Philip Schaff

“ And we too, following our fathers, and keeping close by their footsteps, brand such with infamy, and hold them to be infamous, because they are sprinkled with the stains of infamy. Neither ought we to admit those men or their accusations, that secular laws reject. (For who doubts that human laws, when they are not inconsistent with reason and honour, are to be embraced, especially when they either further the public good or defend the authority of the ecclesiastical office, and uphold it as a help?) ”

“ Moreover, marriages among blood-relations are forbidden, since all laws, both sacred and secular, forbid such. Wherefore the divine laws not only expel, but even anathematize, those who do so, and those who spring from them. Secular laws, again, call such persons infamous, and interdict them from inheriting. ”