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end or design. 3. Some add another reason, that polygamy, which Christ condemns (Matt. xix. 5), is either forbidden here or nowhere in the law. But this may admit of great dispute." He refers the prohibition of polygamy by Christ to Gen. ii. 23, from whence Malachi takes his argument, chap. ii. 14-25. He holds that, as the marrying of two natural sisters was expressly prohibited before, the word sister in the last clause must mean sister in the sense of simply another woman.

The celebrated and learned Italian, Diodati, who became ultimately a minister of the gospel at Geneva, in his Annotations, which were called by the most eminent Reformers of his day," Aureis Annotationibus," Golden Annotations which were recommended afterwards by the Westminster Assembly, and printed by order of the Committee of Parliament-has the following Note on "Lev. xviii. 18, Shalt thou take-Such a conjunction is incestuous (ver. 16); seeing there is the same reason for the sister's husband as for the brother's wife; but here is also added the reason of the inconvenience, it being a kind of confusion to make two sisters rivals to one another, to produce continual strife and jealousies, as an example may be seen in Jacob's marriage, which in the first ages was tolerated." His opinion of the toleration of such a case as Jacob's does not in his mind invalidate Lev. xviii. 16. Of the opinion in the case of Jacob, more hereafter.

It were easy to multiply authorities and quotations of this sort to any amount. I shall give one from the Annotations of the Westminster Assembly. On Lev. xviii. 16, "Brother's wife," they have the following Note:"Neither while he is alive nor when he is dead, except in an especial case, and upon an especial warrant.-Deut. xxv. 5." On ver. 18, "To her sister," they say,-"This is to be understood not only of another natural sister, as if a man might have two wives, so they were not such sisters; or two sisters, one after another, to wife,-the latter upon the death of the former; for the marriage of the brother's wife is forbidden before (ver. 16); and, by consequence, a woman must not marry her sister's husband; and so two sisters are already forbidden to be married to one man—(ver. 16.) Wherefore it is most probable that this is a prohibition of polygamy,—that is, of having more wives than one at once; and the reason showeth it, that the one may not be a vexation to the other, which is likely to fall out, not only betwixt natural sisters, as Rachel and Leah (Gen. xxxi. 1, 14), but betwixt those that are not of kin, as betwixt Hannah and Peninnah (1 Sam. i. 6); and for the word sister, in a general acceptation, it may be applied to any woman, as the word brother to any man (Gen. xix. 7); and it is to be noted that it is sometimes applied to things, which, in propriety of speech, come not under such a title or denomination, as the wings of the beast (Ezek. i. 9) are said to touch a woman to her sister, as the Hebrew phrase carryeth it."

The authors of these Annotations, in their preface, tell us how they proceeded. They were the most learned men of their time, and were called by the Committee of Parliament to undertake the duty; so that they say, anxious to discharge it for the glory of God and the instruction of his people, "Therefore we have put ourselves to much more pains (for many months) in consulting with many more authors, in several languages, than at first sight we thought of, that (for the propriety of the original text, for pertinent and profitable variety of versions, for consonancy of parallel Scriptures, and for perspicuity in clearing of the darkest places) we might

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bring in such observations as might not only serve to edify the ordinary reader, but might likewise gratify our brethren of the ministry, at least, such among them as have not the means to purchase, or leisure to peruse, so many books as (by order of the Committee) we were furnished with all, for the finishing the work committed to our hands." They "attest the divine omniscience" that they have not wrested any part of Scripture" to the patronage of any error" of any denomination whatever. "Nor have we added to it any of our own preconceived opinions, to imprint a partiality on our expositions." "We have not (notwithstanding our most intentive inquiries after the true and genuine meaning of it) rested in any single conceit or construction of our own, nor in any at all as merely human, but (according to that of the apostle, The spirits of the prophets are subject to the prophets, 1 Cor. xiv. 32) have submitted our private dictates to the censure and correction of our colleagues in this service, daily assembled together for the perusal of every one's part."

"And what doubts we met withal which we thought (for the present) too hard to be easily resolved, we put into a particular catalogue, and adjourned their resolution to a day of more deliberate discussion, when our readings were done," &c. They then go on to state their method, and mention their personal prayers for divine guidance in their personal and united studies and examinations. When one reflects on this course, pursued by these eminent men and their coadjutors, clerical and lay, the learned Selden among the rest, in compiling the Confession of Faith, and in all their labours to discover and state the truths of God's Word, it is painful to find Dr Eadie, though quoting Baxter's eulogium on the Confession of Faith, venturing to add the following passage:-"Especially on this question" (the marriage question) "do many of them seem to have erred. They appear, particularly the older of them, to have been in love with their own fancies, and to have cared little for the law and the testimony. Will any one suppose that they based their marriage law on the Bible, when they placed a man's marriage with his wife's sister in the same category as his marriage with an actress or a gipsy?" This is a specimen of modern charity of which the Westminster divines would have been heartily ashamed. Such a statement, in the face of what we have quoted, and that, Dr Eadie must pardon me for saying, in a minister and professor of theology in a church whose greatest distinction in former days was, that its ministers not only subscribed, but held and defended the doctrines of the Confession, the compilers of which he treats thus contumeliously, would deserve severer epithets than I choose to apply. Considering Dr Eadie's learned labours in other departments, I regret much to be compelled to speak as I must do of his ill-advised Letters on the present question.

Section VIII.-Marginal reading of Leviticus xviii. 18.

Before proceeding to consider the import and bearing of the marginal reading of Lev. xviii. 18, on the question under discussion, we must carefully observe what is made to rest upon it on both sides of the question. With our opponents their whole argument rests on the rendering of this verse, and on their being able to prove that it sanctions polygamy and only forbids the bigamy of two sisters, or marriage with both during the lifetime of both, and implies the lawfulness after the death of the first wife of marrying her sister. If they fail in any one of these points, the general principles of the chapter all

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militate against them. They must prove that this 18th verse is an exception to the principle of the 16th verse. They have no direct law on their side, either in principle or express terms. At the best, their argument is only an inference from a supposed exception. I say supposed, for to take for granted that it is an exception, while it has neither the place nor the form of an exception, is to beg the whole question. On their own showing, it occurs in the form of an inference from the prohibition of the bigamy of two sisters. Their allegation is that this bigamy is forbidden during the lifetime of the first married. Their inference is that it is lawful at the death of the first married, and this inference they carry back over several intermediate prohibitions of marriages of a different sort, to get at the nullification of the prohibition in the principle of verse 16. If, then, they cannot maintain the unquestionable accuracy, not only of the literal rendering, but of the actual meaning, idiomatically or not, of verse 18, as in our translation, and the accuracy of their inference also, their whole cause is lost. No wonder, then, they make a death-struggle on this text.

What, on the other hand, is the state of the argument with us? It depends, in the first place, on great general principles, which the greatest minds, both theologians and jurists, who have had any respect to God's Word, have been compelled to admit. And, secondly, on direct texts, Lev. xviii. 16, and xx. 21-requiring no other inference than this, that what is forbidden in marriage as incest to a man, is forbidden as incest to a woman, and vice versa. Our argument stands untouched in itself, even although we should admit, which we by no means do, that polygamy was lawful in God's estimation, and that Lev. xviii. prohibits only such a case of it as that of Jacob taking to wife both Leah and Rachel, of which more in the sequel. On this supposition, it forbids expressly the polygamy of sisters, for our opponents have no right to limit it to two sisters. Their statement is, Polygamy is not forbidden. But it is forbidden in the case of sisters. Why, what does that mean? Of course that there was something unlawful in the simultaneous marriage of sisters. But this kind of polygamy Jacob, who was a good man-one with whom God entered into covenant-was guilty of, contrary to the will of God. Why, in these circumstances, if, as our opponents allege, there is nothing essentially wrong-nothing incestuous—in a man's marrying two sisters, provided the one be dead before the other has been married, did not the conduct of Jacob, on the " good man" argument, which sanctions polygamy in all other cases, sanction also contemporaneous marriage with two sisters? If the alleged conduct of Abraham and David is, on the ground of their being good men, held to sanction polygamy of the ordinary sort, why should not the conduct of Jacob, who was a 66 good man," be also held to sanction bigamy in the case of sisters? Why, instead of doing so, should it, on the contrary, have called forth a pointed law to condemn such a practice? To my mind the idea of a law made by God, to meet a case, after it occurred in one family, is ridiculous; and there is no proof, but the very reverse, that it was by any means a common practice among the heathen to marry two sisters at once. The sin forbidden is forbidden, though Jacob, upwards of 400 years before the giving of the law from Sinai, had been guilty of it. By the sanctions and threatenings at the beginning and the end of Lev. xviii., it is proved to have been a crime, as Grotius calls it, among the nations. There was in these incestuous connections-incestuous connections which death cannot alter-that which rendered them so abominable in the sight

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of God, that even the conduct of Jacob could not sanction them. And, therefore, as our opponents contend that polygamy was lawful, they cannot object to those commentators who do not see their way to cast a stone at Abraham and David as altogether regardless of God's law; yet, nevertheless, even when on that ground they hold that Lev. xviii. 18 refers to the case of Jacob, do not feel themselves warranted to set aside the clear prohibition in Lev. xviii. 16, and xx. 21, and the great general principles which rule their application to all men.

Well, then, the whole strength of the argument of our opponents must rest on the supposition that verse 18 forbids polygamy only in such a case as that of Leah and Rachel, and on the inference which they draw from the word "life," the word time being neither in the original, nor in our version as part of the translation, but as a word supplied. Our argument, then, is not overthrown, nor even materially affected, whether we can make out the marginal reading of our version to be the true translation and meaning or not. But the argument of our opponents has not a vestige of Bible principle or authority to support it, unless they can make out the marginal reading to be positively false, and their meaning of our version positively true. Let it be observed farther, that the task they have to make out is, that the doings of certain men, who were made eminent subjects of God's special grace, mercy, and favour, sanction a connection which violated both God's own original universal law, given in words, and founded on his very act of creating only one woman to one man; and also this same law solemnly renewed or rather declared by himself—the same Lawgiver the Lord Jesus Christ personally on earth. Have they done, or can they do, all or any of these? Let us see.

It will be observed that hitherto our argument has been conducted on the footing of the correctness of the translation in the text of our English Bibles of Lev. xviii. 18—“ Neither shalt thou take a wife to her sister." We have seen that, taking this to be the exact and unquestionable rendering, the most eminent commentators have held that it did not alter in the least degree the prohibition of the marriage of a man with the sister of his deceased wife, deduced from Lev. xviii. 16, and Lev. xx. 21; that even with the apparent difficulty created by this rendering the prohibition still holds. But if the phrase admits of another rendering, which removes the difficulty altogether, the argument is then complete, entire, and, on Bible ground, indubitable.

The marginal reading of the English Bible is the following :-" Thou shalt not take one wife to another," or one woman to another in marriage, and is thus an express prohibition of polygamy. Taking this translation to be true, taking it even to be not inconsistent with the Scripture use of the phrase, it is at first sight a strong argument in its favour that it makes the whole legislation of the Almighty on the subject of marriage, at the creation and by our Lord Jesus Christ, entirely and perfectly consistent and uniform, and harmonises with the antecedent improbability that there should be a formal intermediate exception made in the solemnities of Sinai to God's original law. To plead such an exception on the ground that good men had broken the law, is to introduce a principle which would subvert ten thousand times over the whole commandments of the moral law in their principle and issue, and most of them in their literal meaning, the sixth and the seventh not excepted. Of this more hereafter. But if this marginal reading be positively false, we cannot, even for such important ends,

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venture to adopt it. This would be to make ourselves wiser than God. But is it false ?

It is unwarrantably taken for granted that our translators preferred the rendering in the text. An American writer, quoting a statement in one of their periodicals, that the marginal rendering is of equal authority with that in the text, says, the author of it is surely mistaken, and proceeds to affirm, -"First of all, the translators of our common version had both translations under consideration, and preferred the literal one.' ."* But what do the translators themselves tell us? Something very different indeed; and it is providential that we have the means of settling this point as conclusively as we have done in regard to the Westminster Assembly's annotations.

Those who are at all entitled to be heard on such a subject, know what was the character of the Synod of Dort. It was composed of men formally commissioned from all the Protestant states of Europe-commissioned by the highest authorities, civil and ecclesiastical, of these states-selected as the most learned men which the churches and universities of these various states, whether monarchical or republican, could furnish. Their very names and designations cover several quarto pages. The following curious extract shows both the opinions of the English version held by that august assembly, and the fact regarding the authority of the marginal reading. I give a translation of the whole. Those who wish to test its accuracy, will find it in the " Acta Synodi Nationalis Dordrechtanæ," p. 27. Hanoviæ, anno 1620.

"Session vii., 10th November, Tuesday, antemeridian,

"The theologians of Great Britain explained in writing by what plan, and by what means, the business of the most accurate English version was appointed by the Most Serene King James; what plan was observed in the distribution of the work; also what laws were prescribed to the translators; that those things might thence be taken which might be judged of use to us. A copy of that writing is subjoined :—

:

"The mode which the English theologians pursued in the version of the Sacred Books (Bibliorum.)—The theologians of Great Britain, to whom it did not seem meet to give a sudden and immature answer to so great a question, have judged it to be their duty, after careful deliberation had, since the most honourable mention has been made of the most accurate English translation, lately published by the Most Serene King James, with great care, and at great expense, to make known to this most celebrated Synod, by what plan, and by what means, this sacred business was effected by his Most Serene Majesty.

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First, in distributing the work, he wished this way to be observed :The whole body of the Sacred Book was distributed into six parts. For translating each part, seven or eight chief men, most skilled in the languages, were appointed. Two parts were assigned to certain theologians of London; but the four remaining parts were divided equally among the theologians of each university of Oxford and Cambridge. After the task was completed by each individual from all of these (of course, forty-two or forty-eight in number), twelve select men, assembled in one place, revised and corrected the whole work.

"Lastly, The most reverend the Bishop of Westminster, Bilson, along with Dr Smith, now Bishop of Gloucester, an illustrious man, and from the

* "Lawfulness of Marriage." By the Rev. William Marshall.