CHAPTER IV.
Perpetuity of the Levitical law.—Proofs.—Puritan's argument.—His guide.—Criterion not rightly applied.—Turrettin.—Quotation from Chancellor Kent.—Quotations from Puffendorf.—From Selden and Grotius.
Before we enter on the argument, it may be proper to notice two things in the Puritan.
1. "We profess," he says, (p. 3,) "to present, with such brevity and clearness as we are able, the reasons which have convinced us that such marriages are prohibited by the law of God. The argument brought against them from Scripture is contained in a nut-shell, and is easily sifted."
Allow our brother the privilege of framing for us the argument, and he may bring it within so small a compass. We prefer framing it ourselves. Two things are plain: 1. His argument in refuting it, spread as it is, with that of his allies, over thirty-two closely printed octavo pages, has not been inclosed in a nut-shell. 2. Our argument, designed to refute his, cannot, if we have to follow him in all its windings, be brought within such narrow limits.
He also says, immediately after the quotation above, "The whole stress of that argument is laid on two passages, which are supposed to forbid the marriage of a brother's widow, and thus to imply the prohibition in question—Lev. 18:16, and 20:21." Here he is mistaken. We do not choose to place our fabric on a part of the foundation, when we have the whole ample and firm for its support. He may wish it there; but we rest our argument on the whole of Lev. xviii. from the first to the eighteenth verse inclusive.
2. The reason for enacting these statutes assigned by the Puritan appears to us fanciful. (See p. 11.) We are unable to see how the Israelites were more exposed to commit lewdness by incestuous commerce with their mothers, or sisters, or aunts, while sojourning in tents in the wilderness, than when settled in comfortable houses in the promised land. The necessary secresy for the perpetration of such vile acts of iniquity could, it seems to us, be found in houses more easily than in tents. We cannot see how these statutes "were especially suited to the peculiar sojourn in the desert." Has the writer forgotten the light thrown upon the camp of Israel, by the pillar of fire by night? By this miraculous provision the whole camp was illuminated every night. It was never withdrawn, during Israel's sojourn in the wilderness. See Ex. 13:21, 22, and chap. 40:38.
Our final remark on the reason assigned for the enactment of these statutes is this: we are surprised he should compare statutes prohibiting criminal and incestuous acts with the statutes in Deut. 23:13, &c.
We now enter on the argument to prove the perpetuity of these Levitical statutes.
That they are the law of the supreme Lawgiver is not questioned. He gave them by the hand of his servant Moses to his chosen people, as a rule, in the opinion of multitudes of learned men, prescribing degrees of lawful marriage, or, as the Puritan affirms, as a rule to prohibit the commission of "single acts of an incestuous character." (P. 11.) Which is correct? What is the nature of this law? Is it ceremonial or moral? Manifestly there is in it nothing of a ceremonial kind. Whichever of the two interpretations be correct, it is moral—designed to regulate the conduct of rational creatures, to direct the intercourse of near relations, and prevent their sinning against their Creator.
Is this law permanent or temporary? Was it intended for the Church in all ages, or only while she remained under the Jewish economy? Why should it be limited to one period? Do not Christians need a directory for marriage, as well as the Israelites? Or, if it be regarded as not pertaining to marriage, but only as forbidding single incestuous acts, must not the prohibitions extend to them? None will plead for liberty to practise the lewdness contemplated in these prohibitory statutes.
In support of the perpetuity of this divine law we might argue from what is said by the Lawgiver in the preface: "Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, I am the LORD your God. After the doings of the land of Egypt, wherein ye dwelt, shall ye not do: and after the doings of the land of Canaan, whither I bring you, shall ye not do: neither shall ye walk in their ordinances. Ye shall do my judgments, and keep mine ordinances, to walk therein: I am the LORD your God. Ye shall therefore keep my statutes and my judgments; which if a man do, he shall live in them. I am the LORD." How emphatic and solemn the introduction! Was it not designed to call up the attention of Israel to something important and permanent? If the whole of what followed had been of a ceremonial or temporary character, would it have been introduced by language so impressive and august?
We may reason, too, in favor of the perpetuity of this law, (as Grotius, and many before and after him, have,) from the language of the great Lawgiver subsequent to the publication of it: "Defile not yourselves in any of these things: for in all these the nations are defiled, which I cast out before you: and the land is defiled: therefore I do visit the iniquity thereof upon it; and the land itself vomiteth out her inhabitants. Ye shall therefore keep my statutes and my judgments, and shall not commit any of these abominations; neither any of your own nation, nor any stranger that sojourneth with you: (for all these abominations have the men of the land done, which were before you; and the land is defiled;) that the land spue you not out also, when ye defile it, as it spued out the nations that were before you. For whosoever shall commit any of these abominations, even the souls that commit them shall be cut off from among their people. Therefore shall ye keep mine ordinances, that ye commit not any of these abominable customs, which were committed before you, and that ye defile not yourselves therein: I am the LORD your God."
Here the Canaanites are charged with the guilt of violating the duties enjoined by these statutes. It follows, of course, the observance of them must have been obligatory on them; and if they were bound by them, how can we be free from their obligation?
It is unnecessary to inquire how far the Canaanites were guilty. It is certain they were guilty, and grossly guilty; for God has asserted it in strong and emphatic terms. They may have had more traditionary knowledge than we are aware of. Judah, who lived before the time of Moses, seems to have been acquainted with the obligation of a brother raising up seed to his brother, by marrying his widow, (Gen. 38:6–11,) and with the punishment to be inflicted on whoredom. (Gen. 28:24–26.) Some of the sins of the Canaanites may have been sins of ignorance, while others were wilful violations of known duty.
But the Puritan insists that this law is not permanent; and to establish his position he argues, on two grounds, that this law belongs to the civil or judicial code, and that it has been repealed. The whole of his argument is based on a petitio principii; it is a mere begging of the question in debate. We contend, and design to prove it, that this law does not belong to the civil or judicial code. He affirms it does; and, without offering any proof, assumes it as true, and makes this assumption the basis of his whole argument: "The statutes in question (p. 4, the 2d paragraph) belong to the civil or judicial law of the Hebrew Commonwealth." Let us allow his assumption for the present, and test the correctness of his reasoning.
Having admitted that some principles of this code are still binding, while others are not, he observes, "What we want, then, is some plain criterion, by which we may distinguish those which are of permanent and universal obligation, from those which are not." (P. 4, third parag.) Distrusting himself in this delicate matter, the Puritan determined to avail himself of the guidance and aid of that justly celebrated theologian, F. Turrettin. Had he faithfully followed his own chosen guide, and correctly applied the criterion proposed by him, for discovering what principles are of permanent obligation, and what are not, in the civil code of the Hebrew people, he would have arrived at a different conclusion. But he has failed to do so.
To illustrate this, we make the following remarks:
1. Turrettin does not place these statutes in the municipal code of the Hebrew commonwealth. Incest he would define to be a violation of God's moral law. He justly enumerates it among the sins against the seventh commandment in the Decalogue.[1] Now, let it be recollected that the Puritan, speaking of these statutes, says, (p. 11,) "We undertand them to forbid single acts of an incestuous character."
2. The Puritan does not apply the first criterion, as his guide would have applied it; for, in seeking for something among the Gentiles to meet its requirements, he supposes he must find some law on the subject. "And here, if any where in the Gentile world," he says, (p. 4, last paragraph but one,) "we should expect to find some traces of natural law touching the marriage institution. Bat Rome, in the purest periods of her history, had no law forbidding the marriages in question." Turrettin, in inquiring whether any law was founded in nature, would not search only for some written law among the nations, but would also examine the writings of moralists and philosophers to find out their sentiments, and discover the dictates of natural conscience.[2]
There he gives pertinent quotations from Cicero on the subject. There he says, that the impious laws of some heathen nations in opposition 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.[3]
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 respect, deduced; and they existed in the laws and usages of the Greeks and Romans, subject to considerable alternations of opinions, and with various modifications and extent. These regulations, as far at least as they prohibit marriages among near relations, by blood or marriage, (for the canon and common laws made no distinction on this point, between connexions by consanguinity and affinity,) are evidently founded in the law of nature; and incestuous marriages have generally (but with some strange exceptions at Athens) been regarded with abhorrence by the soundest writers and most polished states of antiquity. Under the influence of Christianity, a purer taste and stricter doctrine have been inculcated; and an incestuous connexion between an uncle and niece, has been recently adjudged, by a great master of public and municipal law, to be 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."[4]
The celebrated Baron Puffendorf, in his work on the law of nature and nations, has treated the subject of marriage with great ability. From that work we give the following quotations: "Among the old Peruvians the Yncas alone were permitted to marry their sisters, and all other men forbidden to take the same liberty. On the other hand, the Romans abhorred this practice as most odious and unnatural. Plutarch, giving the reason why the women, in that nation, saluted their relations with a kiss, hath left this remark: When the laws had prohibited the marriage of near relations, they yet allowed them to proceed to this innocent expression of love; and this became a mutual pledge and mark of their alliance. For, in ancient times, the Romans abstained from wedding their kinswomen in any degree of blood, as they at present forbear their aunts and their sisters. It was late before the marriage of cousin-germans was dispensed with."[5] Let the reader compare this testimony of Plutarch with the quotation given above from the Puritan in regard to "Rome in the purest periods of her history."
In the same paragraph (p. 4) the Puritan says, "The Egyptians, Persians, Macedonians, and Athenians allowed the marriage of own sisters, and would not, of course, scruple such alliances." Let this be compared with what Puffendorf has written on the page noted above: "The Athenians, by the constitution of Solon, might marry their sisters by the father's side, and not by the mother's." From the oration of Andocides against Alcibiades, he quotes these words: "Reflect," says he, "with what bravery and what wisdom they proceeded, when they sent so great a man as Cimon into banishment for violating the laws in taking his own sister to bed."
Others of the ancients declared an absolute dislike of this freedom. It is one of Phocylides's precepts,
"Nor climb thy sister's interdicted bed."
And indeed that these matches were very unusual through all Greece, may be gathered from Hermione's speech in Euripides, where she thus upbraids Andromache:
"Thus the barbarians with incestuous love,
Fathers their daughters, sons their mothers wed,
Brothers their sisters; and no law restrains
Their sinful passion."—
Or if they were once permitted in Greece, it is certain they grew entirely out of use with posterity, as that passage of Sextus Empiricus sufficiently proves: "The Egyptians contracted marriage with their sisters, which, amongst us, is disallowed by law." The same author says, in another place, "In our country we esteem it contrary to all right and decency to make a wife of a mother or of a sister." Yet he chargeth both those practices on the Persians; as do also Strabo, Laertius, Curtius, and Lucian. Though the answer given by the Judges to Cambyses in Herodotus, plainly shows that the wise men, even in the Persian nation, were of a very different opinion.
Puffendorf, it is hardly necessary to state, refers to all his authorities, so that his readers can easily examine for themselves.
We have seen, that, among other prohibitions of the ancient Romans, was the marriage of an aunt; and that, by prohibiting that of cousin-germans, they went even beyond the Levitical law.
Selden confirms what Puffendorf states: "Sed in Roma veteri etiam Patruelium, Amitinorum, seu consobrinorum nuptiæ nunc vetita fuere, nunc permissæ."[6]
Grotius, in p. 200, (translation,) quotes Tacitus: "To marry wives is to us entirely new, but very common with other people; nor is it by any law prohibited, says Tacitus." Tac. lib. xii. chap. 6.
In view of these quotations, what are we to think of the Puritan's round and bold assertion: "We look in vain through the Gentile world, for any traces of evidence that this law is one of those principles of general equity, which is taught by the light of nature. So the first criterion fails of bringing its obligation on us." (P. 4.) Had he extended his inquiries and searched more diligently, he might have found the above "traces of evidence," and many more "traces of natural law, touching the marriage institution." His look into the Gentile world was manifestly limited and confined. If he will examine Grotius, and Selden, and Puffendorf, &c., he will be convinced of his error.