use of all men, in all ages, and in all places. In the patriarchal age, among the barbarous and polished nations of antiquity, among Greeks and Romans, Jews and Christians, marriage has been always ratified by ceremonies, more or less distinct, of religious reverence: and while this general concurrence proves the assent of man's reason to the propriety of the practice, there is nothing in the whole volume of the Scriptures, by which it is opposed; there is much by which it is authorized and approved. The appeal to the Deity, which is implied in the religious ratification, agrees with the doctrine of the divine institution of marriage; and it is the most convenient form of securing in practice the public and irrevocable consent of the parties. The reasons which Gerhard assigns for retaining the practice, are worthy of all attention. These reasons are, 1. the example of God in the institution of marriage : 2. the apostolical precepts, both general, to do all things decently and in order, in the name of Christ, and to the glory of God; and particular, to marry only in the Lord: 3. the opportunity of instructing the parties in the dignity and the duties of marriage: 4. the advantages resulting from the ratification of the marriage, in the presence of God and of his Church, and from public prayer, in hope of the divine benediction: 5. the antiquity of the institution, and the practice of all ages, without excepting, 6, the suffrages of the heathen. The first of these reasons, the divine example in the primary institution of marriage, is a point, upon which ancient

° S. 462.

and Lutheran writers frequently insist; and it is reasonably supposed to be the original of a tradition, than which none is more ancient; of a practice, than which none can be more properly called universal; of a tradition so coextensive with the reason of man, and with his natural sense and feeling of propriety, as to have no exception but in nations the most barbarous, and as can be traced to no source but the Author of our being, our affections, and our understanding, who hath formed our hearts in correspondence with his will, that there shall be a religious ratification of marriage, a public acknowledgment of his benevolent provision for the good of mankind.

P Comber, Off. of Matr. Introd.

SECTION II.

The Religious Ratification of Marriage in England. IT has been the common error of writers who maintain, that marriage is a civil contract and nothing more, to misrepresent the true origin of its religious ratification; asserting that marriage was originally a civil contract, and that a sacred character and a religious solemnization were surreptitiously engrafted upon this civil contract, by an ascendant hierarchy, but not universally or authoritatively prescribed before the fourth council of Lateran, held under Innocent III. A.D. 1213. In opposition to this assertion, it has been shewn, that marriage originated in the divine institution, and not a civil contract; that it is called in the Scriptures of the Old Testament, a covenant of God; that certain of the Psalms, and the Song of Solomon, were in fact nuptial songs; and that marriage was celebrated with sacrifices among the Jews; that rites of marriage were common among the heathens; that the New Testament attaches a peculiar sanctity to marriage, and delivers rules, which do not oppose, if they do not command, its religious celebration; and that, from the earliest ages of Christianity, as far as a just judgment can be formed from the scanty records of those ages, marriage has been always solemnized in the Christian Church with sacerdotal benediction. There is such a perpetual and catholic tradition of its religious character, as may justify the conclusion that it is agreeable to the natural sense

and reason and religion of mankind, to acknowledge a certain holiness and dignity in the state of marriage, and not to enter upon it without public and solemn prayer for the aid and blessing of God.

The opinion has, from time immemorial, been established in England, that the civil contract requires to be ratified and made effectual by a religious ceremony. On this principle deeds of settlement are valid, not in themselves, but in contemplation of a marriage to be celebrated, without which they are void and of no effect: the contracts of a former age per verba de præsenti, were not only liable to the compulsory celebration, but derived in many respects their chief validity from the actual celebration in the face of the Church: and in the time when espousals were distinct from marriage, they also were a religious act; and it was customary to receive the dower, in the presence of the priest, at the door of the Church, as is plain from Chaucer's relation of the Wife of Bath, that

Husbands at the church door she had five.

The minds of men have thus been trained into a voluntary and habitual conformity with these provisions of religion and of law; and the practical use of a merely civil contract has been almost or alto

a

* Ux. Ebr. 1. ii. c. 27. Although the espousals and marriage are now combined in one office, is there not a vestige of the ancient custom retained in the neglected direction of the rubric, requiring that part of the service which relates to the mutual stipulation or espousals to be celebrated in the body of the Church, from which the parties are to proceed to the Lord's Table, reciting the nuptial Psalm ?

gether rejected or unknown. The great body of the people have no conception of marriage which is not celebrated in the Church; and all conditions of men agree in declaring their respect for the institution; the rich by their liberal remuneration of the service of the minister, the poor by their humble thanks for his ministration. In the extravagant passion for clandestinity, which called for the provisions of the Marriage Act, the form and semblance of a religious ceremony were observed: in the time of the Usurpation that ceremony was superseded, not by the will of the people, but by the order of the usurping power at the time of the Reformation the Romish missal was succeeded, without any interval or intermission, by the revised office of the Protestant Church. The minds of our forefathers were always impressed, and they have from age to age impressed the minds of their children, with a sense of the propriety of the religious celebration of marriage, as one grand distinction between the virtue of matrimony and the vice of concubinage. There are but few men who have entertained, or been able to apprehend, a doubt upon the subject: and even the few who have been most zealous in contending for the merely civil contract, have been restrained by a sense of propriety from the practical application of their own principles, under circumstances, which involve no right of inheritance, and under which the civil advantages of marriage might be secured by civil bonds and they have deferred so far to the public opinion, as to seek no other redress of their alleged grievances, than a modification of the existing formulary, or a licence to ratify the marriage,