marriage between an uncle and a niece to be incestuous; "a nuisance extremely offensive to the laws and manners of society, and tending to endless confusion, and the pollution of the sanctity of private life."[1]
Jurists see the first part of the Levitical law to be founded in nature. For this they are able to assign sufficient reasons to satisfy their minds on the point; but in regard to the rest of these statutes, they cannot assign the same reasons for the prohibitions: and, therefore, they chose to denominate these positive law. Is this reasonable? The law, we have seen, is one law. All its prohibitions rest on the same basis; all have the same object in view; and all are enforced by the same spiritual punishment. Why then should a part of this one and the same law be regarded as founded in nature, and another part be considered as only positive? The inability of jurists to discover by the deductions of their own reason the whole extent of the law of nature, is no sufficient reason for not admitting the whole of this Levitical law to be a natural law, found-
- ↑ Kent's Com., vol. ii. p. 82.
