# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1878_S15
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

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Likewise Brenz in the year 1530 still went by the persons named, and twelve years later he writes in his commentary on the third book of Moses: ". . . For Moses wrote only an excerpt of the relationships by blood and by marriage and left it to natural reason to recognize, from these persons whom he has named, the other persons who are likewise forbidden by the law of nature." (Opp. Tom. I. fol. 839 sqq.)

Dieterich concludes his demonstration with these words: "the agreement of the Church Fathers and the applause even of the Catholic gentlemen themselves supplies us with the eighth ground of proof."

Thus among the Church Fathers Augustine expresses himself as follows: "In Leviticus chapter 18 that is forbidden which, also in the time of the New Testament, after the observance of the old shadows has been abolished, is without doubt to be kept." (Quaest. supra Levit. q. 64.)

And Chemnitz writes: "The first and oldest councils established nothing on this matter. For they kept within the degrees that were expressed by the divine law and by human laws. . . . In the second Synod of Tours, about the year of the Lord 577, in the twenty-second canon, first the prohibitions of the divine law, second the prohibitions of the civil laws are cited, and third the prohibitions of the synods are added." (Loci th. III, 213.)

Later the Papists did indeed arrive at the most absurd prohibitions of marriage and justifications of them, until they even declared marriage inadmissible up to the seventh degree of kinship. From this compulsion Luther wanted to free the poor consciences; and if we see that at the beginning he went too far, we must bear in mind that he had, unlike us, no predecessors who could have guided him. We have, however, already seen from the passage cited above that Luther later became quite strict, and in this strictness he remained to his death. Those therefore err greatly who appeal to Luther for their perverse understanding of Leviticus 18; for one must not correct the later Luther from the earlier, but the earlier from the later, who says of himself that he did not become a master overnight.

The thesis was adopted as it reads.

Thesis 2.

The Mosaic prohibitions of marriage apply (with the exception of the case named in Leviticus 18:14) not only to the persons expressly named in them, but to all persons who stand with those named in an equal degree of kinship.

Chiefly three proofs are the ones on which this thesis rests. First, the individual prohibitions pronounced in Leviticus 18:7–17 are preceded by a general prohibition which states a degree of kinship; by which the