It is of much importance to mark clearly how absolute, upon Dr. M’Caul’s reading of Leviticus xviii. 18, is the contradiction involved. I add, therefore:—Let it be well observed that a time beyond that expressed by the words “in her life-time” must be understood to be of the essence of all the prohibitions. That is to say (and the awful importance of the matter requires it to be stated plainly), that it is incest and not adultery which is the subject of the prohibitions throughout. A man is prohibited from marrying his Mother not merely during his Father’s life time, but always—his Sister, not merely, if she be married, and, if so, during her husband’s life-time, but always. So of the Brother’s Wife, and the rest. Therefore according to the interpretation insisted upon, the collision is, as stated in the text, a complete contradiction; a universal negative on the one side met by a particular affirmative on the other, just as if one should say, negatively, “No horses are black,” and then immediately add, affirmatively, “Some horses are black.” For, the statements drawn out in full, including the case by parity of reasoning from verse 16, would stand thus:—

Thou shalt not take thy Brother’s Wife, whether in thy Brother’s life-time or not.

Thou shalt not take thy Wife’s Sister, whether in her Sister’s life-time or not.

Thou mayest take thy Wife’s Sister, if it be not in her Sister’s life-time.

Such is the over-riding demanded by Dr. M’Caul’s position, and necessary to the argument if this 18th verse is to be made in any way available for the purpose of the promoters of the change in our marriage law. The improbability of such a contradiction within two verses, including an assumed change in the subject matter, from incest to adultery, in a continuous catalogue of the enormities denounced, can, as it appears to me, hardly be exaggerated.

There is one consideration further to which it may be well to call attention, viz., that the translation of Lev. xviii. 18, is not to be confused with its interpretation. Dr. M’Caul naturally insists much upon the translation, and in addition to his own critical judgment, allowed to be of great weight from his known eminence as an Hebrew Scholar, he gives many authorities in favour of the rendering as it stands in the text of our authorized version. Still it is to be remarked that the authorities whom he cites for the translation are by no means at one with him as to the interpretation. This point will be found very fully treated of in the second letter of the present Lord Chancellor to the Dean of Westminster, printed in 1861, [40] and, if I remember rightly, it was also examined and the result put very forcibly by the Bishop of Exeter in the postscript to his letter to the late Bishop of Lichfield, published, I believe, in 1860, where it is observantly noted that of all our Reformers cited by Dr. M’Caul as having accepted the authorized version as to the rendering of Lev. xviii. 18, there is not one who has gone with him in the application of it which he advocates, inasmuch as they have all either explicitly or implicitly received our table of prohibited degrees: a proof that even from Dr. M’Caul’s premise, as to the translation, they have not come to his conclusion as to the interpretation. And it is plainly in the interpretation, not in the mere translation, that the above-mentioned contradiction is involved.