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distinct, and shew also, how entirely both the Mishna and Dr. M'Caul maintain all which I have advanced as to the application of the verse in Leviticus to the case of the two brothers having married two sisters, though they refuse (at least the latter) to stop at this point.
I ought to say thus much as introduction to the Extract. In his first letter Dr. M'Caul had mentioned the Mishna as confirming his view. " The Mishna compiled in the second century testifies that it (this permission of the marriage) was the common and received sense of the Hebraizing Jews."[1] This drew some remarks from the writer of one of the Tracts published by the Marriage Law Defence Association, (Tract 8, p. 4, and Appendix, quoted also by yourself in the Appendix to your speech,) upon the statements of the Mishna, which again caused Dr. M'Caul in rejoinder to examine those statements and to comment upon them afresh in his letter to yourself I need not go back to the first two pamphlets. Dr. M'Caul's explanations in his second letter will shew all which I want to exhibit. Complaining of inaccurate quotation on the part of the writer of Tract 8, he says,
"I will give the passages as they stand in the Mishna, and you, Sir, may judge of the faithfulness of this writer in making quotations. The words of the Mishna are:—
'Suppose three brothers, two of them married to two sisters, and one of them married to a stranger—one of the sister's husbands dies, and he who is married to the stranger takes his widow— then the wife of the second dies, and after that he that is married to the stranger dies, behold this widow, (i.e., the surviving sister) is prohibited to him for ever, because she was prohibited to him for one hour.'
"Now, Sir, you will perceive several differences between this statement of the Mishna and that of the Appendix. 1st, The Appendix says,—"It is declared, that if that
- ↑ Letter to Rev. W. H. Lyall, p. 14.
