| 705 but if ye shall find that any persons have left their companions for the sake of adultery, and they themselves are the offenders, and their companions are living, they shall be cast out from among you.'- Doctrine and Covenants 42: 20.
"The sum of these quotations is this: Men and women of competent age may marry, and that marriage is a covenant between two only, and they twain thereby become one flesh. The term flesh limits the continuance of the contract to the time of severance by the death of one or both of the contracting parties. The result of the keeping this covenant inviolate is that neither can be absolved except by a transgression amounting to a crime. This crime when committed breaks the bond of the covenant; which bond is the purity of faith, one with the other. When this bond is broken the one who is criminal may be put away lawfully, and the one putting the other away is at liberty to marry again, thereby securing another companion in the place of the one put away.
"We presume that if anyone wished to marry a person convicted of adultery, or fornication, they might do so after he or she was put away. From the passages quoted it is to us very clear that there was no justifiable cause for the dissolution of the marriage contract in the days of the Savior; but if either party to it became a transgressor, it was then a broken bond; and the one aggrieved was justified in severing the connection.
"We know of no change having been made in the law of God touching the case. The lawmaking bodies of different governments, founding their action upon the Mosaic code, have modified the stern decree of the Savior's rule, until there are many causes, which if existent, and proven, may give married persons freedom from their contract.
"The great question with the church ought to be, Shall we recognize the divorces granted by the courts of the land under its laws; or shall we insist upon the strictest interpretation of the Savior's words, and permit no persons to unite with the church who have put away their companions, unless that putting away was for the cause given, that of fornication and adultery.
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