(_Ethics_, c. viii., s. iii., nn.
1-3, p. 147.) [Footnote 19] A third explanation would be founded on
the words of St. Paul to the Athenians (Acts xvii. 30), about "God
overlooking the times of this ignorance." This would suppose that
mankind, beginning in monogamy, from passion and ignorance lapsed
quickly into polygamy: that the patriarchs in good faith conformed to
the practice of their time; and that God, in their case as with the
rest of mankind, awaited His own destined hour for the light of better
knowledge to break upon the earth. A fourth explanation would be this.
God by His supreme dominion can dissolve any marriage. By the same
dominative power He can infringe and partially make void any marriage
contract without entirely undoing it. The marriage contract, existing
in its fulness and integrity, is a bar to any second similar contract,
as we have proved. But what, on this theory, the Lord God did with the
marriages of the patriarchs was this: He partially unravelled and
undid the contract, so as to leave room for a second contract, and a
third, each having the bare essentials of a marriage, but none of them
the full integrity.
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