concern for the welfare of all who profess and call themselves Christians: it is an office of the largest and most unbounded charity, not to give countenance to the errors, not to justify the objections, not to exasperate the prejudices, not to promote the entire separation, of any sectarian body, but to seek, in the divisions which unhappily prevail under the name of religion, the reunion of the Christian body, and to persuade each and every member of it to perceive and acknowledge, through the perfection of her ritual, that the beauty of holiness is manifest in all the offices of the Church of England. CHAPTER III. IMPEDIMENTS WHICH PRECLUDE AND VITIATE THE CONTRACT OF MARRIAGE. SECTION I. Incestuous and Illicit Marriages. THE acknowledgment of the divine institution of marriage combined with a just view of the comprehensive terms in which that institution is delivered, and of the indissoluble nature of the relation which is contracted in conformity with that institution, imposes the necessity of the most rigid and scrupulous care in respect of the circumstances under which the celebration of marriage shall be prohibited, and the ratification of marriage shall be superseded and annulled by the provisions of human laws. The history of the divine institution is recorded in terms the most comprehensive and unlimited. It was not good in the judgment of the divine wisdom. that man should be alone; woman was created to be an help meet for him: and when they were brought together it was ordained, that for this cause a man should leave his father and mother, and cleave unto his woman, or wife, and they should be one flesh. It will not be denied, that the words man "Gen. ii. 24. Ainsworth in loc. and woman are here used reciprocally, that the man should leave his parents and the woman should leave her parents, and that they should mutually cleave to each other: neither will it be denied, that the words man and woman are also used distributively in the widest and most indefinite sense for the freedom and power possessed by each and every man to enter into the state of matrimony. The nature of marriage exhibited in the primary law is, that the parties shall cleave to each other in such permanent and indissoluble union, that they two shall become one flesh. It is an unavoidable conclusion from this view of the divine institution, that all laws which have been enacted at various periods for the purpose of prohibiting marriage among particular classes or orders of mankind, as of slaves and of the priesthood, or of annulling the marriages which have been contracted in opposition to any arbitrary restrictions, are at once an unjust infringement of human liberty, and a daring contravention of divine authority. It would at the same time be vain to assert, that the primary law of marriage admits no exception or qualification. It is easy to conceive, that a marriage may be contracted in opposition to the divine institution; that it may frustrate the proposed ends of marriage; that it may be interdicted by some particular restrictions of divine authority, which form a case of exception to the general law and liberty of marriage. Marriages contracted under any of these circumstances would want the authority of divine institution, which is the grand principle of valid marriage, and being contrary to the ordinance of God, they could not be ratified in his name and with a religious and solemn invocation of his blessing. The union would depend upon terms so different from those which God's word doth allow as to justify the assertion, that the parties were not joined together by God, and that their marriage was not lawful. It is of importance to ascertain what are these characters of invalidity and prohibition, not only as they are unfolded in the divine institution, but as they are found to prevail, with various modifications, in all ages, in all countries, and under all dispensations of religion, with a frequency and concurrence which almost argues and implies some universal, primeval, and divine prohibition, from which the restrictions of men have been collected and deduced. An instinct, almost innate and universal, appears to prohibit the incestuous marriage of parents and children, and the evils inseparable from the necessary disparity of years, the difference of tempers and pursuits, and the probabilities of an early widowhood and orphanage, are alone sufficient to form the reasonableness of the prohibition. The prohibition also corresponds with the natural sense of propriety, and is necessary to maintain the distinct relations of society, and the duties appropriate to those relations. The reverence which the child owes to the parent would be immediately inverted by the marriage of a son with a mother, or a daughter with a father: and it would be a strange confusion of kindred, under which a woman should be the wife of her son, or the mother of her husband, and a man be the brother of his own children. The easy familiarity, the mutual confidence, and the delicate forbearance, which form the charm of domestic life, would be immediately destroyed, as among the Druses they are in fact destroyed, by the possibility of such marriages; and in their stead would be introduced the malignant influence and unnatural restraint of jealousy, suspicion, and distrust. That purest love which a father is said to feel towards a daughter must be restrained from degenerating into a less holy passion: the heart of a mother must not be distracted with continual anxiety; and the tenderness of a sister's affections must be protected from the generous attentions of a brother. The many opportunities of early association, and the natural approximations in the dispositions of youth, would produce a prevalence of such marriages, and families would be isolated and detached from the great body of society, which by the force of the existing restrictions is consolidated, and in a condition to be more and more consolidated, by the union of one family with another, gradually extending the primary connexion of marriage, and strengthening the bonds of civil society, by repeated and enlarged affinities. There are reason therefore, and nature and necessity, and the interests of peace and virtue, both in public and in private, all pleading ь φανήσεται δε παισι τοις αυτού ξυνων αδελφος αυτος και πατηρ καξ ής εφυ εις μητρος ήλθον της ταλαίπωρου λέχος Soph. Ed. Tyr. v. 457. Eur. Phoeniss. v. 1603. |