_b_) _Views of the early Fathers._--During the first four centuries of our era the so-called "strict" construction of the utterances of Jesus and Paul relating to the twofold question of separation and second marriage was formulated by the Fathers of the church; and the principles then agreed upon were in the end, after an intervening period of vacillation and compromise, to be accepted and elaborated into a complete system of law by the canonists. The literature of this early debate may be regarded as reaching from the Pastor of Hermas, a writer in the first half of the second century, highly respected in Christian antiquity,[37] to Augustine, late in the fourth century (died 430), who towers above all the other Fathers in his influence for good or evil in the history of European thought. At first the Pauline interdict of further marriage after separation receives more attention perhaps than the question of divorce itself, with its assigned cause as laid down by Jesus; for it is strongly urged that the chief evil of a too lax divorce system, such as the Roman, is the facility of second marriage regardless of the guilt or innocence of the parties.[38] Setting aside for the present the case of the Christian whose unbelieving spouse voluntarily departs--the _casus apostoli_ or _privilegium Paulinum_, as it is later styled by the canonists[39]--nearly all are agreed that divorce is forbidden except for the one cause mentioned by Matthew. There is, however, a divergence of view in two important particulars. On the one hand, certain writers, such as Tertullian and pseudo-Ambrose, following the principle of the Jewish law, admit this ground of repudiation to the advantage of the man, but not to that of the woman; while others, like Epiphanius, maintain the equal right of the sexes in this regard. On the other hand, in a few instances the word "adultery"[40] is accepted in an allegorical or spiritual sense, thus greatly widening the field of divorce. In this way, for example, Hermas, Hieronymus, and, for a time, Augustine anticipate the mode of interpretation adopted by some of the Reformation Fathers, admitting idolatry, apostasy, and covetousness, equally with carnal transgression, as proper grounds of separation.[41]