The same perspicuous writer adds, upon the subject of divorce, "The Scriptures seem to have drawn the obligation tighter than the law of nature left it. 'Whosoever,' saith Christ, '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.' The law of Moses, for reasons of local expediency, permitted the Jewish husband to put away his wife; but whether for every cause, or for what causes, appears to have been controverted amongst the interpreters of those times. Christ, the precepts of whose religion were calculated for more general use and observation, revokes this permission, (as given to the Jews 'for the hardness of their hearts,') and promulges a law which was thenceforward to confine divorces to the single cause of adultery in the wife. And I see no sufficient reason to depart from the plain and strict meaning of Christ's words. The rule was new. It both surprised and offended his disciples, yet Christ added nothing to relax or explain it. "Inferior causes may justify the separation of husband and wife, although they will not authorize such a dissolution of the marriage contract as would leave either party at liberty to marry again; for it is that liberty, in which the danger and mischief of divorces principally consist. If the care of children does not require that they should live together, and it is become, in the serious judgment of both, necessary for their mutual happiness that they should separate, let them separate by consent. Nevertheless, this necessity can hardly exist, without guilt and misconduct on one side or on both. Moreover, cruelty, ill usage, extreme violence, or moroseness of temper, or other great and continual provocations, make it lawful for the party aggrieved to withdraw from the society of the offender, without his or her consent. The law which imposes the marriage vow, whereby the parties promise to 'keep to each other,' or in other words to live together, must be understood to impose it with a silent reservation of these cases; because the same law has constituted a judicial relief from the tyranny of her husband, by the divorce _à mensa et toro_, and by the provision which it makes for the separate maintenance of the injured wife. St. Paul, likewise, distinguishes between a wife merely separating herself from the family of her husband, and her marrying again: 'Let not the wife depart from her husband; but, and if she do depart, let her remain unmarried.'" [114]