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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 87

Dr. Villiers, Bishop of Durham

Dr. Villiers, Bishop of Durham.

"My lords, the vote which I shall give in support of the Bill before your lordships' house, will, I think, be in accordance with, and not in opposition to, the Levitical Law. I acknowledge that law to be binding. I hold as strongly as any one a belief in the inspiration of the Scriptures; but in saying that, I mean that there is not a word too much nor a word too little. Believing, then, that every word has its own important meaning, I would remark that the verse in Leviticus, which has been so often alluded to, contains these words, 'during her lifetime.' My impression is that these are qualifying words; that they imply a prohibition to take a wife's sister as a wife during the wife's lifetime, to vex her—but that, the wife being dead, the prohibition was removed—that the marrying a wife's sister on the death of the wife is thus virtually pronounced to be directly lawful."—Speech of Dr. Villiers.