d the decay of the
Canon law system so far as Europe as a whole was concerned. It was for
many reasons impossible for the Protestant reformers to retain formally
either the Catholic conception of matrimony or the precariously elaborate
legal structure which the Church had built up on that conception. It can
scarcely be said, indeed, that the Protestant attitude towards the
Catholic idea of matrimony was altogether a clear, logical, or consistent
attitude. It was a revolt, an emotional impulse, rather than a matter of
reasoned principle. In its inevitable necessity, under the circumstances
of the rise of Protestantism, lies its justification, and, on the whole,
its wholesome soundness. It took the form, which may seem strange in a
religious movement, of proclaiming that marriage is not a religious but a
secular matter. Marriage is, said Luther, "a worldly thing," and Calvin
put it on the same level as house-building, farming, or shoe-making. But
while this secularization of marriage represents the general and final
drift of Protestantism, the leaders of Protestantism were themselves not
altogether confident and clear-sighted in the matter. Even Luther was a
little confused on this point; sometimes he seems to call marriage "a
sacrament," sometimes "a temporal business," to be left to the state.[332]
It was the latter view which tended to prevail. But at first there was a
period of confusion, if not of chaos, in the minds of the Reformers; not
only were they not always convinced in their own minds; they were at
variance with each other, especially on the very practical question of
divorce. Luther on the whole belonged to the more rigid party, including
Calvin and Beza, which would grant divorce only for adultery and malicious
desertion; some, including many of the early English Protestants, were in
favor of allowing the husband to divorce for adultery but not the wife.
Another party, including Zwingli, were influenced by Erasmus in a more
liberal direction, and--moving towards the standpoint of Roman Imperial
legislation--admitted various causes of divorce. Some, like Bucer,
anticipating Milton, would even allow divorce when the husband was unable
to love his wife. At the beginning some of the Reformers adopted the
principle of self-divorce, as it prevailed among the Jews and was accepted
by some early Church Councils. In this way Luther held that the cause for
the divorce itself effected the divorce without any judicial dec