would not have passed unnoticed.
The ecclesiastical lawyers failed on both counts therefore. They failed to produce a solution to the real problem they ought to have been trying to solve (a man reconciling God and a wife); and perhaps because of this, they failed to produce a system which was satisfactory to ordinary men and women. They failed to produce a satisfactory system, because as every law-student knows, their system was scrapped in 1857, and replaced by a law of divorce, although it is fair to say that a good deal of the old law was incorporated into the new system. The ecclesiastical courts are not an encouraging precedent for establishing a Vehmegericht to adjudicate on immortality.
Let me give a more modern example of the inadequacy of human tribunals to adjudicate on spiritual matters. Some years ago two church workers were up in front of the bishop; and all they had done wrong was to promise to marry, when one had been previously married and divorced. For this “sin”, they were stripped of their humble church appointments and forbidden communion for six months, if they married, which they did. This was the inspired judgment of the bishop. This was the merciful grace of God, revealed no doubt after anxious vigil and prayer. It is sometimes said that one case proves nothing; but it isn't always true, because I well remember the guffaws of laughter from my logically minded colleagues at breakfast in the Sheffield Club, when they read this astonishing verdict in the papers. They saw the illogicality at once. Either the couple were doing wrong, or they were not. If they were, they ought to have been denounced, and expelled. If they were not, nothing should have been done or said. As it was the Church's verdict condemned them for six months, and then connived at their “adultery” and made their “sin” its own, (I suppose when the bishop considered people would have forgotten, otherwise it is difficult to understand the period of six months). How could any thinking person allow…