# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_October 1855_S293
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

The Lutheran Theological Pastor's Library. 293

...take, when in the year 1535, in reply to a letter from the then pastor at Zwickau, Leonhard Beyer, asking "whether marriage with a deceased wife's sister is permissible," he, together with his colleagues Justus Jonas and Ph. Melanchthon, gave the following salutary opinion in answer: that they were of one mind and concluded that in the case in question the marriage was not to be permitted at all. "For in the first place it is true, as you know, that it is God's commandment that one shall not marry within the near degrees, and that God will punish such unnatural mixing throughout the whole world — this the text of Leviticus 18 shows clearly." He grounds this pronouncement on the general principle of the divine natural law in this regard, when he goes on to say: "For since man and wife are one flesh, the wife's sister is reckoned the same as the husband's own sister; for which reason the imperial laws also forbid this case, cod. de incestuosis et inutilibus nuptiis." And he adds: "We also consider that, should these persons come together, they would nonetheless have troubled consciences for their whole lives — on account of the case itself, and also on account of the offense it would give; and they will without doubt come to a far more peaceful conscience if they part from one another." He lays stress on the fact that it is nowhere stated in Moses, in so many words, "that a man may marry the sister of his deceased wife"; from this silence on the matter he thus concludes — namely, that Holy Scripture does not expressly permit such a marriage — as to its impermissibility, since this follows from the universal fundamental law (Leviticus 18:6); were the marriage free, God would have mentioned its lawfulness through his lawgiver Moses, for by oneself one can only conclude the opposite from it — and he therefore says further: "Nor is there any precedent for it, and even though pretexts for it were sought out of Moses, such marriages are nevertheless forbidden by nature and by the civil authority. Therefore they are contrary to the saying of Matthew 19:6: Quos Deus conjunxit. Above all this you know that such examples are highly offensive, and that reckless people take occasion from them for incest, etc."; and he concludes once more, "that for all these reasons no marriage is to be permitted in the case reported." (Leipzig edition, vol. XXII, p. 466.) Compare also the judgment of the Wittenberg Consistory in a similar case, from Luther's Table Talk, in Konr. Porta, Pastorale Lutheri, 1604 edition, p. 248. To be concluded.

The Lutheran Theological Pastor's Library.

(Continued.)

d. Among the exegetical works, finally, which contain the exposition of the Pauline epistles as a whole, including that of the Epistle to the Hebrews, we recommend without hesitation as a work of the first rank,