Page:Marriagewithade00forbgoog.djvu/23

 foulest thing that the old Arabs did in time of ignorance was this, that a man married two sisters". The very Gentiles, then, regarded this marriage as execrable. In 1 Cor. v. 1, St. Paul, in condemning the marriage he there names, calls it by the very name of the sin (πορνεία) from which the Gentiles were commanded by the Apostles at the Synod of Jerusalem to refrain, while they were exempted from observing the Mosaic law. (See Eccl. Vol. VII., pp. 188, 189.) And Dr. Pusey says to the same effect (1 p. 19). "St. Paul also speaks of the incestuous marriage with the father's widow, under the same term as that used by the Apostles at Jerusalem, as πορνεία not even known among the heathen". Bishop Wordsworth says "Not a single iota of testimony in favour of such marriages can be cited from any Christian writer of any note for fourteen centuries after Christ. In the words of St. Basil writing in the fourth century, and speaking not only in his own name, but bearing testimony to the judgment of his predecessors on this subject, 'our custom in this matter has the force of law, because the statutes we observe have been handed down to us by holy men; and our judgment is this, that if a man has fallen into the sin of marrying two sisters, we do not regard such a union as marriage, nor do we receive the parties to communion with the Church until they are separated'." And we may just remember "that the Church of Rome does not solemnize such marriages without a dispensation and thus is still a witness to their illegality". "Within the Levitical degrees there is no instance whatever of any dispensation until (the Pope) Alexander VI. in 1500 gave the dispensation to Immanuel, King of Portugal; in the next generation his family was extinct." (Dr. Pusey, II., pp. lix. lxii.). In the Apostolical Canons (an ante-nicene collection) (a genuine code of Canons of the Primitive Church according to Bishop Beveridge, who was born 1638, and died Bishop of St. Asaph, 1708), it is ruled (canon 19) that one who married two sisters or his niece was for ever excluded from the clergy. (Dr. Pusey, II., p. 11) (Keble, p. 26). At the Council of Neo-Cæsarea, A.D. 315, one who married two brothers was excommunicated till death, unless in case of sickness. In a canon of the Council of Elvira (or Illibesis) A.D. 325, it was ruled "if any man after the death of