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versality about them. Par hemin can never signify "in the whole church." Moreover Basil does not even speak of it as a law of the church, but only a custom, nor of the custom as having been handed down from the Apostles, but by "holy men." Had St. Basil known of an universal custom, it would have been much more to his purpose to have urged that universality, as being necessarily known to the person against whom he argued. Could he have have adduced the practice of the Universal Church, or the authority of the Apostles, he would hardly have confined himself to that of his own diocese and his predecessors. St. Basil's caution is to me a proof that his custom was not the practice of the Universal Church, and that he was aware of the fact."
THE AUTHORITY OF THE VATICAN MANUSCRIPT QUOTED.
The Magazine writer's next appeal is "the Vatican Manuscript of the Septuagint (lately published by Cardinal Mai,") which we are told, "contains the text of a curse against those who lie with their wife's sister, in Deuteronomy xxvii. 23.—an important witness of the opinion of the early age in which that MS. was written." (p. 16). In 1850, the Rev. E. W. Grinfield, London, addressed and published "An Expostulatory Letter to the Rt. Rev. N. Wiseman, on the interpolated curse," to which the Magazine writer now appeals as his final authority as to the "judgment of the Church." "The interpolation of the additional curse (it has been observed), in Deuteronomy xxvii. 23. according to the Vatican copy of the lxx, falls probably about the time of Sr. Basil. Tischondorf thinks that the Vatican Mauuscript was written before the time of Jerome. It is of no use, therefore, in filling up the hiatus between the Apostles and that time. If the curse were genuine, it could only apply to him who married a wife's sister in her lifetime, as curses could only fall on transgressors of the law. But it is manifestly an interpolation. It was not known to St. Basil- It is not found in the Alexandrian Manuscript, written in the home of the lxx version, nor in the versions made from it. Its citation by Siricius seems to point to a western origin."
THE MAGAZINE WRITER ON LUTHER AND THE "WESTMINSTER DIVINES."
The Magazine writer finally appeals to the authority of Luther and the Westminster Assembly of Divines, though
