sition to natural law, such as sanctioned idolatry and human sacrifices, and permitted theft, rapine, homicide, incest, &c., did not prove that no light of reason had been granted by nature to men, as Selden improperly concludes; but only that idle, wicked men, by abusing their light, struggling against it, and endeavoring, as far as they were able, to extinguish it, had been abandoned to a reprobate sense.
3. The Puritan's translation of Turrettin's first criterion is not correct. He has left out a material word; for the original is not, "following the light of reason," but the light of right reason.[1]
4. The search of our brother to find something among the laws of Gentile nations "touching the marriage institution," has been very defective, as will appear from the following quotations:
"Prohibitions similar to the canonical disabilities of the English ecclesiastical law," says Chancellor Kent, "were contained in the Jewish laws, from which the canon law was, in this
- ↑ Tur. vol. ii. p. 183.
