All are founded on the same basis of relationship by consanguinity or affinity; all have the same object, domestic purity and good morals in the community; all are enforced by the same spiritual penalty, excision from the Church.
But the classification of the prohibitions, from the sixth to the eighteenth verse inclusive, but excluding "those from nineteenth to the twenty-fourth," under the general prohibition contained in the sixth, is deemed arbitrary. Mr. Marshall, regarding the sixth verse as containing "the title or general principle" of all the statutes in this chapter, finds it to be unsuitable, and not in accordance with the accuracy of "European or American legislators;" and then goes on to apologize for the inaccuracy of the inspired lawgiver, by pleading the want of "exact classification or logical arrangement in discourse" in "the Asiatics."[1] But to this he is driven by his own mistake. Had he carefully inspected the chapter, he would have found in the third and fourth verses a more general title or principle, than is contained in the sixth. "After the
- ↑ Marshall, pp. 86–88.
