| Leviticus 18:29
| Every soul that shall commit any of these abominations, shall perish from the midst of his people.
| People. Hebrew hammam. The same temporal punishment is inflicted upon all the aforesaid crimes, though they were not all equally grievous. The smallest of them deserved to be treated with such severity, to prevent the spreading of such contagious vices. (Haydock) --- The regulations respecting marriage, were not immutable, or all determined by the law of nature, which admits of no dispensation. Only those relations in a right line, and the first in the collateral line, can be esteemed of this description. (Du Hamel) --- If Protestants maintain, that all these regulations of Moses are part of the natural law, and bind Christians, they must also allow that a person must marry the widow of his deceased brother, if he has left no children, Deuteronomy xxv. God would never have established this general rule for his people, if it were in opposition to the natural law; which is clear and obvious to all people by the light of reason, according to Aristotle. (Polit. ii.) Neither would so many holy men have violated this law without reproof, if it had prohibited the marriages of two sisters, of aunts, etc. See Genesis 29.; Exodus 6:20. God never dispensed in the right line; (1 Corinthians 5:1,) and such relations, or even people in the first collateral degree of consanguinity, marrying, are punished with death, Leviticus 20. Whereas those in the second degree, or in the first of affinity, undergo a smaller punishment; which shews that the transgression, in both cases, is not against the law of nature. No man ever undertook to dispense with the marriage of brothers and sisters; though Beza lays this to the charge of Pope Martin V. But the person alluded to, only obtained leave to retain the sister of her whom he had privately dishonoured, when his marriage could not be dissolved without great scandal. (St. Antonin. 3. p. tit. 1:11.) As, therefore, some of these impediments were introduced by the positive ceremonial law of the Jews, which was abrogated by Jesus Christ, they have no other force at present than what they derive from the authority of Christian republics, which have adopted some and changed others, appointing, in some countries, death for the punishment of theft, and not of adultery, though the old law enjoined the reverse. See Leviticus 20:10, and Genesis 38:24; Exodus 22:1. The Church may, therefore, surely dispense with those laws which she has enacted. (Worthington) (Council of Trent, Session 24:3.) --- She has indeed restricted marriage between relations to the fourth degree included, both of consanguinity and of affinity. See the Council of Lateran, under Pope Innocent 3:But she will not allow people to marry their aunts, brothers' widows, or sisters of their deceased wife, as the Jews do. (Tirinus)
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