Page:Unlawfulmarriage00jane.djvu/132

128 all sexual intercourse between near relations, under all circumstances, uses the terms here recorded, as the fittest to express His will; and, therefore, forebore to employ the term marriage in reference to connexions that no form of marriage could sanctify and render honorable.

These statutes, then, while they prohibit all sexual intercourse between near relations, as incestuous, have reference to marriage, and do impliedly forbid it.

Another proof of such reference may be found in Levit. 20:21. Mark the penalty annexed to the crime. "They shall be childless." And what was the crime from which this threatening was designed to deter? Was it, as the Puritan imagines, an adulterous connexion with a brother's wife? Was adultery committed with such a relative less heinous, than adultery committed with another woman to whom the offender was not nearly related? Certainly not. It was a greater crime. By the 10th verse of this chapter, the crime of adultery was to be punished with death; and it will follow, that if the crime contemplated in the 21st verse had been adultery, the offender would have been deserving of