Christian Marriage Indissoluble: A Plain Sermon / Preached at Archbishop Tenison's chapel, on the fifth Sunday after Trinity, 1857
Date: 2021-03-07T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Sermons; English -- 19th century; Marriage -- Biblical teaching; Divorce -- Religious aspects -- Church of England; Marriage -- Religious aspects -- Church of England; Remarriage -- Religious aspects -- Church of England

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Title: Christian Marriage Indissoluble: A Plain Sermon

Author: James Galloway Cowan

Release date: March 7, 2021 [eBook #64733]
Most recently updated: October 18, 2024

Language: English

Credits: Transcribed from the 1857 William Skeffington edition

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHRISTIAN MARRIAGE INDISSOLUBLE: A PLAIN SERMON ***

Transcribed from the 1857 William Skeffington edition.

CHRISTIAN MARRIAGE
INDISSOLUBLE.

A Plain Sermon

PREACHED AT

ARCHBISHOP TENISON’S CHAPEL.

ON THE FIFTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY, 1857.

BY

JAMES GALLOWAY COWAN,
MINISTER OF THE CHAPEL.

LONDON:
WILLIAM SKEFFINGTON, 163, PICCADILLY.

1857.

Price 4d., or 2s. 6d. per doz.

The following Sermon is printed, partly because some who heard it wished to possess it, and partly because it has been suggested to me that it would be useful for distribution as a tract.  It is simply what I have called it, “a plain Sermon,” written and printed for ordinary hearers and readers.

St. Matthew, xix, 3, 4, 5, 6.

The Pharisees also came unto Him, tempting Him, and saying unto Him, Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife for every cause?

And He answered and said unto them, Have ye not read, that He which made them at the beginning made them male and female, And said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife; and they twain shall be one flesh?  Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh.  What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.

“The priest’s lips should keep knowledge, and they should seek the law at his mouth.”  This was part of the reproof which God, through the prophet Malachi,[3] administered to His priests and His people, for not teaching and not learning the divine will respecting idolatry and adultery.

The words may well arouse us, my brethren—God’s priests and God’s people—from the apathy which would neither proclaim nor seek for the teaching of the Word of God, in the time of a great moral and religious crisis.  You all know, probably, to what I allude.  There is a bill now before the Lower House of Parliament, having passed the Upper House, which proposes to make it a common law of the land, that Christian marriages may, in certain cases, be wholly dissolved, and that the divorced persons may re-marry in the lifetimes of those from whom they have been divorced.  Yea, and even more: the bill would give full liberty (designedly it would seem, from the language of its advocates) to the person whose guilt has rendered the divorce possible, to perpetuate that guilt in company with the first partner in it, and to dignify the union by the appellation of Holy Matrimony.

Now, my brethren, I could adduce many moral reasons why we should take alarm at the most distant prospect of such a state of things, and set ourselves most earnestly to work, if not to oppose it, yet at least to put it off, until we have had time to judge of its expediency and its consequences; but I take a higher stand, and I entreat you to do so—a religious stand.  The Word of God deals with the question of marriage, and legislates upon it; God prescribes the qualifications for it, the duties of it, the nature and endurance of its covenant, and the prohibitions against entering upon it.

Are you prepared, my brethren, to say that all that is now proposed as law of the land is in harmony with the law of God?  Recollect you do say so, if you do not strongly deny it and protest against it.  “He that is not with me is against me.”

God Himself deals with this whole question.  Have you so investigated the subject, as to feel convinced that man only proposes now to carry out God’s law?  If you were appealed to to petition against this bill, or to pray that it may be put off, would your refusal to do so (if you refused) be grounded upon a thorough conviction, formed from devout and careful study of God’s Word, that there was nothing religiously wrong in the measure!  No!  To many of you the trumpet has appeared to give an uncertain sound, and you have not prepared yourselves for the battle.  “The priest’s lips have not kept knowledge, and you have not sought the law at his mouth,” or anywhere else.

I say not this in idle declamation against others, dear brethren.  I exempt not myself when I say that the vast majority of God’s priests and people have long remained in strange and culpable ignorance or indifference about the teaching of God, and the occasional human legislation on this subject; and that it is only very gradually that they are being awakened, and led to the knowledge of what has Divine sanction and what has human sanction, and consequently to a correct judgment, as to what should be done at this crisis.

Let us, my brethren, awake quickly and thoroughly, while there is use in so doing.  Let us, priests and people, betake us to the Word of God, and speak and hear what is there written; and then let us go forth to be doers of that Word, according to our several abilities and opportunities.

Marriage, you know, was instituted in the time of man’s innocency.  God judged that it was not good for man to be alone; He therefore gave him a help meet for him.  That help was a creature formed, not separately and independently, but out of himself—bone of his bone, and flesh of his flesh.  And so close and dear was the union, divinely cemented between them, intended to be, that Adam was taught by God to say—and Moses to record for future men—“Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife, and they shall be one flesh.” [5]  Thus was marriage, by Divine institution, made the first and closest of human relationships.  And fresh, and higher, and holier honours were bestowed on it, when Christ made it the glorious type of His own never-to-be-broken union with His Church; calling Himself the bridegroom, her the bride; giving Himself for her, and loving and cherishing her as His own flesh; and providing that she should be presented to Him a glorious Church, not having spot or wrinkle, or any such thing; that her espousals should be celebrated by angels, and that she should be for ever with the Lord.

The history of the institution of marriage, and this exaltation of it into a type of Christ’s eternal union with the Church (so much dwelt on in some books of the Old Testament) would teach us clearly, that no divorce, save by death, was originally contemplated in the Divine mind; and this is further incontestibly proved by Christ in the language of the text—“Have ye not read, that He which made them at the beginning” (He, that is, who designed what they should be and do, and has an indisputable right to exercise His will) “made them male and female,” (male and female man, this means—imperfect parts of one being—“man,”) and joined them together, “and said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife; and they twain shall be one flesh?  Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh.  What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.”

This, brethren, is Christ the Word’s answer to the question of the Pharisees, “Whether it is lawful for a man to put away his wife for every cause.”  He refers His inquirers immediately to the original institution of marriage, as a sufficient answer, and, quoting the words then used by the Creator Himself, or dictated by His inspiration, expressive of the most entire and permanent union required between a man and his wife—words which He says make them no longer “twain, but one flesh”—He adds His own absolute, peremptory, and unqualified decree, “What therefore God has joined together, let not man put asunder.”  In this sentence, observe He makes no exception; He allows neither adultery nor any other cause, as a justification of a breach of His prohibition.  He positively forbids every human being to dissolve a union, which, as He shows, the Almighty designed to be indissoluble. [7]

His words were objected to by the Pharisees, as my interpretation of them will doubtless be by some, because in the Old Testament—in the Law given by Moses—there were distinct rules of divorce; not simply of putting away, but of marrying again.  “They say unto Him, ‘Why did Moses then command to give a writing of divorcement, and to put her away.’”  It is to these words, contained in the 24th chapter of Deuteronomy, vv. 1, 2, that the Pharisees alluded:

“When a man hath taken a wife and married her, and it come to pass that she find no favour in his eyes, because he hath found some uncleanness in her, then let him write her a bill of divorcement, and give it in her hand, and send her out of his house.  And when she is departed out of his house, she may go and be another man’s wife.”

Now this, it must be admitted, was naturally a stumbling-block to the Pharisees, preventing the easy reception of Christ’s teaching.  And yet it should have presented no permanent difficulty to teachable minds.  Was this, in Moses’s time (and since, till Christ’s), the law of God?  What of that?  God, by His prophet Jesus Christ (we can say God in His own person), now repealed that law, and reverted to His original declarations and prohibitions.  Who, then, shall perceive a contradiction in the forbidding of divorce, because it had been previously allowed, when it is the same authority which exerts itself first to allow, and then to disallow?  Who shall venture to say it is lawful for man to act now upon a law long since repealed by God, and replaced by a directly contrary one?  But, brethren, this never was God’s law.  Hear what Christ says—“Moses, because of the hardness of your hearts, suffered you to put away your wives: but from the beginning it was not so.”  Moses, the civil magistrate, finding it impossible to restrain the obstinate and rebellious Israelites within the bounds originally set for them by God, attempted to regulate, in some measure, their lawless ways, and to secure some regard for public and private rights.  Accordingly, as they had fallen into the practice of dismissing their wives for many frivolous reasons, and often in momentary displeasure, of which they afterwards relented, and sought them again, Moses required that when they did so dismiss their wives, they should do it deliberately, and in a formal way, writing a bill of divorcement; and with the understanding, probably as a check upon precipitancy, that no after repentance should render them able to claim their wives again, if they had availed themselves of their supposed liberty, and taken other husbands.  So much of sanction and regulation of unlawful courses did Moses condescend to.

But it may be objected: “Moses was God’s deputy, what he sanctioned God therefore must have approved.”  Now, truly, we do not suppose that Moses acted without Divine permission; but such permission did not amount to approval.  Suppose you that God approved of the ignorance of the heathen, because we are told He “winked at it?”  Was wicked Balaam’s forbidden journey approved by God, because He directed what should be said and done on it?  Was the lawless divorce between the king Jehovah and His kingdom Israel, and the re-marriage of that kingdom with an earthly king, divinely approved, because regulations for the management of that adulterous kingdom were vouchsafed by God?  No, brethren; God simply made the best of the evil.  He set bounds to it, and so diminished it; in a measure condescending to human infirmities, and effecting through them His good and wise purposes.  Thus He has ever done and still does: but not in the case of separation of man and wife for re-marriage; all sanction, all toleration of this breach of His commandment He has withdrawn for ever.  “I say unto you” (they are Christ’s words) “whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery; and whoso marrieth her which is put away, doth commit adultery.”

But here it is objected: “This is granting the whole matter in dispute—‘Except it be for fornication.’  This is all that is proposed to the Legislature now: the putting away of an unfaithful wife, and (the vows between them being thus loosed) the removal of obstacles to a fresh marriage or marriages.”  Now, I confess, brethren, that the full explanation of this apparent exception is what I cannot offer within the space of time allowed me this morning.  Neither can it be given at all to those who will not bestow on it close and somewhat learned attention.  I am satisfied in my own mind (and I believe I could satisfy any one who will study the passage with me), that this is no real exception to the general prohibition.  But I can show you all, in few words, how little its ordinary interpretation is to be relied on.  It is mentioned twice, [10] once in the hearing of the multitude, once to the Pharisees.  It is found only in the Gospel of St. Matthew, written for Jewish converts.  It does not occur in the Gospel of St. Mark, or in that of St. Luke, written for the Gentiles, in both of which the prohibition of putting away is absolute and without exception, and it is never once alluded to in any other part of the New Testament.  Not even in the Epistles to the Corinthians, among whom the sin in question was a very common one, and to whom St. Paul gives full directions about the married state, is there the remotest hint of such a separation being lawful, though the verse of the Gospel in which it occurs is actually referred to in the seventh chapter of the 1st Epistle, (vv. 10, 11).  “And unto the married I command, yet not I, but the Lord (‘Matthew xix, 6, 9,’ says the marginal reference), Let not the wife depart from her husband: but if she depart, let her remain unmarried, or be reconciled to her husband; and let not the husband put away his wife.”

Now, when we remember that all Holy Scripture was dictated by the same Spirit; that that Spirit brought to the remembrance of the Sacred Writers, or taught them all that Christ did and said, and suggested to them all that they should write; that all the sacred writings were not at once put into the hands of each Christian disciple, but that in most cases probably only a single gospel and an epistle or two were to be found in any one church, what inference are we compelled to draw from this exception being mentioned only in the Gospel written first, and written for Jews; but that it was a parenthetical recognition of the Jewish criminal law, which put the adulterer and adulteress to death?  As though Christ had begun to declare His decree, that marriage should in no case be dissolved, and then stopped short to announce in a parenthesis, that He meant not, at least in their case, at that time, to interfere with the husband’s right to deliver up a faithless wife to the officers of justice, to be dealt with by the law.  The Gentiles had no such law delivered them from God: they were receiving Divine law for the first time: in writing for them, therefore, there was no need of such an allusion to the Mosaic law, and accordingly the Spirit left it out, though it had been spoken by Christ.

But, however this may be, even if there is an exception in the case of such sin, to the general law against putting away, there is no exception whatever to the general law against re-marriage in each other’s lifetime.  “Whosoever shall put away his wife” (“except it be for fornication,” belongs only to these words, most clearly not to those that follow), “and shall marry another, committeth adultery; and whoso marrieth her which is put away” (this means in the original Greek any divorced woman) “doth commit adultery.”  You get the full force of this whole prohibition, if you bear in mind that our Lord is answering the Pharisees’ reference to the permission given by Moses in the first and second verses of the 24th chapter of Deuteronomy, and showing what was to be observed in future.  With reference to the first verse, which recognises putting away in certain cases, Christ says, “Whoso putteth away his wife (except it be for fornication), and marrieth another, committeth adultery.”  In answer to the second verse, in which Moses permits, “When she is departed out of his house, she may go and be another man’s wife,” Christ says, “Whosoever marrieth any divorced woman, committeth adultery.”  This, then, is the sum of the matter:—Perhaps Christ permits a man so to put away a faithless wife, as no longer to have his home and children contaminated by her presence, or to be responsible for her maintenance and recognition as his wife: but He does not allow him to take another wife in her lifetime; and if any one marries her, He counts him an adulterer, a sinner of that odious class which God, when He ruled temporally, commanded to be stoned to death, and whom He still condemns to spiritual and eternal death, saying through His apostle, that they “shall not inherit the kingdom of God.” [12]

In the face of all this, and I have urged but a tithe of what might be said, can a Christian State provide for the divorce of Christians, and their re-marriage with others, during the lives of their only lawful husbands or wives?  I say most confidently, No!  In my Master’s name I protest most loudly against such dishonour to His commands, and entreat you protest with me.  But suppose the State insists upon her civil power, alleging the rule of expediency, which is so lamentably urged in these days, and maintaining that we cannot legislate now according to the law of God.  Suppose she legalises such divorces and reunions.  What then?  Why, let her take the responsibility wholly on herself: let her treat them as civil contracts, and not require the Church to join in such spiritual adultery against Christ.  I crave your earnest attention and warm sympathy, dearly beloved, in the terrible alternative which threatens us, the ministers of Christ.  If this bill passes, without a proviso, that the Church shall not be called on to celebrate or sanction such unions, then we must either wholly renounce our allegiance to Christ in this behalf, or brave the law of the land by becoming rebels against it, in not marrying adulterers and adulteresses, and not admitting them to Holy Communion.

A politician of the nineteenth century may urge (and be applauded for it), that you cannot legislate now by the Decalogue.  “You cannot put down atheism,” he may tell you, “or idolatry, or blasphemy, or Sabbath desecration.”  That may be, though the admission is a fearful one.  But you do not call upon the officers of religion to take part in those sins.  Now, if you make me marry adulterers, or administer to them the blessed Body and Blood of Christ, it is all the same thing as if you compelled me to preach atheism from this pulpit, or to worship an idol before God’s altar, or to blaspheme His holy name in His sanctuary, or set the example of Sabbath desecration.  Look at the Church’s service for Holy Matrimony.  It requires the respective parties to say before God, that there is no disqualification in His sight to their union.  It pledges them to take each other for better or worse, till death parts them.  It unites them with the solemn words, “Those whom God hath joined together, let no man put asunder.”  It makes the priest say to God, that it shall never be lawful to put asunder those whom He by matrimony has made one, and it requires him to pronounce, as by God’s authority and in God’s name, two solemn benedictions on the union of those before him.  Is not this an awful profanation if used in the case of adulterers?  Is it not, in the memorable language of the Archbishop of Canterbury, [14] “beyond the power of charity itself to hope for God’s blessing on an union which had its origin in a guilty passion, and was only rendered possible by the commission of a heinous crime?”

A few words in answer to the objection: “Has not the state of things you deprecate, been already lawful for some three hundred years?  Is not the only change proposed now, the substitution of a judicial court to try the case and pronounce sentence, for the direct legislation of the Houses of Parliament?”  Brethren, there is as yet no common law of this land which allows divorce and re-marriage.  There is indeed an imitation now and then of one of the great corruptions of Popery.  The Church of Rome pronounces marriage absolutely indissoluble, and utters a loud anathema against any one who presumes to say that it may ever be dissolved.  But if she is well paid for it, she will readily grant the Pope’s dispensation (at least she has often done this to those whom she has a mind to favour), and allow of their divorce and re-marriage.  A relic of this Popery, I say, exists among us.  The law of Holy Scripture, echoed by the Church, is generally recognized by the State, who therefore has no statute on her books permitting divorce and re-marriage; but if any one will go to the expense and prove his case, she will grant a special dispensation, passing a “private act,” which nullifies, in that individual case, the law of the land.  The toleration of this kind of legislation for more than three hundred years, is a shameful reproach to those who brought it about, and to those who do not seek to alter it; but it is no precedent for a general dispensation with the law: unless it be a good plea for continuing in sin, and plunging deeper into it, that we have already sinned, and more than once.  Neither is the effect of such a private act anything like so great or so injurious as a general law would be.  Whoever has heard of these special dispensations, either in righteous indignation, or in jealousy because he is not rich enough to secure a like privilege, has cried “shame” on them.  But let the State utter with her whole strength of voice, and to all, that the marriage bond can be easily cancelled, and fresh unions formed; let her add this sanction, this favouring of adulterers to the encouragement they already derive, from knowing that the State does not regard their sin as a crime, though God calls it a deadly one, and—not at once; probably English decency will long delay it, but surely ultimately—the Word of God will be made of none effect; married life will lose all its privileges, and safeguards, and charms; morality will be outraged; evil called good, and good evil.  This view, my brethren, is illustrated by the effect of a similar licence in Prussia: and it is awfully corroborated by the past Providence of God, Who has ever smitten with judicial blindness, those who would not see, and has left them to grope in foul darkness, and to fall into destruction.

My dear brethren, I trust that none of you will think that I have taken up your time unprofitably this morning.  With so few opportunities of speaking to you of our common salvation, and urging you to lay hold of it, we should be very blameable if we misused any of them.  But the glory of God in Christ in the assertion of His holy law; the vindication of His Church; the preservation of His ministers from unworthy temporizing, or from conflict with the secular powers; the welfare of the State, and the defence of our dear English domestic life from the heaviest blow that ever threatened it, and the foulest blot that ever assayed to stain it, is surely a Christian minister’s most legitimate use of his time and opportunity; and I, for one, most strongly feel, that I should have been fearfully guilty had I not so employed it; and that my position would have been an unaccountable one, if I had been now silent, and yet, if this bill becomes law, had ventured to say (as may God give me grace to do!) “Whether it be right in the sight of God to hearken unto you more than unto God, judge ye.  For we cannot but speak (and do) the things which we have heard and seen.”

F. Shoberl, Printer to H.R.H. Prince Albert, 51, Rupert Street.

Footnotes.

[3]  Mal., ii.

[5] Gen., ii, 24.

[7]  See Considerations on Divorce a Vinculo Matrimonii.  By a Barrister.  London: Stewart.

[10]  St. Matthew, v, 32; xix, 9.

[12]  Galatians, v, 20.

[14]  Debate on Adulterers’ Marriage Bill.

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Table of Contents

- CHRISTIAN MARRIAGE INDISSOLUBLE.

- St. Matthew, xix, 3, 4, 5, 6.

- Footnotes.

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