Clergyman's wife

“ The sixth of the Apostolical Canons, allowed by all to be ante-Nicene, says "He who hath married two sisters, or his brother's or his sister's daughter, cannot be a clergyman." St. Basil, in the 4th century, as noted in Bishop Wordsworth's Commentary, says: "Our custom in this matter has the force of law, because the statutes we observe have been handed down to us by holy men; and our judgment is this, that if a man has fallen into the sin of marrying two sisters, we do not regard such an union as marriage, nor do we receive the parties to communion with the Church until they are separated." ”

“ She says that you are an amiable girl, but one given up to worldly pursuits and without a trace of religious principle; the last woman to make a clergyman's wife, though you might do very well for an artist or somebody wicked enough for you, as I gathered her idea. I am told that she amuses herself by adding that she never took Mr. Hazard for a clergyman, and the sooner he quits the pulpit, the better. She is never satisfied without hitting every one she can reach. ”

“ Surely no man was ever blessed with a better wife! He had made a reach into the matrimonial grab-bag and drawn forth a jewel. This jewel was many-faceted. Without affectation or silly pride, the clergyman's wife did the work that God sent her to do. The sense of duty was strong upon her. Babies came, once each two years, and in one case two in one year, and there was careful planning required to make the income reach, and to keep the household in order. ”

“ The right sort of wife is important to any man, but more to a clergyman than to others. Charm, tact, the kindliness that comes from the heart itself, above all, understanding—these are the things your little Jacqueline has brought to help her husband, and he will go far. ”

“ I own it appears to me a particularly happy fate, if one likes one’s husband, to have married a clergyman. He is safe not merely from the dangers of a profession, but of a duel, and his wife has un gage de plus for his moral conduct and his leading a domestic stationary life. Add to this an eternal comparison with poor me—my garnets, my shawl, my house in Hampshire, all wished for ”

“ It is not surprising that when second marriages (whose only authority from Scripture is inference) had been long forbidden, that marriage with a deceased wife's sister, for which Scripture authority was more explicit, should begin to be forbidden; and the prohibition of the clergy to marry at all soon followed. The Provincial Spanish Council of nineteen Bishops, which was held at Eliberis A.D. 305, the first Council to forbid marriage with a deceased wife's sister, was also the first to forbid the marriage of the clergy. ”

“ Furthermore, when in Leviticus xxi. 14, a High Priest is forbidden to marry a widow, common sense infers that other priests and other men may marry a widow; but according to this writer no priest nor any other man can lawfully marry a widow; yet this inference from the prohibition of the High Priest is the only authority or permission in the law of Moses for the lawfulnes of a priest or any other man to marry a widow. If this writer be consistent or sincere in his reasoning, he certainly should not marry a widow. ”

“ The great bulk of English Churchmen are against any alteration of what is and has been the law of the Church and the law of the land, and which forbids a man to marry his deceased wife's sister. The Presbyterian bodies are all pledged against it. ”

“ Where is there an unperverted mind which does not feel that the moral relation of two sisters successively to one or the same man as husband, is strictly parallel to that of two brothers to one and the same woman as wife? And even if the Law, in spite of this moral identity, did not entirely recognize the practical equality of obligation in both cases, there is no reason why Christians should not do it. ”

“ His statement is not true as to the Presbyterian bodies in the United States, nor as to a large number of their members and most distinguished ministers in Canada, nor as to such illustrious names as those of Dr. Chalmers and Dr. Eadie in Scotland; it is not true as to English Nonconformists generally. Cardinal Wiseman said the Roman Catholic Church did not hold that such a marriage was prohibited in Scripture, but "is considered a matter of ecclesiastical legislation;" ”

“ There is none in the Gospels or Epistles—there is none (as has been shown) in the translations of the Scriptures used by the Jewish, Syrian, Greek and Latin Churches. These versions are all favourable to the marriage with a wife's sister."—" Having given the concurrent testimony of the three greatest Bible-scholars of their age, and that age the end of the fourth and beginning of the fifth century, in addition to the Septuagint, the Syraic and the Italic versions, I have done enough to show the opinion of the Church for the first 400 years. ”

“ Indolence and love of ease; a want of all laudable ambition, of taste for good company, or of inclination to take the trouble of being agreeable, which make men clergymen. A clergyman has nothing to do but be slovenly and selfish—read the newspaper, watch the weather, and quarrel with his wife. His curate does all the work, and the business of his own life is to dine.” ”

“ If, therefore, a woman marries a clergyman, she does so for love of the man and his work's sake; there cannot be a tinge of ambition as to the career of her husband, for there are no such things as comfortable rectories and prospective deaneries or bishoprics, with their consequent influence and power. ”

“ Death "departs" a man and his wife—makes a complete separation; but it does not abolish the relations which that marriage effected between the surviving husband or wife and their respective families, till he comes and touches with his icy fingers each separate one.
We will just put Mr. Punshon's objection into the mouth of the parallel relation—a deceased brother's wife. ”

“ XVIII. 18 specially refers to the marriages in question: "Neither shall thou take a wife to her sister, (margin one wife to another) , to vex her, to uncover her nakedness, beside the other in her lifetime." (I add a literal rendering of the Hebrew, as it will be useful for reference: "And a woman to her sister thou shall not take, to rival, to uncover her nakedness besides her, in her life")
1. It is argued that as the marriage is forbidden with a special restriction, "in her life," therefore it is lawful when that restriction is removed, nay, that it is almost suggested. ”

“ Every just man must feel and say that there can be no justice or principle in an Act which declares the same marriage illegal if contracted since 1835, and which robs a child of his inheritance if born since 1835, while it gives him, if born before that period, vast wealth, the patronage of 26 Church livings, the first rank in the peerage, and even exalts him to be an officer of Her Majesty's household. ”

“ It must be, unless we would contradict an absolute enactment: "Thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of thy brother's wife: it is thy brother's nakedness." Lev. xviii. 16. The very terms of the Law in question may serve to show this: "If brethren dwell together, and one of them die, and have no child, the wife of the dead shall not marry without unto a stranger: her husband's brother [margin: "next kinsman"—i.e. brother opposed to stranger, and thus equivalent to "kinsman,"] shall go in unto her, and take her to him to wife, and perform the duty of a husband's brother unto her." ”

“ But we do not permit any one of the clergy to take to wife either a courtesan, or a servant, or a widow, or one that is divorced, as also the law says. Let the deaconess be a pure virgin; or, at the least, a widow who has been but once married, faithful, and well esteemed. ”

“ This is the only advantage on the side of marriage, and it is but relative; for a celibate clergy has also its female allies who are scarcely less devoted; and in the Church of Rome there are great organized associations of women entirely under the control of ecclesiastics. Again, there is a lay element in a clergyman’s family which brings the world into his own house, to the detriment of its religious character. The sons of the clergy are often anything but clerical in feeling. ”

“ Let the public at large notice what the Rev. W. Morley Punshon, President of the Wesleyan Conference, distinctly says: It appears to me, and has always appeared to me that the doctrine of this passage (Rom. VI: 2) 'is that the relationship of affinity created by law, ceases when the law ceases." An astounding, a tremendous conclusion! Observe, so a man may marry his father's wife, his son's wife, his brother's wife, his wife's mother, his wife's daughter, his wife's grand-daughter—all expressly fordidden in Scripture! ”

“ We have before observed, that nothing can abolish a pre-existing fact—and therefore such cohabitation would still be incest. Though "freed from the law of her husband," as Mr. Punshon emphasises it; it does not follow that a widow is free from all law as to his kindred, as he argues, or we might have such mixtures as would rival the incests of ancient Persia. Because, forsooth, I may not marry my sister-in-law, must I cry out with the logic of a petulant will. You insist that she who was once my wife is still my wife in the spirit world! ”

“ A step-son may not marry his father's widow; and yet there is no kin between them, except through the woman's former marriage with his father, who is now dead. The death of the person through whose marriage the bond of kindred began, must either dissolve that bond in all cases, or it dissolves it in none. ”

“ The translation is as follows:
"If his wife die, he is allowed to marry her sister. If he divorce her, and she die, he is allowed to marry her sister. If she be married to another man and die, he is allowed to marry her sister. ”

“ So exceedingly difficult is it to combat against nature, that little regard seems to have been paid to this decree of Syricus; for we are informed, that several centuries after, it was no uncommon thing for the clergy to have wives, and perhaps even a plurality of them; as we find it among the ordonnances of pope Sylvester, that every priest should be the husband of one wife only; and Pius the Second affirmed, that though many strong reasons might be adduced in support of the celibacy of the clergy, there were still stronger reasons against it. ”

“ The general contempt for religious as opposed to secular law which characterizes the looseness of Colonial populations, and our familiarity with the tremendous laxness of the Marriage Laws of the United States, must, in the nature of things, precipitate a struggle between the Church and the World at no distant day ”

“ Even heathen writers reproached the Asiatics with their dissoluteness: "Such is the whole barbarian race: a father has intercourse with his daughter, a youth with his mother, a maiden with her brother." (Euripides, Androm, 173) . The Law of Moses re-established holy limitations of domestic virtue, but not ignoring the civil custom of the time. The Law of inheritance applied first to the husband's next of kin; but he was not only exempt from taking the widow if she were within the prohibited degrees—he dared not take her. ”

“ Surely it is utterly ridiculous to call that union a marriage, either from a legal or a Christian point of view, which depends on the mere forbearance of non-objectors, or which either of the two parties may dissolve at their own bare will! ”

“ For, supposing a person baptized and her husband dead, it would not be consistent if the Apostle were to bid her marry another, when he enjoins even those who have wives to be as though they had them not. And this is why the number of wives which a man may take is not defined, because when Christian baptism has been received, even though a third or a fourth wife has been taken, she is reckoned as the first. ”

“ And the women, poor dupes, believed it.
One method the Church took to benefit woman and show its respect for her was this: any married man was prohibited from being a priest. Women were so unholy, so unclean, and so inferior, that to have one as a wife degraded a man to such an extent that he was unfit to be a minister or to touch holy things. The Catholic Church still prohibits either party who is so unholy as to marry from profaning its pulpit'; but the Protestant Churches divide up, giving women the disabilities and mon the offices. ”

“ Punshon to quote in his own defence Lev. xx. 21, of all possible arguments!
But there is another "dilemma"—a very harmless, though a very ugly goblin. "If my wife's sister is still [after the wife's decease] my wife's sister; then logically my wife is still my wife, and so far from restricting my liberty to marry to her own relations, her death—as it does not alter my relations to her [his own representation] —does not leave me at liberty to marry at all." How very "logical" indeed, where the word "wife" is plainly "equivocal"—made to represent a past and a present relation ”

“ PLAIN MEANING OF THE PROHIBITION IN LEV. XVIII. 18.—THE MAGAZINE WRITER'S ABSURD EXAMPLES.
So much at present on the translation of the verse. Let us now briefly notice the prohibition, "thou shalt not take a wife to her sister, &c.," a prohibition understood in all ages, as the words expressly declare, as relating to two sisters. The law of Moses assumes the existance of polygamy, and regulated it, (Exodus xxi. 9–12; Deuteronomy xxi. 15–17) , but does not forbid it. The prophet denounced David's adultery, but directly recognized his polygamy (II Samuel xii. 8.) ”

“ So it by no means follows that, because a man may not take his wife's sister in marriage while his wife is alive, he may marry his wife's sister when his wife is dead. Hooker exhibits his "judiciousness" in the observation—"It is a mistake to suppose that a thing denied with special circumstance doth import an opposite affirmation when once that circumstance is expired." (Bk. v, c. xiv) . "The manner of Scripture produceth no such inference as that." (Pearson, Art. iii) . (2.) There is nothing to prove that the restriction, "her life,," belongs to the wife—see the literal rendering above. ”