England, and Scotland, and Holland do not allow these marriages: yet the Puritan swells his enumeration by the additional clause, "most other Protestant States of Europe!" Judge Story has, in his Conflict of Laws, the same enumeration, and the same additional clause.[1] Probably our brother, copying from the Judge, was led into the mistake by his guide.
But whatever change has taken place in the laws of States in regard to marriage, no change is stated by the Puritan to have occurred in the laws of the Churches. If any have been made by the Churches of Germany we are not informed; and, when it is considered how those once flourishing Protestant Churches have been swept over by the blighting influence of infidelity; and how the pulpits, from which formerly was heard the pure and holy gospel of Jesus Christ, are now occupied by Errorists and Neologists, who mislead and deceive the people; who would be surprised to hear that a change in the practice of the Churches has occurred, as unscriptural and deleterious as what has occurred in the life-giving doctrines of divine revelation?
- ↑ Page 105, note, 2d edition.
