MATRIMONY

The nuptial state. The State in England has declared that marriage may be henceforth regarded merely as a civil contract; and, so far as the effects of the law are concerned, they who contract marriage by a merely civil ceremony, will undergo no disabilities, their children will not be illegitimate, and they will themselves be regarded, to all intents and purposes, as man and wife. Yet, although this be the case, the Church, (in this respect opposed to the State, or rather the State having placed itself in opposition to the Church,) at the very commencement of the Marriage Service, declares that so many as are coupled together otherwise than God’s word doth allow, are not joined together by God , neither is their matrimony lawful: it is not lawful , that is to say, in the eyes of God ,—for its legality in the eyes of the State cannot be questioned. The case is actually this: the State says, if you choose to consider matrimony to be a civil contract , the law of the land will permit you to enter into the marriage state by a civil ceremony : but the Church has not as yet been silenced, and she affirms, that though the State may permit this, the word of God instructs us otherwise , and marriage is a religious contract; therefore do not avail yourselves of the permi ion given by the State. That such is the doctrine of the Church now , must at once be admitted ; and equally admitted it will be, that it was so at the Reformation of the Church of England, and before the Reformation. But the question is, was it one of those dogmas introduced in the Middle Ages, such as transubstantiation, praying to the saints, worshipping images, and certain other superstitions which distinguish the Church of Rome from the Church of England? And we may answer at once in the negative, because we find allusion to the sacred nature of the marriage contract in the writings of the very earliest Christian authors. For instance, St. Ignatius, the disciple of St. John, (who was afterwards bishop of Ephesus, and died a ble ed martyr,) waiting to Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna, says expre ly: “It becomes those who marry, and those that are given in marriage, to take this yoke upon them with the consent or direction of the bishop, that their marriage may be according to the will of God , and not their own lusts.” Another early Father (Tertullian) exclaims, “How shall I sufficiently set forth the happine of the marriage which the Church brings about by her procurement, which the eucharist confirms, which angels report when done, and the Father ratifies!” In those days the members of the Church were in much the same situation as that in which we are ourselves now placed. The law of the land regarded marriage as a civil contract, and the Church did not annul or disallow the legality of such marriages, or solemnize them again, on the parties becoming converts: it admitted the validity of the act when done , though it declared it to be done unlawfully, according to God’s law, and severely censured the members of the Church whenever they were married without the sacerdotal benediction. The practice for Christians to be married in the Church appears at first to have been universal, except when a Christian was unequally yoked with an unbeliever; he was then obliged to have recourse to the civil authorities, because the Church, censuring the alliance, absolutely refused to solemnize the marriage. When the Church, in the time of Const an tine, became allied with the State, and religion began to cool, (the laws of the empire still remaining the same,) some Christians began to fall off from the primitive practice, some for one reason and some for another, and to contract marriages according to the civil form. To correct which abuse Charles the Great enacted in the eighth century for the Western empire, and Leo Sapiens in the tenth century for the Eastern empire, that marriages should be celebrated in no other way, except with the sacerdotal ble ing and prayers, to be succeeded by the reception of the eucharist or Lord’s supper. And this continued to be the practice in our own country until the usurpation of Cromwell, when marriage was declared to be a merely civil contract. At the Restoration of Charles II. marriage was again regarded as a religious ordinance, though the Church no longer insisted that the parties married should receive the communion, (a regulation which had in practice been much disregarded,) but contented herself with remarking in the rubric succeeding the ordinance, that “it is expedient that the new-married couple should receive the holy communion at the time of their marriage, or at the first opportunity after their marriage,” declaring the duty, but not absolutely compelling its observance; and thus things continued till the present time. Of course, all churchmen must now adhere to their principle, that marriage is a religious contract, and that those marriages only are lawful in the sight of God which are contracted in his name and by his ordinance. And for thus acting we have the highest authority which earth and heaven can afford, that of our ble ed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ himself. When he was in the flesh, marriage was regarded by Jews and Gentiles as a mere civil contract, and that of no very binding nature. He did not on this account declare the offspring of such marriages to be illegitimate; and yet, when appealed to, he a umed the fact as one which the Scriptures plainly declared, that marriage was of Divine institution. (Matt. xix. 4–9.) The Pharisees came unto him, tempting him, and saying unto him, “Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife for every cause?” Now, this was a very natural question for those to ask who considered marriage as a mere civil contract. Wherever such is the case, one of two things in proce of time is found to follow—polygamy, or the allowance of frequent divorce. Men soon came to reason thus : If marriage be merely a bargain between two parties for mutual convenience, why should not the bargain be di olved when the convenience no longer exists? and why, if a man wishes for more wives than one, should he be prevented from having them, provided the parties making the contract agree that the first wife shall have the pre-eminence, and her children be the heirs of the family property? It is all a matter of mere civil convenience and expediency. The Jews thus arguing had permitted polygamy; they did po e many wives, and now they entertained the question, whether these wives might not be dismi ed for almost any cause whatever. The subject being much under discu ion, they appealed to our Lord , and how did he meet them? By arguments against the expediency of polygamy, or frequent divorce? No; but by a uming at once, that, according to Scripture, marriage is not a mere civil, but a religious contract. “Have ye not read,” he says, thus referring to Scripture, “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 twain shall be one flesh. Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. What, therefore, God hath joined together let no man put asunder.” The permi ion of divorce is out of the jurisdiction of man, because the ordinance is of God . If the contract were merely a civil contract, man might legislate with respect to it; but man may not legislate for it, because it is an ordinance of God —a religious, and not a mere civil, contract. And all this is the more remarkable, because our Lord , in his reply to the Herodians, carefully distinguishes between the things of Cæsar and the things of God , and on several occasions disclaims all intention to interfere with those things which had reference merely to the civil authority; yet, observe, when the Pharisees appeal to him on a doubtful disputation, growing out of their allowance of divorce, he does not , as on another occasion, put the question aside by asking who made him a judge in such matters, but he instantly exercises his judicial authority without reservation; thereby, in that very fact, declaring that God , not Cæsar, or the State, is the supreme authority, to whose tribunal the decision with respect to matrimony belongs. He pronounces the vital principle of marriage to be the making twain one flesh, and expre ly declares that it is by God’s joining them together that this blending of their nature takes effect, and that the contract, once made, is on this account inviolable; nay, he declares it to be an exempt jurisdiction reserved by God exclusively to himself, and not to be modified, or in any respect invaded, by human authority. Man’s law indeed may couple male and female together; but as the Church declares, on the authority of our Lord , it is their being joined together by God , and as God’s law doth allow, that in his sight makes their matrimony lawful. Indeed, the Scriptures from first to last envelope this union with a sacred and mysterious solemnity. The first marriage, that of Adam and Eve, God himself solemnized, even God , who, by that very act, instituted the ordinance, and stamped it as Divine, and not a mere human contract. The whole proceeding, with respect to the marriage of Adam and Eve, is related under circumstances calculated to awaken the most solemn attention. As to the other creatures of his hand, they were produced by a fiat of the Almighty will, (male and female of every species,) a corporeal and instinctive adaptation to herd together being the bounds of their perfection. But in the case of the human species, a very different course was observed. Man is first formed, a splendidly gifted creature, who soon is made to feel his social wants, (by a survey of all God’s creatures mated except himself,) and to expre , by a plaintive reference to his own comparative destitution, how desolate he was even in Paradise, being alone in the garden of delights; and how hopele was the search for a helpmeet for him throughout the whole compa of hitherto animated nature. Then it is that God puts his last finish to the visible universe by his own wonderful counsel for supplying the deficiency. He takes from man’s own substance the material from which his second self is to be formed; as the term employed by Moses imports, he works upon it with the skill of a profound artificer; and having framed and modelled out of it, after man’s own image, softened and refined, but still retaining its Divine similitude, the grace of social life, he himself brings her to him to be his bosom counsellor and partner of his joys, (for cares and sorrows he, as yet, had none,) knitting them together, and pouring on them the most precious benedictions. Thus was the marriage first solemnized by the great God himself. And even so do his amba adors now; they , as an ancient writer observes, they, as the representatives of God , come forth to the persons who are to be joined together, to confirm this their sacred covenant by the offering up of holy prayers. By Canon 62, it is enjoined that no minister shall join persons in marriage in any private place, but either in the churches or chapels where one of them dwelleth, and likewise in time of Divine service. (See Banns .) An uniformity of principle prevails throughout the sacred Scriptures, and to the sacredne of the marriage contract frequent allusions are made. Thus Israel is said to have been married to the Lord ; and idolatry (that is, the following of the gods of the heathens) is represented as adultery, a breach of the covenant between God and Israel. God’s reproofs to them for their infidelity are sharpened by the recollection of their marriage relation with him. The state of believers in this world is compared by the apostle Paul to the time that used to elapse between the betrothing and the actual marriage among the Jews; nay, St. Paul goes further, he alludes to this sacred contract as a type or representation of the mysterious love of Jesus to his Church. For our Lord forsook his heavenly Father , and did cleave unto our nature, becoming one flesh with us, giving to the Church his Spirit for a dowry, and heaven for a jointure, feeding her at his table, adorning her by his grace, and protecting her by his power; and from this love of Christ to his spouse, the Church, are many converts begotten unto God through the gospel, and (born again of water and the Holy Ghost ) they become heirs of glory. Thus honoured is the marriage contract, by being made an emblem of so Divine and mysterious a mercy. It was indeed to hallow the rite by this application that St. Paul wrote, since in the pa age referred to he was arguing against certain seducers who would have disfigured Christianity by imputing to it the forbidding of its disciples to marry. He shows, on the contrary, that marriage, so far from having any discredit cast upon it by the gospel, is advanced in honour. He describes, indeed, the ministerial office to consist in espousing the Church to Christ ; and St. John, in the Apocalypse, depicts the consummation of all things as the marriage of the Lamb and his wife, the beatific union between Christ and his redeemed ones, between God and the Church, when the Church has been cleansed and sanctified, and become a glorious Church, without spot or wrinkle, or any such thing.