CONCLUSION.

To the discussion of the principal and most important questions relating to the doctrine and law of marriage, adultery, and divorce, it is only necessary to annex a very brief recapitulation of the course of argument which has been pursued; and it is hoped, that if the investigation shall result in the exhibition of a clear, consistent, and harmonious doctrine, it must be founded in principles that are true, and certain, and worthy to be maintained.

The principle on which the whole theory is constructed, is, that marriage is a divine institution, and this principle is maintained not only on the common assertion of the primitive writers, and the constant tradition of the Church, but on the combined authority of the Old and the New Testaments, and it is proved by the providential care which has watched over the preservation of marriage, and made provision for its perpetual use in the conveyance of good to mankind. This doctrine is not liable to any imputation of superstition, nor does it involve the inference of a sacramental character. The merely civil contract of marriage, for which some writers have contended in preference to the divine institution, has been shewn not to be held without limitations in the law of England; to be inconsistent with the circumstances under which marriage originated and became the parent not the child of civil society; to place the rights of marriage in subjection to certain restrictions; to weaken its obligations; to make

its permanence to rest on rules of policy and expedience, to the prejudice of that indefeasible perpetuity which constitutes the essence of the relation; and to render adultery a civil injury. The opposite doctrine of the divine institution results in ascertaining and enforcing the practical virtue of marriage, and in elevating the dignity and the holiness of the

state.

The terms of the divine institution in fixing the permanence of marriage justify the necessity of a public ratification, of which the origin is as ancient as the practice is universal, and corresponds with the honour of marriage without infringing its simplicity. The holy character and divine origination of marriage also suggest the inference that this public ratification should be marked by religious rites, which are appropriate to the solemn nature of the engagement, and useful in attestation of the covenant, and which, however they may appear to have been neglected in countries whose manners are barbarous, or imperfectly known, have uniformly prevailed in the most civilized nations of antiquity. The New Testament certainly offers no objection to the religious ratification of marriage, and the practice of sacerdotal benediction may be traced in the Eastern and the Western Churches from the earliest ages to the period of the Reformation; and the most ancient and continuous evidence of all men, all ages, and all places, is agreed in upholding those religious forms of solemnization, which are at once the testimony and the consequence of the divine institution. The necessity of the sacerdotal benediction has been familiarized by immemorial

practice to the habits of Englishmen, and been enforced in the most ancient provisions of the law, distinguishing the contract from the ratification, and allowing an efficacy to the one, which it withholds from the other. The public celebration in the Church and the invalidity of the private contract out of the Church were maintained from the Reformation to the passing of the Marriage Act in 1754, which makes no exemption but in favour of Jews and Quakers, and was not designed to con-. tract any privilege previously possessed by nonconformists. The impolicy of acceding to any of the propositions for abating the necessity of conformity in respect of marriage has been examined, and it has been suggested, that all the objections to the use of the ritual may be removed by a judicious revision, without any compromise of the ancient and universal practice of the religious ratification of marriage.

The terms of the divine institution imply the existence of certain impediments precluding and vitiating the contract of marriage, impediments corresponding with the natural sense of propriety, specified in the law of Moses, and recognized in the universal practice of all nations, which have forbidden marriage to be contracted within certain degrees of consanguinity and affinity. There is not the same authority for proscribing the marriages which minors may contract without consent of their parents, and in violation of filial duty, but of which the nullity rests on no better principle than the arbitrary despotism of the Roman economy, and is foreign to the constant tenor of the English law. The nullity of the marriages of the Royal Family

rests on the ground of a very questionable expedience.

The divine institution and religious ratification of marriage give new force to the duties of the relation, which is contracted in terms of the most exact reciprocity, corresponding with the personal unity of the parties maintained in the Scriptures and in the English law; with their community of interest both in temporal and spiritual concerns; with their mutual society, division of domestic cares, and constant cooperation, especially in the instruction of their children; and with the indissoluble perpetuity of the relation, of which the reciprocal duties cannot be neglected without opening a way to recrimination.

The doctrine that marriage is not a merely civil contract, but a divine institution, establishes the sinful character of adultery, which is proved in the prohibitions and the penalties delivered in the Scriptures to be a sin of a very aggravated kind, a sin only less heinous than murder and idolatry. In its practical effects it includes a complication of the basest fraud and perjury, and inflicts an injury upon the woman, the husband, and the children, which cannot be repaired, which cannot be compromised, and which no man who consults his own heart does not deprecate as the worst of sorrow and the worst of shame. The Christian religion appreciates the equal guilt of both parties; it offers no palliation of the offence of either, and pronounces on both the sentence of eternal doom. By the Jewish, law the offence was capitally punished in both parties, and the law of the bitter waters afforded a redress in cases of sceret guilt, which could not be obtained by

marital infidelity. The criminal character and penal consequence of adultery are approved by the common sense of mankind, and there are but few nations in which it is not punished as a crime. In the earlier stages of the English law, and at the time. of the Reformation, its criminal character was also recognized, and the offence was made, or proposed to be made, liable to penal prosecution. With the only exception of a certain justification of homicide committed in retribution of adultery, and of the aggravation of the offence in a clergyman, adultery, in correspondence with the received view of marriage as a civil contract, is made a matter of civil injury, which may be satisfied by an action for trespass, and by the recovery of damages, of which the amount is estimated upon various considerations of the conduct and of the circumstances of the parties. The partiality and inadequacy of this state of the law are too plain to be denied, and various measures have been proposed for restoring it to a more just and equal operation, for recognizing the criminal character of the act, and rendering it liable to a public prosecution and to an appropriate severity of punishment.

The terms of the divine institution assert the indissoluble unity of marriage, of which the perpetuity is established upon reasons worthy of the divine wisdom and benevolence, in making the most effectual provision for the protection of the infirmity of the woman, for the continuance of the necessary solace through the whole period of human infirmity, and for the religious education of the offspring. This essential individuality of marriage