# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1878_S7
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

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is sin before God's majestic judgment seat. Four reasons should move every person to bring his conscience to clarity in this matter. First, because it is surely unthinkable that God, after giving the sixth commandment, should have given us no precise revelation on so closely related a point. Second, a man would have to have become an unreasoning beast if he were unwilling to concede that one may not marry all persons, and it must therefore concern him to learn who the persons are whom he may and may not marry. Third, we do indeed still have by nature some faint impressions of what is forbidden in this respect, and these impressions are also universal, but for that reason they are still no reliable rule, as St. Paul testifies in Romans 7:7: "For I had not known lust, except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet." By this it is proved as clear as day that we know not only nothing of the Gospel but also very little of the Law. Fourth, every Christian must be concerned to be quite certain that he lives in his marriage in a state pleasing to God. All this should fill us with heartfelt thanks to God that He has not left us in the dark on this point either, and should make us all the more willing to receive and accept this doctrine. —

The most convenient and best-trodden way to dispose of this chapter as a rule is to assert that it is not of a moral nature but, like the dietary laws, was given only to the Jewish people. But that is an error. Admittedly they were spoken first to the Jews, but in such a manner that one must see that they apply to all people. It is likewise an error to claim that the expressions "it is an abomination" refer only to the last part of the prohibitions. For the prohibitions are introduced by saying that the children of Israel are not to do after the works of Egypt, from which they had come, nor after the works of Canaan, into which they were to be brought; and at the conclusion it is said that the Canaanites were to be cast out for their works and spewed out of their land. Between this agreeing beginning and conclusion these prohibitions are set. From this everyone must surely see that God punished the transgression of these prohibitions as abominations and defilements among the Gentiles, and that these prohibitions must therefore be of universal nature. It would be mere wickedness, where it says expressly, "Defile not yourselves in any of these things; for in all these the Gentiles have defiled themselves," to say: but I will except this or that part of it. Only a quite definite word of God establishing an exception would release us, so far as it itself makes an exception. God can indeed make exceptions, as is evident for instance in the fifth commandment. The commandment "Thou shalt not kill" applies to all people, and yet God commands Abraham to slaughter his son, and it is not improbable that the Jews in their blindness on that account supposed,