8
He then adds: —
"The next remark I have to make on this, which is God's own table of prohibited marriages, is one which it seems to me that no fair mind can deny. Indeed, one is half ashamed to enounce it, it is so obvious: yet the reasoning on the other side appears to be mainly based on the denial of it. It is simply this: that nearness of kin not being affected by sex, what is forbidden to a man is forbidden to a woman in the same degree of kindred or affinity, though it be not set down in words. For instance, in v. 7, a man is forbidden to marry his mother: then, by the same rule, a woman is forbidden to marry her father, though the prohibition is not expressed. Surely it would be fearful paltering with God's law, not to accept and obey such a plain rule as this. And it is to be observed, that these Canons are all addressed to men only: the woman's duty and the woman's sin are left to be inferred in each case: but what should we think of the woman who should therefore account herself left at liberty, so far as the Levitical laws are concerned?
"Now look at v. 16; which, being expressed in such English as we now commonly talk, would run, I suppose, as follows: 'Thou shalt not marry thy brother's widow: she is one flesh with thy brother, and is therefore thine own sister.' Can any other interpretation be put upon it? and if this be the right interpretation, are not marriages with a brother's widow plainly forbidden among the Canaanitish abominations?"[1]
All this appears to me not only a fair and right explanation, with no unwarrantable deductions or inferences, but one absolutely irrefutable, unless God Himself have marked in some other place a dispensation or exception to be made to it. I know such dispensation or exception is just what is claimed. To deal with such allegation is the very object
- ↑ Ibid. pp.13, 14.
