Chapter 24. Of Marriage and Divorce

Chapter 24. Of Marriage and Divorce

I. Marriage is to be between one man and one woman: neither is it lawful for any man to have more than one wife, nor for any woman to have more than one husband at the same time.⁴⁹⁸

II. Marriage was ordained for the mutual help of husband and wife;⁴⁹⁹ for the increase of mankind with a legitimate issue, and of the Church with an holy seed;⁵⁰⁰ and for preventing of uncleanness.⁵⁰¹

III. It is lawful for all sorts of people to marry who are able with judgment to give their consent.⁵⁰² Yet it is the duty of Christians to marry only in the Lord.⁵⁰³ And, therefore, such as profess the true reformed religion should not marry with infidels, Papists, or other idolaters: neither should such as are godly be unequally yoked, by marrying with such as are notoriously wicked in their life, or maintain damnable heresies.⁵⁰⁴

IV. Marriage ought not to be within the degrees of consanguinity or affinity forbidden in the Word;⁵⁰⁵ nor can such incestuous marriages ever be made lawful by any law of man, or consent of parties, so as those persons may live together, as man and wife.⁵⁰⁶ The man may not marry any of his wife's kindred nearer in blood than he may of his own, nor the woman of her husband's kindred nearer in blood than of her own.⁵⁰⁷

V. Adultery or fornication, committed after a contract, being detected before marriage, giveth just occasion to the innocent party to dissolve that contract.⁵⁰⁸ In the case of adultery after marriage, it is lawful for the innocent party to sue out a divorce,⁵⁰⁹ and after the divorce to marry another, as if the offending party were dead.⁵¹⁰

VI. Although the corruption of man be such as is apt to study arguments, unduly to put asunder those whom God hath joined together in marriage; yet nothing but adultery, or such willful desertion as can no way be remedied by

the Church or civil magistrate, is cause sufficient of dissolving the bond of marriage;⁵¹¹ wherein a public and orderly course of proceeding is to be observed; and the persons concerned in it, not left to their own wills and discretion in their own case.⁵¹²