and fill and infest the house with flagitious practices of
lewdness, giving birth to adulterous immodesty, and rendering the whole
mind abandoned. To these things may be added malicious desertion, which
involves adultery, and causes a wife to commit whoredom, and thereby to
be divorced, Matt. v. 32. These three causes, being legitimate causes of
divorce,--the first and third before a public judge, and the middle one
before the man himself, as judge, are also legitimate causes of
concubinage, when the adulterous wife is retained at home. The reason
why adultery is the one only cause of divorce is, because it is
diametrically opposite to the life of conjugial love, and totally
destroys and annihilates it; see above, n. 255.

469. The reasons why, by the generality of men, the adulterous wife is
still retained at home, are, 1. Because the man is afraid to produce
witnesses in a court of justice against his wife, to accuse her of
adultery, and thereby to make the crime public; for unless
eye-witnesses, or evidences to the same amount, were produced to convict
her, he would be secretly reproached in companies of men, and openly in
companies of women. 2. He is afraid also lest his adulteress should have
the cunning to clear her conduct, and likewise lest the judges should
show favor to her, and thus his name suffer in the public esteem. 3.
Moreover, there may be domestic reasons, which may make separation from
the house unadvisable: as in case there are children, towards whom also
the adulteress has natural love; in case they are bound together by
mutual services which cannot be put an end to; in case the wife is
connected with and dependent upon her relatives, whether on the father's
or mother's side, and there is a hope of receiving an increase of
fortune from them; in case he lived with her in the beginning in habits
of agreeable intimacy; and in case she, after she became meretricious,
has the skill to soothe the man with engaging pleasantry and pretended
civility, to prevent blame being imputed to herself; not to mention
other cases, which, as in themselves they are legitimate causes of
divorce, are also legitimate causes of concubinage; for the causes of
retaining the wife at home do not take away the cause of divorce,
supposing her guilty of adultery. Who, but a person of vile character,
can fulfil the duties of the conjugial bed, and at the same time have
commerce with a strumpet? If instances of this sort are occasion