Duties Imposed by the Marriage Relation
By Francis Wayland
The marriage relation imposes upon both parties, equally, the duty of chastity. 1. Hence, it forbids adultery, or intercourse with any other person than that one to whom the individual is united in marriage. 2. And, hence, it forbids all conduct in married persons, or with married persons, of which the tendency would be to diminish their affection for those to whom they are united in marriage, or of which the tendency would be to give pain to the other party. This is evident from what we have before said. For if the contract itself proceed upon the principle of entire and exclusive affection, anything must be a violation of it which destroys or lessens that affection; and that which causes this affection to be doubted, produces to the party in which the doubt exists, the same misery that would ensue from actual injury. The crime of adultery is of an exceedingly aggravated nature. As has been before remarked, aside from being a violation of the law of chastity, it is also a violation of a most solemn contract. The misery which it inflicts upon parents and children, relatives and friends, the total annihilation of domestic happiness, and the total disruption of parental and filial ties which it necessarily produces, mark it for one of the basest forms of human atrocity. Hence, as might be expected, it is spoken of in the Scriptures as one of those crimes on which God has set the seal of His peculiar displeasure. In addition to the passages already quoted on this subject, I barely mention the following: Matt. 5:28: “Whosoever looketh on a woman to cherish impure desire, hath committed adultery with her already in his15heart.” Heb. 13:4: “Marriage is honorable in all, and the bed undefiled; but whoremongers and adulterers God will judge.” Rev. 21:8: “Murderers and whoremongers shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death.” Throughout the writings of the prophets, in numberless instances, this crime is singled out, as one for which God visits with the most awful judgments, both nations and individuals. And, if any one will reflect that the happiness and prosperity of a country must depend on the virtue of the domestic society more than on anything else, he can not fail to perceive that a crime, which, by a single act, sunders the conjugal tie, and leaves children worse than parentless, must be attended with more abundant and remediless evils than almost any other that can be named. The taking of human life can be attended with no consequences more dreadful. In the one case, the parental tie is broken, but the victim is innocent; in the other, the tie is broken, with the additional aggravation of an irretrievable moral stain, and a wide-spreading dishonor that can not be washed away.—Francis Wayland, D.D.