# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1878_S11
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

— 11 —

(nisi contrarium textus et circumstantiae suadeant) [unless text and circumstances suggest the contrary]. Now a penalty of life is appointed for the transgressors of the laws on the forbidden degrees, in Leviticus, chapters 18 and 20, and in Deuteronomy, chapter 27, v. 20 ff. Therefore these laws are not ceremonial or Levitical laws but moral laws. Bellarmine answers this ground by declaring the major premise (the Major) incorrect and denying the conclusion that follows from it, saying that equal penalties were attached also to Levitical and judicial laws, adducing as proof the examples of the transgression of the law of circumcision and of him who eats leavened bread at the Passover, in Exodus 12. But we answer this objection, first, that this ground of reasoning of ours combines the force of proof and does not divide it; second, that there is a sophistical trick behind it, in that things that are not alike are being compared (elenchus parium), because circumcision and the Passover lamb are sacraments of the Old Testament which, although they had something in common with the ceremonial law, contained much that was peculiar, entirely remote from the other ceremonies, etc."

The same: "The fifth ground is supplied to us by the general conclusion attached to the laws on certain forbidden degrees, in Leviticus 18:5: 'he shall live in them.'"

This ground too, especially when one takes it together with the remaining grounds, makes it as clear as the sun that Leviticus 18 is speaking not of Levitical commandments but of moral commandments binding the whole of mankind. For the promise of eternal life, which in the passage cited is attached to the keeping of these commandments about marriage, we find in Scripture attached only to moral laws, not to ceremonial commandments. Rather, the holy prophets rebuke the notion that one had fulfilled the Law by keeping the ceremonial commandments. So also the Savior says to the man who had stated to Him the sum of the moral law: "This do, and thou shalt live"; but He never says this of the keeping of a ceremonial commandment. And when the Apostle says, "what the law could not do," etc., he evidently means the moral law also; for the Jews had, at least for the most part, kept the ceremonial law. Also in the passage Isaiah 58:13-14 the promise of life is attached not to the outward keeping of the Jewish Sabbath but to the right spiritual observance of the Sabbath, which, as the real kernel of the Sabbath commandment, concerns us also and consists in this, that we cease from our own doing and let God work in us.

Dieterich continues: "Sixth, we base this our opinion on the repetition of these laws. For the laws which are also commanded and required in the New Testament are . . moral laws of nature. To the minor premise we give its light of truth first from the act of John the Baptist, Mark 6:18. Second, it is confirmed by Paul's hand-