Likeliest it is (which our Selden hath well observed _I.II.c.28.Ux.

Heb._) that in imitation of heathen priests, who were wont at nuptials to use many rites and ceremonies, and especially judging it would be profitable and the increase of their authority not to be spectators only in business of such concernment to the life of man, they insinuated that marriage was not holy without their benediction, and for the better colour made it a Sacrament; being of itself a Civil Ordinance, a household contract, a thing indifferent and free to the whole race of mankind, not as religious, but as men.

Best, indeed, undertaken to religious ends, as the Apostle saith (1 Cor.
VII.

'_In the Lord_'); yet not therefore invalid or unholy without a minister and his pretended necessary hallowing, more than any other act, enterprise, or contract, of civil life,--which ought all to be done also in the Lord and to his glory,--all which, no less than marriage, were by the cunning of priests heretofore, as material to their profit, transacted at the altar.

Our Divines deny it to be a Sacrament; yet retained the celebration, till prudently a late Parliament recovered the civil liberty of marriage from their encroachment, and transferred the ratifying and registering thereof from their Canonical Shop to the proper cognisance of Civil Magistrates" [The Marriages Act of the Barebones Parliament; in accordance with which had been Milton's own second marriage: see ante p.