donation, but a mutual contract; and therefore the consent of one of the parties is insufficient, that of both necessary to its validity; and to declare this consent, words are obviously the medium to be employed. If the internal consent alone, with out any external indication, were sufficient, it would then seem to follow as a necessary consequence, that were two persons, living in the most separate and distant countries, to consent to marry, they should contract a true and indissoluble marriage, even before they had mutually signified to each other their consent by letter or messenger; a consequence as repugnant to reason as it is opposed to the decrees and established usage of the Church.
It has been wisely provided that the consent of the parties to the marriage contract be expressed in words which have reference to the present time. Words which signify a future time promise, but do not actually unite in marriage: it is evident that what is to be done has no present existence: what does not exist can have little or no firmness or stability: a promise of marriage, therefore, does not give a title to the rights of marriage. Such promises are, it is true, obligatory; and their violation involves the offending party in a breach of faith: but although entered into they have not been actually fulfilled, and cannot therefore constitute marriage. But he who has once entered into the matrimonial alliance, regret it as he afterwards may, cannot possibly change, or invalidate, or undo the compact. As then the marriage contract is not a mere promise, but a transfer of right, by which the man yields the dominion of his person to the woman, the woman the dominion of her person to the man, it must therefore be made in words which designate the present time, the force of which word? abides with undiminished efficacy from the moment of their utterance, and binds the husband and wife by a tie which can never be dis solved, but by death of one of the parties.
Instead of words, however, it may be sufficient for the validity of the marriage contract to substitute a nod or other unequivocal sign of tacit consent: even silence, when the result of female modesty, may be sufficient, provided the parents answer for their daughter. Hence the pastor will teach the faithful that the nature and force of marriage consists in the tie and obligation; and that, without consummation, the consent of the Consumparties, expressed in the manner already explained, is sufficient to constitute a true marriage. It is certain that our first parents before their fall, when, according to the Holy Fathers, no consummation took place, were really united in marriage. [1] The holy Fathers, therefore, say that marriage consists not in its consummation, but in the consent of the contracting parties; a doctrine repeated by St. Ambrose in his book on virginity. [2]
Having explained these matters, the pastor will proceed to teach that matrimony is to be considered in two points of view,
