SECTION 39.

MATRIMONY.

XXXIV. The last of their sacraments is matrimony, which all confess to have been instituted by God, but which no one, till the time of Gregory, ever discovered to have been enjoined as a sacrament. And what man, in his sober senses, would ever have taken it into his head? It is alleged to be a good and holy ordinance of God; and so agriculture, architecture, shoemaking, and many other things, are legitimate ordinances of God, and yet they are not sacraments. For it is required in a sacrament, not only that it be a work of God, but that it be an external ceremony appointed by God for the confirmation of a promise. That there is nothing of this kind in matrimony even children can judge. But, they say, it is a sign of a sacred thing, that is, of the spiritual union of Christ with the Church. If by the word sign, they mean a symbol presented to us by God to support our faith, they are very far from the truth. If by a sign they merely understand that which is adduced as a similitude, I will show how acutely they reason. Paul says, “One star differeth from another star in glory: so also is the resurrection of the dead.”

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Here is one sacrament. Christ says, “The kingdom of heaven is like to a grain of mustard seed.” Here is another. Again: “The kingdom of heaven is like unto leaven.”

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Here is a third. Isaiah says, “Behold, the Lord shall feed his flock like a shepherd.”

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Here is a fourth. Again: “The Lord shall go forth as a mighty man.”

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Here is a fifth. And what end will there be? Upon this principle, every thing will be a sacrament; as many parables and similitudes as there are in the Scripture, there will be so many sacraments. Even theft will be a sacrament; because it is written, “The day of the Lord cometh as a thief.”

[1396]

Who can bear the foolish babblings of these sophists? I confess indeed, that, whenever we see a vine, it is very desirable to recall to remembrance the language of Christ: “I am the vine, ye are the branches, and my Father is the husbandman.”

[1397]

Whenever we meet a shepherd with his flock, it is good for us to remember another declaration of our Lord: “I am the good shepherd: the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep.”

[1398]

But if any one should class such similitudes among the sacraments, it would argue a want of mental sanity.

XXXV. They obtrude upon us the language of Paul, in which, they say, he expressly calls matrimony a sacrament. “He that loveth his wife, loveth himself. For no man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the Church; for we are members of his body, of his flesh, and his bones; for this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh. This is a great mystery (or sacrament, as the word is rendered in the Vulgate;) but I speak concerning Christ and the Church.”

[1399]

But to treat the Scriptures in this manner, is to confound heaven and earth together. To show to husbands what peculiar affection they ought to bear to their wives, Paul proposes Christ to them as an example. For as he has poured forth all the treasures of his kindness upon the Church, which he had espoused to himself, so the apostle would have every man to evince a similar affection towards his wife. It follows, “He that loveth his wife, loveth himself; even as the Lord the Church.” Now, to declare how Christ has loved the Church, even as himself, and how he has made himself one with the Church his spouse, Paul applies to him what Moses relates Adam to have spoken of himself. For when Eve was brought into his presence, knowing her to have been formed out of his side, he said, “This is bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh.”

[1400]

Paul testifies that all this has been spiritually fulfilled in Christ and us, when he says, “We are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones,” and consequently “one flesh” with him. At length he concludes with an exclamation, “This is a great mystery;” and, that no one might be deceived by an ambiguity of language, he expressly states, that he intends not the conjugal union of man and woman, but the spiritual marriage of Christ and his Church: “I speak concerning Christ and the Church.” And, indeed, it is a great mystery that Christ has suffered a rib to be taken from him, of which we might be formed: that is to say, though he was strong, he voluntarily became weak, that we might be strengthened with his might; so that now we “live, yet not” we, “but Christ liveth in” us.

[1401]

XXXVI. They have been deceived by the word sacrament in the Vulgate version. But was it reasonable that the whole Church should suffer the punishment of their ignorance? Paul has used the word μυστηριον, mystery—a word which the translator might have retained, mysterium being not unfamiliar to Latin ears, or he might have rendered it arcanum, secret; he preferred, however, to use the word sacramentum, sacrament, but in the same sense in which Paul has used the Greek word μυστηριον, mystery. Now, let them go and clamorously rail against the critical knowledge of languages, through ignorance of which they have so long been most shamefully deceived in a thing so easy and obvious to every one. But why do they so strenuously insist on the word sacrament in this one passage, and pass it over in so many others without the least notice? For that translator has used it twice in the First Epistle to Timothy,

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and in another place in this Epistle to the Ephesians,

[1403]

and in every other case where the word mystery occurs. Let this oversight, however, be forgiven them; liars ought, at least, to have good memories. For, after having dignified matrimony with the title of a sacrament, what brainless versatility is it for them to stigmatize it with the characters of impurity, pollution, and carnal defilement! What an absurdity is it to exclude priests from a sacrament! If they deny that they are interdicted from the sacrament, but only from the conjugal intercourse, I shall not be satisfied with this evasion. For they inculcate that the conjugal intercourse itself is part of the sacrament, and that it represents the union which we have with Christ in conformity of nature; because it is by that intercourse that a husband and wife become one flesh. Here some of them have found two sacraments; one, of God and the soul, in the man and woman when betrothed; the other, of Christ and the Church, in the husband and wife. The conjugal intercourse, upon their principles, however, is a sacrament, from which no Christian ought to be prohibited; unless the sacraments of Christians are so incompatible, that they cannot consist together. There is also another absurdity in their doctrine. They affirm that the grace of the Holy Spirit is conferred in every sacrament; they acknowledge that the conjugal intercourse is a sacrament; yet they deny that the Holy Spirit is ever present in that intercourse.

XXXVII. And, not to deceive the Church in one thing only, what a long series of errors, falsehoods, frauds, and iniquities, have they joined to that false principle! It may truly be affirmed that, when they made matrimony into a sacrament, they only sought a den of all abominations. For, when they had once established this notion, they assumed to themselves the cognizance of matrimonial causes; for matrimony was a spiritual thing, and not to be meddled with before lay judges. Then they made laws for the confirmation of their tyranny; and some of them manifestly impious towards God, and others most unjust towards men. Such as, that marriages contracted between young persons subject to the authority of parents, without the consent of their parents, remain valid and permanent; that no marriages be lawful between persons related, even to the seventh degree; and that, if any such be contracted, they be dissolved, (and the degrees themselves they state in opposition to the laws of all nations, and to the institution of Moses, so that what they call the fourth degree is, in reality, the seventh;) that it be unlawful for a man, who has repudiated his wife for adultery, to marry another; that spiritual relatives be not united in marriage; that no marriages be celebrated from Septuagesima, or the third Sunday before Lent, to the octaves of Easter, or eight days after that festival; for three weeks before the nativity of John the Baptist, or Midsummer-day, instead of which three weeks they now substitute the Whitsun week, and the two weeks which precede it; or from Advent to the Epiphany; and innumerable other regulations, which it would be tedious to enumerate. We must now quit their corruptions, in which we have been detained longer than I could wish: but I think I have gained some advantage by stripping these asses, in some measure, of the lion’s skin, and so far unmasking their principles, and exposing them to the world in their true colours.