contemplates no nullity of marriage, no incapacity of forming the contract, no meretricious union, but pronounces the parties man and wife, bound to each other until death shall part them, engaged to forsake all other, and to keep only the one to the other, and joined together by God in such manner that no man may put them asunder.

"The first of these legal disabilities is a prior marriage, or having another husband or wife livings." Under such circumstances the parties would be coupled together otherwise than God's word doth allow; and, whatever forms or words may be used, their matrimony is not lawful; they are not joined, because they are not in a condition to be joined, together by God, whose institution and law are opposed to polygamy. The Church and the Law are therefore agreed in recognizing this disability: but if the disability is founded in the Scriptures, and the divine law of marriage, and is not the mere creation of municipal law, does it not fall under the legal definition of voidable, rather than of void, marriages? Or does not analogy require that other marriages, voidable because they are interdicted, should be also void? It is not pretended that the law vitiates the marriage of the bigamist only on the ground of its civil inconvenience.

"The next legal disability is want of age. Therefore, if a boy under fourteen, or a girl under twelve, years of age, marry, this marriage is only inchoate and imperfect; and when either of them comes to the age of consent aforesaid, they may disagree, and

declare the marriage void, without any divorce or sentence of the spiritual court. In our law it is so far a marriage, that if at the age of consent they agree to continue together, they need not to be married again"."

Marriages of persons of such tender years are in this country of very rare occurrence: and the law of inchoate or imperfect marriages, and the personal right of voiding them, is appropriate to an age and country in which the espousals and the marriage are separate and distinct. It is certain that the Church of England contemplates nothing but a definitive solemnization of marriage, independent of all contingencies of agreement or disagreement, assent or dissent, at a future period. The parties take each other from this day forward, under every change of circumstances, until death shall part them.

"The

Another incapacity is want of reason. statute, 15 Geo. II. c. 30, has provided, that the marriage of lunatics, and persons under frenzies, shall be totally void1.”

The want of reason, as it implies a natural incapacity of entering into any contract, is a most just and reasonable impediment of marriage; and the fraudulent collusion and concealment of this incapacity, is a just ground of annulling the marriage, which, by its primitive institution, and by the existing formulary, supposes a capacity and freedom in both parties, to declare their assent. These and other disabilities, which render the marriage voidable or void, must be in existence at the time of the

marriage, and cannot be inferred from circumstances subsequent to the marriage.

The marked disagreement between the ecclesiastical and municipal laws, in respect of the contract of marriage, is seen to pervade its rule as well as its principle. Thus the Church, in conformity with the divine institution, and with the great end of mutual society, which matrimony was designed to promote, forbids any man to put asunder those whom God has joined together, and requires their constant cohabitation, that they shall live together in the discharge of their several duties, forsaking all other, and cleaving the one to the other so long as they both shall live. But the Law, interpreted by the judgments of the courts, has been on many occasions but too ready to give its sanction and countenance to acts of private and mutual separation. Again, the Church, in the just but quaint language of one of its Homilies, pronounces adultery a filthy sin; but the secular Law regards it only in the light of a civil injury, for which the husband may obtain satisfaction by an action of trespass vi et armis against the adulterer. The intercourse of the sexes out of marriage is also left to the feeble coercion of the spiritual courts, and hardly recognized by the Law as a crime, except with reference to the civil injury; so that unless a man can prove the value of his daughter's services, he can procure no redress for her seduction: and a woman is under no responsibility to the law of bastardy so long as she can maintain the issue of an illicit intrigue. So extraordinary is the impartiality which the law displays in the administration of

justice, entitling the poor to redress, and exempting the rich from punishment. In the law of divorce it may be sufficient to allude to this most striking difference in the ecclesiastical and parliamentary practice; the ecclesiastical courts holding the indissolubility of marriage, and looking prospectively to the reconciliation of the parties, grant no divorce a mensa et thoro, without an express condition and bond, that the parties shall not, during each other's life, contract matrimony with any other person; the practice of parliament requires the exhibition of this sentence of restricted divorce, as a preliminary condition of obtaining a bill of divorce a vinculo, enabling the parties to proceed to a new marriage.

When there is such discrepancy between the ecclesiastical and municipal laws pervading the whole doctrine and law of marriage, it is not unnatural that the minds of men should be in doubt and perplexity on one of the most vital questions of moral duty and for the correction of the disorder which prevails on the principle and rule of matrimony, and in the absence of more comprehensive treatises, it is proposed to collect, from the Scriptures, from the writings of primitive antiquity, and from the various authorities which throw light on the subject, a theological and practical view of the divine institution of marriage, of the religious ratification of marriage, of the impediments which preclude and vitiate the contract of marriage, of the reciprocal duties of husbands and wives, of the sinful and criminal character of adultery, and of the difficulties which embarrass the principle and practice of divorce. In this enquiry into the true doctrine of

matrimony, it will be attempted to ascertain how far the tenets of the Church are true and worthy to be maintained, and in what respects the provisions of the Law are in need of revision. The appeal is confidently made to the authority of the Scriptures, on which the doctrine of the Church is founded, and with which the laws which regulate the social institutions of a Christian state ought in all things to correspond. The following passage of the Gospel of Saint Matthew compared with the parallel narrative of Saint Mark, comprehends the Christian doctrine and law of marriage, and is the basis of the proposed investigation.

"The Pharisees also came unto him, tempting him, and saying unto him, Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife for every cause? And he answered and said unto them, Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning, made them male and female; and said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife; and they two shall be one flesh? Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder. They say unto him, Why did Moses then command to give a writing of divorcement, and to put her away? He said unto them, Moses, because of the hardness of your hearts, suffered you to put away your wives; but from the beginning it was not so. And I say unto you, Whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery: and whoso marrieth her which is put away doth commit adultery. His disciples say unto him, If the case of a