Page:Unlawfulmarriage00jane.djvu/208

204 discussion, may be inferred from the clause in the 18th verse; "in her life-time." They contend, that, although the law forbids a man to have for wives two sisters at the same time, yet it does not forbid a man to marry two sisters in succession, the second after the death of the first.

We reply, The law, as we have before shown by a fair construction, has, in preceding sections, pronounced its prohibition of such a marriage; and this prohibition is not to be set aside by a mere inference from a single clause in a single verse.

With more plausibility may an inference in favor of polygamy be drawn from this text; for, while it prohibits a man to take his wife's sister in marriage, it does not prohibit him to marry another woman, during the life-time of the first wife. Is such an inference admissible? Is polygamy now lawful, or was it ever really lawful? Neither the Puritan nor Omicron pleads for this. "We grant," says the first, (p. 20,) "that polygamy was forbidden in the moral law; though in terms so obscure, that the best of men seem not to have been aware of the prohibition, in the early days of the Hebrew