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RECAPITULATION OF OMITTED FACTS AND AUTHORITIES.
We have now reviewed, and, we think, refuted the criticisms and arguments of the magazine writer—omitting, of course his personalities and quibbles to give them point, as beneath notice.
We will, in conclusion, state and recapitulate certain facts, and then adduce certain authorities bearing upon the whole question. The facts to which we beg the recollection of our readers are the following:—
1. The law of marriage in England and Ireland down to 1835 was as follows, as stated in 32 Henry viii., c. 38: "By this act we declare all persons to be lawful, that be not prohibited by God's law to marry." The law of marriage in Scotland is thus stated in Statue 1558, c. 16: "Our Sovereign Lord with consent, &c., has ordained the holy band of marriage made by all estates and sorts of men and women to be as lawful and as free as the law of God has permitted the same to be done without exception of person or persons." No complaint was made of the operation of the law from the Reformation to 1835, during which period the marriage in question was virtually permitted and contracted—its absolute prohibition dating from 1835, and therefore being a recent innovation, a gross injustice to thousands, and, as Robert Southey called it, "an abominable relic of ecclesiastical tyranny."
2. As such marriage is held in the Church of Rome to be an ecclesiastical regulation, the revenue of the Pope has been much augmented at various times from the payments of large sums by Princes and numerous others to procure the Pontiff's dispensation or permission for such marriage; and other ecclesiastical and agents have received much money for their services in obtaining the Pope's dispensations for such marriage. These facts are referred to in some statutes passed during the reign of Queen Elizabeth, as well as related by historians of the Reformation; but there is no record of any condemnation of such marriage in the Christian Church from its first foundation until 305; and the Bench of English Bishops voted to legalise marriages with a deceased wife's sister celebrated previously to 1835—a measure to which it was impossible they should have assented had they believed such marriages to be contrary to the Word of God.
