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 sacredness 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 passage 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.
MATTHEW, ST., THE EVANGELIST’S DAY. A festival of the Christian Church, observed on the 21st of September.
St. Matthew, the son of Alpheus, was also called Levi. He was of Jewish original, as both his names discover, and probably a Galilean. Before his call to the apostolate, he was a publican or tollgatherer to the Romans; an office of bad repute among the Jews, on account of the covetousness and exaction of those who managed it. St. Matthew’s office particularly consisted in gathering the customs of all merchandise that came by the sea of Galilee, and the tribute that passengers were to pay who went by water. And here it was that Matthew sat at the “receipt of custom,” when our Saviour called him to be a disciple. It is probable, that, living at Capernaum, the place of Christ’s usual residence, he might have some knowledge of him before he was called.
Matthew immediately expressed his satisfaction, in being called to this high dignity, by entertaining our Saviour and his disciples at a great dinner at his own house, whither he invited all his friends, especially those of his own profession, hoping, probably, that they might be influenced by the company and conversation of Christ.
St. Matthew continued with the rest of the apostles till after our Lord’s ascension. For the first eight years afterwards he preached in Judea. Then he betook himself to propagating the gospel among the Gentiles, and chose Ethiopia as the scene of his apostolical ministry; where it is said he suffered martyrdom, but by what kind of death is altogether uncertain. It is pretended, but without any foundation, that Hyrtacus, king of Ethiopia, desiring to marry Iphigenia, the daughter of his brother and predecessor Æglippus, and the apostle having represented to him that he could not lawfully do it, the enraged prince ordered his head immediately to be cut off.
MATTHEW’S, ST., GOSPEL. A canonical book of the New Testament. (See the preceding article.)
St. Matthew wrote his Gospel in Judea, at the request of those he had converted. It is thought he began this work about the year 41, eight years after our Saviour’s resurrection. Irenæus thinks he wrote it whilst St. Peter and St. Paul were preaching at Rome. It was written (according to the testimony of all the ancients) in the Hebrew or Syriac language, which was then common in Judea.
The true Hebrew Gospel of St. Matthew is no longer in being anywhere, as far as can be discovered. Those printed by Sebastian Munster, and du Tillet, are modern, and translated into Hebrew from the Latin or Greek.
The Greek version of St. Matthew’s Gospel, and which at this day passes for the original, is as old as the apostolical times. The author is unknown. Some ascribe it to St. Matthew himself; others, to St. James the less, bishop of Jerusalem; others, to St. John the evangelist, or to St. Paul, or to St. Luke, or to St. Barnabas.