So it is; but
that is exactly what makes divorce a duty when the marriage has
lost the inward and spiritual grace of which the marriage ceremony
is the outward and visible sign. In vain do bishops stoop to pick
up the discarded arguments of the atheists of fifty years ago by
pleading that the words of Jesus were in an obscure Aramaic
dialect, and were probably misunderstood, as Jesus, they think,
could not have said anything a bishop would disapprove of. Unless
they are prepared to add that the statement that those who take
the sacrament with their lips but not with their hearts eat and
drink their own damnation is also a mistranslation from the
Aramaic, they are most solemnly bound to shield marriage from
profanation, not merely by permitting divorce, but by making it
compulsory in certain cases as the Chinese do.
When the great protest of the XVI century came, and the Church was
reformed in several countries, the Reformation was so largely a
rebellion against sacerdotalism that marriage was very nearly
excommunicated again: our modern civil marriage, round which so
many fierce controversies and political conflicts have raged,
would have been thoroughly approved of by Calvin, and hailed with
relief by Luther.
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