# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_September 1856_S268
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

268 Whether Someone May Marry the Sister of His Deceased Wife

works, concerning whose importance we have already expressed ourselves at the very outset of our "Pastor's Library," so that as regards the polemical writings of Luther our pointing them out is unnecessary. If we may permit ourselves to express here a related wish, it is this: that some member of our synod, or otherwise some theologian here at home, who is familiar with Luther's doctrine, language, and history, and is a Lutheran at heart, might undertake to republish Luther's work "On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church," together with its defense, which Luther likewise issued: "Luther's Answer to King Henry VIII of England's Book against his Treatise on the Babylonian Captivity" — perhaps with some historical and philological notes serving the needed explanation. In the first place, these writings contain the core of the whole Lutheran polemic against the papacy, and, being products of his first love, are written with such liveliness, such freshness, and such fire that they give clarity to the understanding just as much as they kindle the heart; and further, the first of these writings was originally written by Luther in the Latin language, and is therefore not found in the Jena, Wittenberg, or Erlangen editions of Luther's German writings, and appears in the Altenburg, Leipzig, and Halle editions only in a translation that Luther himself criticized. To many, therefore, the first work — with which Luther, so to speak, delivered the first victorious main battle against the papacy*) — remains inaccessible. Should a Lutheran theologian here at home come to the resolve to meet the wish expressed here, it would, so that no second person might undertake the same work at the same time, be well if this resolve were made known to the public beforehand through one of our ecclesiastical organs.

(To be continued.)

(Submitted for "Lehre und Wehre.")

Whether Someone May Marry the Sister of His Deceased Wife?

To this Joh. Gerhard answers in his Loci: That by divine law marriage with the sister of one's deceased wife is forbidden, we prove with the following grounds:

1. From the express prohibition, Lev. 18:18: "Thou shalt also not

*) Bugenhagen, as is well known, came to knowledge of the truth through this writing in a remarkable way, and was won over to the cause of the Reformation, although at the first fleeting glance into this writing he had declared that he could see in it nothing but the root broth of all heresies.