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Untitled Article
of my two remedial principles was the law , the divine law of the land , in which Christians lived ; and in any land it would be a noble protection for woman , and a powerful restraint on licentiousness . The second principle restricts the facility of divorce allowed to the Jews , even more than it was restricted by the words to which my Correspondent referred . ( Matt . xix . 5—9 . ) For I must observe , that our Lord is not here speaking of divorce by mutual agreement , or by
adjudication ; neither one nor the other ; but simply of divorce by the arbitrary and individual will of the husband . He restricts that to one case . But as I do not perceive that he meant to enjoin it in the single case to which he restricted it , I am against its existence at all . I think that in no case should a man be allowed to put away his wife , without the intervention of the proper authorities , although unhappily thousands of men In this country do put away those who ( in my view ) are their wives in a moral , as they should be in a If gal sense .
Having already made the reference in the Monthly Repository , I need not repeat that this is the exposition of the highest authority on such a subject , Michaelis on the Laws of Moses . My venerable Correspondent says , he is * an advocate for making marriage , as respects the law of the land , simply a civil contract , leaving it to the parties engaging in it to connect with it
whatever religious service they think proper , and of course not making it compulsory to connect any . ' Very just ; and herein is contained all that has been affirmed in the Monthly Repository . A simple civil contract cannot be independent of civil regulation . Civil authoiity can cease to enforce , or interpose to annuL it , when so required by adequate considerations of public or private good . The necessity of enforcing a contract where no party concerned objects to
a release , and the parties most concerned desire it , is a notion too incongruous to endure in the world but as upheld by the misapplication
of that religious sanction which has upheld so many incongruities in human credence . I agree that * this opinion has no relation to the wisdom and consistency with Christianity , of making its duration depend on taste and temper / except this relation , that it leaves that , with other considerations , for civil regulation . He continues : 4 One among the greatest moral advantages of the conjugal relation , is the discipline it gives to the principles and the character ; and this would be greatly impeded , if divorce were easy in law and free from dishonour . ' Why ,
so we might say of sickness , but it would surely be iin unsound philosophy to deprecate an increased facility of cure . Or , shall we try the argument upon the condition of slavery , which has , no doubt , some moral discipline in it . The simple substitution of the word will suffice . The proof will stand thus : One among the greatest advantages of the " Jugal relation , " is the discipline it gives to the principles and the character ; and this would be greatly impeded if emancipation were easy in law and free from dishonour . ' It is said , that if divorce were legal ,
it would be disreputable . So much the better . It is , no doubt , in itself a great evil , and the aeldomer it occurs the better . The tendency of all that has been said in the Monthly Repository is to make divorce ( a legal separation ) much rarer than separation ( an illegal divorce ) is now . This point was particularly argued by 'Junius Redivivus / p . 228—230 , and yet there has been talk of a tendency to throw down No . 77 . 2 C )
Untitled Article
A LetUr . 353
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), May 2, 1833, page 353, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2614/page/65/
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