some to form a second marriage, after
the death of the first wife, which St. Paul forbids to a bishop, who was to
be, in the _modern_ sense of the word, a monogamist. Two wives at the same
time were wholly repugnant to Jewish, as well as Greek and Roman,
sentiment. Ignatius (_ad Polyc. 5._) says it is _proper_ ([Greek: prepei])
for married persons to unite under the bishop's advice, so that the
marriage may be [Greek: kata Theon] and not [Greek: kat' epithumian];
whence it is inferred that a marriage was {330} valid in his time, although
no religious sanction was obtained.

It appears from Our Lord's remarks, Matt. xix. 8., Mark x. 5., that the
consuetudinary law of marriage was not wholly abrogated, but was
accommodated to the Jews by the Mosaic code. To understand this subject,
therefore, the ancient usages and existing practices must be weighed, as
well from ancient authors as from modern travellers. Whence it appears that
the contract of marriage, whereby a man received a wife in consideration of
a certain sum of money paid to her father, contemplated progeny as its
special object.[5] In default of an heir the Jew took a second wife, it
being assumed that the physical defect was on the wife's part. If the
second had no child he took a third, and in like default a fourth, which
was the limit as understood by the rabbins, and is now the limit assigned
by the Mahometan doctors. But the Mosaic law proceeded even beyond this,
and allowed, on the husband's death, the right of _Iboom_, usually called
the Levirate law, so that in case of there being _no_ child, some _one_ of
the deceased's brothers had a right to take some _one_ of the deceased's
wives: and their progeny was deemed by the Mosaic code to be his deceased
brother's, whose property indeed devolved in the line of such progeniture.
It would appear that it was usual for the eldest brothers to marry, the
younger brothers remaining single. This was a remnant, as modified by
Moses, of the custom of polyandry, several brothers taking one wife,--a
sort of necessary result of polygamy, since the number of males and females
born is equal in all countries, within certain limits of variation. The
best authorities on this subject are the Mishna, Selden, Du Halde, Niebuhr,
Suesmilch, and Michaelis, the last in Dr. Smith's translation, at the
beginning of the 2nd volume.

T. J. BUCKTON.

Lichfield.

[Footnote 5: In the recent ceremony of the French emperor's marriage, mone