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severe penalties, and to immediate excommunication from the Church, is well known.
The Church of SCOTLAND appears to have been so deeply impressed with a conviction of the
enormous evil of Incest, that she has introduced the subject even into her confession of faith, and fixed
the principles of prohibited degrees, in language the most intelligible and decided. "Marriage ought
not to be within the degrees of consanguinity or affinity forbidden in the word; nor can such incestuous
marriages ever be made lawful by any law of man, or consent of parties, so as those persons may
live together as man and wife. The man may not marry any of his wife's kindred nearer in blood,
than he may of his own; nor the woman of her husband's kindred nearer in blood than of her own."
See Pardovan's collections, Book 2. Tit.l v. para. 3.
See also the Constitution of the PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH IN THE UNITED STATES, Confession of
Faith, chap. xxiv. para. 4.
The Church of Scotland adopted the standards established by the Westminster assembly of divines.
What that assembly judged of Levit. xviii. 18 may
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be ascertained from the remarks made upon that text, by those learned men who were appointed by
the committee for religion to make annotations upon the Bible. - "Verse 18. To her sister. This is to
be understood, not, of two sisters, one after another to wife, the latter upon the death of the former, for
the marriage of a brother's wife is forbidden before, verse 16. and by consequence a woman must not
marry her sister's husband; and so two sisters are already forbidden to be married to one man, verse
16, wherefore; this verse 18, is a prohibition of POLYGAMY, that is of having more wives than
one at once, and the reason sheweth it, that the one may not be a vexation to the other - The word sister
in a general acceptation may be applied to any woman, as the word brother to any man, Gen. xix. 7.
And it is to be noted, that it is sometimes applied to things, which in propriety of speech, come not
under such a title or denomination; as the wings of the beast, Ezek. i. 9. are said to touch a woman to her sister,
as the Hebrew phraseth it, see Exod. xxvi. 3."
The Churches in AMERICA which have originated from those in Europe, and adopted their respective
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