I have thought this analysis of the ten commandmentsin their deepest principles, inadequate as it is, might be worth making, partly because I cannot feel altogether satisfied with such as are commonly current,[94] partly because the attempt to make such an analysis deepens in my own mind the conviction that if the ten commandments were not—as our Lord teaches us they were not—perfect, they were none the less, in the truest sense, “the word of God,” for the moral education of His chosen people, and through them of the human race. Their principles are extraordinarily complete and suggestive, and there is no early moral legislation which seems to me to be even comparable to them.
APPENDIX III
THE DUTY OF THE CHURCH IN REGARD TO DIVORCE
ABOVE, in the text of the exposition, it has been maintained (1) that Christ, by a distinct act of legislation, prohibited divorce among His disciples in such sense as allows of remarriage, except in the case of the adultery of one of the parties, in which case He did not prohibit it; but (2) that the Church law and tradition in England, as in the whole Western Church, maintains the absolute indissolubility of the marriage tie. Both propositions, however, are denied, and it is necessary to make some remarks upon the respective denials.
1. The present tendency of those who deny that Christ’s words, as repeated on two occasions in St. Matthew’s Gospel, allow the remarriage of the innocent party after divorce for adultery is—abandoning with good cause the older arguments (1) that πορνεία only applies to prenuptial sin: (2) that the words as quoted in St. Matthew were only intended to apply to the Jews—to lay stress upon the uncertainty of the text in St. Matt. xix where the words occur “and shall marry another.” To this it may be replied (i) that it is strange to find people not generally recognized as very advanced textual critics going, in this single case, further than even Dr. Hort ventured to go, in maintaining the textual authority of the Vatican manuscript, which alone among the great uncials omits the clause; (ii) that it would appear sufficiently obvious that the variation of thetext in this passage is due to assimilation to the similar passage in chapter v; (iii) that it is not time to deprive people of the right to appeal to an accepted text until some trustworthy editors have been found to venture to remove it from its place; (iv) that the sense remains the same in any case. For the text, as given in chapter v, or in chapter xix with the words “and shall marry another” omitted, yet carries the liberty to do so, see text given above, [pp. 72, 73.] Divorce, as understood by the Jews, meant divorce a vinculo, i.e. divorce with liberty of remarriage. Is any sane man prepared to say that divorce, in the sense of separation of a wife from bed and board, without liberty of remarriage, is only permissible to a Christian when the wife has been adulterous?
I do not think then that the obvious force of the passages in St. Matthew can be dissolved.
2. On the other hand, admitting all that can be said as to the difficulty, which is due to the historical relation of Church and State in England, of saying what is Church law pure and simple, it does seem to me that the Western law of divorce, as distinct from the Eastern, was accepted by the English Church and not only never repudiated, but at least assumed to be permanent in the Post-Reformation Canons. What has happened since then is (1) that the opinion of a great number of the best English divines and commentators on St. Matthew has been expressed in favour of allowing the remarriage of the “innocent party” after a divorce for adultery; (2) that the Lambeth Conference of 1888 allowed such remarriage; (3) that statute law in England has recently allowed the remarriage of both innocent and guilty party.
But the Lambeth Conference only expresses the opinion (however weighty) of a gathering of Anglican bishops. It cannot legislate for the Church of England. And the legislation which has taken placeis purely civil legislation made from a civil point of view and going beyond what the Lambeth Conference would allow. And on such a matter as marriage which lies at the heart of our religious life it seems quite unreasonable to ask Christian people to accept this, as authority sufficient to upset an ancient practice of the Church.
Granted then (1) that Christ did not prohibit[95] the remarriage of an innocent party after a divorce for adultery, (2) that the unaltered Church law of England does prohibit it, it seems to me that the best course is not, at least in the present state of Church feeling, to alter the Church law on the matter, up to the point which Christ allows, by getting leave for Convocation to make a new Canon—though this would be a course to which no one could take just exception—but to retain and observe the Church law, allowing no remarriage with the rites of the Church, but simply leaving it to bishops to act on the decision of the Lambeth Conference as far as admission to communion is concerned.
This refusal to allow remarriage in churches may involve some collision with statute law till an equitable concession to our principles is accorded. But the difficulty is not greater than has been overcome by a little resolution in the case of the Public Worship Regulation Act. If in the process of the controversy the institution of compulsory civil marriage here in England, with the same publicity as in most foreign countries, to be followed by a voluntary religious ceremony, becomes a more likely event, there would be a good many Churchmen who would not regret it.
As regards the allowance of remarriage to the innocent party after a divorce for adultery, it issometimes pointed out that it is only explicitly allowed by our Lord to the innocent husband. But it is, I submit, at least competent to the Church to interpret this in the more lenient sense as extending to the aggrieved wife also. It is more often urged that it is illogical to forbid to the guilty party what is allowed to the innocent—that if declared adultery dissolves the marriage tie for either, it does so for both. To this I should only reply that our Lord appears on the matter to be legislating rather than laying down a principle. His legislation covers the one exception but not (with any degree of clearness) the other. He appears to be sanctioning in the case of an innocent and deeply aggrieved person a dispensation which violates the logic of the marriage tie on grounds of equity: but this carries with it no necessary consequence of a similar dispensation in favour of the chief offender.