In this case, by the admission of all, a man is, in express terms, forbidden to marry his wife's sister during her life-time; and no one will affirm that the text says, in plain words, he may marry such a relation after his wife's decease. It is silent in regard to the time subsequent to her death, because it was not necessary to utter more than had been written; for the law, in its preceding sections, had spoken in terms sufficiently clear to make known to us our Master's will.
It may be objected, If the unlawfulness of this marriage was settled in the preceding parts of the law, why was the prohibition of it repeated in the 18th verse? If the reader will turn to Levit. 24, he will find, that the penalty annexed to murder in the 17th verse, is repeated in the 21st verse. In the 18th chapter, which contains the law under discussion, the very first particular prohibition (v. 7) is repeated in the same verse; and the prohibition to marry a sister in the 9th verse, is repeated in the 11th verse. Why these repetitions? Are they not emphatic? Were they not designed particularly to mark the unlawfulness of these marriages? And is not the
