_Readings_.--_Contra Gent_., iii., 124; Suarez, _De Legibus_, II., xv., 28. SECTION III.--_Of the Indissolubility of Marriage_. 1. This section is pointed not so much against a _separation_--which may take place by mutual consent, or without that, by grievous infidelity or cruelty of one party--as against a divorce _a vinculo_, which is a dissolution of a marriage in the lifetime of the parties, enabling each of them validly and lawfully to contract with some other. The unity of marriage is more essential than its indissolubility. Nature is more against polygamy than against divorce. Even Henry VIII. stuck at polygamy. In the present arrangement, a divorce _a vinculo_ is obtainable in three cases. First, when of two unbaptized persons, man and wife, the one is converted, and the unconverted party refuses to live peaceably in wedlock, the convert may marry again, and thereupon also the other party. So the Church understands St. Paul, I Cor. vii. 13, 15. Again, the Pope can grant a divorce _a vinculo_ in the marriage of baptized persons before cohabitation. Such a marriage in that stage is also dissolved by the profession of one of the parties in a religious order. Beyond these three cases, the Catholic Church allows neither the lawfulness nor the validity of any divorce _a vinculo_ by whomsoever given to whatsoever parties. 2. It is ours to investigate the lie of the law of nature, having due regard to the points marked, antecedently to our search, by the definition of infallible authority. Nothing can be done in the Church against the law of nature: since therefore divorce _a vinculo_ is sometimes recognized in the Church, it may be contended that marriage is not by nature absolutely indissoluble. On the other hand, it is a proposition censured by Pius IX. in the Syllabus, n. 67: "By the law of nature the bond of marriage is not indissoluble." Thus it appears we must teach that marriage is naturally indissoluble, still not absolutely so, just as a safe is justly advertised as fire-proof, when it will resist any conflagration that is likely to occur, though it would be consumed in a blast-furnace or in a volcano. So marriage is indissoluble, if it holds good for all ordinary contingencies, for all difficulties that may be fairly reckoned with and regarded as not quite improbable, for every posture of affairs that the contracting parties before their union need at all consider. Or, if the three cases of divorce actually allowed are to be traced to the dominative power of God (_Ethics_, c. vii., n. 2, p. 129), we may teach that marriage is by nature absolutely indissoluble, and that divorce is as much against the law of nature as the killing of an innocent man, excepting in the case of God's dominion being employed to quash the contract or the right to life. But against this latter view is to be set the consideration, that God is manifestly averse to using His dominative power to overturn natural ordinances. He does not hand the