niece, that is, his brother's or sister's daughter, was only incapacitated for the ministerial office."[1]
Now, let the reader look at this insulated quotation, and find, if he can, that Grotius even thought such marriages to be lawful. If they were lawful, why should any contracting them be rendered incapable of holding the ministerial office, and be punished for doing no wrong?
But, when it is considered that, in the very section from which the quotation is taken by Judge Story, and immediately preceding it, Grotius states the marriages of parents and children, and of brothers and sisters, to be so in violation of the law of nature as to be "null and void," "but that the case is not the same as to laws concerning other degrees, since they are rather made to prevent certain inconveniences than to direct men from a thing that is in itself dishonest;" and further, that he had, in his preceding section, (see above p. 36,) asserted that the prohibitions in Levit xviii., in all the degrees of affinity as well as of consanguinity, in the
- ↑ Note p. 105, 2d edition.
