Page:Unlawfulmarriage00jane.djvu/77

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PERPETUAL.
73

sition to natural law, such as sanctioned idolatry and human sacrifices, and permitted theft, rapine, homicide, incest, &c., did not prove that no light of reason had been granted by nature to men, as Selden improperly concludes; but only that idle, wicked men, by abusing their light, struggling against it, and endeavoring, as far as they were able, to extinguish it, had been abandoned to a reprobate sense.

3. The Puritan's translation of Turrettin's first criterion is not correct. He has left out a material word; for the original is not, "following the light of reason," but the light of right reason.[1]

4. The search of our brother to find something among the laws of Gentile nations "touching the marriage institution," has been very defective, as will appear from the following quotations:

"Prohibitions similar to the canonical disabilities of the English ecclesiastical law," says Chancellor Kent, "were contained in the Jewish laws, from which the canon law was, in this

  1. Tur. vol. ii. p. 183.