468.  VI.  THE LEGITIMATE CAUSES OF THIS CONCUBINAGE ARE THE LEGITIMATE CAUSES OF DIVORCE, WHILE THE WIFE IS NEVERTHELESS RETAINED AT HOME.  By divorce is meant the annulling of the conjugial covenant, and thence an entire separation, and after this a full liberty to marry another wife.  The one only cause of this total separation or divorce, is adultery, according to the Lord’s precept, Matt. xix. 9.  To the same cause are to be referred manifest obscenities, which bid defiance to the restraints of modesty, 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 occasionally to be met with, no favorable conclusions are to be drawn from them.