Note 295 — Chapter XI · HISTORY OF SEPARATION AND DIVORCE UNDER ENGLISH AND ECCLESIASTICAL LAW (continued 2)

Lecky, op. cit., II, 215, citing T. Paynter Allen's pamphlet already mentioned. There is a weak criticism of this work in the Tracts Issued by the Mar. Law Defence Union, I, 177-96. On its high authority see Huth, Mar. of Near Kin, 129.

"It is certain that the Old Testament does not directly condemn such marriages, and it is very doubtful whether it condemns them even by inference. It is not at all doubtful that it sanctions, and sometimes eminently blesses, polygamy; that it strictly enjoins that, in every case of adultery, both parties should be put to death; that it makes it a capital offence for a man to have intercourse with a woman who, though unmarried, was betrothed to another; that it commands that a man who had defiled an unbetrothed virgin should be compelled to marry her; that it forbids marriage with aliens in religion; that it not only permits, but enjoins a man to marry the widow of his deceased brother if she had no children, or only daughters, which could scarcely be the case if such marriages of affinity were in their own nature incestuous. It is not easy to understand the process of mind which, among all these provisions of the Jewish code, selects a very doubtful inference condemnatory of marriage with the deceased wife's sister as alone binding on the conscience of the Imperial Parliament."—Lecky, op. cit., II, 216, 217.