taking word or speech for cause or matter in the common eastern phrase meaning perhaps no more then if he had said for fornication as in this 19th chapter And yet the word is found in the 5th of Exodus also fignifying Proportion where the Israelites are commanded to doe their tasks The matter of each day in his day A task we know is a proportion of work not doing the same thing absolutely every day but so much Whereby it may be doubtfull yet whether heer be not excepted not only fornication it self but other causes equipollent and proportional to fornication Which very word also to understand rightly wee must of necessity have recours again to the Ebrew For in the Greek and Latin sense by fornication is meant the common prostitution of body for sale So that they who are so exact for the letter shall be dealt with by the Lexicon and the Etymologicon too if they please and must be bound to forbidd divorce for adultery also untill it come to open whoredom and trade like that for which Claudius divorc't Messalina Since therfore they take not heer the word fornication in the common significance for an open exercise in the stews but grant divorce for one single act of privatest adultery notwithstanding that the word speakes a public and notorious frequency of fact not without price we may reason with as good leav and as little straining to the text that our Saviour on set purpose chose this word Fornication improperly appli'd to the lapse of adultery that we might not think our selvs bound from all divorce except when that fault hath bin actually committed For the language of Scripture signifies by fornication and others beside St. Austin so expounded it not only the trespas of body nor perhaps that between maried persons unlesse in a degree or quality as shameles as the Bordello but signifies also any notable disobedience or intractable cariage of the wife to the husband as Judg. the 192. Whereof at large in the Doctrin of Divorce l. 2. c. 18 Secondly signifies the apparent alienation of mind not to idolatry which may seeme to answer the act of adultery but farre on this side to any point of will worship though to the true God some times it notes the love of earthly things or worldly pleasures though in a right beleever some times the least suspicion of unwitting idolatry As Num. 15. 39. willsull disobedience to any the least of Gods commandements is call'd fornication Psal 73. 26 27. A distrust only in God and withdrawing from that neernes of zeal and confidence which ought to be is call'd fornication We may be sure it could not import thus much less then Idolatry in the borrow'd metaphor between God and man unless it signifi'd as much less then adultery in the ordinary acception between man and wife Adde also that there was no need our Saviour should grant divorce for adultery it being death by law and law then in force Which was the cause why Joseph sought to put away his betrothed wife privately least he should make her an example of capitall punishment as lernedest expounders affirm Herod being a great zelot of the Mosaic law and the Pharises great maisters of the text as the woman tak'n in adultery doubtless had cause to fear Or if they can prove it was neglected which they cannot doe why did our Saviour shape his answer to the corruption of that age and not rather tell them of their neglect If they say he came not to meddle with their judicatures much less then was it in his thought to make them new ones or that divorce should be judicially restrain'd in a stricter manner by these his words more then adultery judicially acquitted by those his words to the adultres His sentence doth no more by law forbidd divorce heer then by law it doth absolve adultery there To them therefore who have drawn this yoke upon Christians from his words thus wrested nothing remaines but the guilt of a presumption and perversnes which will be hard for them to answer Thus much that the word fornication is to be understood as the language of Christ understands it for a constant alienation and disaffection of mind or for the continual practise of disobedience and crossnes from the duties of love and peace that is in summ when to be a tolerable wife is either naturally not in their power or obstinatly not in their will and this opinion also is St. Austins least it should hap to be suspected of novelty Yet grant the thing heer meant were only adultery the reason of things will afford more to our assertion then did the reason of words For why is divorce unlawfull but only for adultery because say they that crime only breaks the matrimony But this I reply the institution itselfe gainsaies for that which is most contrary to the words and meaning of the institution that most breaks the matrimony but a perpetuall unmeetnes and unwillingnesse to all the duties of helpe of love and tranquillity is most contrary to the words and meaning of the institution that therefore much more breaks matrimony then the act of adultery though repeated For this as it is not felt nor troubles him who perceaves it not so beeing perceav'd may be soon repented soon amended soon if it can be pardon'd may be redeem'd w th the more ardent love and duty in her who hath the pardon But this naturall unmeetnes both cannot be unknown long and ever after cannot be amended if it be natural and will not if it be farregon obstinat So that wanting ought in the instant to be as great a breach as adultery it gains it in the perpetuity to be greater Next adultery does not exclude her other fitnes her other pleasingnes she may be otherwise both loving and prevalent as many adultresses be but in this general unfitnes or alienation she can be nothing to him that can please In adultery nothing is given from the husband which he misses or enjoyes the less as it may be suttly giv'n but this unfitnes defrauds him of the whole contentment which is sought in wedloc And what benefit to him though nothing be giv'n by the stealth of adultery to another if that which there is to give whether it be solace or society be not such as may justly content him and so not only deprives him of what it should give him but gives him sorrow and affliction which it did not ow him Besides is adultery the greatest breach of matrimony in respect of the offence to God or of the injury to man if in the former then other sins may offend God more and sooner cause him to disunite his servant from being one flesh with such an offender If in respect of the latter other injuries are demonstrated therein more heavy to mans nature then the iterated act of adultery God therfore in his wisedom would not so dispose his remedies as to provide them for the less injuries and
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
could have created him out of the same mould a thousand friends and brother Adams to have bin his consorts yet for all this till Eve was giv'n him God reckn'd him to be alone It is not good God heer presents himself like to a man deliberating both to shew us that the matter is of high consequence and that he intended to found it according to naturall reason not impulsive command but that the duty should arise from the reason of it not the reason be swallow'd up in a reasonlesse duty Not good was as much to Adam before his fall as not pleasing not expedient but since the comming of sin into the world to him who hath not receiv'd the continence it is not only not expedient to be alone but plainly sinfull And therefore he who wilfully abstains from mariage not being supernaturally gifted and he who by making the yoke of mariage unjust and intolerable causes men to abhorr it are both in a diabolicall sin equall to that of Antichrist who forbids to marry For what difference at all whether he abstain men from marying or restrain them in a mariage hapning totally discommodious distastfull dishonest and pernicious to him without the appearance of his fault For God does not heer precisely say I make a female to this male as he did briefly before but expounding himselfe heer on purpos he saith because it is not good for man to be alone I make him therefore a meet help God supplies the privation of not good with the perfect gift of a reall and positive good it is mans pervers cooking who hath turn'd this bounty of God into a Scorpion either by weak and shallow constructions or by proud arrogance and cruelty to them who neither in their purposes nor in their actions have offended against the due honour of wedlock Now whereas the Apostle speaking in the Spirit 1 Cor. 7. pronounces quite contrary to this word of God It is good for a man not to touch a woman and God cannot contradict himself it instructs us that his commands and words especially such as bear the manifest title of som good to man are not to be so strictly wrung as to command without regard to the most naturall and miserable necessities of mankind Therefore the Apostle adds a limitation in the 26 v. of that chap. for the present necessity it is good which he gives us doubtlesse as a pattern how to reconcile other places by the generall rule of charity For man to be alone Som would have the sense heerof to be in respect of procreation only and Austin contests that manly friendship in all other regards had bin a more becomming solace for Adam then to spend so many secret years in an empty world with one woman But our Writers deservedly reject this crabbed opinion and defend that there is a peculiar comfort in the maried state besides the genial bed which no other society affords No mortall nature can endure either in the actions of Religion or study of wisdome without somtime slackning the cords of intense thought and labour which lest we should think faulty God himself conceals us not his own recreations before the world was built I was saith the eternall wisdome dayly his delight playing alwayes before him And to him indeed wisdom is as a high towr of pleasure but to us a steep hill and we toyling ever about the bottom he executes with ease the exploits of his omnipotence as easie as with us it is to will but no worthy enterprise can be don by us without continuall plodding and wearisomnes to our faint and sensitive abilities We cannot therefore alwayes be contemplative or pragmaticall abroad but have need of som delightfull intermissions wherin the enlarg'd soul may leav off a while her severe schooling and like a glad youth in wandring vacancy may keep her hollidaies to joy and harmles pastime which as she cannot well doe without company so in no company so well as where the different sexe in most resembling unlikenes and most unlike resemblance cannot but please best and be pleas'd in the aptitude of that variety Wherof lest we should be too timorous in the aw that our flat sages would form us and dresse us wisest Salomon among his gravest Proverbs countenances a kinde of ravishment and erring fondnes in the entertainment of wedded leisures and in the Song of Songs which is generally beleev'd even in the jolliest expressions to figure the spousals of the Church with Christ sings of a thousand raptures between those two lovely ones farre on the hither side of carnall enjoyment By these instances and more which might be brought we may imagine how indulgently God provided against mans lonelines that he approv'd it not as by himself declar'd not good that he approv'd the remedy therof as of his own ordaining consequently good and as he ordain'd it so doubtles proportionably to our fal n estate he gives it els were his ordinance at least in vain and we for all his gift still empty handed Nay such an unbounteous giver we should make him as in the fables Jupiter was to Ixion giving him a cloud instead of Juno giving him a monstrous issue by her the breed of Centaures a neglected and unlov'd race the fruits of a delufive mariage and lastly giving him her with a damnation to that wheele in hell from a life thrown into the midst of temptations and disorders But God is no deceitfull giver to bestow that on us for a remedy of lonelines which if it bring not a sociable minde as well as a conjunctive body leavs us no lesse alone then before and if it bring a minde perpetually avers and disagreeable betraies us to a wors condition then the most deserted lonelines God cannot in the justice of his own promise and institution so unexpectedly mock us by forcing that upon us as the remedy of solitude which wraps us in a misery worse then any wildernes as the Spirit of God himself judges Prov. 19. especially knowing that the best and wisest men amidst the sincere and most cordiall designes of their heart doe dayly erre in choosing We may conclude therfore seeing orthodoxall Expositers confesse to our hands that by lonelines is not only meant the want of copulation and that man is not lesse alone by turning in a body to him unlesse there be within it a minde answerable that it is a work more worthy the care and consultation of God to provide for the worthiest part of man which is his minde and not unnaturally to set it beneath the formalities and respects of the body to make it a servant of its owne vassal I say we may conclude that such a mariage wherin the minde is so disgrac't and vilify'd below the bodies interest and can have no just or tolerable contentment is not of Gods institution and therfore no mariage Nay in concluding this I say we conclude no more then what the common Expositers themselves give us both in that
the reason so that either in this regard or in the former I shall be manifest in a middle fortune to meet the praise or dispraise of beeing somthing first But I deferr not what I undertooke to shew that in the Church both primitive and reformed the words of Christ have bin understood to grant divorce for other causes then adultery and that the word fornication in mariage hath a larger sense then that commonly suppos'd Iustin Martyr in his first Apology writt'n within 50. yeares after St. Iohn dy'd relates a story which Eusebius transcribes that a certain matron of Rome the wife of a vitious husband her selfe also formerly vitious but converted to the faith and persuading the same to her husband at lest the amendment of his wicked life upon his not yeilding to her daily entreaties and persuasions in this behalf procur'd by law to be divorc't from him This was neither for adultery nor desertion but as the relation saies Esteeming it an ungodly thing to be the consort of bed with him who against the law of nature and of right sought out voluptuous waies Suppose he endeavour'd som unnaturall abuse as the Greek admitts that meaning it cannot yet be call'd adultery it therefore could be thought worthy of divorce no otherwise then as equivalent or wors and other vices will appear in other respects as much divorsive Next t is said her freinds advis'd her to stay a while and what reason gave they not because they held unlawfull what she purpos'd but because they thought she might longer yet hope his repentance She obey'd till the man going to Alexandria and from thence reported to grow still more impenitent not for any adultery or desertion wherof neither can be gather'd but saith the Martyr and speaks it like one approving lest she should be partaker of his unrighteous and ungodly deeds remaining in wedloc the communion of bed and board with such a person she left him by a lawfull divorce This cannot but give us the judgement of the Church in those pure and next to Apostolic times For how els could the woman have bin permitted or heer not reprehended and if a wife might then doe this without reprooff a husband certainly might no less if not more Tertullian in the same age writing his 4. book against Marcion witnesses that Christ by his answer to the Pharises protected the constitution of Moses as his own and directed the institution of the creator for I alter not his Carthaginian phrase he excus'd rather then destroi'd the constitution of Moses I say he forbidd conditionally if any one therefore put away that he may marry another so that if he prohibited conditionally then not wholly and what he forbadd not wholly he permitted otherwise where the cause ceases for which he prohibited that is when a man makes it not the cause of his putting away meerly that he may marry again Christ teaches not contrary to Moses the justice of divorce hath Christ the asserter he would not have mariage separat nor kept with ignominy permitting then a divorce and guesses that this vehemence of our Saviours sentence was cheifly bent against Herod as was cited before Which leavs it evident how Tertullian interpreted this prohibition of our Saviour for wheras the text is Whosoever putteth away and marieth another wherfore should Tertullian explain it Whosoever putteth away that he may marry another but to signify his opinion that our Saviour did not forbidd divorce from an unworthy yoke but forbidd the malice or the lust of a needles change and cheifly those plotted divorces then in use Origen in the next century testifies to have known certain who had the government of Churches in his time who permitted som to marry while yet their former husbands liv'd and excuses the deed as don not without cause though without Scripture which confirms that cause not to be adultery for how then was it against Scripture that they maried again And a little beneath for I cite his 7. homily on Matthew saith he To endure faults wors then adultery and fornication seems a thing unreasonable and disputes therfore that Christ did not speak by way of precept but as it were expounding By which and the like speeches Origen declares his mind farre from thinking that our Saviour confin'd all the causes of divorce to actual adultery Lactantius of the age that succeeded speaking of this matter in the 6. of his institutions hath these words But lest any think he may circumscribe divine precepts let this be added that all misinterpreting and occasion of fraud or death may be remov'd he commits adultery who marries the divorc't wife and besides the crime of adultery divorces a wife that he may marry another To divorce and marry another and to divorce that he may marry another are two different things and imply that Lactantius thought not this place the forbidding of all necessary divorce but such only as proceeded from the wanton desire of a future chois not from the burden of a present affliction About this time the Councel of Eliberis in Spain decreed the husband excommunicat If he kept his wife being an adultress but if he left her he might after ten yeares be receav'd into communion if he retain'd her any while in his house after the adultery known The councel of Neocaesarea in the year 314. decreed that if the wife of any Laic were convicted of adultery that man could not be admitted into the ministery if after ordination it were committed he was to divorce her if not he could not hold his ministery The councel of Nantes condemn'd in 7. yeares penance the husband that would reconcile with an adultress But how proves this that other causes may divorce it proves thus there can be but two causes why these councels enjoyn'd so strictly the divorsing of an adultress either as an offender against God or against the husband in the latter respect they could not impose on him to divorce for every man is the maister of his own forgivenes who shal hinder him to pardon the injuries don against himself It follows therfore that the divorce of an adultress was commanded by these three councels as it was a sin against God and by all consequence they could not but beleeve that other sins as hainous might with equal justice be the ground of a divorce Basil in his 73. rule as Chamier numbers it thus determins that divorce ought not to be unlesse for adultery or the hindrance to a godly life What doth this but proclaime aloud more causes of divorce then adultery if by other sins besides this in wife or husband the godlines of the better person may be certainly hinder'd and endanger'd Epiphanius no less ancient writing against Heretics therefore should himself be orthodoxal above others acquaints us in his second book Tom. 1 not that his private persuasion was but that the whole Church in his time generally thought other causes of divorce lawful besides adultery as
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