“ HISTORY OF THE REFORMATION.” 379 
plicated discussion. It the authors of Scripture, however, were only 
to be consulted, Henry’s espousal with his brother’s widow must be 
supported entirely from those passages in Genesis** and Deutero- 
nomy, which allows one brother to marry the relict of another, pro- 
vided that the wife of the deceased brother had no issue by him—a 
permission granted that, if possible, the elder line of ancestry might 
be perpetuated. To this passage was opposed the law in Leviticus, 3° 
which prohibits such a marriage. The law and the exception 
were no doubt intended, by Moses, for the use of the Jews; but 
whether the law of Leviticus was designed by the Hebrew ruler to 
be extended to Christians, is very disputable, when we recollect that 
Jesus Christ approved of the exception in Deuteronomy in his 
answer to the Sadducees, who had proposed that law to him. From 
the circumstance, however, of Christian monarchs having adopted 
the Levitical law into their respective codes, Henry’s marriage with 
his brother’s widow was naturally enough considered as a very unu- 
sual case, if not without precedent ; but there were the bull of Pope 
Julius II, and the decision of the king’s council, to sanction the uni- 
on ; and so little did the highest authority of the church question 
the validity of this dispensation, that he goes the length of declaring 
that the marriage would be lawful even if the nuptials of Arthur 
and Catharine had been consummated. Burnett and other defenders 
of Henry’s cause, of course, make light of this dispensation ; but the 
reasoning appears to us very defective which would withhold from 
the head of the church the power of dispensing with a regulation 
which, in all likelihood, the church framed for its members. Bur- 
nett, too, acted as wisely in disregarding this dispensation, as in his 
circumstantial account of the completion of the nuptials of Arthur 
and Catharine ; for it could scarcely escape the common sense of our 
#6 “ And Judah said unto Onan, Go in unto thy brother's wife, and marry 
her, and raise up seed to thy brother.”—Gew. chap. xxxviii, 8. “If bre- 
thren 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 shall 
go in unto her, and take her to him to wife, and perform the duty of an hus- 
band’s brother unto her.”—Devt. xxv, 5. 
se «Thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of thy brother’s wife : it is thy 
brother’s nakedness.” —Lerv. xviii, 16. Calvin has endeavoured to account 
for the discrepancy between Deu. xxv, 5, and the text just quoted, by in- 
terpreting the word brother as a near kinsman ; but there is too much of hy- 
pothesis and assumption in this explanation for any confidence to be attached 
to it. Before we arrive at this result, we must get over the case of the se- 
ven brethren mentioned in the gospels, which every one must see is impossi- 
ble. 
