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
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
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
urgency the Religious from the irreligious the fit from the unfit the willing from the wilfull the abus'd from the abuser such a separation is quite contrary to confusion But to binde and mixe together holy with Atheist hevnly with hellish fitnes with unfitnes light with darknes antipathy with antipathy the injur'd with the injurer and force them into the most inward neernes of a detested union this doubtles is the most horrid the most unnatural mixture the greatest confusion that can be confus'd Thus by this plain and Christian Talmud vindicating the Law of God from irreverent and unwary expositions I trust wher it shall meet with intelligible perufers som stay at least of mens thoughts will bee obtain'd to consider these many prudent and righteous ends of this divorcing permission That it may have for the great Authors sake heerafter som competent allowance to bee counted a little purer then the prerogative of a legal and public ribaldry granted to that holy seed So that from hence wee shall hope to finde the way still more open to the reconciling of those places which treat this matter in the Gospel And thether now without interruption the cours of method brings us TETRACHORDON MATT. 5. 31 32. 31 It hath beene said whosoever shall put away his wife let him give her a writing of divorcement 32 But I say unto you that whosoever shall put away his wife c. MATT. 19. 3 4. c. 3 And the Pharises also came unto him tempting him c. IT hath beene said What hitherto hath beene spoke upon the law of God touching Matrimony or divorce hee who will deny to have bin argu'd according to reason and all equity of Scripture I cannot edifie how or by what rule of proportion that mans vertue calculates what his elements are not what his analytics Confidently to those who have read good bookes and to those whose reason is not an illiterate booke to themselves I appeale whether they would not confesse all this to bee the commentary of truth and justice were it not for these recited words of our Saviour And if they take not backe that which they thus grant nothing sooner might perswade them that Christ heer teaches no new precept and nothing sooner might direct them to finde his meaning then to compare and measure it by the rules of nature and eternall righteousnes which no writt'n law extinguishes and the Gospel least of all For what can be more opposite and disparaging to the cov'nant of love of freedom of our manhood in grace then to bee made the yoaking pedagogue of new severities the scribe of syllables and rigid letters not only greevous to the best of men but different and strange from the light of reason in them save only as they are fain to stretch distort their apprehensions for feare of displeasing the verbal straightnesse of a text which our owne servil feare gives us not the leisure to understand aright If the law of Christ shall be writt'n in our hearts as was promis'd to the Gospel Jer. 31 how can this in the vulgar and superficiall sense be a law of Christ so farre from beeing writt'n in our hearts that it injures and dissallowes not onely the free dictates of nature and morall law but of charity also and religion in our hearts Our Saviours doctrine is that the end and the fulfilling of every command is charity no faith without it no truth without it no worship no workes pleasing to God but as they partake of charity He himselfe sets us an example breaking the solemnest and the strictest ordinance of religious rest and justify'd the breaking not to cure a dying man but such whose cure might without danger have beene deserr'd And wherefore needes must the sick mans bed be carried home on that day by his appointment and why were the Disciples who could not forbeare on that day to pluck the corne so industriously desended but to shew us that if he preferr'd the slightest occasions of mans good before the observing of highest and severest ordinances hee gave us much more easie leave to breake the intolerable yoake of a never well joyn'd wedlocke for the removing of our heaviest afflictions Therefore it is that the most of evangelick precepts are given us in proverbiall formes to drive us from the letter though we love ever to be sticking there For no other cause did Christ assure us that whatsoever things wee binde or slacken on earth are so in heaven but to signifie that the christian arbitrement of charity is supreme decider of all controversie and supreme resolver of all Scripture not as the Pope determines for his owne tyrany but as the Church ought to determine for its owne true liberty Hence Eusebius not far from beginning his History compares the state of Christians to that of Noah and the Patriarkes before the Law And this indeede was the reason why Apostolick tradition in the antient Church was counted nigh equall to the writt'n word though it carried them at length awry for want of considering that tradition was not left to bee impos'd as law but to be a patterne of that Christian prudence and liberty which holy men by right assum'd of old which truth was so evident that it found entrance even into the Councell of Trent when the point of tradition came to be discusst And Marinaro a learned Carmelite for approaching too neere the true cause that gave esteeme to tradition that is to say the difference betweene the Old and New Testament the one punctually prescribing writt'n Law the other guiding by the inward spirit was reprehended by Cardinall Poole as one that had spoken more worthy a German Collequie then a generall councell I omit many instances many proofes and arguments of this kind which alone would compile a just volume and shall content me heer to have shew'n breifly that the great and almost only commandment of the Gospel is to command nothing against the good of man and much more no civil command against his civil good If we understand not this we are but crackt cimbals we do but tinckle we know nothing we doe nothing all the sweat of our toilsomest obedience will but mock us And what wee suffer superstitiously returnes us no thankes Thus med'cining our eyes wee neede not doubt to see more into the meaning of these our Saviours words then many who have gone before us It hath beene said whosoever shall put away his wife Our Saviour was by the doctors of his time suspected of intending to dissolve the law In this chapter he wipes off this aspersion upon his accusers and shewes how they were the law brea kers In every common wealth when it decayes corruption makes two maine steps first when men cease to doe according to the inward and uncompell'd actions of vertue caring only to live by the outward constraint of law and turne the Simplicity of reall good into the craft of seeming so by law To this
can sever Therefore the prohibition of divorce depends not upon this reason heere exprest to the Pharises but upon the plainer more eminent causes omitted heere and referr'd to the institution which causes not being found in a particular and casuall Matrimony this sensitive and materious cause alone can no more hinder a divorce against those higher and more human reasons urging it then it can alone without them to warrant a copulation but leaves it arbitrary to those who in their chance of marriage finde not why divorce is farbidd them but why it is permitted them and finde both here and in Genesis that the forbidding is not absolute but according to the reasons there taught us not here And that our Saviour taught them no better but uses the most vulgar most animal and corporal argument to convince them is first to shew us that as through their licentious divorces they made no more of mariage then as if to marry were no more then to be male and female so hee goes no higher in his confutation deeming them unworthy to be talkt with in a higher straine but to bee ty'd in marriage by the meere material cause thereof since their owne licence testify'd that nothing matrimonial was in their thought but to be male and female Next it might be don to discover the brute ignorance of these carnall Doctors who taking on them to dispute of marriage and divorce were put to silence with such a slender opposition as this and outed from their hold with scarce one quarter of an argument That we may beleeve this his entertainment of the young man soon after may perswade us Whom though he came to preach eternall life by faith only he dismisses with a salvation taught him by workes only On which place Paraeus notes That this man was to be convinc'd by a false perswasion and that Christ is wont otherwise to answer hypocrites otherwise those that are docible Much rather then may we thinke that in handling these tempters he forgot not so to frame his prudent ambiguities and concealements as was to the troubling of those peremtory disputants most wholsome When therefore we would know what right there may be in ill accidents to divorce wee must repaire thither where God professes to teach his servants by the prime institution and not where we see him intending to dazle sophisters Wee must not reade hee made them Male and Female not understand he made them more intendedly a meet helpe to remove the evill of being alone We must take both these together and then we may inferre compleatly as from the whole cause why a man shall cleave to his wife and they twaine shall be one flesh but if the full and cheife cause why we may not divorce be wanting heer this place may skirmish with the rabbies while it will but to the true christian it prohibits nothing beyond the full reason of it's own prohibiting which is best knowne by the institution Vers 6. Wherefore they are no more twaine but one flesh This is true in the generall right of marriage but not in the chance medley of every particular match For if they who were once undoubtedly one flesh yet become twain by adultery then sure they who were never one flesh rightly never helps meete for each other according to the plain prescript of God may with lesse adoe then a volume be concluded still twaine And so long as we account a Magistrate no Magistrate if there be but a flaw in his election why should we not much rather count a Matrimony no Matrimony if it cannot be in any reasonable manner according to the words of Gods institution What therefore God hath joyned let no man put asunder But heare the christian prudence lies to consider what God hath joyn'd shall wee say that God hath joyn'd error fraud unfitnesse wrath contention perpetuall lonelinesse perpetuall discord what ever lust or wine or witchery threate or inticement avarice or ambition hath joyn'd together faithfull with unfaithfull christian with antichristian hate with hate or hate with love shall we say this is Gods joyning Let not man put a sunder That is to say what God hath joyn'd for if it be as how oft we see it may be not of Gods joyning and his law tells us he joynes not unmachable things but hates to joyne them as an abominable confusion then the divine law of Moses puts them asunder his owne divine will in the institution puts them asunder as oft as the reasons be not extant for which only God ordain'd their joyning Man only puts asunder when his inordinate desires his passion his violence his injury makes the breach not when the utter want of that which lawfully was the end of his joyning when wrongs and extremities and unsupportable greevances compell him to disjoyne when such as Herod the pharises divorce beside law or against law then only man separates and to such only this prohibition belongs In a word if it be unlawful for man to put asunder that which God hath joyn'd let man take heede it be not detestable to joyne that by compulsion which God hath put assunder Vers 7. They say unto him why did Moses then command to give a writing of divorcement and to put her away Vers 8. He saith unto them Moses because of the hardnesse of your hearts suffered you to put away your wives but from the beginning it was not so Moses because of the hardnesse of your hearts suffered you Henee the divinity now current argues that this judiciall Moses is abolisht But suppose it were so though it hath bin prov'd otherwise the firmenesse of such right to divorce as here pleads is fetcht from the prime institution does not stand or fall with the judiciall Jew but is as morall as what is moralest Yet as I have shewn positively that this law cannot bee abrogated both by the words of our Saviour pronouncing the contrary and by that unabolishable equity which it convaies to us so I shall now bring to view those appearances of strength which are levied from this text to maintaine the most grosse and massy paradox that ever did violence to reason and religion bred onely under the shadow of these words to all other piety or philosophy strange and insolent that God by act of law drew out a line of adultery almost two thousand yeares long although to detect the prodigy of this surmise the former booke set forth on this argument hath already beene copious I shall not repeate much though I might borrow of mine own but shall endeavour to adde something either yet untoucht or not largely anough explain'd First it shal be manifest that the common exposition cannot possibly consist with christian doctrine next a truer meaning of this our Saviours reply shall be left in the roome The receiv'd exposition is that God though not approving did enact a law to permit adultery by divorcement simply unlawfull And this conceit they feede with
generall to a whole people alwaies hath charity the end is granted to necessities and infirmities not to obstinat lust This permission is another creatnre hath all those evils and absurdities following the name of a dispensation as when it was nam'd a law and is the very antarctic pole against charity nothing more advers ensnaring and ruining those that trust in it or use it so leud and criminous as never durst enter into the head of any Politician Jew or Proselyte till they became the apt Schollers of this canonistic exposition Ought in it that can allude in the lest manner to charity or goodnes belongs with more full right to the chrian under grace and liberty then to the Jew under law and bondage To Jewish ignorance it could not be dispenc'd without a horrid imputation laid upon the law to dispence fouly in stead of teaching fairly like that dispensation that first polluted Christendom with idolatry permitting to lay men images in stead of bookes and preaching Sloth or malice in the law would they have this calld But what ignorance can be pretended for the Jewes who had all the same precepts about mariage that we now for Christ referrs all to the institution It was as reasonable for them to know then as for us now and concern'd them alike for wherein hath the gospel alter'd the nature of matrimony All these considerations or many of them have bin furder amplify'd in the doctrine of divorce And what Rivetus and Paraeus hath objected or giv'n over as past cure hath bin there discusst Whereby it may be plain anough to men of eyes that the vulgar exposition of a permittance by law to an entire fin what ever the colour may be is an opinion both ungodly unpolitic unvertuous and void of all honesty civil sense It appertaines therefore to every zealous Christian both for the honour of Gods law the vindication of our Saviours words that such an irreligious depravement no longer may be sooth'd and flatter'd through custome but with all diligence and speed solidly refuted and in the room a better explanation giv'n which is now our next endeavour Moses suffer'd you to put away c. Not commanded you saies the common observer and therefore car'd not how soon it were abolisht being but suffer'd heerin declaring his annotation to be slight nothing law prudent For in this place commanded and suffer'd are interehangeably us'd in the same sense both by our Saviour and the Pharises Our Saviour who heer saith Moses suffer'd you in the 10th of Marke saith Moses wrote you this command And the Pharisees who heer say Moses commanded and would mainly have it a command in that place of Marke say Moses suffer'd which had made against them in their owne mouthes if the word of suffering had weakn'd the command So that suffer'd and commanded is heer taken for the same thing on both sides of the controversy as Cameron also and others on this place acknowledge And Lawyers know that all the precepts of law are devided into obligatorie and permissive containing either what we must doe or what wee may doe and of this latter sort are as many precepts as of the former and all as lawfull Tutelage an ordainment then which nothing more just being for the defence of Orfanes the Justitutes of Justinian say is given and permitted by the civil law and to parents it is permitted to choose and appoint by will the guardians of their children What more equall and yet the civil law calls this permission So likewise to manumise to adopt to make a will and to be made an heire is call'd permission by law Marriage it selfe and this which is already granted to divorce for adultery obliges no man is but a permission by law is but suffer'd By this we may see how weakly it hath bin thought that all divorce is utterly unlawfull because the law is said to suffer it whenas to suffer is but the legall phrase denoting what by law a man may doe or not doe Because of the hardnesse of your hearts Hence they argue that therefore he allowd it not and therefore it must be abolisht But the contrary to this will sooner follow that because he suffer'd it for a cause therefore in relation to that cause he allow'd it Next if he in his wisedome and in the midst of his severity allow'd it for hardnesse of heart it can be nothing better then arrogance and presumption to take stricter courses against hardnes of heart then God ever set an example and that under the Gospel which warrants them to no judicial act of compulsion in this matter much lesse to be more severe against hardnes of extremity then God thought good to bee against hardnes of heart He suffer'd it rather then worse inconveniences these men wiser as they make themselves will suffer the worst and hainousest inconveniences to follow rather then they will suffer what God suffer'd Although they can know when they please that Christ spake only to the conscience did not judge on the civil bench but alwaies disavow'd it What can be more contrary to the waies of God then these their doings If they bee such enemies to hardnes of heart although this groundlesse rigor proclaims it to be in themselves they may yet learne or consider that hardnesse of heart hath a twofould acception in the Gospel One when it is in a good man taken for infirmity and imperfection which was in all the Apostles whose weaknesse only not utter want of beleef is call'd hardnes of heart Marke 16. partly for this hardnesse of heart the imperfection and decay of man from original righteousnesse it was that God suffer'd not divorce onely but all that which by Civilians is term'd the secondary law of nature and of nations He suffer'd his owne people to wast and spoyle and slay by warre to lead captives to be som maisters som servants som to be princes others to be subjects hee suffer'd propriety to divide all things by severall possession trade and commerce not with out usury in his comon wealth some to bee undeservedly rich others to bee undeservingly poore All which till hardnesse of heart came in was most unjust whenas prime Nature made us all equall made us equall coheirs by common right and dominion over all creatures In the same manner and for the same cause hee suffer'd divorce as well as mariage our imperfet and degenerat condition of necessity requiring this law among the rest as a remedy against intolerable wrong and servitude above the patience of man to beare Nor was it giv'n only because our infirmity or if it must be so call'd hardnesse of heart could not endure all things but because the hardnes of anothers heart might not inflict all things upon an innocent person whom far other ends brought into a league of love and not of bondage and indignity If therefore we abolish divorce as only suffer'd for hardnes of heart we may as well abolish
comprehended under that name If saith he a divorce happ'n for any cause either fornication or adultery or any hainous fault the word of God blames not either the man or wife marrying again nor cutts them off from the congregation or from life but beares with the infirmity not that he may keep both wives but that leaving the former he may be lawfully joyn'd to the latter the holy word and the holy Church of God commiserates this man especially if he be otherwise of good conversation and live according to Gods law This place is cleerer then exposition and needs no comment Ambrose on the 16. of Luke teaches that all wedloc is not Gods joyning and to the 19. of Pro. That a wife is prepard of the Lord as the old latin translates it he answers that the septuagint renders it a wife is fitted by the Lord and temper'd to a kind of harmony and where that harmony is there God joyns where it is not there dissention reigns which is not from God for God is love This he brings to prove the marrying of Christian with Gentile to be no mariage and consequently divorc't without sin but he who sees not this argument how plainly it serves to divorce any untunable or unattonable matrimony sees little On the 1 to the Cor 7 he grants a woman may leave her husband not for only fornication but for Apostacy and inverting nature though not marry again but the man may heer are causes of divorce assign'd other then adultery And going on he affirms that the cause of God is greater then the cause of matrimony that the reverence of wedloc is not due to him who hates the author thereof that no matrimony is firm without devotion to God that dishonour don to God acquitts the other being deserted from the bond of matrimony that the faith of mariage is not to be kept with such If these contorted sentences be ought worth it is not the desertion that breaks what is broken but the impiety and who then may not for that cause better divorce then tarry to be deserted or these grave sayings of St. Ambrose are but knacks Jerom on the 19. of Matthew explains that for the cause of fornication or the suspicion thereof a man may freely divorce What can breed that suspicion but sundry faults leading that way by Jeroms consent therfore divorce is free not only for actuall adultery but for any cause that may encline a wise man to the just suspicion therof Austin also must be remember'd among those who hold that this instance offornication gives equal inference to other faults equally hateful for which to divorce therfore in his books to Pollentius he disputes that infidelity as being a greater sin then adultery ought so much the rather cause a divorce And on the Sermon in the Mount under the name of fornication will have idolatry or any harmfull superstition contain'd which are not thought to disturb matrimony so directly as som other obstinacies and dissaffections more against the daily duties of that cov'nant in the eastern tongues not unfrequently call'd fornication as hath bin shew'n Hence is understood faith he that not only for bodily fornication but for that which draws the mind from Gods law and fouly corrupts it a man may without fault put away his wife and a wife her husband because the Lord excepts the cause of fornication which fornication we are constrain'd to interpret in a general sense And in the first book of his retractations chap. 16. he retracts not this his opinion but commends it to serious consideration and explains that he counted not there all sin to be fornication but the more detestable sort of sins The cause of fornication therefore is not in this discours newly interpreted to signify other faults infringing the duties of wedloc besides adultery Lastly the councel of Agatba in the year 506. can 25. decreed that if lay men who divorc't without some great fault or giving no probable cause therfore divorc't that they might marry som unlawfull person or som other mans if before the provinciall Bishops were made acquainted or judgement past they presum'd this excommunication was the penalty Whence it followes that if the cause of divorce were som great offence or that they gave probable causes for what they did and did not therefore divorce that they might presume with som unlawfull person or what was another mans the censure of Church in those daies did not touch them Thus having alleg'd anough to shew after what manner the primitive Church for above 500. yeares understood our Saviours words touching divorce I shall now with a labour less disperst and sooner dispatcht bring under view what the civil law of those times constituted about this matter I say the civil law which is the honour of every true Civilian to stand for rather then to count that for law which the pontificiall Canon hath enthrall'd them to and in stead of interpreting a generous and elegant law made them the drudges of a blockish Rubric Theodosius and Valentinian pious Emperors both ordain'd that as by consent lawfull mariages were made so by consent but not without the bill of divorce they might be dissolv'd and to dissolve was the more difficult onely in favour of the children We see the wisedome and piety of that age one of the purest and learnedest since Christ conceav'd no hindrance in the words of our Saviour but that a divorce mutually consented might bee suffer'd by the law especially if there were no children or if there were carefull provision was made And further saith that law supposing there wanted the consent of either wee designe the causes of divorce by this most wholsom law for as we forbid the dissolving of mariage without just cause so we desire that a husband or a wife distrest by som advers necessity should be freed though by an unhappy yet a necessary releefe What dramm of wisedome or religion for charity is truest religion could there be in that knowing age which is not virtually summ'd up in this most just law As for those other Christian Emperours from Constantine the first of them finding thé Roman law in this point so answerable to the Mosaic it might bee the likeliest cause why they alter'd nothing to restraint but if ought rather to liberty for the helpe and consideration of the weaker sexe according as the Gospel seems to make the wife more equal to her husband in these conjugal respects then the law of Moses doth Therefore if a man were absent from his wife foure yeares and in that space not heard of though gon to warre in the service of the Empire she might divorce and mary another by the edict of Constantine to Dalmatius Co. l. 5. tit 17. And this was an age of the Church both antient and cry'd up still for the most flourishing in knowledge and pious government since the Apostles But to returne to this law of Theodosius with this observation by
the way that still as the Church corrupted as the Clergie grew more ignorant and yet more usurping on the Magistrate who also now declin'd so still divorce grew more restrain'd though certainly if better times permitted the thing that worse times restrain'd it would not weakly argue that the permission was better and the restraint worse This law therefore of Theodosius wiser in this then the most of his successors though not wiser then God and Moses reduc't the causes of divorce to a certain number which by the judiciall law of God and all recorded humanitie were left before to the brest of each husband provided that the dismisse was not without reasonable conditions to the wife But this was a restraint not yet come to extreames For besides adultery and that not only actual but suspected by many signes there set down any fault equally punishable with adultery or equally infamous might bee the cause of a divorce Which informes us how the wisest of those ages understood that place in the Gospel whereby not the pilfering of a benevolence was consider'd as the main and only breach of wedloc as is now thought but the breach of love and peace a more holy union then that of the flesh and the dignity of an honest person was regarded not to bee held in bondage with one whose ignominy was infectious To this purpose was constituted Cod. l. 5. tit 17. and Authent collat 4. tit 1. Novell 22. where Justinian added three causes more In the 117. Novell most of the same causes are allow'd but the liberty of divorcing by consent is repeal'd but by whom by Justinian not a wiser not a more religious emperor then either of the former but noted by judicious writers for his fickle head in making and unmaking lawes and how Procopius a good historian and a counselor of state then living deciphers him in his other actions I willingly omitt Nor was the Church then in better case but had the corruption of a 100. declining yeare swept on it when the statute of consent was call'd in which as I said gives us every way more reason to suspect this restraint more then that liberty which therfore in the reign of Justin the succeeding Emperor was recall'd Novel 140. establisht with a preface more wise christianly then for those times declaring the necessity to restore that Theodosian law if no other meanes of reconcilement could be found And by whom this law was abrogated or how long after I doe not finde but that those other causes remain'd in force as long as the Greek empire subsisted and were assented by that Church is to bee read in the Canons and edicts compar'd by Photius the Patriarch with the avertiments of Balsamon and Matthaeus Monachus thereon But long before those dayes Leo the son of Basilius Macedo reigning about the yeare 886. and for his excellent wisdome surnam'd the Philosopher constituted that in case of madnesse the husband might divorce after three yeares the wife after 5. Constitut Leon. 111. 112. this declares how hee expounded our Saviour and deriv'd his reasons from the institution which in his preface with great eloquence are set downe whereof a passage or two may give som proofe though better not divided from the rest There is not saith he a thing more necessary to preserve mankind then the helpe giv'n him from his own rib both God and nature so teaching us which being so it was requisite that the providence of law or if any other care be to the good of man should teach and ordaine those things which are to the helpe and comfort of maried persons and confirme the end of mariage purpos'd in the beginning not those things which afflict and bring perpetuall misery to them Then answers the objection that they are one flesh if Matrimony had held so as God ordain'd it he were wicked that would dissolve it But if we respect this in matrimony that it be contracted to the good of both how shall he who for some great evil feard perswades not to marry though contracted not perswade to unmarry if after marriage a calamity befall should we bid beware least any fall into an evil and leave him helplesse who by humane error is fall'n therein This were as if we should use remedies to prevent a disease but let the sick die without remedy The rest will be worth reading in the author And thus we have the judgement first of primitive fathers next of the imperial law not disallow'd by the universal Church in ages of her best authority and lastly of the whole Greeke Church and civil state incorporating their Canons and edicts together that divorce was lawfull for other causes equivalent to adultery contain'd under the word fornication So that the exposition of our saviours sentence heer alleg'd hath all these ancient and great asserters is therefore neither new nor licentious as some now would perswade the commonalty although it be neerer truth that nothing is more new then those teachers themselves nothing more licentious then some known to be whose hypocrisie yet shames not to take offence at this doctrine for licence when as indeed they feare it would remove licence and leave them but few companions That the Popes Canon law incroaching upon civil Magistracy abolisht all divorce eevn for adultery What the reformed Divines have recover'd and that the famousest of them have taught according to the assertion of this booke But in these western parts of the empire it will appeare almost unquestionable that the cited law of Theodosius and Valentinian stood in force untill the blindest and corruptest times of Popedom displac't it For that the volumes of Justinian never came into Italy or beyond Illiricum is the opinion of good Antiquaries And that only manuscript thereof found in Apulia by Lotharius the Saxon and giv'n to the state of Pisa for their aid at sea against the Normans of Sicily was receav'd as a rarity not to bee matcht And although the Gothes and after them the Lombards and Franks who over-run the most of Europ except this Island unlesse wee make our Saxons and Normans a limm of them brought in their owne customes yet that they follow'd the Roman laws in their contracts and mariages Agathias the historian is alleg'd And other testimonies relate that Alaricus Theodoric their Kings writ their statutes out of this Theodosian Code which hath the recited law of Divorce Neverthelesse while the Monarchs of Christendome were yet barbarous and but halfe Christian the Popes tooke this advantage of their weake superstition to raise a corpulent law out of the canons and decretals of audacious preists and presum'd also to set this in the front That the constitutions of princes are not above the constitutions of clergy but beneath them Using this very instance of divorce as the first prop of their tyranny by a false consequence drawn from a passage of Ambrose upon Luke where hee saith though Mans law grant it yet Gods law
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
be more then ordnary as if wisdome had now forsak'n the thirstie and laborious inquirer to dwell against her nature with the arrogant and shallow babler to what purpose all those pains and that continual searching requir'd of us by Solomon to the attainment of understanding why are men bred up with such care and expence to a life of perpetual studies why do your selves with such endeavour seek to wipe off the imputation of intending to discourage the progresse and advance of learning He therfore whose heart can bear him to the high pitch of your noble enterprises may easily assure himself that the prudence and farre-judging circumspectnesse of so grave a Magistracy sitting in Parlament who have before them the prepar'd and purpos'd Act of their most religious predecessors to imitate in this question cannot reject the cleernesse of these reasons and these allegations both here and formerly offer'd them nor can over-look the necessity of ordaining more wholsomly and more humanly in the casualties of Divorce then our Laws have yet establisht if the most urgent and excessive grievances hapning in domestick life be worth the laying to heart which unlesse charity be farre from us cannot be neglected And that these things both in the right constitution and in the right reformation of a Common-wealth call for speediest redresse and ought to be the first consider'd anough was urg'd in what was prefac'd to that monument of Bucer which I brought to your remembrance and the other time before Hence forth except new cause be giv'n I shall say lesse and lesse For if the Law make not timely provision let the Law as reason is bear the censure of those consequences which her own default now more evidently produces And if men want manlinesse to expostulate the right of their due ransom and to second their own occasions they may sit hereafter and bemoan themselves to have neglected through faintnesse the onely remedy of their sufferings which a seasonable and well grounded speaking might have purchas'd them And perhaps in time to come others will know how to esteem what is not every day put into their hands when they have markt events and better weigh'd how hurtfull and unwise it is to hide a secret and pernicious rupture under the ill counsell of a bashfull silence But who would distrust ought or not be ample in his hopes of your wise and Christian determinations who have the prudence to consider and should have the goodnesse like gods as ye are call'd to find out readily and by just Law to administer those redresses which have of old not without God ordaining bin granted to the adversities of mankind ere they who needed were put to ask Certainly if any other have enlarg'd his thoughts to expect from this government so justly undertak'n and by frequent assistances from heaven so apparently upheld glorious changes and renovations both in Church and State he among the formost might be nam'd who prayes that the fate of England may tarry for no other Deliverers JOHN MILTON TETRACHORDON Expositions upon the foure chiefe places in Scripture which treat of Mariage or nullities in Mariage Gen. 1. 27. So God created man in his owne image in the image of God created he him male and female created he them 28. And God blessed them and God said unto them be fruitfull c. Gen. 2. 18. And the Lord God said It is not good that man should be alone I will make him a helpe meet for him 23. And Adam said This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh she shall be called Woman because she was taken out of Man 24. Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother and shall cleave unto his wife and they shall be one flesh Gen. 1. 27. SO God created man in his owne image To be inform'd aright in the whole History of Mariage that we may know for certain not by a forc't yoke but by an impartial definition what Mariage is and what is not Mariage it will undoubtedly be lafest fairest and most with our obedience to enquire as our Saviours direction is how it was in the beginning And that we begin so high as man created after Gods owne Image there want not earnest causes For nothing now adayes is more degenerately forgott'n then the true dignity of man almost in every respect but especially in this prime institution of Matrimony wherein his native pre-eminence ought most to shine Although if we consider that just and naturall privileges men neither can rightly seek nor dare fully claime unlesse they be ally'd to inward goodnesse and stedfast knowledge and that the want of this quells them to a servile sense of their own conscious unworthinesse it may save the wondring why in this age many are so opposite both to human and to Christian liberty either while they understand not or envy others that do contenting or rather priding themselves in a specious humility and strictnesse bred out of low ignorance that never yet conceiv'd the freedome of the Gospel and is therefore by the Apostle to the Colossians rankt with no better company then Will-worship and the meer shew of wisdome And how injurious herein they are if not to themselves yet to their neighbours and not to them only but to the all-wise and bounteous grace offer'd us in our redemption will orderly appear In the Image of God created he him It is anough determin'd that this Image of God wherin man was created is meant Wisdom Purity Justice and rule over all creatures All which being lost in Adam was recover'd with gain by the merits of Christ For albeit our first parent had lordship over sea and land and aire yet there was a law without him as a guard set over him But Christ having cancell'd the hand writing of ordinances which was against us Coloss 2. 14. and interpreted the fulfilling of all through charity hath in that respect set us overlaw in the free custody of his love and left us victorious under the guidance of his living Spirit not under the dead letter to follow that which most edifies most aides and furders a religious life makes us holiest and likest to his immortall Image not that which makes us most conformable and captive to civill and subordinat precepts whereof the strictest observance may oftimes prove the destruction not only of many innocent persons and families but of whole Nations Although indeed no ordinance human or from heav'n can binde against the good of man so that to keep them strictly against that end is all one with to breake them Men of most renowned vertu have sometimes by transgressing most truly kept the law and wisest Magistrates have permitted and dispenc't it while they lookt not peevishly at the letter but with a greater spirit at the good of mankinde if alwayes not writt'n in the characters of law yet engrav'n in the heart of man by a divine impression This Heathens could see as the well-read in
story can recount of Solon and Epaminondas whom Cicero in his first booke of invention nobly defends All law saith he we ought referr to the common good and interpret by that not by the scrowl of letters No man observes law for laws sake but for the good of them for whom it was made The rest might serv well to lecture these times deluded through belly-doctrines into a devout slavery The Scripture also affords us David in the shew-bread Hezechiah in the passeover sound and safe transgressors of the literall command which also dispenc'd not seldom with it self and taught us on what just occasions to doe so untill our Saviour for whom that great and God-like work was reserv'd redeem'd us to a state above prescriptions by dissolving the whole law into charity And have we not the soul to understand this and must we against this glory of Gods transcendent love towards us be still the servants of a literall indightment Created he him It might be doubted why he saith In the Image of God created he him not them as well as male and female them especially since that Image might be common to them both but male and female could not however the Jewes fable and please themselvs with the accidentall concurrence of Plato's wit as if man at first had bin created Hermaphrodite but then it must have bin male and female created he him So had the Image of God bin equally common to them both it had no doubt bin said In the image of God created he them But St. Paul ends the controversie by explaining that the woman is not primarily and immediatly the image of God but in reference to the man The head of the woman saith he 1 Cor. 11. is the man he the image and glory of God she the glory of the man he not for her but she for him Therefore his precept is Wives be subject to your husbands as is fit in the Lord Coloss 3. 18. In every thing Eph. 5. 24. Neverthelesse man is not to hold her as a servant but receives her into a part of that empire which God proclaims him to though not equally yet largely as his own image and glory for it is no small glory to him that a creature so like him should be made subject to him Not but that particular exceptions may have place if she exceed her husband in prudence and dexterity and he contentedly yeeld for then a superior and more naturall law comes in that the wiser should govern the lesse wise whether male or female But that which far more easily and obediently follows from this verse is that seeing woman was purposely made for man and he her head it cannot stand before the breath of this divine utterance that man the portraiture of God joyning to himself for his intended good and solace an inferiour sexe should so becom her thrall whose wilfulnes or inability to be a wife frustrates the occasionall end of her creation but that he may acquitt himself to freedom by his naturall birth-right and that indeleble character of priority which God crown'd him with If it be urg'd that sin hath lost him this the answer is not far to seek that from her the sin first proceeded which keeps her justly in the same proportion still beneath She is not to gain by being first in the transgression that man should furder loose to her because already he hath lost by her means Oft it happens that in this matter he is without fault so that his punishment herein is causeles and God hath the praise in our speeches of him to sort his punishment in the same kind with the offence Suppose he err'd it is not the intent of God or man to hunt an error so to the death with a revenge beyond all measure and proportion But if we argue thus this affliction is befaln him for his sin therefore he must bear it without seeking the only remedy first it will be false that all affliction comes for sin as in the case of Joh and of the man born blind Joh. 9. 3 was evident next by that reason all miseries comming for sin we must let them all lye upon us like the vermin of an Indian Catharist which his fond religion forbids him to molest Were it a particular punishment inflicted through the anger of God upon a person or upon a land no law hinders us in that regard no law but bidds us remove it if we can much more if it be a dangerous temptation withall much more yet if it be certainly a temptation and not certainly a punishment though a pain As for what they say we must bear with patience to bear with patience and to seek effectuall remedies implies no contradiction It may no lesse be for our disobedience our unfaithfulnes and other sins against God that wives becom adulterous to the bed and questionles we ought to take the affliction as patiently as christian prudence would wish yet hereby is not lost the right of divorcing for adultery No you say because our Saviour excepted that only But why if he were so bent to punish our sins and try our patience in binding on us a disastrous mariage why did he except adultery Certainly to have bin bound from divorce in that case also had bin as plentifull a punishment to our sins and not too little work for the patientest Nay perhaps they will say it was too great a sufferance And with as slight a reason for no wise man but would sooner pardon the act of adultery once and again committed by a person worth pitty and forgivnes then to lead a wearisom life of unloving unquiet conversation with one who neither affects nor is affected much lesse with one who exercises all bitternes and would commit adultery too but for envy lest the persecuted condition should thereby get the benefit of his freedom 'T is plain therefore that God enjoyns not this supposed strictnes of not divorcing either to punish us or to try our patience Moreover if man be the image of God which consists in holines and woman ought in the same respect to be the image and companion of man in such wise to belov'd as the Church is belov'd of Christ and if as God is the head of Christ and Christ the head of man so man is the head of woman I cannot see by this golden dependance of headship and subjection but that Piety and Religion is the main tye of Christian Matrimony So as if there be found between the pair a notorious disparity either of wickednes or heresie the husband by all manner of right is disingag'd from a creature not made and inflicted on him to the vexation of his righteousnes the wife also as her subjection is terminated in the Lord being her self the redeem'd of Christ is not still bound to be the vassall of him who is the bondslave of Satan she being now neither the image nor the glory of such a person nor made for