This page has been validated.
80
LEVITICAL LAW

time. But the Puritan perhaps will say, he means the light which the Scriptures of the New Testament have shed upon the book of nature. Well, they were bestowed on the Church at the beginning of the Christian era; and could not primitive Christians use their light in reading the book of nature, and read out of it the law against these marriages? But popery was then developing itself, and darkening the pages of inspiration and of nature. If so, we ask again, when was this law enacted and written in the book of nature? Was it since the Protestant Church arose? But why these questions? If this law exists now, it existed ever since men had multiplied on the earth, and part of it from the beginning of the world. If men had not eyes to read it in the book of nature, still it was written there; and if they were ignorant of the law of nature, still that law of nature had existence. It was enacted by the God of nature for the government of his rational creatures. Were all men blind, that calamity would not extinguish the sun's rays of light. He would go forth still, like a bridegroom from his chamber, and shine in all his brightness in the heavens.