Note 128 — Chapter V

A second instance of the same kind of complaisance from the Bishops appeared in May, 1753. Lord Bath had brought in a Bill to prevent clandestine marriages, which being very exceptionable, a new one was ordered to be brought in by the Judges, and was accordingly drawn up and warmly patronized by the Chancellor, and as warmly, though ineffectually, opposed by the Duke of Bedford; the whole Episcopal Bench consenting to the Act, though there were several clauses which enjoined dissolution of marriage for temporal reasons. In the House of Commons it was opposed by Fox and Nugent; on the other hand, the Attorney-General, who had been bred a Presbyterian, supported it, and applauded the conduct of the Bishops, who, he said, had at last reduced Christianity to common sense. This sentence occasioning great astonishment, he softened it by adding, that he only meant that the Bishops had at last consented to remove a superstructure, raised on the foundation of the Gospel, which Christ and the Apostles had never projected, it being only intended by the New Testament that marriages contracted under the laws of the country should be indissoluble; and that it was nowhere said that even the intervention of a priest was essential to the validity of matrimony.