The Sun.
London, England, 1857-08-01 00:00:00

posed, they all agreed upon the one essential point—
that was whether the words of exception in St. Matthew
referred to a particular law of the Jews, which was tran-
sitory in its character, and which, being so, did not ap-
ply to Christians. That was the vital—the essential
p drit, and in that respect he (Mr. Gladetene) contended
all the three constructions agreed. If they interpreted
it to mean idolatry, or apostacy, or adultery, or mar-
riage ei ith a foreign person, they remit remember that
the Jews had particular laws of their own, and which-
ever construction of the word rofveia was advanced,
it was capable of being made conformable with the law
of the Jews, but had no bearing urn Christians. But
when his hon. and learned friend talked of discrepancies
between those who held that the best interpretation of
scripture was that which made marriage indissoluble, he
would ask him to consider the discussions between those
who supported the contrary view. Hera was a bill pro-
fessing to rest on the authority of scripture. Two hon.
gentlemen had spoken in favour of it, his hon. and
learned friend the Attorney-Geaeral and the hon. MOM-
bet for Hertfordshire. The hon. member for forts
founded his argument on the verse in the sth of Mat-
thew ; but the Attorney-General threw that verse over-
board altogether. His hon. and learned friend used
words so remarkable that he must quote them : " The
argument was, that as the excsotion in St. Matthew was
not found in St. Mark, or in St. Luke, that therefore
the rule in St. Mark and St. Luke be taken to be the
binding rule. But it never seemed to strike those wlio
advanced this argument that the reasonable deduction
was that our Saviour, in addressing those who were con-
versant with and were bound by the Jewish law, thought
it requisite in one place to say that he excepted the else
which was provided for by the Jewish law, but thought
it unnecessary in another place to introduce the ex:ep-
tional case, because adultery in the Jewish law was not
a case for divorce, but was subject to criminal punish-
ment. Our Saviour was condemning those things which
were divorces among the Jews, and adultery was not
a case for divorce according to the Jewish law, but
for criminal punishment." The honourable member
for Hertfordshire said, on the contrary, that that verso
in St. Matthew did cen3titute a real exception and
that the adultery mentioned in the verse did constitute
a ground for divorce applicable to us for a precedent,
but the hon. and learned Attorney-General, in flat con-
tradiction to that, threw the verse overboard, and en- I
deavoured to show that it could not have any bearing
on the question, because the manner of dealing with
adultery according to the law of the Jews was not by
divorce but by capital punishment. So much for the
harmony on scriptural interpretation of the only two
gentlemen who had ventured to speak in support of the
bill. It was not to be dissembled that much diversity
of opinion prevailed as to the true construction of
Scripture ao bearing upon this question. Some thought
the prohibition, of divorce—that is divorce carrying with
it the power of re-marriage—was absolute ; others con-
sidered there was a permission in Scripture for re-
marriage after divorce in the case of adultery alone,
but limited to the innocent man, and not extended to
the innocent woman. That he believed was the most
ancient opinion in the church after the doctrine of indis-
solubility. There were others who went further thee
this, and gave the right of re-marriage to both the inno-
cent man and the innocent woman. Again, there were
some who on Scriptural authority, gave the liberty of
marriage to both parties after divorce for adultery.
There was another body of persons—and this was the
view adopted in the Scotch law—who gave it to both
parties, ti Nether innocent or guilty, provided there
was no intermarriage between the guilty parties.
There was a sixth party that permitted such inter-
marriages ; a eleventh that considered the Scripture
granted liberty of divorce and re-marriage in case of adul-
tery and also in case of desertion. But the great pecu-
liarity of the present bill was this. He had given seven
different constructions of Scripture on the point, all of
them having some champions and advocates. He did
not say they were any of them supported by sound
argument ; but the peculiarity of the bill was that it
agreed with neither of the seven. (Hear, hear, and a
laugh.) There was, he believed, a feeling amongst cer-
tain religious people that our marriage law was drawn
too tight ; that by relaxing it in the manner hers pro-
posed they would make it square with Scripture ; and
that if that point could be established it was felt that it
would be a conclusive argument for the bill. But no
one could show that it squared with Scripture by any
construction that could be put upon it. What did the
bi Ido I It relieved—he must so speak of it, he sup-
posed, though the relief was more than doubtful—it gave
relief to the man in case of tie woman's adultery, and it
gave relief, not in ca-e of the man's adultery, but of the
man's adultery under very rare and peculiar circum-
stances. (Hear, hear.) Let them take the authority
of Scripture as given in that house. The Attorney-
General had invited them to force his construction upon
the consciences of 17,000 clergymen. Let them see
how his hon, and learned friend's construction agreed
with his bill. His hon. and learned friend threw over
the verse in St. Matthew, but found another for his pur-
pose—that in which our Lord said, "They twain shall
be one flesh, whereupon they were no more twain, but
one flesh." And his hon. and learned friend said that
by the fact of adultery the bond was broken. Was
that the sense of the Serip:ure I No, it was an arbitrary
sense put on the words by his hon. and learned friend
—a construction put upon them perhaps by Archbishop
Cranmer, and which had been to them an advocate, but
which was not supported by any weight of authority,
and which it was impossible to defend against those who
would press upon his hon, and learned friend for further
changes in the law of marriage if this bill passed. It
was a most arbitrary rule, founded on the notion that
the bond of marriage was so affected by adultery that
it ex.;eted no longer. There were many causes far more
fatal to the great obligations of marriage, as disease,
idiocy, crime involving imprisonment for life, and which,
if the bond were so dissoluble, might be urged as a reason
for divorce ; hut that was not what he would dwell upon
at present. His hon. and learned friend said by the fact
of the adultery the marriage bond was destroyed, and
then he asked the house to pass a bill under which nine-
teen out of every twenty adulterers in the land would he
covered with perfect immunity. (Hear, hear ) The
enormous majority of adulteries were adulteries of men ;
and having shown that the adultery destroyed the mar-
riage bond, his hon. and learned friend immediately de-
manded a license to destroy nineteen-twentieths of the
propositions he laid down. (Hear, hear.) His hon. and
learned friend commenced at once child murder upon his
own bill—(" hear" and laughter)—for he justified it
from Scripture that marriage could not exist after adul-
tery, and then he proceeded to pass a law to compel
cohabitation, when according to his own showing, in
nineteen out of twenty cases the parties were no longer
married. (Hear.) Such was the mode in which Scripture
was handled by Attorney-Generals, and in which they in•
vited the house to repose in them confidence so implicit that
you are to force their construction on the consciences of
the clergy, who, if they say it is contrary to their vows,
were to be humanely told to go and obey. He had yet
to learn if marriage was destroyed ipso facto by the adul-
tery of the husband ; how coul f they say to the wife,
"You have ceased to be married to your adulterou hus-
band, but we nevertheless compel you to live with him."
There was this difference between his mode of construing
Scripture and the Attorney-General's—that he (Ma.
Gladstone) did not ask the house to stand upon any ar-
gument, ingenious or not ingenious, be might cinstruct
from any text. The lights of history, the records of an-
tiquity, the lives of those who followed our blessed Lord
had immense weight, in his view, in determining the
true sense of scriptural authority. The hon. and learded
member for Dundalk had given hie construction of the
scriptural authority, which it was difficult to answer
(though he had not, as his hon, and learned friend the
Attorney-General had anticipated, quoted the Council of
Trent.) With regard to the main point in the case, they
had wiLle them the authority of his hon. and learned
friend the Attorney-General—and he was a host in him-
self. Those who proved the lax interpretations from
Scripture on the verse of St. Matthew, the Attorney-
General threw overboard. He (Mr. Gladstone) would,
however, venture to point out this, that if they took the
text of St. Matthew as giving a license of marriage
after adultery, they placed St, Matthew in conflict
on the point with the other Evangelista and St,
Paul. The Gospel of St. Matthew was written for
the Jews, and probably in Hebrew ; the Gospels of
St. Mark and St. Luke were written for foreigners and
Gentiles. There was no reason for saying that the Gus
pel of St. Matthew was known to the Gentiles, and yet
according to that and the doctrine of the hoc, member
for Hertford, this essential and vital point in the Chris-
tian
law of marriage—whether it might be dissolved for
adultery—a most important matter in the application
of Christianity into the disordered society of Rome, when
the relations of the sexes was most dissolute, was kept
a secret from them for many generations, and never pro-
claimed to them—bat on the understanding of the A ttor-
nay-General as to Mark that it was not mentioned then -I
because they addressed the Jews, who punished it
criminally, they had St. Matthew in harmony with St.
Mark and St. Luke, who addressed the Gentile, and for '
whom the law, as addressed to the Jews, would have
had no meaning. The member for Herta said that the
punishment of death was not inflicted by the Jewish
law except the parties were discovered in flagrante de-
flate,. The hon. member was the first that had made I
that discovery. If he would look to the chapter of
Deuteronomy touching upon adultery, he would see I
that the punishment of death was to be inflicted on the
incontinence not merely of a married person, but of one
even who was betrothed. History, historical testimony, I
and the primitive and early testimony of the Christian
church, was vital in this case. He therefore hOmbly
propounded this as the true construction of the verse of
St. Matthew. Our Lord was speaking to the Jews, and I
as the Jewish law provided the punishment of death in
case of a lultsry,
it was impossible the verse could
refer to re-marriage during the life of the parties.
With regard to history, he made this proposition
boldly, that for the first 300 years we hod not a shred or
vestige of divorce with re-marriage for any cause what-
ever. The tendency of the early church was to forbid,
to prohibit second marriages in ad cause whatever. This
was clear fromall the early writers. But they had
higher authority than writers ; they had the law of the
church ; they had the Christian code and the apostolic
canons, The apostolic canons, which were the law of
the church, said if a layman divorce his wife and marry
another, or marry a wife divorced by another, let him bs
separated from the church. There was one exception in
the writers of the early church, Origen, who expressed
an opinion which was the first sign of a greater laxity,
that the innoceut husband whose wife was divorced for
adultery might be permitted to re-marry. After the
three first centuries of Christianity they began to find a
change ; and in the writings of Lactantius it was ldd
down that the innocent husband of a wife divorced for
adultery might re-marry. When the (-ally Christian;
was held to be ie
were:an isolated ao, seingewerned society, marriage
the heath,- ""`
them, that society to a cor-
e., society aroundtat-the laws of Christianity-
- extent left its mark on
life,
but to lower its tone.
not so far as to effect its
was the most powerful
Which of the Clnistian churches
;iissoluble; but when they mixed with