prohibition to marry the wife's sister during all her (the sister's) lifetime, and I think Cranmer's Bible, cited in Dr. M' Caul's letter to Mr. Lyall, adopts that view; but the translation is, after all, a fragment only of the case, and therefore I hasten to the second question, namely. Is the inference from the 18th verse, however translated, clear as a permission to marry the wife's sister after the wife's death?
Dr. M'Caul says that the Jews believed they might contract such marriages, whilst the heathen Romans were also allowed like liberty, therefore the Christian opponents of such marriage are bound to show any teaching of the Primitive Church to the contrary of so established a custom. Addressing me (in page 6) he says, if in lack of New Testament evidence I could have begun with the immediate followers of the Apostles, and continued the chain of evidence, he would have accepted the antiquity and catholicity of the evidence as demonstrative of an Apostolical repeal of Leviticus xviii. 18. It will be observed that he assumes the verse to be a conclusive permission. I am not quite sure that I should go so far as Dr. M'Caul in my respect, great though it be, for such evidence. I certainly have never contended that less than absolute Scriptural authority would repeal, or rather explain, a clear text of Scripture. In my view of the subject there is nothing to repeal but the 6th verse, which, if it were to be repealed, would have been so by
