"Is it lawful for a man to marry his deceased wife's sister?" to the General Synod, who answered the question in the negative, and determined at the same time, that the censure proper to be inflicted on persons contracting such unlawful marriage, had been justly decided on by the Particular Synod of 1788, whose resolution has just been recited.[1]
In 1815, nineteen years afterwards, the question came before the General Synod again for adjudication, when they postponed the decision till the next year. At this session the venerable Professor was requested to write on the subject. See preface to his dissertation.
The next year the vote was taken on this resolution: "Resolved, That so much of the acts of the General Synod, passed in the years 1797 and 1815, recorded on page 264, in the appendix to our constitution, as directs the churches to exclude from sealing ordinances the persons contemplated by those acts, be, and the same is hereby repealed." The vote stood thus: yeas fifteen, nays forty-one; nearly three to one.
- ↑ See Reformed D. C. Constitution, p, 264, published in 1815
