The corro

borative

the subsequent testimony.

witnesses to the illegality of the union, and content

character of ourselves, as the fact is not disputed, with the briefest summary. After the fourth century a succession of Provincial Councils and Local Synods indorsed the restrictions; some for one degree, some for another, some again for all three. The first was called at Rome by Innocent I., 402 A.D., to consult upon a variety of questions which had been submitted to him by the Gallican bishops. The answers were made in the form of Canons, the ninth of which ruled that "no Christian may marry his deceased wife's sister, nor besides his wife have a concubine." The same marriage, as also that with a niece, was pronounced incestuous by the Council of Agde in 506 a.d. This century was marked also by numerous canonical decrees on the same lines: at Orleans in 511, 538, and 541 A.D.; Epaone, 517 A.D.; Auvergne, 533 A.D.; Paris, 557 A.D.; Tours, 567 A.D.; and in several other places.2 In the East, the Council in Trullo, which is regarded as oecumenical by that branch of the Church, the Canons of Basil were accepted and renewed.

1 Mansi, iii. 1133; Hefele, ii. 429, Clark's Transl.

2 Auxerre, Auvergne, Metz, Mayence, and Arles. The constant reiteration of the Canons points to attempts at evasion, but no less at a determination to uphold the law.

Many of these ecclesiastical decisions embraced, no doubt, other restrictions based upon spiritual as well as natural relationships, and multiplied impediments unauthorised by Scripture, but we are not now concerned with these. All we desire to show is, that the three prohibitions which we undertook to consider were never relaxed for at least fourteen centuries.

VIII.

Ecclesiastical Prohibitions not based

on Scripture.

OBJECTIONS have been frequently raised to the authority of the Church on the ground that she has imposed at times restrictions which have been abandoned as untenable.

We shall be able to show that there is a broad line of demarcation between such restrictions and the prohibited degrees which are under our immediate consideration; and not only so, but that the Church in her mode of dealing with them clearly recognised the distinction. Take, for instance, the legitimacy of second marriages. There is no doubt that a marriages. tendency to discourage these is discernible in the

The legitimacy of second

Church, even from the earliest times. It arose out of two causes: first, the desire to restore what was thought by some to have been the primitive ideal of marriage; and secondly, the growth of asceticism, denouncing every form of self-gratification.

When God knit together our first parents, the terms in which He instituted the union appeared to favour the idea that it was indissoluble, and of such a kind that the formation of a second would mar its integrity. The chosen people were satisfied with a far lower conception of it, and by the time when Christ came, the marriage contract had lost every element of permanence, and was broken again and again at the husband's caprice to satisfy his carnal lust and appetite. The Ideal Man, the Restorer of the primal morality, took them back in His teaching, whenever He broached the subject, to the original standard, and this, together with S. Paul's personal discouragement of second marriages, had a marked effect upon the early Church. Such unions were permissible, but they did not, in the opinion of the Apostle, betoken the highest estimate of marriage. "The wife is bound by the law as long as her husband liveth; but if her husband be dead, she is at liberty to be married to whom she will; only in the Lord. But she is happier if she so abide, after my judgment; and I think also that I have the Spirit of God." 1

Thus Hermas, one of the Apostolic Fathers, gives 1 1 Cor. vii. 39, 40.

testimony.

Patristic his opinion in almost the selfsame language, saying of one whose wife was dead, that if he marries again, "he does not sin, but if he remains by himself, he gains to himself great honour with the Lord." 1

Clement of Alexandria writes in the same spirit: "The Apostle grants to a man leave for a second marriage: for he does not sin; but he does not fulfil that highest perfection which is found in the Gospel." 2

Tertullian was a persistent opponent of second marriages, regarding them as hindrances to holiness, but admitting their legality, though he fell at last into heresy, and denounced them as "a species of fornication." 3

Origen, while admitting that those who marry a second time are in a state of salvation, refuses to give to them the crown of benediction. This was

4

1 Non peccat, sed si per se manserit, magnum sibi conquiret honorem apud Dominum.-Lib. ii. Mandat. 4.

2 Apostolus veniam secundi concedit matrimonii: nam hic quoque non peccat non implet autem summam illam vitæ perfectionem, quæ agitur ex Evangelio.-Strom. iii. c. xii.

...

3 De Uxorem, i. 7; De exhortatione castitatis, ix.

4 The crowning, especially in the East, was an important part of the marriage ceremony. Both bridegroom and bride were crowned by the priest; one of the common forms being, "With glory and honour hast Thou crowned them, Thou hast set crowns of precious stones upon their heads."-Goar's Eucholog. 396.