diction
of the priest or bishop. The origin, validity, and duties of the holy
institution were regulated by the tradition of the synagogue, the
precepts of the gospel, and the canons of general or provincial synods;
and the conscience of the Christians was awed by the decrees and
censures of their ecclesiastical rulers. Yet the magistrates of
Justinian were not subject to the authority of the church: the emperor
consulted the unbelieving civilians of antiquity, and the choice of
matrimonial laws in the Code and Pandects, is directed by the earthly
motives of justice, policy, and the natural freedom of both sexes.

Besides the agreement of the parties, the essence of every rational
contract, the Roman marriage required the previous approbation of the
parents. A father might be forced by some recent laws to supply the
wants of a mature daughter; but even his insanity was not gradually
allowed to supersede the necessity of his consent. The causes of the
dissolution of matrimony have varied among the Romans; but the most
solemn sacrament, the confarreation itself, might always be done away by
rites of a contrary tendency. In the first ages, the father of a family
might sell his children, and his wife was reckoned in the number of his
children: the domestic judge might pronounce the death of the offender,
or his mercy might expel her from his bed and house; but the slavery of
the wretched female was hopeless and perpetual, unless he asserted for
his own convenience the manly prerogative of divorce. The warmest
applause has been lavished on the virtue of the Romans, who abstained
from the exercise of this tempting privilege above five hundred years:
but the same fact evinces the unequal terms of a connection in which the
slave was unable to renounce her tyrant, and the tyrant was unwilling
to relinquish his slave. When the Roman matrons became the equal and
voluntary companions of their lords, a new jurisprudence was introduced,
that marriage, like other partnerships, might be dissolved by the
abdication of one of the associates. In three centuries of prosperity
and corruption, this principle was enlarged to frequent practice and
pernicious abuse. Passion, interest, or caprice, suggested daily motives
for the dissolution of marriage; a word, a sign, a message, a letter,
the mandate of a freedman, declared the separation; the most tender
of human connections was degraded to a transient society of profit
or pleasure. According