Saying, Master, Moses said, If a man die, having no children, his brother shall marry his wife, and raise up seed unto his brother.
Ver. 24. Master, Moses said] They pretend Scripture; so did the devil, Matthew 4:1,11. So do heretics all; Sed sensum afferunt non auferunt, but they fetch not the meaning from the Scripture, but fasten a sense (even that of their own devising) on the Scripture: Caedem Scripturarum faciunt ad materiam suam, saith Tertullian. They taw the text, as shoemakers do their leather uppers, saith Polydore Virgil, that they may bring them to serve their turns; they lay the dead child of their own corrupt glosses in the bosom of holy Scripture, and then cry out, It is hers, and not theirs.
If a man die, having no children] This law these Sadducees seem to approve, when indeed they jeer it, as the mother of much monstrous confusion, if there ever be a resurrection. So deals the devil and his janizaries a (Jesuits, I should say) at this day, by both Scriptures and fathers, whom they either elude or deride, further than they serve their turn, to confirm their falsehoods.
Raise up seed unto his brother] Our children are a principal part of ourselves, even the seed; as though now there were nothing left in us but the chaff.
a One of a former body of Turkish infantry, constituting the Sultan's guard and the main part of the standing army. The body was first organised in the 14th century, and was composed mainly of tributary children of Christians; after a large number of them had been massacred in 1826, the organization was finally abolished. ŒD