the law of Moses upon this point to be still binding;[221]--that in the same manner St. Paul condemned the Corinthian convert of a fornication not so much as named among the Gentiles, “in that he had his father’s wife;”[222] which like the other was one of the degrees forbidden in Leviticus, and forbidden in the very same chapter of Leviticus as the relation in question;[223]--that St. Paul, therefore, pronounced the Mosaical law, in these particulars, still to stand good. On the other side, it was replied, that the Levitical precept must be understood, of not taking a brother’s wife whilst he was living, for that the brother was actually enjoined to take the brother’s widow, he having died childless and to raise up seed unto his brother;[224]--that with regard to Herod, he was guilty in the case of Herodias, not of incest but of adultery--Philip, as seems probable from Josephus, being yet alive;--that the like must be said of the Corinthian delinquent, “fornication not to be named among the Gentiles,” implying that the offence was committed in his father’s lifetime, since, otherwise the connection, however monstrous, was not unknown among the Persians, and that even amongst the Jews Adonijah had desired Abishag in marriage.[225] To this it was rejoined,--that the exception in the general law proved only that God might dispense with his own ordinances for his own ends, and that the end in this case was, the preservation of a family in Israel, and care for the protection of the genealogy of the future Messiah, objects now accomplished, and the means thereto now superseded;--that in Herod’s affair, it cannot be with certainty affirmed that when he married Herodias, Philip was living, that she certainly deserted her former husband, but that she was probably divorced from him; and that for aught which appears to the contrary, Josephus who condemns her conduct as an infraction of the law, understands, when he does so, her marriage with her husband’s brother, he not having left her _childless_;[226]--that the case of the Corinthian does not admit of the interpretation that he took his father’s wife before his father’s death, for that the seventh commandment alone was provision enough against such an abuse, and that the eighteenth chapter of Leviticus, in which this and similar abominations are forbidden, and to which St. Paul has here an eye, must have contemplated something distinct from adultery, and does in fact contemplate the case of incestuous alliance.