3. In the Roman Catholic Church

presupposed legal procedure and decree. If the words of Christ with regard to divorce, were taken as a legal prohibition of it, the phrase "saving for the cause of fornication" (Matt. v. 32; cf. xix. 9) must necessarily be interpreted as a legal permission of at least perpetua separatio in such a case. The law of the Roman Catholic Church is, accordingly, that upon motion a separation for a definite or indefinite time (temporaria separatio a toro et mensa) is to be granted in case of greater or lesser impairment of conjugal life, in case of temptation to immoral acts or crimes, in case of endangered safety, and the like. Perpetual separation (perpetua separatio), however, can be granted only for adultery or unnatural crimes, although in such cases the motion may be opposed by the plea of compensation (adultery practised by the plaintiff), pandering or connivance, and condonation.

4. Divorce in the Protestant Church

Protestant divorce law had its beginning in the proposition laid down in the appendix to the Schmalkald Articles: "Unjust also is the tradition which forbids an innocent person to marry after divorce" (cf. H. E. Jacobs, Book of Concord, i. 351 Philadelphia, 1893). The positive rules which the magistrates were to lay down with the advice of the Church concerning divorce in the strict sense of the term (though the Church itself could make no independent legislation on the subject) were to be based on the relevant passages of the Bible submitted to a conscientious exegesis unhampered by ecclesiastical tradition. The result was to substantiate the words of Luther, in his exegesis of the Sermon on the Mount (Erlangen ed., xliii. 117): "Christ (and, of course, Paul as well) here makes no ruling or enactment like a jurist or regent in things external, but simply as a preacher who instructs the conscience so that the law of divorce may be rightly used." The question is, then, not one of "Scriptural grounds for divorce," as if the Bible assigned certain grounds which granted one married party a legal right to separate from the other and the liberty of marrying again; for even in this sense the adultery of the other party is not a Scriptural ground for divorce. The sole problem, on the contrary, is what forms of actual separation or guilt of the one party, in harmony with the Scripture, should be true grounds for the civil authorities to come to the aid of the innocent party by granting a dissolution of the legal bond of marriage. If, from this point of view, the grounds for divorce be considered those for which a petition for judicial separation would be entertained by the civil authorities for the protection of the sanctity of marriage and the defense of the innocent against the guilty, then the most undoubted Scriptural grounds for divorce are adultery and wilful desertion. These were generally expressly and exclusively recognized as such by the Evangelical agenda of the period of the Reformation. On the other hand, it can not be termed contrary to Scripture that the most recent Protestant law of divorce, developed with ecclesiastical sanction, permits judicial separation for other reasons, which, like adultery and wilful desertion, imply dolosa fidei coniugalis violatio on the part of one of the married pair.