Page:Vindicationoflaw00hath.djvu/21

Rh great abuse. They extended the prohibited degrees far beyond those contained in the 18th chapter of Leviticus, and then dispensed with the prohibition for a money payment. At the Reformation this abuse was corrected by the 32 Hen. VIII. c. 38, which enacted amongst other things, "That no reservation or prohibition, God's law except, shall trouble or impeach any marriage without the Levitical degrees." The Common Law Courts upon this statute determined, that the Levitical degrees were to be extended to all degrees of the same proximity, either by affinity or consanguinity, as those named in the 18th chapter of Leviticus (see the very interesting cases of Harrison v. Burwell, and Hill v. Good, in Chief Justice Vaughan's Reports, in the time of Charles II.), and that the case of the wife's sister was within the Levitical degree. At no time, up to the present hour, has any difference been made between that case and the case of a man's own mother or sister.

The time, then, during which the existing system of law prevailed dates at least from the conversion of Ethelbert in the sixth century. Observe, however, that in this branch of my argument I claim no additional sanction from its Christian origin, or from the Book of Leviticus; I claim merely a right to rely on the fact of the long duration of the law, and on the fact of the habits of thought and life thereby engendered, to which I will now call attention.