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ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A89158	Tetrachordon: expositions upon the foure chief places in scripture, which treat of mariage, or nullities in mariage. On Gen.I.27.28. compar'd and explain'd by Gen.2.18.23.24. Deut.24.1.2. Matth.5.31.32. with Matth.19. from the 3d.v. to the 11th. I Cor.7. from the 10th to the 16th. Wherein the doctrine and discipline of divorce, as was lately publish'd, is confirm'd by explanation of scripture, by testimony of ancient fathers, of civill lawes in the primitive church, of famousest reformed divines, and lastly, by an intended act of the Parlament and Church of England in the last eyare of Edvvard the sixth. / By the former author J.M.	Milton, John, 1608-1674.	1645 (1645)	Wing M2184; Thomason E271_12; ESTC R212199	97,577	109

and the suspence of judgement what to choose and how in the multitude of reason to be not tedious is the greatest difficulty which I expect heer to meet with Yet much hath bin said formerly concerning this Law in the Doctrins of divorce Wherof I shall repeat no more then what is necessary Two things are heer doubted First and that but of late whether this bee a Law or no next what this reason of uncleannes might mean for which the Law is granted That it is a plain Law no man ever question'd till Vatablus within these hunder'd years profess'd Hebrew at Paris a man of no Religion as Beza deciphers him Yet som there be who follow him not only against the current of all antiquity both Jewish and Christian but the evidence of Scripture also Malach. 2. 16. Let him who hateth put away saith the Lord God of Israel Although this place also hath bin tamper'd with as if it were to be thus render'd The Lord God saith that hee hateth putting away But this new interpretation rests only in the autority of Junius for neither Calvin nor Vatablus himself nor any other known Divine so interpreted before And they of best note who have translated the Scripture since and Diodati for one follow not his reading And perhaps they might reject it if for nothing els for these two reasons First it introduces in a new manner the person of God speaking less Majestic then he is ever wont When God speaks by his Profet he ever speaks in the first person thereby signifying his Majesty and omni-presence Hee would have said I hate putting away saith the Lord and not sent word by Malachi in a sudden faln stile The Lord God saith that hee hateth putting away that were a phrase to shrink the glorious omnipresence of God speaking into a kind of circumscriptive absence And were as if a Herald in the Atcheivment of a King should commit the indecorum to set his helmet sidewaies and close not full fac't and open in the posture of direction and command Wee cannot think therfore that this last Profet would thus in a new fashion absent the person of God from his own words as if he came not along with them For it would also be wide from the proper scope of this place hee that reads attentively will soon perceav that God blames not heer the Jews for putting away thir wives but for keeping strange Concubines to the profaning of Juda's holines and the vexation of thir Hebrew wives v. 11. and 14. Judah hath maried the daughter of a strange God And exhorts them rather to put thir wives away whom they hate as the Law permitted then to keep them under such affronts And it is receiv'd that this Profet livd in those times of Ezra and Nehemiah nay by som is thought to bee Ezra himself when the people were forc't by these two Worthies to put thir strange wives away So that what the story of those times and the plain context of the 11 verse from whence this rebuke begins can give us to conjecture of the obscure and curt Ebraisms that follow this Profet does not forbid putting away but forbids keeping and commands putting away according to Gods Law which is the plainest interpreter both of what God will and what he can best suffer Thus much evinces that God there commanded divorce by Malachi and this confirmes that he commands it also heer by Moses I may the less doubt to mention by the way an Author though counted Apocryphal yet of no small account for piety and wisdom the Author of Ecclesiasticus Which Book begun by the Grand-father of that Jesus who is call'd the Son of Sirach might have bin writt'n in part not much after the time when Malachi livd if wee compute by the Reigne of Ptolemaeus Euergetes It professes to explain the Law and the Profets and yet exhorts us to divorce for incurable causes and to cut off from the flesh those whom it there describes Ecclesiastic 25. 26. Which doubtles that wise and ancient Writer would never have advis'd had either Malachi so lately forbidd'n it or the Law by a full precept not left it lawful But I urge not this for want of better prooff our Saviour himself allows divorce to be a command Mark 10. 3. 5. Neither doe they weak'n this assertion who say it was only a sufferance as shall be prov'd at large in that place of Matthew But suppose it were not a writt'n Law they never can deny it was a custom and so effect nothing For the same reasons that induce them why it should not bee a law will strair'n them as hard why it should bee allow'd a custom All custom is either evil or not evil if it be evil this is the very end of Law-giving to abolish evil customs by wholsom Laws unless wee imagin Moses weaker then every negligent and startling Politician If it be as they make this of divorce to be a custom against nature against justice against chastity how upon this most impure custom tolerated could the God of purenes erect a nice and precise Law that the wife marryed after divorce could not return to her former husband as beeing defil'd What was all this following nicenes worth built upon the leud foundation of a wicked thing allow'd In few words then this custom of divorce either was allowable or not allowable if not allowable how could it be allow'd if it were allowable all who understand Law will consent that a tolerated custom hath the force of a Law and is indeed no other but an unwritt'n Law as Justinian calls it and is as prevalent as any writt'n statute So that thir shift of turning this Law into a custom wheels about and gives the onset upon thir own flanks not disproving but concluding it to be the more firm law because it was without controversy a granted custom as cleer in the reason of common life as those giv'n rules wheron Euclides builds his propositions Thus beeing every way a Law of God who can without blasphemy doubt it to be a just and pure Law Moses continually disavows the giving them any statute or judgement but what hee learnt of God of whom also in his Song hee saith Deut. 32. Hee is the rock his work is perfet all his waies are judgement a God of truth and without iniquity just and right is hee And David testifies the judgements of the Lord are true and righteous altogether Not partly right and partly wrong much less wrong altogether as Divines of now adaies dare censure them Moses again of that people to whom hee gave this Law saith Deut. 14. Yee are the childern of the Lord your God the Lord hath chosen thee to bee a peculiar people to himself above all the nations upon the earth that thou shouldst keep all his Commandements and be high in praise in name and in honour holy to the Lord Chap. 26. And in the fourth Behold I have taught you statutes and

Tetrachordon EXPOSITIONS UPON The foure chief places in Scripture which treat of Mariage or nullities in Mariage On Gen. 1. 27. 28. compar'd and explain'd by Gen. 2. 18. 23. 24. Deut. 24. 1. 2. Matth. 5. 31. 32. with Matth. 19. from the 3d. v. to the 11th 1 Cor. 7. from the 10th to the 16th Wherin the Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce as was lately publish'd is confirm'd by explanation of Scripture by testimony of ancient Fathers of civill lawes in the Primitive Church of famousest Reformed Divines And lastly by an intended Act of the Parlament and Church of England in the last yeare of EDVVARD the sixth By the former Author J. M. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Euripid. Medea LONDON Printed in the yeare 1645. To the PARLAMENT THat which I knew to be the part of a good Magistrate aiming at true liberty through the right information of religious and civil life and that which I saw and was partaker of your Vows and solemne Cov'nants Parlament of England your actions also manifestly tending to exalt the truth and to depresse the tyranny of error and ill custome with more constancy and prowesse then ever yet any since that Parlament which put the first Scepter of this Kingdom into his hand whom God and extraordinary vertue made thir Monarch were the causes that mov'd me one else not placing much in the eminence of a dedication to present your high notice with a Discourse conscious to it self of nothing more then of diligence and firm affection to the publick good And tbat ye took it so as wise and impartial men obtaining so great power and dignitie are wont to accept in matters both doubtfull and important what they think offer'd them well meant and from a rational ability I had no lesse then to perswade me And on that perswaston am return'd as to a famous and free Port my self also bound by more then a maritime Law to expose as freely what fraughtage I conceave to bring of no trifles For although it be generally known how and by whom ye have been instigated to a hard censure of that former book entitl'd The Doctrine and Diseipline of Divorce an opinion held by some of the best among reformed Writers without scandal or confutement though now thought new and dangerous by some of our severe Gnostics whose little reading and lesse meditating holds ever with hardest obstinacy tbat which it took up with easiest credulity I do not find yet that ought for the furious ineitements which have been used hath issu'd by your appointment that might give the least interruption or disrepute either to the Author or to the Book Which he who will be better advis'd then to call your neglect or connivence at a thing imagin'd so perilous can attribute it to nothing more justly then to the deep and quiet streame of your direct and calme deliberations that gave not way either to the fervent rashnesse or the immaterial gravity of those who ceas'd not to exasperate without cause For which uprightnesse and incorrupt refusall of what ye were incens'd to Lords and Commons though it were don to justice not to me and was a peculiar demonstration how farre your waies are different from the rash vulgar besides tbose allegiances of oath and duty which are my publie debt to your public labours I have yet a store of gratitude laid up which cannot be exhausted and such thanks perhaps they may live to be as shall more then whisper to the next ages Yet that the Author may be known to ground himself upon his own innocence and the merit of his cause not upon the favour of a diversion or a delay to any just censure but wishes rather he might see those his detracters at any fair meeting as learned debatements are privileg'd with a due freedome under equall Moderators I shall here briefly single one of them because he hath oblig'd me to it who I perswade me having scarse read the book nor knowing him who writ it or at least faining the latter bath not forborn to scandalize him unconferr'd with unadmonisht undealt with by any Pastorly or brotherly convincement in the most open and invective manner and at the most bitter opportunity that drift or set designe could have invented And this when as the Canon Law though commonly most favouring the boldnesse of their Priests punishes the naming or traducing of any person in the Pulpit was by him made no scruple If I shall therfore take licence by the right of nature and that liberty wherin I was born to defend my self publicly against a printed Calumny and do willingly appeal to those Judges to whom I am accus'd it can be no immoderate or unallowable course of seeking so just and needfull reparations Which I had don long since had not these employments which are now visible deferr'd me It was preacht before ye Lords and Commons in August last upon a special day of humiliation that there was a wicked Book abroad and ye were taxt of sin that it was yet uncensur'd the book deserving to be burnt and impudence also was charg'd upon the Author who durst set his name to it and dedicate it to your selves First Lords and Commons I pray to that God before whom ye then were prostrate so to forgive ye those omissions and trespasses which ye desire most should find forgivness as I shall soon shew to the world how easily ye absolve your selves of that which this man calls your sin and is indeed your wisdome and your Noblenesse whereof to this day ye have don well not to repent He terms it a wicked book and why but for allowing other causes of Divorce then Christ and his Apostles mention and with the same censure condemns of wickednesse not onely Martin Bucer that elect Instrument of Reformation highly honour'd and had in reverence by Edward the sixth and his whole Parlament whom also I had publisht in English by a good providence about a week before this calumnious digression was preach'd so that if he knew not Bucer then as he ought to have known he might at least have known him some months after ere the Sermon came in print wherein notwithstanding he persists in his former sentence and condemnes again of wickednesse either ignorantly or wilfully not onely Martin Bucer and all the choisest and holiest of our Reformers but the whole Parlament and Church of England in those best and purest times of Edward the sixth All which I shall prove with good evidence at the end of these Explanations And then let it be judg'd and seriously consider'd with what hope the affairs of our Religion are committed to one among others who hath now onely left him which of the twain he will choose whether this shall be his palpable ignorance or the same wickednesse of his own book which he so lavishly imputes to the writings of other men and whether this of his

probibits it Whence Gregory the Pope writing to Theoctista inferrs that Ecclesiasticall Courts cannot be dissolv'd by the Magistrate A faire conclusion from a double error First in saying that the divine law prohibited divorce for what will hee make of Moses next supposing that it did how will it follow that what ever Christ for bids in his Evangelic precepts should be hal'd into a judicial constraint against the patterne of a divine law Certainely the Gospel came not to enact such compulsions In the meane while wee may note heere that the restraint of divorce was one of the first faire seeming pleas which the Pope had to step into secular authority and with his Antichristian rigor to abolish the permissive law of Christian princes conforming to a sacred lawgiver Which if we consider this papal and unjust restriction of divorce need not be so deere to us since the plausible restraining of that was in a manner the first loosning of Antichrist and as it were the substance of his eldest horn Nor doe we less remarkably ow the first meanes of his fall heer in England to the contemning of that restraint by Henry 8. whose divorce he oppos'd Yet was not that rigour executed anciently in spiritual Courts untill Alexander the third who trod upon the neck of Frederic Barbarossa the Emperor and summond our Henry 2. into Normandy about the death of Becket He it was that the worthy author may be known who first actually repeal'd the imperial law of divorce and decreed this tyranous decree that matrimony for no cause should be disolv'd though for many causes it might separate as may be seen decret Gregor l. 4. tit 19. and in other places of the Canonicall Tomes The main good of which invention wherein it consists who can tell but that it hath one vertue incomparable to fill all christendom with whordomes and adulteries beyond the art of Balaams or of divells Yet neither can these though so perverse but acknowledge that the words of Christ under the name of fornication allow putting away for other causes then adultery both from bed and bord but not from the bond their only reason is because mariage they beleeve to bee a Sacrament But our Divines who would seem long since to have renounc'd that reason have so forgot them selves as yet to hold the absurdity which but for that reason unlesse there be some mystery of Satan in it perhaps the Papist would not hold T is true we grant divorce for actual prov'd adultery and not for lesse then many tedious and unreparable yeares of desertion wherein a man shall loose all his hope of posterity which great and holy men have bewail'd ere he can be righted and then perhaps on the confines of his old age when all is not worth the while But grant this were seasonably don what are these two cases to many other which afflict the state of mariage as bad and yet find no redresse What hath the soule of man deserv'd if it be in the way of salvation that it should be morgag'd thus and may not redeem it selfe according to conscience out of the hands of such ignorant and slothfull teachers as these who are neither able nor mindful to give due tendance to that pretious cure which they rashly vndertake nor have in them the noble goodnesse to consider these distresses and accidents of mans life but are bent rather to fill their mouthes with Tithe and oblation Yet if they can learne to follow as well as they can seeke to be follow'd I shall direct them to a faire number of renowned men worthy to be their leaders who will commend to them a doctrin in this point wiser then their own and if they bee not-impatient it will be the same doctrin which this treatis hath defended Wicklef that Englishman honor'd of God to be the first preacher of a general reformation to all Europe was not in this thing better taught of God then to teach among his cheifest recoveries of truth that divorce is lawfull to the christian for many other causes equall to adultery This book indeed through the poverty of our Libraries I am forc't to cite from Arnisaeus of Halberstad on the right of mariage who cites it from Corasius of Tolouse c. 4. Cent. Sct. and he from Wicklef l. 4. Dial. c. 21. So much the sorrier for that I never lookt into author cited by his adversary upon this occasion but found him more conducible to the question then his quotation render'd him Next Luther how great a servant of God in his book of conjugal life quoted by Gerard out of the Dutch allowes divorce for the obstinate denial of conjugal duty and that a man may send away a proud Vasthi and marry an Esther in her stead It seemes if this example shall not be impertinent that Luther meant not onely the refusall of benevolence but a stubborn denial of any main conjugal duty or if he did not it will be evinc't from what he allowes For out of question with men that are not barbarous love and peace and fitnesse will be yeelded as essential to mariage as corporal benevolence Though I give my body to be burnt saith Saint Paul and have not charity it profits me nothing So though the body prostitute it selfe to whom the mind affords no other love or peace but constant malice and vexation can this bodily benevolence deserv to be call'd a mariage between Christians and rationall creatures Melanchton the third great luminary of reformation in his book concerning marriage grants divorce for cruell usage and danger of life urging the authority of that Theodosian law which he esteemes written with the grave deliberation of godly men and that they who reject this law and thinke it disagreeing from the Gospel understand not the difference of law and Gospel that the Magistrat ought not only to defend life but to succour the weake conscience lest broke with greif and indignation it relinquish praier and turn to som unlawful thing What if this heavy plight of despaire arise from other discontents in wedloc which may goe to the soule of a good man more then the danger of his life or cruel using which a man cannot bee liable to suppose it be ingratefull usage suppose it be perpetuall spight and disobedience suppose a hatred shall not the Magistrat free him from this disquiet which interrupts his prayers and disturbs the cours of his service to God and his Country all as much and brings him such a misery as that he more desires to leave his life then feares to loose it Shall not this equally concerne the office of civil protection and much more the charity of a true Church to remedy Erasmus who for learning was the wonder of his age both in his notes on Matthew and on the first to the Corinthians in a large and eloquent discourse and in his answer to Phimostonus a Papist maintaines and no protestant then living contradicted him that the

words of Christ comprehend many other causes of divorce under the name of fornication Bucer whom our famous Dr Rainolds was wont to preferr before Calvin in his comment on Matthew and in his second booke of the Kingdome of Christ treats of divorce at large to the same effect as is written in the doctrine and discipline of divorce lately publisht and the translation is extant whom lest I should be thought to have wrested to mine own purpose take somthing more out of his 49. Chap. which I then for brevity omitted It will be the duty of pious princes and all who govern Church or common wealth if any whether husband or wife shall affirme their want of such who either will or can tolerably performe the necessary duties of maried life to grant that they may seeke them such and marry them if they make it appeare that such they have not This book he wrote heer in England where he liv'd the greatest admir'd man and this hee dedicated to Edward the sixth Fagius rankt among the famous divines of Germany whom Frederic at that time the Palatine sent for to be the reformer of his Dominion and whom afterwards England sought to and obtain'd of him to come and teach her differs not in this opinion from Bucer as his notes on the Chaldey paraphrast well testify The whole Church of Strasburgh in her most flourishing time when Zellius Hedio Capito and other great Divines taught there and those two renouned magistrates Farrerus and Sturmius govern'd that common wealth and Academy to the admiration of all Germany hath thus in the 21. Article We teach that if according to the word of God yea or against it divorces happen to doe according to Gods word Devt 24. 1. Mat. 19. 1 Cor. 7. and the observation of the primitive Church and the Christian constitution of pious Caesars Peter Martyr seems in word our easy adversary but is in deed for us toward which though it be somthing when he saith of this opinion that it is not wicked and can hardly be refuted this which followes is much more I speake not heer saith he Of natural impediments which may so happ'n that the matrimony can no longer hold but adding that he often wonder'd how the antient and most christian Emperors establisht those lawes of divorce and neither Ambrose who had such influence upon the lawes of Theodosius nor any of those holy fathers found fault nor any of the Churches why the Magistrats of this day should be so loth to constitute the same Perhaps they feare an inundation of divorces which is not likely whenas we reade not either among the Ebrews Greeks or Romans that they were much frequent where they were most permitted If they judge christian men worse then Jewes or Pagans they both injure that name and by this reason will bee constrain'd to grant divorces the rather because it was permitted as a remedy of evil for who would remove the medcin while the disease is yet so rife This being read both in his common places on the first to the Corinthians with what we shall relate more of him yet ere the end sets him absolutely on this side Not to insist that in both these other places of his commentaries hee grants divorce not onely for desertion but for the seducement and scandalous demeanour of a heretical consort Musculus a divine of no obscure fame distinguishes betweene the religious and the civil determination of divorce and leaving the civil wholly to the lawyers pronounces a conscionable divorce for importence not only natural but accidental if it be durable His equity it seems can enlarge the words of Christ to one cause more then adultery why may not the reason of another man as wise enlarge them to another cause Gualter of Zuric a well known judicious commentator in his Homilies on Matthew allows divorce for Leprosie or any other cause which renders unfit for wedloc and calls this rather a nullity of mariage then a divorce and who that is not himselfe a meer body can restrain all the unfitnes of mariage only to a corporal defect Hemingius an Author highly esteem'd and his works printed at Geneva writing of divorce confesses that lerned men vary in this question some granting three causes thereof some five others many more he himselfe gives us sixe adultery desertion inability error evill usage and impiety using argument that Christ under one special containes the whole kind under the name example of fornication he includes other causes equipollent This discours he wrote at the request of many who had the judging of these causes in Denmark and Norway who by all likely hood follow'd his advice Hunnius a Doctor of Wittenberg well known both in Divinity other arts on the 19. of Matt. affirmes that the exception of fornicationexprest by our Saviour excludes not other causes equalling adultery or destructive to the substantials of matrimony but was oppos'd to the custom of the Jewes who made divorce for every light cause Felix Bidenbachius an eminent Divine in the Dutchy of Wirtemberg affirmes that the obstinat refusal of conjugal due is a lawful cause of divorce and gives an instance that the consistory of that state sojudg'd Gerard cites Harbardus an author not unknown and Arnisaeus cites Wigandus both yeelding divorce in case of cruel usage and another author who testifies to have seen in a dukedom of Germany mariages disjoynd for some implacable enmities arising Beza one of the strictest against divorce denies it not for danger of life from a Heretic or importunat solicitation to doe ought against religion and counts it all one whether the heretic desert or would stay upon intolerable conditions But this decision well examin'd will be found of no solidity For Beza would be askt why if God so strictly exact our stay in any kind of wedloc wee had not better stay and hazard a murdering for Religion at the hand of a wife or husband as he and others enjoyn us to stay and venture it for all other causes but that and why a mans life is not as well and warrantably sav'd by divorcing from an orthodox murderer as a heretical Againe if desertion be confest by him to consist not only in the forsaking but in the unsufferable conditions of staying a man may as well deduce the lawfulnesse of divorcing from any intolerable conditions if his grant bee good that wee may divorce thereupon from a heretic as he can deduce it lawfull to divorce from any deserter by finding it lawful to divorce from a deserting infidel For this is plaine if Saint Pauls permission to divorce an infidel deserter inferre it lawfull for any malicious desertion then doth Beza's definition of a deserter transferr it selfe with like facility from the cause of religion to the cause of malice and proves it as good to divorce from him who intolerably stayes as from him who purposely departs and leaves it as lawfull to depart from him