_c_) _The legislation of the Christian emperors._--Where the most severe teachers of the early church, and even the ecclesiastical councils themselves, as we have seen, were thus led to temporize, it is not surprising that an enlightened secular policy should be compelled to take intermediate ground. The legislation of the first Christian emperors goes far beyond the narrow limits which Tertullian, Clement, or Augustine would have drawn. For centuries, through every change in the statutes, the Roman principles of one-sided divorce and divorce by mutual consent were maintained, though it was precisely these principles against which primitive Christianity took its firmest stand. "It was a maxim of Roman law far down beyond the time when the emperors became Christian, that no obstacle ought to be put in the way of a dissolution of marriage caused by the free consent of the partners, liberty of marrying again being in this case equally unrestricted. The lawyer Paulus says, that it has been thought improper that marriages, whether already contracted or about to take place, should be secured by the force of penalty (_poenae vinculo obstringi_), that is that two parties ought not to be forced by fear of penalty either to enter into a state of wedlock to which they were pledged, or to keep up such a state if they were agreed to the contrary. And it was laid down that marriage was so free, according to ancient opinion, that even agreements between the parties not to separate from one another could have no validity (_pacta ne liceret divertere non valere_)."[60] One-sided divorce was equally free, except in the cases and under the conditions fixed by Augustus,[61] "saving that here, if the woman had caused the divorce by her conduct, a large share of her dower was withheld from her, and if the man had caused it, he might be liable to pay over the whole of the dower, and that within a short term. The parties were subjected until the time of Justinian to a _judicium morum_, which might be instituted on a complaint of either consort. The fear, then, of losing a portion or the whole of the dower, and the dread of a loss of reputation, when the conduct of the parties in their married life should be investigated, seem to have been the only inducements to prevent one-sided divorces. But what if no misconduct could be alleged on the part of the man, what if he dismissed his wife to marry a richer woman, the law in this case had no restraining power. And where the wife brought no dower, as might happen in the lower classes, there could be no operation of the law at all."[62] [Footnote 60: WOOLSEY, _op. cit._, 92, 93: PAULUS, in _Dig._, XLV, 1, 134; _Cod._, viii, 39, 1, 2, de inutil. stip.] [Footnote 61: The requirement of seven witnesses; the case of the freedwoman marrying her patron; and the obligation of the husband, under penalty, to put away a guilty wife: see above, p. 16.]