1. Marriage is to be between one man and one woman. Nor is it lawful for any man to have more than one wife at the same time, nor for any woman to have more than one husband at the same time.

2. Marriage was ordained for the mutual help of the husband and wife, for the increase of mankind with legitimate offspring, for the increase of the Church with a holy seed, and for preventing uncleanness.

3. It is lawful for all sorts of people to marry who are able to give their consent with judgment. Yet is it the duty of Christians to marry only in the Lord. Therefore those who profess the true reformed religion should not marry unbelievers, Roman Catholics, or other idolaters, nor should those who are godly be unequally yoked by marrying those who are notoriously wicked in their life or who hold to damnable heresies.

4. Marriage ought not to be within the degrees of closeness of blood or relationship forbidden by the Word. Nor can such incestuous marriages ever be made lawful by any law of mankind or consent of the parties, so that those people might live together as man and wife. A man may not marry any of his wife’s relatives nearer in blood than he may of his own, nor the woman of her husband’s relatives nearer in blood than of her own.

5. Adultery or fornication committed after an engagement, detected before marriage, gives just occasion to the innocent party to dissolve that contract. In the case of adultery after marriage, it is lawful for the innocent party to pursue a divorce, and after the divorce, to marry another, as if the offending party were dead.

6. Although the corruption of mankind is such that they are apt to greatly pursue arguments to separate those whom God has joined together in marriage, yet nothing but adultery or desertion, so willful that it can in no way be remedied by the Church or the civil magistrate, is sufficient cause for dissolving the bond of marriage. In a divorce, a public and orderly course of proceeding is to be observed, and the persons concerned in it are not to be left to their own wills and discretion in their own case.