the West and Arcadius in the East, and finally repealed by the latter, the Church continued to regard such marriages as incestuous, and gradually extended its prohibition to the seventh degree.*

Public opinion was in favour of the first prohibition, however it may have revolted against the penalty. We are told that when the marriage of cousin-germans was lawful, it rarely occurred, and was regarded with horror, as bordering upon incest. And as a prepossession of this kind disposes men to credulity and superstition, Pope Gregory affirms, as a thing known by experience, that when cousin-germans intermarried‡ no progeny could be reared, ... as if there lay a curse upon such unholy unions. He instructed Augustine, however, to allow of marriage among the Anglo-Saxons in the third and fourth degrees; and being, it appears, questioned concerning this, as if in reprehension, by a certain Sicilian prelate, Felix by name, he assured him in reply that he had only granted this permission for policy, lest the converts should be disgusted with their new

* Bingham, b. xvi. c. xi. § 4.

+ St. Augustine quoted by Bingham, ut supra.

Bede, 1. c. c. xxvii. p. 19.

religion if they were subjected to all its restraints; but that when the faith should have taken root in their land, it was his intention that no marriage should be permitted within the seventh degree, and this not of consanguinity merely, but of affinity† also. It is very possible that the decree past at the Council of Herudford was framed in the same spirit of duplicity as Pope Gregory's instructions, and that, while one thing was expressed, another was intended.

In ages when the whole of the agricultural population was attached to the soil, when the different classes of society were separated by distinctions almost as strong as those which distinguish the casts in India, and when there was little intercourse between one part of the country and another, it must have been difficult for any person, except those of the highest rank,

*Decret. P. 2. Caus. 33. q. 3. ff. 417.

"Affinitas secundum canones est personarum proximitas ex coitu proveniens, omne carens parentelá. Et dicitur affinitas quasi duorum ad unum finem unitas; eo quod duæ cognationes diversa per nuptias secundum leges, vel per coitum secundum canones copulantur; et alter ad alterius cognationis finem accedit. Scias autem quod affinitas est perpetuum impedimentum, quod durat etiam mortuâ personâ quâ mediante contrahitur." This is the Affinitatis Declaratio subjoined to the Arbor Affinitatis in the Decretals.

to find women of their own station who were not related within the prohibited degree; it would be so now in a Highland parish, and in many parts of Wales. But as if these prohibitions were not sufficiently comprehensive, it was held that when a man and woman engaged as sponsors to the same infant, they contracted thereby a spiritual relationship, which made it unlawful for them to intermarry.

I have shown that the Romish Church in many of its corruptions accommodated itself to existing customs and persuasions, partaking in some cases the delusion which it fostered. No such extenuation can be offered for these prohibitions, which were not more unwarranted by the laws of God and man, than they were unreasonable in themselves and vexatious in their operation. They were, indeed, so opposed to the general feelings of mankind, so gratuitously. oppressive, and so sure to produce great inconvenience and evil, that it seems difficult to account for their introduction. The more I have searched into the history of the Romish Church, the more I have found cause to suspect that they originated in the difficulty with which the first converts among the northern conquerors. were brought to submit to the regulations of Christian matrimony. Our Edwin of Northum

bria affords a rare, perhaps a solitary instance, wherein the conversion of a heathen prince was the result of long reflection, and a sincere conviction that the faith which he embraced was true. The usual motives were merely politic; and if such converts as the ferocious Clovis conformed in appearance to the new religion which they professed, it was as much as could be hoped. Upon the question of marriage, the point upon which they were most unwilling to conform, a tacit compromise appears to have been made. They could not openly be allowed to retain their habits of polygamy; but, by widening the circle of the prohibited degrees, means were afforded them for having as many wives as they pleased in succession: it was but to find a flaw of this nature in the marriage when a chieftain was tired of his wife, and the ecclesiastical authorities assisted him in his desire of dismissing her, and permitted him to take another in her stead. Whatever you may think, Sir, of the suspicion I have expressed, your own reading will have furnished you with cases enough which might be adduced to support it.

Your associate in the vote of thanks, Sir, touched upon an unlucky subject when he accused me, with his wonted veracity and wonted

manners, of falsifying Archbishop Theodore's decree respecting divorce. Few subjects could more strikingly illustrate the tyranny and the cupidity of the Romish Church, the oppressiveness of its principles, and the profligacy of its practice. For whatever may have been the motive for introducing these injurious laws, the reason for continuing them is palpable. They formed part of the ways and means of the Romish see; and the very Church, which taught that these degrees of relationship were of such importance as to nullify the sacrament of marriage, (as marriage in that Church is held to be,) was at any time ready to dispense with the impediment for a price;... to dispense with it not in those cases only where the common feelings and common sense of mankind accorded with the dispensation, but in extreme and monstrous cases, to the violation of both, legitimating connections between uncle and niece, or aunt and nephew. Marriages which had been contracted for true affection and in good faith were annulled by this inhuman Church, if the price for

* By a law of Constantine and Constans such connections were to be punished by death. Si quis filiam fratris sororisve faciendam crediderit abominanter uxorem, aut in ejus amplexum, non ut patruus aut avunculus convolaverit, capitalis sententiæ pœná teneatur.-Cod. Theod. 1. iii. tit. 12. p. 52. ed. 1593.