her unto him-." Deut. vii. 3. "thy daughter thou shalt not give unto his son." Jer. xxix. 6. "take wives for your sons. But the mutual consent of the parties themselves is naturally the first and most important requisite; for there can be no love or good will, and consequently no marriage, without mutual consent.6

In order that marriage may be valid, the consent must be free from every kind of fraud, especially in respect of chastity. Deut. xxii. 20, 21, 23. It will be obvious to every sensible person that maturity of age is requisite.

The degrees of affinity which constitute incest are to be determined by the law of God, Lev. xviii. Deut. xxvii. and not by ecclesiastical canons or legal decrees. We are moreover to interpret the text in its plain and obvious meaning, without attempting to elicit more from it than it really contains. To be wise beyond this point, savours of superstitious folly, and a spurious preciseness.

It is also necessary that the parties should be of one mind in matters of religion. Under the law this precept was understood as applying to marriages already contracted, as well as to those in contemplation. Exod. xxxiv. 15, 16. Deut. vii. 3, 4. compared with Ezra x. 11, &c. and Nehem. xiii. 23, 30. A similar provision was made under the gospel for preventing the contraction of any marriage where a difference of religious opinion might exist: 1 Cor. vii. 39. "she is at liberty to be married to whom she will, only in the Lord." 2 Cor. vi. 14. "be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers." But if the marriage be already contracted, it is not to be dissolved, while any hope remains of doing good to the unbeliever." known,' &c. Prose Works, III. 289. It is generally held by reformed writers against the Papist, that....the father not consenting, his main will without dispute shall dissolve all.... Because the general honour due to parents is great, they hold he may, and perhaps hold not amiss.' Tetrachordon. Prose Works, III. 338.

6 There must be a joint consent and good liking on both sides.' Doctrine, &c. Prose Works, III. 203. This brings in the parties' consent; until which be, the marriage hath no true being." Tetrachordon, III. 345. 7 His drift, as was heard before, is plain; not to command our stay in marriage with an infidel; that would have been a flat renouncing of the religious and moral law; but to inform the Corinthians, that the body of an unbeliever was not defiling, if his desire to live in Christian wedlock showed any likelihood that his heart was opening to the faith; and therefore advises to forbear departure so long till nothing have been neglected

1 Cor. vii. 12. For the rest, what kind of issue generally follows such marriages may be seen in the case of the antediluvian world, Gen. vi. of Solomon, 1 Kings xi. 1, &c. of Ahab, xxi. 25. of Jehoshaphat, who gave his son Jehoram a wife of the daughters of Ahab, 2 Kings viii.

The form of marriage consists in the mutual exercise of benevolence, love, help, and solace between the espoused parties, as the institution itself, or its definition, indicates.

The end of marriage is nearly the same with the form. Its proper fruit is the procreation of children; but since Adam's fall, the provision of a remedy against incontinency has become in some degree a secondary end. 1 Cor. vii. 2. Hence marriage is not a command binding on all, but only on those who are unable to live with chastity out of this state." Matt. xix. 11. "all men cannot receive this saying."

Marriage is honourable in itself, and prohibited to no order of men; wherefore the Papists act contrary to religion in excluding the ministers of the church from this rite. Heb. xiii. 4. " marriage is honourable in all." Gen. ii. 24. 1 Cor.

to set forward a conversion: this I say he advises-.' Doctrine, &c. Prose Works, III. 203. See also Tetrachordon; I cannot see by this golden dependence—not an endless servitude.' III. 326, 327. and pp. 408-420.

8 What is not therefore among the causes constituting marriage, must not stay in the definition. These causes are concluded to be matter, and, as the artist calls it, form...... First, therefore, the material cause of matrimony is man and woman; the author and efficient, God and their consent; the internal form and soul of this relation is conjugal love arising from a mutual fitness to the final causes of wedlock, help and society in religious, civil, and domestic conversation, which includes as an inferior end the fulfilling of natural desire, and specifical increase; these are the final causes both moving the efficient, and perfecting the form.' Tetrachordon. Prose Works, III. 342. See also p. 345. Marriage is a divine institution- -common duty than matrimonial.'

9 'If we speak of a command in the strictest definition, then marriage itself is no more a command than divorce; but only free permission to him that cannot contain.' Doctrine, &c. Prose Works, III. 226. 1 Whatever hypocrites austerely talk

Of purity, and place, and innocence,
Defaming as impure what God declares

Pure, and commands to some, leaves free to all.
Our maker bids increase; who bids abstain

But our Destroyer, foe to God and Man?

Paradise Lost, IV. 744.

ix. 5. "have we not power to lead about a sister, a wife, as well as other apostles?" 1 Tim. iii. 2. “a bishop must be blameless, the husband of one wife." v. 4. "one that ruleth well his own house, having his children in subjection."

2

Marriage, by its definition, is an union of the most intimate nature; but not indissoluble or indivisible, as some contend on the ground of its being subjoined, Matt. xix. 5. "they two shall be one flesh." These words, properly considered, do not imply that marriage is absolutely indissoluble, but only that it ought not to be lightly dissolved. For it is upon the institution itself, and the due observance of all its parts, that what follows respecting the indissolubility of marriage depends, whether the words be considered in the light of a command, or of a natural consequence. Hence it is said, "for this cause shall a man leave father and mother.... and they two shall be one flesh;" that is to say, if, according to the nature of the institution as laid down in the preceding verses, Gen. ii. 18, 20. the wife be an help meet for the husband; or in other words, if good will, love, help, comfort, fidelity, remain unshaken on both sides, which, according to universal acknowledgment, is the essential form of marriage. But if the essential form be dissolved, it follows that the marriage itself is virtually dissolved.

Great stress, however, is laid upon an expression in the next verse; "what God hath joined together, let not man put asunder." What it is that God has joined together, the institution of marriage itself declares. God has joined only what admits of union, what is suitable, what is good, what

2 This is in direct opposition to the sentiments attributed to Adam in his original innocency;

to have thee by my side

Henceforth an individual solace dear.

Paradise Lost, IV. 485.

3 The same comment upon the passage in Genesis occurs elsewhere, and is remarked by Newton as a beautiful climax.

for this cause he shall forego

Father and mother, and to his wife adhere;

And they shall be one flesh, one heart, one soul. VIII. 497.

And again, Eve replying to Adam, who had said, 'we are one flesh.'
Adam, from whose dear side I boast me sprung,

And gladly of our union hear thee speak,

One heart, one soul in both.

IX. 965.

is honourable ;* he has not made provision for unnatural and monstrous associations, pregnant only with dishonour, with misery, with hatred, and with calamity. It is not God who forms such unions, but violence, or rashness, or error, or the influence of some evil genius." Why then should it be unlawful to deliver ourselves from so pressing an intestine evil?" Further, our doctrine does not separate those whom God has joined together in the spirit of his sacred institution, but only those whom God has himself separated by the authority of his equally sacred law; an authority which ought to have the same force with us now, as with his people of old. As to Christian perfection, the promotion of which is urged by some as an argument for the indissolubility of marriage, that perfection is not to be forced upon us by compulsion and penal laws, but must be produced, if at all, by exhortation and Christian admonition. Then only can man be properly

4 Lastly, Christ himself tells who should not be put asunder, namely, those whom God hath joined. A plain solution of this great controversy, if men would but use their eyes; for when is it that God may be said to join?......only then when the minds are fitly disposed and enabled to maintain a cheerful conversation, to the solace and love of each other, according as God intended and promised in the very first foundation of matrimony: "I will make him a help meet for him;" for surely what God intended and promised, that only can be thought to be his joining, and not the contrary.' Doctrine, &c. III. 250. But here the Christian prudence lies, to consider what God hath joined; shall we say that God hath joined error, fraud, unfitness, wrath, contention, perpetual loneliness, perpetual discord; whatever lust, or wine, or witchery, threat or enticement, avarice or ambition hath joined together, faithful and unfaithful, christian and anti-christian, hate with hate, or hate with love, shall we say this is God's joining?" Tetrachordon, Prose Works, III. 376.

5 It is error or some evil angel which either blindly or maliciously hath drawn together, in two persons ill embarked in wedlock, the sleeping discords and enmities of nature.' Doctrine, &c. Prose Works, III. 207. 'The rest whom either disproportion or deadness of spirit, or something distasteful or averse in the immutable bent of nature renders conjugal, error may have joined, but God never joined against the meaning of his own ordinance.' Ibid. 250. 'Charity and wisdom disjoins that which not God, but error and disaster joined.' Tetrachordon, Ibid. 400.

6 Once join'd, the contrary she proves, a thorn
Intestine, far within defensive arms

A cleaving mischief.

Samson Agonistes, 1036.

7 'God delights not to make a drudge of virtue, whose actions must be all elective and unconstrained. Forced virtue is as a bolt overshot, it goes neither forward nor backward, and does no good as it stands.' Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, Prose Works, III. 261.

VOL. IV.

R

said to dissolve a marriage lawfully contracted, when, adding to the divine ordinance what the ordinance itself does not contain, he separates, under pretence of religion, whomsoever it suits his purpose. For it ought to be remembered that God in his just, and pure, and holy law, has not only permitted divorce on a variety of grounds, but has even ratified it in some cases, and enjoined it in others, under the severest penalties, Exod. xxi. 4. 10, 11. Deut. xxi. 14. xxiv. 1. Ezra x. 3. Nehem. xiii. 23, 30.

9

But this, it is objected, was "because of the hardness of their hearts," Matt. xix. 8.8 I reply, that these words of Christ, though a very appropriate answer to the Pharisees who tempted him, were never meant as a general explanation of the question of divorce. His intention was, as usual, to repress the arrogance of the Pharisees, and elude their snares; for his answer was only addressed to those who taught from Deut. xxiv. 1. that it was lawful to put away a wife for any cause whatever, provided a bill of divorcement were given. This is evident from the former part of the same chapter, v. 3. "is it lawful for a man to put away his wife for every cause?" not for the sole reason allowed by Moses, namely, if " some uncleanness were found in her," which might convert love into hatred; but because it had become a common practice to give bills of divorce, under the pretence of uncleanness, without just cause; an abuse which, since the law was unable to restrain it, he thought it advisable to tolerate, notwithstanding the hardness of heart which it implied,1 rather than to prevent the dissolution of unfortu

8 See Selden's Uxor Hebræa, Michaelis On the Laws of Moses, Book iii. Chap. VII. and Paley's Moral Philosophy, Book iii. Part 3. Chap. VII. where Milton's opinions on the subject are specially alluded to; Lightfoot's Works, II. 115-121.

9 The occasion which induced our Saviour to speak of divorce, was either to convince the extravagance of the Pharisees in that point, or to give a sharp and vehement answer to a tempting question.' Doctrine, &c. Prose Works, III. 215.

1Now that many licentious and hard-hearted men took hold of this law to cloke their bad purposes, is nothing strange to believe, and these were they, not for whom Moses made the law, (God forbid) but whose hardness of heart taking ill advantage of this law, he held it better to suffer as by accident, where it could not be detected, rather than good men should lose their just and lawful privilege of remedy Christ there