8
To tell a man that his wife’s sister is as near in blood to him as his own sister, is to assert what reason revolts from; and to endeavour to persuade men that such is the teaching of God’s Word, is only to do what is calculated to induce them to sneer at revelation, and join the ranks of infidelity. When will men distinguish between superstition and simple belief in God’s Word? This mode of interpreting the law of Moses, happily for the cause of inspired Scripture, breaks down when applied to the eighteenth chapter of Leviticus.
The inference of the Confession is equally incorrect, viz., that the man who marries the sister of his deceased wife is guilty of an incestuous deed. This is the opinion of those who hold to the Confession in its integrity.
An inference which Moses guards against in the text:— "Neither shalt thou take a wife to her sister, to vex her, to uncover her nakedness beside the other, in her life time.” The marginal reading is somewhat different, which is “one wife to another.” The textual reading, however, is the correct one. It is the rendering which is supported by all the ancient versions, and by the great majority of learned and judicious interpreters of all countries and times. Indeed, so obviously is the textual rendering the true one, that no other would ever have been thought of, had it not been felt that it opposes the Church doctrine.
If the marginal reading be the true rendering, then does Moses contradict himself; for the marginal reading forbids a plural wives—a thing that Moses everywhere allows. The prohibition of the text is the marrying of a sister of a wife in her lifetime. The text neither enjoins nor forbids such a marriage after the death of the wife. The most learned commentators are of opinion that the words “beside the other in her lifetime” distinctly teach, by implication, the lawfulness of such a marriage. And the ground of this prohibition seems not only to be the unseemliness of the thing itself, but also the jealousy and strife which such a marriage caused in the family of Jacob.
The result of the Confession’s teaching is the most objectionable of all; for, on the teaching of the Confession, there is no evading the idea—that God is the Author of sin.
This is the conclusion to which intelligent individuals, reasoning on the matter, cannot help coming, if they take the teaching of the Confession in connection with the command contained in the fifth and on to the sixteenth verse of the twenty-fifth chapter of Deuteronomy.
In this passage we have not a simple permission, but a definite command, that the brother of the deceased husband shall marry his widow, and raise up seed unto his brother. And what is the object for which this command (which, on the teaching of the Confession, we cannot but regard as a command to do an immoral deed, i.e., to commit a sin) is given? It is to perpetuate the name of his brother!
