Scripture itself. But I ask how, if Jews and Heathens recognized such marriages as lawful, the quiet acquiescence of the Christian world in the conclusion that the 18th verse does not authorize such marriages can be explained? I had said that Basil, about 350, remonstrated against such a perversion of the verse, and that we did not hear of any earlier remonstrance before, because such a marriage was not heard of amongst Christians. I thought myself justified in saying this from Basil's assertion that such marriages were against custom. Dr. M'Caul attempts to confine that expression to some local custom. Why, he himself reminds me of the Council of Eliberis in 305, and tells me that St. Basil's letter was written in 375. You have, therefore, a law of the Church seventy years before, directed probably against Heathen practices, passed, in a place far from Basil as west is from east, on the same subject. When Basil refers to custom it is of course of general Christian custom, as distinguished from Heathen customs—just as St. Paul uses this identical word, when he says, "If any man seem to be contentious, we have no such custom, neither the churches of God[1]." I use Basil as a witness of a pre-established custom. But Dr. M'Caul reminds me further (and I thank him) of the 19th Apostolic Canon, about a.d. 300, and the decree of the Council of Neo-Cæsarea in 314, on the subject of marriage with a wife's brother. The
- ↑ 1 Cor. xi. 16.
