together, for the establishment of some restrictions upon marriage, for restrictions which all the wise and good have approved, and which have been violated by none but the most unhappy, the most barbarous, or the most depraved.

These restrictions have been classed under the two general heads; 1. of proximity in respect of natural relation; and 2. of disparity in respect of religious and civil distinction, of personal condition, and of age. When marriages are contracted in opposition to the restrictions of human law they are called illicit: when the restriction is founded in the Scriptures they are called incestuous or nefarious : incestuous, because they are unchaste, (incestæ,) or more properly in allusion to the cestus, or girdle, of Venus, which in a lawful marriage was worn by the woman, and loosed by the husband, as an auspicious omen of conjugal and parental happiness, and the disuse of which, in an unlawful marriage, rendered it incestuous, or ungirdled: and nefarious, either because they were without right, (fas,) or because those who contracted them were unworthy of the corn, (far,) which is the bread of life, or, if the conjecture may be allowed, because they were not contracted with the offering of corn, (furre,) which was usual in the most solemn marriages. It is a common and just distinction, that the power of human laws extends to the prohibition of illicit marriages, but

Gibbon's Roman Empire, c. 44. Wheatly on the Common Prayer, c. x. s. 2. Gerhard de Conjug. s. 322, 323. Cic. de

Off. 1. i. s. 17.

that none but incestuous marriages can be dissolved and rendered void after the ratification, which can only be counteracted or superseded by the authority of a divine prohibition.

The primary law of marriage requires, that the man shall cleave unto his wife, so that they two shall become one flesh and thus it precludes every kind and description of adultery, of polygamy, and of community of wives: in the abandonment of the filial, and the preference of the conjugal, relation it supposes a voluntary agreement of the parties, and a capacity of fulfilling the duties of marriage, and thus precludes the marriage of children, of idiots, and of madmen, who are not capable of entering into this agreement, and whose union would disappoint the great ends of marriage, the mutual consolation of the parties, and the religious education of the progeny. The Jewish doctors have drawn a further inference from that sentence of the institution which the Chaldee paraphrase translates, He shall leave the bed of his father and mother; which they apprehend, not without reason, to be the primary and universal prohibition of all incestuous marriages, comprehended under the specific interdiction of marriage with a mother, and with a father's wife or mother-in-law'.

From the terms of the divine institution of marriage, the Jewish doctors collect five kinds of incestuous commerce; 1. with a mother; 2. with a mother-in-law or father's wife; 3. with a neighbour's

• Wheatly, c. x. s. 2. Gerhard, s. 289, 292, 361. worth in Gen. ii. 24.

'Ains

wife; 4, 5. by unnatural passion. To these they add connexion with a sister by the mother's side, which they infer from the words of Abraham, who, in speaking of Sarah his wife, and excusing his pretence that she was his sister, admitted that she was the daughter of his father, but not the daughter of his mothers. These restrictions, with five other principal laws against idolatry, against blasphemy, against shedding of blood, against robbery, and concerning the punishment of malefactors, which, as they contend, were in force from the time of Adam, with a sixth, especially delivered to Noah, concerning the eating of blood with the flesh thereof, they conceive to be of universal obligation, and to comprehend all the posterity of Noah. Any man, who would not comply with these rules, was judged worthy to be slain with the sword; and any of the heathens, who would submit to these moral laws, although they rejected circumcision and the other ordinances of the Jews, were permitted to dwell in the land, even in the priests' houses, but restricted from the use of sacred things, and were called by the name of sojourners among them, or of strangers within the gates". It was a disputed point among the Jewish writers, how far the Gentiles were bound to observe the restrictions imposed upon marriage in the Levitical law: but it was the general opinion of the Talmudists, that the Gentiles were only required to conform with such restrictions as were of natural law, and obligatory upon all mankind, and that,

Gen. xx. 12. See Ainsworth on Gen. ix. 4. on Gen. ix. 4. Exod. xii. 45.

b Ainsworth

although these restrictions were introduced, in company with other restrictions peculiarly appropriated to the Jews, they were under no obligation to comply with any of those particular interdictions which were not founded in the law of nature. The Israelite was bound by all the Levitical restrictions: the proselyte, or stranger within the gate, was restricted only by the six precepts of natural and universal law. The Gentiles were restricted, says Maimonides, from marrying their mothers, their fathers' wives, their sisters by the mothers' side, from adultery, and from unnatural lusts: other marriages, otherwise forbidden under the name of incest, were permitted and lawful to the Gentiles'.

There are plain and obvious traces of the original prohibition in the practice of the two principal nations of antiquity, and of their incorporation under various modifications in the laws of Greece and Rome.

The Grecian laws of marriage were very simple, and comprised but few exceptions or restrictions. The multiplied and incestuous marriages of their fabled deities, which afforded to the primitive apologists abundant matter of sarcasm and invective on the prevailing idolatry, were not allowed to influence the conduct of individuals. That the gods had their own laws, and that it was not for man to force human rites to covenants that were celestial and entirely different, was the ingenuous argument of a sister in contending with her own unlawful passion

Selden, De Jure Nat. et Gen. 1. v. c. 11.

Theophil. ad Autolyc. 1. ii. s. 8. Min. Felix. s. 21, 22. Clementin. Hom. iv. s. 16. Cf. s. 24. Hom, vi. s. 18.

for her brother. The Grecian laws required a competent age in the parties to be married, and they restricted polygamy, and marriages within certain degrees of consanguinity, and with aliens.

The laws of Sparta, without defining the exact age, required, that both men and women should maintain the full maturity of their strength before their marriage. The legislators, philosophers, and poets, of Athens were divided in their opinions of the age of marriage, which was left to men from the thirtieth to the thirty-seventh, and to women from the sixteenth to the thirtieth, year of their age'.

Polygamy was so far from being tolerated in Greece, that the Greek word for marriage is supposed to be derived, in a singular conformity with its primitive nature and institution, from the union of two persons together, (γαμος παρα το δυο άμα είναι.) Anaxandrides of Sparta, in taking a second wife, compromised his own judgment to the will of the Ephori, and the necessity of preserving the race of Eurysthenes; and it is recorded of him by Pausanias, that he was the only Spartan who had two wives; and by Herodotus, that in having two wives he acted by no means in a Spartan manner". Nor was there any thing peculiar in this practice of Sparta. The other Grecian states agreed with the Lacedemonians in restricting polygamy, except upon particular emergencies, especially of a want of men arising from famine or from war, which were thought to justify, with permission of the magistrates and the 'Potter's Antiq. b. iv. c. 11. Ουδαμως Σπαρτιητικά. Herod. Terps. s. 39, 40.