CHAPTER II.

THE RELIGIOUS RATIFICATION OF MARRIAGE.

SECTION I.

Expedience and Antiquity of the Religious Ratification. THE establishment of the divine institution of marriage, and of the divine authority of the primary law of marriage, affords a safe and solid ground for the investigation of the nature and circumstances of marriage. It is prescribed in the divine law: For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and cleave unto his wife, and they shall be one flesh. The terms of this law are plainly reciprocal: a man shall leave his father and mother, and cleave unto his wife or woman; and a woman shall leave her father and mother, and cleave unto her husband or man: and thus, leaving the nearest and dearest of their natural connexions, and cleaving unto each other in the new relation of husband and wife, they shall be indissolubly united in that union which is represented as the unity of one flesh. The nature of marriage, thus exhibited in the divine law, is the permanent union of one man with one woman; and this nature of marriage is distinctly recognized in the formularies of the national Church, in which the parties engage severally, that they will live together after God's ordinance, in the holy estate of matri

a Gen. ii. 24.

mony, and that, forsaking all other, they will keep each to the other, so long as they both shall live, and until death shall part them.

This is the true nature of marriage; the reciprocity of the terms used in the divine law implies a mutual agreement of the parties respectively, to forsake the dearest, and, with the dearest, all other relations, and to form a permanent and indissoluble union with each other. The first condition is the mutual agreement, contract, or espousals of the parties, and to this agreement must be added such a ratification as shall render the agreement irrevocable, and the contract indissoluble: and the interest of the parties, the interest of the offspring, the interest of their kindred, the interest of society, all agree in requiring that the consent shall be pledged under such circumstances, that the obligation shall not be retracted. A private engagement of the parties upon arbitrary terms, which they themselves shall settle and interpret, and which they shall be at liberty to alter or rescind, is not sufficient to constitute a marriage contemplated by the light of Scripture, which insists upon the permanence of the conjugal union, and authorizes the inference of the necessity of a public ratification, in the presence of witnesses who may certify the terms of the consent, and by their testimony enforce the fulfilment of the obligation.

The publicity of marriage does not infringe the simplicity of the primary institution. The Almighty God was himself witness of the first espousals. It was at the time that the Lord God brought the woman unto the man, and in his immediate presence, that Adam, in acknowledgment of his intimate and inseparable

union with Eve, exclaimed, This is now bone of my bone, and flesh of my flesh; and that the law of marriage was delivered, requiring, in correspondence with the words of Adam and with the circumstances under which the woman was created, that the man should cleave unto his wife, and they should become one flesh. The example of the first marriage would naturally recommend the presence of parents and other relations at succeeding marriages; and hence may have proceeded the celebrity of the nuptial feast, for the purpose of attesting and publishing the marriage. The barbarous practice of buying a wife implies the presence of a seller; and the various gifts, which under different names have from the remotest periods accompanied the marriage, have been inanimate proofs and attestations of the engagement. In the forms of ancient espousals the contract was often made, not between the parties immediately interested, but between the parents and other relations, who thus became both parties and witnesses to the covenant". The writers who have ventured to contend that the consent of parents is involved in the terms of the primary institution, are necessarily opposed to the clandestinity of marriage; nor can the doctrine, that marriage is a civil contract, be sustained, without admitting the necessity of witnesses to prove and confirm the contract. The argument is confirmed by the practice of Scotland, where all which is necessary to the validity of the contract, is a declaration of the consent of the parties: notwith

b Gen. ii. 23, 24. Gerhard de Conj. s. 44, 45, 455.

Potter's Antiq. b. iv. c. 11.

d Ux. Ebr. 1. ii. c. 19.

standing the apparent simplicity of the contract, the matrimonial law of Scotland is more intricate and involved than it is easy to conceive, from the extreme difficulty of proving whether there has or has not been a marriage; and even the evidence of the fact may be counteracted by the allegation, that there was a secret understanding between the parties, and that it was not their intention to contract matrimony by the ostensible act.

There is nothing in the state of marriage, considered in its proper nature, and undertaken upon worthy motives, of which a man should be ashamed, or which a man can endeavour to disguise, or to take upon himself clandestinely and without witnesses, without incurring the suspicion of some vicious principle, which actuates the desire of concealment, and which suffers him, by disowning, to dishonour his wife and children, and to place them in an equivocal light before the world. Concubinage may seek the shade and shelter of retirement, but marriage has a public character, and demands a public recognition. It is for the honour and interest of the parties and of their respective families, that their marriage should be known and undisputed. An honourable man does not blush to avow an honourable connexion; he cannot suffer the honour of his wife to be called in question, or that she should not be acknowledged in the character which she is entitled to sustain; he is anxious that the line of his inheritance should be undisturbed, and that all the offices and all the immunities of wedded life should be sècured, by the public celebration of his marriage, in conformity with the laws of the state in which he

lives, and which has a public interest in ascertaining the marriage of the citizen, as it affects the rights and privileges of him and his children, and a public duty in preventing the evils and litigation which result from a doubtful and clandestine marriage.

It will be the object and endeavour of every Christian community, to make the publicity of marriage, and the presence of witnesses, subservient to the great end of securing, in conformity with the divine institution, the permanent union of a man with, his wife, upon terms which shall not be liable to misapprehension, by a form which shall be sanctioned and enforced by the laws, and by the solemnity of a vow which shall bind the conscience. That the ratification of the private agreement should not only be public, but accompanied with religious offices, is consistent with the nature of marriage, and agreeable to the common sense of mankind, attested with very few and inconsiderable exceptions in the practice of all countries, in which "the bond of wedlock hath been always more or less esteemed of, as a thing religious and sacred"."

It would not be precipitate to assume the religious ratification from the characteristic holiness of marriage. Marriage is holy in its origin, which is the ordinance of the holy God, whose institutions cannot but be holy it is holy in its celebration, or the Son of God would not have honoured the nuptial banquet with his presence, and the first fruits of his miraculous power: it is holy also in its end, which is the religious education of the offspring, the per

e Hooker's Eccl. Pol. b. v. s. 73.