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 decree, though a magisterial permission was needed for remarriage.  This question of remarriage, and the treatment of the adulterer, were also matters of dispute.  The remarriage of the innocent party was generally accepted; in England it began in the middle of the sixteenth century, was pronounced valid by the Archbishop of Canterbury, and confirmed by Parliament.  Many Reformers were opposed, however, to the remarriage of the adulterous party.  Beust, Beza, and Melancthon would have him hanged and so settle the question of remarriage; Luther and Calvin would like to kill him, but since the civil rulers were slack in adopting that measure they allowed him to remarry, if possible in some other part of the country.[333]

The final outcome was that Protestantism framed a conception of marriage mainly on the legal and economic factor—­a factor not ignored but strictly subordinated by the Canonists—­and regarded it as essentially a contract.  In so doing they were on the negative side effecting a real progress, for they broke the power of an antiquated and artificial system, but on the positive side they were merely returning to a conception which prevails in barbarous societies, and is most pronounced when marriage is most assimilable to purchase.  The steps taken by Protestantism involved a considerable change in the nature of marriage, but not necessarily any great changes in its form.  Marriage was no longer a sacrament, but it was still a public and not a private function and was still, however inconsistently, solemnized in Church.  And as Protestantism had no rival code to set up, both in Germany and England it fell back on the general principles of Canon law, modifying them to suit its own special attitude and needs.[334] It was the later Puritanic movement, first in the Netherlands (1580), then in England (1653), and afterwards in New England, which introduced a serious and coherent conception of Protestant marriage, and began to establish it on a civil base.