Page:The ancient interpretation of Leviticus XVIII. 18 - Marriage with a deceased wife's sister is lawful.djvu/60

 of Trent, is nothing to the purpose. It is only going farther from the apostles and the Apostolic Church, and plunging deeper into that superstition with regard to marriage and celibacy, which prohibited to the clergy what God pronounces "honourable in all men," and imposed upon the laity a host of impediments to marriage unknown to Scripture and the early Church. From the first 300 years the advocates of the modern interpretation have nothing to show against the ancient and primitive opinion. The appeal to the first 1,500 years of the Church is therefore the unconscious exaggeration of ardent advocates. But even if it had been warranted by more varied and general testimony, the conclusion from the practice or laws of the Church to the Church's interpretation of Scripture is an unsafe one. I have no doubt that the Bishops at Eliberis and Neo-Cæsarea interpreted 1 Tim. iv. 3 and Heb. xiii. 4 correctly, but yet their practice and law were opposed to their interpretation. With regard to Lev. xviii. 18, it is certain that even in the darkest ages the ancient translation and interpretation were faithfully preserved, though the law and practice of the Church were in opposition to it. The testimony of those times, therefore, on that point is all the more valuable. Extravagant ideas of the authority of Church-canons and Papal decisions, imbibed from infancy, led even thoughtful and learned men to submit in this, as in so many other respects, image-worship for example, to what was directly opposed to the Scriptures and the interpretation received from the Fathers. The preservation of the primitive truth, under such circumstances, is the more wonderful, and the argument derived so much the stronger.

The next objection is one suggested by St. Basil. To take the person with whom he argued on his own ground of the Law, he says that Lev. xviii. 6 of itself would make