Page:Unlawfulmarriage00jane.djvu/76

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72
LEVITICAL LAW

lected that the Puritan, speaking of these statutes, says, (p. 11,) "We undertand them to forbid single acts of an incestuous character."

2. The Puritan does not apply the first criterion, as his guide would have applied it; for, in seeking for something among the Gentiles to meet its requirements, he supposes he must find some law on the subject. "And here, if any where in the Gentile world," he says, (p. 4, last paragraph but one,) "we should expect to find some traces of natural law touching the marriage institution. Bat Rome, in the purest periods of her history, had no law forbidding the marriages in question." Turrettin, in inquiring whether any law was founded in nature, would not search only for some written law among the nations, but would also examine the writings of moralists and philosophers to find out their sentiments, and discover the dictates of natural conscience.[1]

There he gives pertinent quotations from Cicero on the subject. There he says, that the impious laws of some heathen nations in oppo-

  1. Tur. vol. ii. p. 67.