath married two sisters, or his brother's or his sister's daughter, cannot be a clergyman.'" (p. 16.) In Dr. Pusey's examinations before the Royal Commissioners on this subject, the question (444) was asked him,—"When was the earliest period in the Christian Church at which notice was taken of these marriages ?" His reply was, "In the Apostolic Canons, canon 19, one had so married, or had married a niece, was forever excluded from the clergy.'
