2. Weighing of the Opinion

82. The way in which this opinion can be held acceptable is this: complete justice does not exist in this exchange or contract of matrimony save by divine ratification, though there is found before it what suffices for justice on the side of the exchange and the exchanging parties; and whenever such justice can be found in the exchange, it is reasonable that it ought to be ratified. But just as the exchange of the body of one man in return for exchange with the bodies of several women is something just when such exchange is necessary for procreation of offspring - and so then God justly made dispensation for bigamy, indeed approved it, on account of a greater good resulting than would, on the other side, result by exchange of one woman with one man; and the exchanging parties should, according to right reason, want so to exchange - thus in the issue at hand can God, for avoiding a greater evil than is the good of indissolubility of marriage, make dispensation that a contract may be made for a time, until the woman displease the man.

83. And in this is justice in some way preserved, because the parties should want thus to exchange, not only for attaining a greater good but also for avoiding a greater evil; and uxoricide is a greater evil than is the good of indissolubility; because the former is the evil of penalty for a killed wife and the grave evil of guilt for the killer. It would also be an evil for the whole republic, because an occasion for continuous discord and fighting, on account of the anger of the wife’s parents against the killer; and in this there would be a continuing dissipation of the family, because, with the man being killed by his adversaries or by the law, the family and the education of the offspring would be destroyed.

84. So it could, therefore, be said that, just as God made dispensation for bigamy on account of a greater good, so could he make dispensation in the repudiation of wives for the [Hebrew] nation on account of avoiding a greater evil.

85. And according to this can it be said that, since the good wine of matrimony is indissolubility and perpetual obligation, no matrimony of the Jews was perfect, because the contracts were always under a condition on account of the bill of repudiation. But in the matrimony of the New Law this good does exist, namely indissoluble union; and, in addition to this, something else, namely the signification of the union of Christ and the Church, which is the union of one with one. Now in the matrimony of the law of nature, as with Abraham, the first perfection or the first good existed, namely indissolubility, but not the second, which is to have one wife only. But in the Mosaic Law, when there was repudiation and one man had several wives, neither perfection of matrimony existed, because neither was there union of one with one nor was the union simply indissoluble; but this was done by divine dispensation.