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Having laid this down as a settled and stated Preliminary; it then follows, that no pre-existing Engagement or Promise between the Man and Woman, no, nor any subsequent Performance of the Promise, can be substituted in the room of Marriage, or make the coming together (which is so, as above, forbidden) be lawful or justifiable.
Nor can any subsequent Performance, I say, take off the Crime or Scandal of what is past. It is true, a subsequent Marriage makes it lawful for them to come together afterward, because it is not indeed unlawful for such to marry. It is not unlawful for a Man to make his Whore his Wife, however foolish; but it is unlawful for any Man to make his Wife his Whore, however seemingly and intentionally Honest.
But the Promise, say they, makes the Woman his Wife. I grant it does so indeed, in Point of Right, but the Form alone gives the legal Possession. Signing a Writing, and depositing an Earnest, or part of the Money, gives a Man a Right to the Estate he has thus purchased, and he may fairly be said to have bought the Estate, but he must have the Deeds fairly executed, sign'd, seal'd and delivered, and Livery and Seisin given in Form, before he can receive the Rents, and before he can take Possession of the Land, or the Tenants own him for their Landlord.
Under the old Jewish Institution, which, it must be allowed, was critically just in every Part, being instituted immediately from Heaven, a Woman betrothed or espoused to a Man, was called his Wife, yet he never knew her tillshe
