DIVORCE

A separation of a married man and woman by the sentence of an ecclesiastical judge qualified to pronounce the same. Among us, divorces are of two kinds, à mensâ et thoro , from bed and board; and à vinculo matrimonii , from the marriage tie. The former neither di olves the marriage, nor debars the woman of her dower, nor bastardizes the i ue; but the latter absolutely di olves the marriage contract, making it void from the very beginning. The causes of a divorce à mensâ et thoro are adultery, cruelty of the husband, .; those of a divorce à vinculo matrimonii , precontract, consanguinity, impotency, . On this divorce the dower is gone, and the children, if any begotten, bastardized. On a divorce for adultery, some acts of parliament have allowed the innocent person to marry again. DOCETÆ. Heretics, so called ἀπὸ τοῦ δοκέειν ( apparere ), because they taught that our Lord had only a seeming body, and that his actions and sufferings were not in reality, but in appearance. There was in the second century a sect which especially bore this name; but the Docetic error was common to many kinds of Gnostics. (See Gnostics .)