"except it be for fornication," gives a sample of the causes which may dissolve the marriage union, as one of many which put an end to the state beautifhlly called one flesh. Plainly but one cause of separation with remarriage is in his thoughts, and that is one in its outward nature and grossness distinct from all oth- ers. Nor again, ybtir<A/y, can it be said that these precepts were intended to govern individual action, but that, where the law of the state permitted, the in- dividual, acting under public law, might exercise the right of divorce for other reasons. For Christ set aside Jewish law. He says, let not man put asunder, i,^, not ike individual man^ but tmm as oj^posed to God, who established the primeval law of marriage. He gives a rule to his followers, who must follow it, whether the State allows larger liberty or not Chris- tians may live in a State which foels no obligation to conform its law to Christ's views in this respect, but they will, if they have influence, necessarily change legislation regarded by them as injuring society like that which opens a wide path for divorce.
We come now to the supplemental precepts of Paul, who had to guide churches gathered amid the heathen, infected by heathenish views of marriage, some of whose members, by their conversion, were brought into the trying condition of having heathen partners. The apostle contemplates two cases: the first where both partners are believers, the other where one is not (1 Cor. vii). In the former case he repeats the Lord's role against separation, with the additional injunction that if a woman should be separated fh>m her husband, she must remain unmarried, or be reconciled to him. Here, then, the possibility of separation a mensa et ihoro alone, without liberty of remarriage, is contemplated ; and this passage has had a vast influence on ecclesiastical legislation. Most in&rpreters suppose that the apos- tle here is thinking of withdrawal from the marriage union for comparatively slight grounds, such as do not involve unfaithfulness — and this view alone seems to reconcile what Christ sa3rs with the supplementary precepts of Paul— but Augustine strives, with great pains and ingenuity (de conjugOs aduiUrHs), to show that divorce for adultery is intended, and applies the interpretation to our Lord's words. Hence adultery can be condoned by the innocent partner, and can only involve separation, without liberty to either party to enter into second nuptials. This view became prev- alent, and had a great efRect on subsequent opinion. In the other case, where one of the partners is an un- believer, the apostle enjoins on the believer to be pas- sive, to take no active steps for the purpose of dissolv- ing the marriage because it is a union with a heathen, for it is a marriage after alL If the unbeliever wishes to retain the tie, the believer must not leave him or her. But if the unbeliever depart, *' let him depart.'* A Christian " is not in bondage" in circumstances like these. Here the question arises. What does **not in bondage" mean? The fothers, at least to some ex- tent, the Catholic and older Protestant interpreters, understood it to mean not in bondage to keep up the marriage connection, and hence at liberty to contract a new one. This interpretation has had wide eflTects. In the canonical law a believing partner was allowed, if thrust away by an infldel one, to marry again ; and as the early Protestant theologians extended the rule, by analogy, to malicious desertion in Christian lands, an entrance-wedge was here driven into the older ec- clesiastical laws, and much of the shocking fiicility of divorce in some Protestant countries has flowed f^om this source. But we rej%;t the interpretation. We hold with Tholuck (Bergpred. ed. 4, p. 268), with Ne- ander, De Wette, Meyer, and Stanley (commentaries on 1 Cor.), that the apostle means "not in bondage" to keep company with the unbeliever at all events, without having the thought of remarriage in his mind. This must be regarded, we thinly as settled by the soundest modem exegesis.
DIVORCE
842
DIVORCE
Roman law adhered, on the whole, to its fatal facil- ity of granting divorces for very slight reasons so long as the Western empire lasted ; and even the Eastern empire, after it became Christian, did not move wholly in a new track. Meanwliile, opinion within the Church, and ecclesiastical law, took an opposite course. Owing to the interpretations of Scripture mentioned above, to new views of the sanctity of marriage, and at length to the developed doctrine of the sacrament of marriage, divorce with remarriage waa excluded from Christian practice, with the single very rare ex- ception of the case where an infidel or a Jew had de- serted a bdieverf and separation a menta et thoro re- mained as the only kind of divorce permissible. The law of all Christian states in the West until the Refer- mation, and of Roman Catholic states since, has been shaped by canon law, which knows no divorce with remarriage even for the cause of adultery. After the Reformation, when the Protestants had abandoned the doctrine of the sacramental character of marriage, and the Protestant interpreters generally held that mali- cious desertion, according to the apostle Paul, released the innocent party from the marriage bond altogether, many ecclesiastical ordinances in Protestant Germany permitted divorce with remarriage on this account, as well as in cases of adultery. Thus the Geneva ^^^or- dotmances eccUtkuHques** of 1541 declare that "if any one maketh a business of abandoning his wife to stroll through the country, and continueth unamended, it be provided that the wife be no longer bound to such a man, who will keep neither faith with her nor compa- ny." And in the ordinance of Braunschweig-Gruben- hagen for 1581 it is said that divorce shall be granted only for the two reasons which Christ and Paul in the Gospel declare to be sufficient, of which the second is "malicious desertion, running *away, and abandon- ment, whereof St. Paul speaketh, 1 Cor. vii. ' ' Still an- other ordinance, that of Lower Saxony of 1585, says that " whatever other grounds besides these two (adul- tery and desertion) are alleged by certain emperors, as TheodosiuSjValentinian, Leo, Justinian, cannot be sufficient for divorce." Some few, it is true, of the earlier Church regulations limit divorce to cases of adultery, but a fbw others extend its operation beyond the two grounds already mentioned. The Prussian consistorial ordinance of 1584 permits it in cases of plotting to take the life of a consort. A Zurich ordi- nance of 1525 goes further still, so much so as to de- sert the principles of Scripture entirely. Not only does it allow divorce in cases of adultery, desertion, and attempt on life, but considers these as examples, and leaves it to the judge to decide what other grounds he will add to them, among which it mentions as pos- sible cases not only cruelty, but insanity and eruptive disease, as leprosy. For the most part only adultery and desertion were, through the 17th and into the 18th century, held to be valid grounds for divorce. But in more recent times the civil law of some German states goes &r beyond these limits. We confine ourselves to the Prussian code, where plotting against the life of a consort, grave transgressions against third per- sons, cruelty, refusal of connubial duties, insanity, impotence, or other incurable bodily disease commen- cing after marriage, incompatibility of temper* and permanent variance, mutual consent without discord when the marriage is childless, are allowed to put an end to the marriage tie. The laws in Baden, and for non-Romanists in Austaia, come near to these. It is impossible not to see in such legislation a disregard of the religious character of n^uriage, a tendency to look at it on the outside and as a civil contract, to consider it as a means to gain certain earthly ends. It has for- gotten the religious side of life, and thus falls under the influence of Roman law, and looks at purely secu- lar results.