This reasoning appears to indicate that it was consorting with the wife after the offence was known, which caused the disqualification; and that, if the husband had repudiated her, he could be admitted. No law compelled a layman to dismiss his wife, even for adultery; and it might occur that to retain her without intercourse, and without public exposure, would be excusable. But the last clause compels a dismissal when the crime has been committed after ordination. It appears to us that the canon, so understood, is full of wisdom.

The Twentieth Canon of the Council of Ancyra (A.D. 315) is translated by Dr. Hammond: "If any man's wife commit adultery, or any man commit adultery, they are to be admitted to communion in seven years after passing through the several degrees of penance.'

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Van Espen remarks (there must have been a similar version when he wrote) that this sense has been objected to, as implying that the husband might be punished for the crime of the wife. He answers that the canon does not mean this according to its true and received construction. His own Latin version is: Si cujus uxor adultera fuerit,aut si ipse adulterium commisserit, septem annorum penitentia oportet eam perfectionem consequi, secundum pristinos gradus. And he explains it thus: If a man take to wife a woman divorced for adultery, or commit adultery himself, he is to undergo the penance.2

The Rev. Dr. Fulton, in his work just published, gives the Greek text, and translates it: "The adulterer and adulteress shall be restored to full communion after seven years passed in the degrees of penance."

I have been favored by the reverend writer with a critical examination of the Greek text, and Van Espen's Latin version. He says, in conclusion, that there is nothing in the Greek to warrant the translation adultera fuerit, viz., an adulteress at the time of the marriage. It was rather a version of Van Espen's construction of the canon, than a version of the canon itself. He has also referred to a comment by Hefele, "that the simplest explanation of the canon is, that the man or woman who has violated the marriage bond shall undergo the penance." This was, however, objected to by some, and Fleury and Routh think that the canon speaks of a woman who has been guilty, with the knowledge and consent of her

1 Councils, p. 155. 2 Scholia in Canones Ancyranos, xix. The 4th and 5th of the Greek are included in the 4th of the Latin text. Index Canonum.

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husband. He then would be punished for his connivance, just as if he had committed adultery himself. The exposition of Van Espen is noticed and disapproved. Dr. Fulton notices that Dr. Clark, in translating Hefele, gives this as the better translation, while it is only Hefele's understanding of the sense.

The twentieth of the Penitential Canons of Dunstan (A.D. 963) seems to have been framed upon this one: "If a married man defile the lawful wife of another, or a wife lie with another woman's lawful husband, let them fast seven years; three on bread and water, and four as the Shrift (confessarius) directs. And let them ever bewail their crime." 1

The one hundred and second (Greek 105) of the code called the African Canons, passed from A.D. 348-412,2 is: "It is decreed that according to the Evangelical (Gospel) and Apostolic discipline, neither a man dismissed by his wife, nor a woman dismissed by her husband, shall marry another; but let them so remain, or let them be reconciled to each other (sibimet). But if they contemn this decree, let them be subjected to penance. For such a case the promulgation of an imperial law should be sought." Let them so remain plainly means" unmarried."

The comment of Van Espen is: "It was known to these fathers that among the Romans, divorces for various causes were permitted by the public law, and tolerated by Christian emperors. They knew that such laws could not dissolve the marriage bond, being contrary to the Gospel and Apostolic rule. If the parties did not remain so that they could be reconciled (unmarried), they were to be punished as for adultery. Yet, as they knew how slight was the power of the Church, though resting upon Gospel and Apostolic discipline and doctrine, against a custom favorable to human license and lust, and approved, or, at least, tolerated by the laws, they rightly added that an imperial edict should be sought." This means an edict to ratify and enforce the law of the Church.

Introduce into this canon, as we are fully warranted in doing, the Saviour's allowance of a dismissal for adultery, and we cannot find anywhere a more explicit, Scriptural, and sensible statement of the Christian rule.

The Eighty-seventh Canon of the Trullan Council is as follows: "The woman who forsakes her husband, and goes to another man, is an adulteress according to the Holy St. Basil, who, from the prophecy

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1 Johnson's Laws, etc., vol. i. p. 436. Van Espen's Scholia in Canones Africanos. Ibid. Van Espen, in Canones Trullanos.

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of Jeremiah, has gathered that she shall not return to her husband, but that she shall remain utterly unclean;" and again he says, "that he who keeps an adulteress is senseless and impious. But he who forsakes his lawfully-wedded wife, and takes another, contrary to the Lord's Commandment, lies under the crime of adultery." It was decreed by the fathers "that such persons shall be mourners for one year, for two years hearers, for three, prostrators, and for the seventh year, co-standers (with the faithful), and so be fitted for the oblation; that is to say, if they repent with tears."1

This canon must also be understood, with the exception of a dismission for adultery. It then settles that abandonment for any cause but adultery, and a remarriage, is adultery. For such an offence, the extreme of ecclesiastical punishment should be inflicted.

The forty-eighth of the Apostolical Canons is: "If any layman put away his wife and marry another, or one who has been divorced by another man, let him be excommunicated.""

(g.) Among the ancient fathers we find Tertullian, Lactantius, Chrysostom, Basil, Ambrose, and Jerome, limiting the right of absolute divorce to the case of adultery. The language of St. Jerome is: "The Lord commandeth that a wife should not be dismissed except for the cause of adultery; and if dismissed, should remain unmarried. Whatever is commanded unto men, consequently follows as to women. The laws of Cæsar and the laws of Christ are different. Papianus teaches one thing, our Paul another. With the former the chains upon licentiousness are relaxed for men; allowable to women is not allowable to men. quae uxoris vincat affectum."s

with us, what is not Sola fornicatio est

And Aristenus Amersenus, a bishop, writing about the year 1101, observes: "What God hath joined together, let not man put asunder. Hear this ye hucksters, who change your wives as ye do your clothes; who build new bride-chambers as often and as easily as ye do shops at fairs; who, for any light offence, presently write a bill of divorce; who have many widows alive at once,-know of a certainty that marriage cannot be dissolved for any cause but only death or adultery." 4

(To be continued.)

1I am indebted to the Rev. Dr. Fulton for this version.

Dr. Fulton has suspended.-Index, 97. Suspension in the case of a layman was the lesser excommunication. Bingham, iii. 80, etc. * Ibid. 89.

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WHE

HEN we seriously set ourselves to consider the statements of Holy Scripture respecting the being of God, a difficulty in the way of receiving them in their manifest sense is often felt and acknowledged to arise from the fact that we cannot comprehend the existence of God in a threefold personality. This difficulty (for such it really is, or it would not be so often urged) merits a calm and fair consideration, both to disarm opposition and to confirm faith.

That the mystery of the Trinity is incomprehensible, or inconceivable, none will deny; and this is admitted to be a difficulty. But of itself it cannot be considered an objection; for we must ask ourselves, How can the Infinite be conceivable by the finite, or the Eternal comprehensible by the temporal? It is reasonable that there should be a difficulty sufficient to stimulate faith to its highest activity when it rises to reach up to God; for the highest act of faith is faith in God, and its highest act demands its greatest energy. Like all other human faculties (if it be a faculty), it expands in power and rises in energy in proportion to the difficulties it overcomes. It requires no energetic exercise of faith to believe our friend's assurance of his good health, when we meet him on the street, because there is no difficulty to be surmounted; to receive the report of a new and unlooked-for phenomenon in science, for which we are not prepared at once to account fully, requires a

stronger effort; yet we do not reject it if presented on creditable testimony. It remains a belief, though incomprehensible, until we have traced its connections, analyzed its conditions, and mastered its laws; and then, indeed, it takes its place among the things we know. But its temporary incomprehensibility is not admitted as a valid argument against its truth. On the contrary, the difficulty of comprehending it is one of the strongest reasons for fixing the attention upon it, raising it in importance before the inquiring mind; and this may be one reason why we are so constituted as to find the doctrine of God incomprehensible, that it may engage our thoughts the more. If by investigation we find that the report on which we believed could not have been true, we have added proof of its impossibility to the mere negative force of incomprehensibility, and reject it on the former ground, and not on the latter. But if the truth be one which, though fully attested, we are unable to analyze, and the laws and conditions of which we are unable to grasp; if it be clearly and demonstrably above us and our faculties of positive knowledge, its incomprehensibility ought not to be admitted as an argument against our belief of it, even if the evidence were of a low order, nor against its certainty, if the evidence were otherwise unimpeachable. A truth so attested need find no bar to its reception by faith, in being without the sphere of other faculties of our nature, any more than we need find an objection to the truth of presentations to the eye in the fact that they are not observable by means of the ear. It does, indeed, require a more active and persistent exercise of faith to surmount the difficulty of confessed and irremovable incomprehensibility, and to accept a great truth without the aid of those other faculties which we are accustomed to call in to help us in making it our own; but faith is equal to the task, and it is only in the presence of such demands upon it that it can display the highest, noblest, most energetic exercise of its powers, only because in the Nature and Being and Personality of the Godhead there is such an incomprehensibility, that faith is stimulated to approach His throne dilated to the utmost, to catch and retain the revelations of His glory.

It is, therefore, the sophism of putting the conclusion of one argument to the premise of another if we say, "This is incomprehensible, therefore it is untrue." To be proved untrue, it must be shown impossible, that is, it must be shown to involve a contradiction to some known and necessary truth. We may say, "This is impossible, therefore it is untrue;" but we cannot draw the same