2. Doubts and their Solution

22. But there are two doubts that cause difficulty.

One, how can an unbeliever give his body to another, since he does not do this relying on the approval of the Divine Law because he does not know it, and no one can simply give, or at least not licitly give, save in virtue of the approval of the superior lord?

23. A second doubt is: since matrimony essentially includes indissolubility, how does an unbeliever contract matrimony since, however, it is dissoluble afterwards? For if one of the spouses be converted to the faith without the other, he can depart. And this reason the Master touches on in the text [Lombard, Sent. IV d.39 ch.5 nn.3-4, ch.6 n.2], saying that a matrimony of this sort is not ratified though it is legitimate.

24. But to the first of these [n.22] it can be said that God, after the fall, licensed everyone generally for such exchange, not only because of the first end, namely because of the duty, but also because of the second, namely as a remedy [cf. d.32 n.8, d.26 n.77]. And then those who use this exchange, although they do not attend to what the exchange has licensed (because they do not know the Law of God), do not sin; just as in the case of other licenses, though one may not know that one has been licensed, yet provided one not know that what one is doing is illicit, one does not sin. It is probable too that, from the beginning, by virtue of the divine license or precept, the use of contracting became fixed even among unbelievers, who received it in accord with a certain custom derived from their fathers. And though the first unbelievers did not want to follow the fathers in the faith which is in God, yet they did imitate them in this [sc. matrimonial contracts]; and no wonder, because this is of the law of nature secondarily, as was said above [d.26 nn.13, 31]; and so it was very consonant with the minds of individuals. Let it also be that they would not have transferred [the contract] licitly in any way, yet they would have transferred it, by the fact that the superior Lord conceded the transferring of it to everyone, not only to believers but also unbelievers. Thus, therefore, on the part of the superior Lord, the transfer was perhaps licit, and at least some transfer was - and on the side of the contracting parties it was firm and just, though not complete, yet not unjust, if they observed the conditions that natural reason dictated were to be observed.

25. To the second doubt [n.23]: the matrimonies were ratified, unless anywhere a stronger bond were to supervene, with which bond this matrimony could not stand. Of this sort is a new obligation to God through reception of the faith, when the other spouse not want to remain without impediment to the faith of the former, to which faith one is more bound than to the conjugal bond. The matrimony, then, while the same conditions in the extremes remained, was ratified; but it was not ratified for the time when a stronger bond supervened, to which the observance of this [matrimonial] bond would be repugnant.