# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1878_S48
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— 48 —

a man has married his deceased wife's sister's daughter, etc. The secular authorities will fairly reserve their punishment in this case. We are speaking here, however, of what the consistories should pronounce or heed, in such and similar cases that have occurred in the collateral line, with regard to the consciences of the persons. On this we have reported our simple opinion. In the year 1561 the theologians at Wittenberg and Frankfurt on the Oder gave their opinion in such a case, where a nobleman who had married his mother's sister, and on account of such grave misconduct had been banished from the land of His Electoral Grace, had settled in another city; whereupon a dispute arose; the ministerium of that place did not wish to admit such people to confession and the Holy Sacrament, pressed for a divorce, and wished to proceed against them with the ban or excommunication. The persons did not wish to leave one another and, to counsel their consciences, sought opinions (consilia) from many theologians. For if these persons, who have contracted against divine law, are willing to leave one another voluntarily and do penance, they are without doubt not to be hindered in this; in such a case they may be permitted to marry properly elsewhere (with another person). But if they wish to remain together, the authorities under which they have put themselves tolerate them also: in this several theologians' opinions agree, that such a marriage is not to be dissolved, if the persons acknowledge their sin, have remorse and sorrow over it, and direct themselves to true repentance; they are also not to be excluded from communion or the Christian congregation by excommunication; notwithstanding that the Apostle excommunicated the man at Corinth who had married his stepmother; for that offense was in the ascending and descending line; we, however, are speaking only of the collateral line in the second degree of the unequal line. On this foregoing opinion our predecessors and we have pronounced for conscience' sake, and the chief reasons are as follows. For first, it is clear from Moses (who forbade the degrees in Leviticus 18) that in the 20th chapter of the 3rd Book of Moses he by no means separates from one another such persons as have contracted de facto in forbidden degrees. In Leviticus 20:21 he forbids his brother's wife, and in verse 20 his father's brother's wife; where he says: They shall bear their sin, they shall die childless. From this it is clear that Moses does not wish to separate or tear apart the forbidden marriage, if it has come about de facto, but has laid upon them the curse that they shall die childless. The jurists have a fine rule: many things are more easily prevented at the outset than, once done, undone (as with an oath). The bodily punishment which is set in the Electoral ordinance on those who marry in the first degree or in the second of the unequal line gives the consistories nothing to do.' (Dedekennus, loc. cit., fol. 343 ff.) In the year 1659 the Wittenberg theological faculty answered the question: 'Whether George N. and his Ursula, after they have obtained the dispensation