on of legal marriage.

The glorification of virginity led by imperceptible stages to the
formulation of "fornication" as a deadly sin, and finally as an
actual secular "crime." It is sometimes stated that it was not
until the Council of Trent that the Church formally anathematized
those who held that the state of marriage was higher than that of
virginity, but the opinion had been more or less formally held
from almost the earliest ages of Christianity, and is clear in
the epistles of Paul. All the theologians agree that fornication
is a mortal sin. Caramuel, indeed, the distinguished Spanish
theologian, who made unusual concessions to the demands of reason
and nature, held that fornication is only evil because it is
forbidden, but Innocent XI formally condemned that proposition.
Fornication as a mortal sin became gradually secularized into
fornication as a crime. Fornication was a crime in France even as
late as the eighteenth century, as Tarde found in his historical
investigations of criminal procedure in Perigord; adultery was
also a crime and severely punished quite independently of any
complaint from either of the parties (Tarde, "Archeologie
Criminelle en Perigord," _Archives de l'Anthropologie
Criminelle_, Nov. 15, 1898).

The Puritans of the Commonwealth days in England (like the
Puritans of Geneva) followed the Catholic example and adopted
ecclesiastical offences against chastity into the secular law. By
an Act passed in 1653 fornication became punishable by three
months' imprisonment inflicted on both parties. By the same Act
the adultery of a wife (nothing is said of a husband) was made
felony, both for her and her partner in guilt, and therefore
punishable by death (Scobell, _Acts and Ordinances_, p. 121).

The action of a pseudo-morality, such as our sexual morality has been, is
double-edged. On the one side it induces a secret and shamefaced laxity,
on the other it upholds a rigid and uninspiring theoretical code which so
few can consistently follow that theoretical morality is thereby degraded
into a more or less empty form. "The human race would gain much," said the
wise Senancour, "if virtue were made less laborious. The merit would not
be so great, but what is the use of an elevation which can rarely be
sustained?"[268] At present, as a more recent moralist, Ellen Key, puts
it, we only ha