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Rh sins that violate that natural law, which the Puritan reads out of the book of nature, and which no ceremony of marriage can cleanse from guilt or render lawful.

8. If we reason on the ground, subsequently assumed, in chap. iii., that these Levitical statutes do not relate to marriage, but only forbid "single acts of an incestuous character," (p. 11, fourth paragraph,) we must come to the same result. "Having the light of inspiration to read the book of nature with," can we find any "difficulty in reading out of the book of nature a law against" the lewd, incestuous sin of defiling a father's bed, or having criminal intercourse with a sister, or an aunt, or a son's daughter, or a daughter's daughter, or a brother's wife? Does not the voice of nature reprobate such acts of uncleanness? And is not the law which nature has enacted against such abominable crimes, a law?

9. Nor does the second criterion fail. "Those laws which are seen to conform to the precepts of the Decalogue, and serve to explain and confirm it."

Here we are constrained to notice another