and such of them as have Propriety in Goods and Chattels Tenements and Haereditaments as Bees Ants and Squirrels leaving as they die their Hives and Honey-Hills and Corn-Holes and Nuts to their Descendents to be their Successors The Internal Readers and Witnesses in Man are the Divine faculties of the Soul Sense and Reason one doth Testifie the Fact the other the Law The Internal Judg of the Probation of both is the Conscience The Laws which they read and testifie are written in the Internal Tables of the Heart Christ expresseth the first concerning Marriage in the foresighted Text Matth. 19.5 For this cause shall a man leave Father and Mother and they two shall be one flesh Concerning Filiation the Law of natural affection which is writ in the heart of the Father is mention'd Psal 103.13 As the Father pittieth his Children so the Lord pittieth them that fear him And the Law of natural affection writ in the heart of the Mother is mention'd Isa 49.15 Can a Woman forget her sucking Child that she should not have compassion on the Son of her Womb As to the Law of Aliment written in the heart of the Father it is mention'd Luke 11.11 If a Son shall ask bread of any of you that is a Father will he give him a stone or if he ask a Fish will he give him a Serpent or if he shall ask an Egg will he offer him a Scorpion Lastly as to the Law of Succession written in the heart of the Father whereby all natural Sons succeeded either to the right of Primogeniture or Filial Portions the same runs through all the examples of Jews in Scripture and of Gentiles in Histories This great Law of Nature is acknowledged to be written in the Tables of the Heart by the Scripture it self Rom. 2.14 The Gentiles who have not the Law do by Nature the things contained in the Law these having not the Law are a Law unto themselves which shew the work of the Law written in their Hearts their Conscience also bearing witness and their thoughts mean while accusing or excusing one another So Rom. 1.26 Paul saith Women did sin against Nature Yet was there no Law of Moses nor any Law written by God or Man in Paper and Ink which particularly prohibited them but only that of Nature And that this Law of Nature can neither be changed nor abolished or dispensed with by any humane power is agreed by Philosophers Poets Divines Common and Civil Lawyers and all others except Popes who exalt themselves above God Christ and Nature and all that is called God Lex Naturae neo tolli neo abrogari potest saith Tul. de leg 205. Dionysius when his Mother being an old Woman desired of him he would get her to be married to a young Man He answer'd Kings might overthrow Civil Laws but could not the Laws of Nature Lex humana derivari debet à lege Dei sed eam perfectè persequi non Potest Aquin. Augustin In humanis Legibus nihil est justum nisi ab aeterna lege dirivatur Honesta turpia natura judicanda sunt Tul. de leg 169.6 Hobart's Reports 120. It is acknowledged that all customs and Acts of Parliament against the Laws of Nature are void for Lex naturae est lex legum the Law of Nature is the Law of God and positive Law if contrary or variant from it is the Law of Man Yelverion Justice said When a new Case comes for which there is no positive Law before we do as the Sophonisis and Civilians resort to the Law of Nature which is the reason and ground of all Laws and of that which is most beneficial for the Common-wealth make a Law quod non negatur 8 E. 4. fo 12. Claudius justly reprehends Tribonian That in compiling the Institutes of the Civil Law he omitted the Law of Nature de Ferraiis 552. But the flattering Courtier had he done so knew he must have prefixed another imperatoriam Majestatem and laid other manner of principles then placitum Principis to be the original of right he could not have then divided Title and Jurisdiction with his Master And Jupiter Proclaiming that Deus est imperator in Coelis Imperator est Deus in Terris 'T is well he claims only the Earth for now the Pope claims not only plenitudinem Terrae but Heaven too to sell to his Customers Yet the Civil Law acknowledges the Law of Nature immutable And this point of Marriage and Succession saith Lege duodecim tabularum benè humano generi prospectum est quae unam consonantiam tam in maribus quà m in foeminis Legitimis in eorum successionibus necnon in liberis observandam esse existimavit nullo discrimine in successionibus habito cum natura utrumque corpus ediderit ut maneat suis vicibus immortale alterum alterius auxilio egeat ut uno semoto alterum corrumpatur sed posteritas dum inimica utitur subtilitate non piam induxit differentiam c. Cod. lib. 6. tit 47. l. lege By the Law of the Twelve Tables it is well provided for Mankind that there should be the same rule of Successions for Males and Females and in Children and no difference to be made in their Successions seeing Nature hath brought forth the Bodies of both that they might continue in their course immortal and one need help of another and one taken away the other might be destroyed But later Ages while they use so much subtilty have made an impious difference c. Which is intended between Males and Females in Succession when Lands are Intailed to Heirs Males By which appears what opinion the Civil Law hath of Successions to such Intails to be impious because contrary to the Law of Nature The Civil Law likewise acknowledgeth that Jura Sanguinis nullo jure Civili dirimi possunt and again it follows the Law of Nature in Legitimation Si mulier quinquagenaria partum ediderit an debet hujusmodi soboles suo patri succedere haereditatem â—jus nancisci à Caesariano advocato interrogati sumus sancimus Licet mirabilis hujusmodi partus inveniatur raro contingat nihil tamen eorum quae probabiliter à natura nascuntur esse producta respui sed omne jus quod ex quacunque Lege liberis praestitum est hoc merum atque immutilatum hujusmodi filiis vel filiabus servari in omnibus succâ—ssionibus sive ex testamento sive ab intestata Et summatim non absimiles aliis fiant in quos similes natura efficit Cod. lib. 6. tit 47. si major A question is proposed us by the Advocate of Caesar if a Woman above fifty bring forth a Child whether such Issue shall be Successor to the Father in the whole inheritance And we Decree though it be an admirable Case and rarely happens yet we ought not to reject any thing known to be probably produced by Nature but all the right which by any Law is given to
THE Night doth vanish when the Sun appears And from all Clouds the smiling Morning clears Romish Night-Ravens flie ye filthy Fowls And all ye Ceremonial Bats and Owls And Weather-cocks whose painted Feathers strange With every Wind God's Moral Law would change His Law is light the Sun outshines the Torch Which blindly Virgins led to the Church Porch Ye Meadows deck your selves with flowry pride Hear of an Holy Marriage and a Bride Not given by Man but God so great aad wise And by him Married as in Paradise With Beauty bright as Fire but chast and cold As Snow he Crowned her and not with Gold The Issue fair who did not Prophesie Sacred Religion Justice Liberty And Property providing of the best Both Bread and Wine for every Marriage Feast The Morall Law The Ceremonial Law Marriage by the Morall Law of God Vindicated Against all Ceremonial Laws of Popes and Bishops destructive to Filiation Aliment and Succession and the Government of Familyes and Kingdomes The Lord hath been a Witness betweene thee and the Wife of thy youth Mal. 2.14 1680. Linea Recta Proefertur Transversali RELIGION IUSTICE LIBERTY PROPERTY TO THE READER THE Writers both of Nature and Policy agree That the Original of all humane Society was Marriage by which Families were first composed consisting of Men their Wives and Children and after Commonwealths composed of those Families when by the multiplication of Generation they were grown so numerous as to be no longer able to preserve their Religion Liberty Propriety and Lives against one another without some Union of all obnoxious to receive or do Injuries under such Form of Government as was by the whole or major part of the Fathers of Families in their General Conventions of themselves or Representatives Consented and Covenanted for the common Peace and Happiness of all to both which no Constitution of Laws was more necessary than those which concern'd Marriage Filiation Aliment and Succession whereon not only private but publick Peace and War often depended and therefore Marriage being the Ordinance of God and not of Man it was impossible to lay any secure Foundation of the Rights of the same except on the Moral Law of God and no other was long observed either by the Jews or Gentiles than what was as Christ saith from the beginning till to break in pieces the Divine Tables of the same the Devil and the Priest conspired together to set up the Golden Calf of their Ceremonies and that Gods Ordinance should be null and void without them and no probation should be admitted of their performance but the Certificate of the Bishop or High-Priest by which as to matter of Succession to Inheritances and Kingdoms They bound their Kings with Chains and their Nobles with Fetters of Iron God was pleased to make the Contention concerning a Marriage between H. 8. and the Pope the occasion of breaking off some of the Links and of being a beginning of the Protestant Religion and Liberty and I hope he doth now offer the like or a greater occasion of propagating both to the present Age and Posterity and not only to break all the Reliques of the Chains but to file off the Collars themselves whereby the Bishop of Rome and the Provincial Bishops have long so gauled the Necks of Princes and People through all Christendom to the easing of which Burdens I should be glad if thou and so many other more fit than my self would lend your hands but seeing so many seeming to sleep in the midst of so great a danger I hope it ought not to offend if I hereby endeavour to awaken you and to be therein as I ought to be to my Power Your Servant Will. Lawrence THE CONTENTS Of the First Book BY what Law Marriage Filiation Aliment and Succession ought not and ought to be Judged p. 1. Not to be Judged by the Law of Moses or Customes of the Jews p. 2 Not to be Judged by the Laws and Customes of Heathen Nations p. 10 Not to be Judged by the Law Civil Canon or Feudal p. 21 Not to be Judged by the Law of Mahomet p. 26 Not to be Judged by Ecclesiastical Laws p. 31 All Allegations of Coke in behalf of Ecclesiastical Laws answer'd ib. Of the mischiefs ensue from Ecclesiastical Laws p. 43 1. All Ecclesiastical Laws of Marriage were invented by Daemons Pagan Priests or Popes ib. The History of the Devil appearing in the shape of Christ to Dr. d ee and tempting him and his Seer Kelly to Community of Wives p. 45 All prohibition of Marriage or Meat in any Ceremony or Circumstance not prohibited by the Moral Law of God came from the Devil p. 52 2. The Final Causes of all Ecclesiastical Laws of Marriage variant from the Moral Law of God were Lust Covetousness and Ambition of the Priest p. 53 3. They pester the Three Kingdoms with an unnecessary and excessive multitude of Laws p. 57 4. They corrupt the choicest Protestant Wits in their Education with Principles of Popery and Slavery p. 59 5. They introduce divers weights and measures of Justice in the same People ib. 6. They compell the Subjects ad aliud Tribunal than Caesars Judgment Seat ad aliud Examen than per legem terrae ad aliud judicium than legale judicium Parium ib. 7. They expose the Subjects to Circuit of Action Subornation Perjury and to be ground between two Milstones of interferring Jurisdictions Spiritual and Temporal 8. Papal Laws of Marriage are inconsistent with a Protestant Priesthood ib. Not to be Judged by such Laws of England Scotland or Ireland as are Reliques of Popery and contrary to the Law of God Of the Law making Marriage a Sacrament p. 65 Of the profound Popery of the Common Lawyers of Transubstantiation of two Persons into one Person and the mischiefs thereof p. 66 A Note taken at Kings-Bench-Bar of the miraculous Transubstantiation of a Shoulder of Mutton betwixt a Man and his Wife p. 71 Of the Law of Transubstantiation of the Children of the Wife into the Children of the Husband if within the Four Seas and of Intails p. 72 A further descant on the words of Littleton and Coke concerning the same and of Intails on Marriages depending thereon p. 73 75 Of the barbarous Law of Illegitimation or making Children incapable to succeed to the Goods of their Parents the Reformation thereof by the Emperor Anastasius and the Deformation of the same again by the Strumpet Theodora and succeeding Popes and Bishops p. 79 That unlawful Marriages of Parents ought not to Illegitimate their Children p. 80 Illegitimation of Children shews Popes and Bishops worse than Pagans Infidels Beasts Monsters Serpents p. 82 Intails Feminine cut off by Adoption or Institution by the Father of his natural Children Heirs ib. Of the Law of Consensus non Concubitus facit Matrimonium p. 83 Of the Pagan Goddess Juno and the Popish Mother of St. Kentigern both got with Child without a Man p. 85 Of the
Lady Ann of Britain Married to the bare Leg of the Embassador of the Emperor Maximilian p. 86 Of the Lady Pulcheria Sister to Theodosius the Emperor Married to Martianus the Lady Etheldred to two Husbands the Lady Amigunda to the Emperor Henry the Second the Lady Editha to Edward the Confessor the Lady Ann of Cleve to Henry the Eight all Married by Priests but not by their Husband ib. Of the Custom of desertion of Virgins after deslowring p. 88 Of the desertion of the Lady Lucy by Edward the Fourth for the Lady Jane Grey and the infelicity followed thereon to them and their Children ib. Of the like desertion by a Gentleman in Ireland after a Child born p. 89 Of the ancient Form of Marriage-Contracts Se post concubitum in vitam non deserturum now repugnantly turn'd into Verba de presenti Of the Law giving liberty of Temptation to a Minor Married to an Husband after Carnal knowledge to desert him for a Richer p. 91 An example of the same in Scotland ib. Of the Law tempting Women to desert their Husbands by giving them more Alimony than the Interest of their Portions p. 94 Of the Law of Divorce after Procreation of a Child for Precontract or Precopulation without Preprocreation ib. Stat. 3 H. 8. cap. 38. against Precontracts p. 96 Edward the Sixth abused by Papists in his Minority to repeal his Fathers Act against Precontracts p. 98 Of the Law making private Marriage or Carnal-knowledge without publique Witnesses of a verbal Contract Fornication p. 101 Of the Law requiring Witnesses of Marriage and Filiation where both are acknowledged by the Parents and no third Party claims the Father Mother or Child p. 109 Of the Law of Sequestration of a Woman pendente placito Sued by two Corrivals and Sentencing either Man or Woman to be restored in Specie and not in Value ib. Of the Law making all prohibited Marriages Null p. 100 Of the Custom of Superalimentary Gifts in consideration of Carnal knowledge between a Man and a Woman either before or after Marriage p. 113 A Satyr against Merâ—enary Marriage p. 117 Of the Law giving Jurisdiction of the secret Causes of Divorce between Parents and secret Uncleanness of Children in their Parents Houses to publick Tribunals Of the Law compelling Parties Married though mortal Enemies to Cohabitation Of the Law of Divorce a Mensa Thoro. Not to be Judged by Ceremonial Laws Of the absurd and ridiculous Ceremonies on which Priests would have Marriage Filiation Aliment and Succession to depend p. 127 Marriage Filiation Aliment and Succession ought only to be Judged by the Moral Law of God p. 130 Of the Final causes of Marriage by the Law of God and Nature p. 135 Errata's in Verse LIb. 1. p. 131. line 5. for Moon read Morn p. 135. l. 36. for lease r. cease p. 223. l. 28. for I see r. is with me p. 224. l. 9. for all r. such p. 225. l. 8. for thanks r. there and in the same line after for there r. and l. 39. for lightnings r. lightning p. 228. l. 5. add the word next before the word expel p. 392. l. 11. for who burn would not r. who burn would Lib. 2. p. 239. l. 31. for Mariners r. Mariner l. 36. for why r. who Lib. 3. p. 89. l. 8. for their r. them l. 16. for not babling r. no babling Errata's in Prose COntents to the First Book relating to p. 88. for in vitam r. invitam non deserturum Lib. 1. p. 88. l. 8. add invitam before deserturum p. 90. l. 42. for invitum r. invitam deserturum p. 1. l. 11. for or any Subject r. on any Subject p. 4. l. 28. for Harecloth r. Hayrcloth p. 17. l. 36. for women were divorced r. women did divorce p. 23. l. 21. for Affinity r. Consanguinity p. 43. l. 11. for Canon Law r. Common Law p. 93. l. 27. for Common Law r. Canon Law p. 106. l. 31. for pitty relieve him r. pitty to relieve him p. 110. l. 40. for invitum fore Matrimonium r. Irritum fore Matrimonium p. 132. l. 36. add and shall cleave to his wife p. 180. l. 11. for established r. abolished p. 180. l. 42. for Chancellors of State r. Councellors of State p. 210. l. 20. for Sacrament r. Sacrifice p. 215. l. 28. for Tyrant r. Pyrat p. 282 l. 23. for there were Judges r. and Judges p. 120. l. 1. leave out no l. for Secreta Fori r. Secreta Thori p. 121. l. 25. for false r. and the false p. 121. l. 43. for take off Exequenda officia Matrimonialia r. talk of Exequenda officia Matrimonialia p. 257. l. 30. for thinks r. think l. 27. for that binds r. binds p. 265. l. 17. for Obligatio libelli r. Oblatio libelli Lib. 3. Preface p. 10. l. 1. for Algine r. Algive In the Contents relating to p. 160. for Successor or Male r. Successor Male leaving out or p. 2. l. 16. for ever that be r. Over that be p. 13. l. 10. for wages r. ways p. 188. l. 25. for Basiel r. Baliel In the Index see Bail in line 36. for Canon-Law r. Common-Law OF The Laws of Marriage Filiation Aliment and Succession Lib. I. Of the Two Grand Questions concerning Marriage Filiation Aliment and Succession IT was the saying of one Se benè dividentem velut Deum secuturum And Dichotomy though the most difficult to do is without dispute if well done the most excellent Division and Method wherein any Discourse can proceed or any Subject which made me indeavour though not passibus aequis to follow that way directed by the great Methodist of Art Aristotle or rather the greater director of Nature God himself of whom it may more truly be said In duo divisit quicquid in Orbe suit The whole Question therefore naturally depending on what shall be the Law and who shall be the Judg and all Parts of Argumentation consisting either of Premises or Conclusion all Premises being either Negative or Affirmative I have as to Premises stated the whole Controversie of Marriage Filiation Aliment and Succession Negatively and Affirmatively under these Two great Questions following First By what Law they ought not and by what Law they ought to be judged Secondly By what Judg they ought not and by what Judg they ought to be judged And these two Premises being proved he will be an absurd Logician who denies the Conclusions following from them CHAP. I. Marriage Filiation Aliment and Succession not to be judged by the Law of Moses or Customs of the Jews Divorce DEut. 24.1 It 's said When a man hath taken a Wife and married her and it come to pass that she find no favour in his Eyes because he hath found some Vncleanness in her then let him write a Bill of Divorcement and give it in her hand and send her out of his House And when she is departed out of his House she may go and be another man's Wife
as they agree And at the end of the time they are free and may leave each other without other agreement The Tartars by reason of their Plurality of Wives have a multitude of Children In Monomotapa they Marry as many Wives as they will but the first is the Principal and her Children only to inherit The Mogul hath a Thousand the Turk is said to have three Thousand Women Amongst Barbarians mention is made of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a People where Women had many Husbands and amongst the Medes which dwelt in the Mountains 't is said a Woman had five Husbands at once It is said that the Lacedemonians had anciently a Custom that one Woman should have two Husbands one to go to War the other to abide at home In Malabar the Women have many Husbands either at once or successively and if at once they send their Children to them whom they think have most right to them In Calicut some Women are related to have six or seven Husbands and they Father their Children on which of them they please The Anses had Women in common and the Child was to be reputed his with whom the Woman chose to live Some report that Gorgophan Daughter to Perseus about Anno Mundi 2630. Second Marriage was the first Woman who Married a Second Husband When Myrrha fell in love with her Father Cynara Gentes esse feruntur in quibus nato genitrix nata parenti jungitur Pietas geminato crescit amore Incest Ovid Metam lib. 10. The Babylonians allowed Marriage of Parents and Children Justin lib. 1. saith That Semiramis was kill'd by Ninus her Son because she would have lain with him but Orosius lib. 1. cap. 4. affirms That she was Married with her Son Curtius lib. 8. saith In Regionem quam Naura appellant Rex cum toto exercitu venit Satrapas erat Sysimithres duobus ex sua matre filiis genitis quippe apud illos licitum parentibus stupro coire cum liberis Alexander came with his whole Army into a Region called Naura where was a Satrapas called Sysimithres who had two Sons whom he begat of his own Mother For with them it 's held lawful for Children to lie with their Parents This Sysimithres together with her who was his Mother and Wife being possessed of an impregnable Rock scituate in the pass into his Country opposed Alexander in his entrance and being Summon'd by him to yeild he himself assented but was over-ruled by the same Incestuous Woman his Mother and Wife who said She would rather die then yield so much more valiant was she then he but in the end he over-ruled her and yeilded his Fort and was content his two Sons should militate under Alexander who took them with him as a kind of a wicked Rarity Plutarch saith That the Cimbri married their own Daughters which Custom was taken from them by Marius who overcame them in Germany and triumphed over them The Quitteve or King of Sofala hath an Hundred Women Queens and Concubines and many of them his Aunts Couzins Sisters Daughters all whom he useth saying His Sons by them are the truest Heirs to the Kingdom because no mixture of blood But none but the King on pain of death may marry Sister or Daughter Jo. dos Sanctus At Cape Gonsalvetz they have a filthy Custom that the King when his Daughters are grown takes and keeps them for his Wives and the Queens in like manner take their Sons when they are grown up and make use of them as Husbands In Aegypt some of the Ptolomies married with their Sisters and as it seems by Seneca such Marriages were not unusual at Alexandria for he saith Athenis dimidium licet Alexandriae totum and as Turnelius affirmeth at Athens they might Marry their own Sisters by the Father such as Abraham Gen. Cap. 20.12 said of Sarah She is the Daughter of my Father but not the Daughter of my Mother and she became my Wife Whereby you see Abraham is censur'd by the Doctrine of Seneca as an Incestuous Person but Lycurgus permitted Sisters only to Marry by the Mother's side but forbid to Marry Sisters of the Father's side And Arnobius contra Gent. saith That Incest was allowed amongst many Nations of whom Alex. ab Alex. lib. 1. gen dier C. 24. hath made a Catalogue Cambyses amongst the Persians married his Sister so did Artaxerxes so did Darius and in Aegypt so did Ptolomeus Philadelphus at Rome Claudius with Agrippina his Brother's Daughter and Caracalla with his step-Mother Opian the Poet saith That Caracalla Married Julia his own Mother When Cambyses had a mind to Marry his Sister he advised with the Magi to know whether the Laws did allow it who answer'd They knew no Law which did allow it But there was a Law which allowed the King of Persia to do what he would Yapangoi the Father of Guagna Capa was the first Ingua of Peru who married his Sister that Ingua's might do it and commanding his own Children to do it permitting the Noblemen also to Marry their Sisters by the Father's side Other Incest in the line ascendent or descending and Adulteries were punished with death The chast Artemisia was the Wife and Sister of Mausolus Diique suas habuere sorores Vt Saturnus Opim junctam sibi sanguine junxit Oceanus Tethin Junonem Rector Olympi Ovid Metamor 9. In Pozo in America they marry with their Neices and Sisters The Chinois heed no degrees of Affinity or Consanguinity so the Sirnames differ and therefore marry into the Mother's kindred be it almost never so near If a Tartar die his Son may marry all his Wives except his own Mother and Sisters so it is lawful for a Brother to marry the Widow of his Brother Polo Pliny in an Epistle to Loratius saith That the Athenians did use to marry Brothers and Sisters but yet did not permit Uncles to marry their Neices nor Aunts their Nephews Aemilius Probus speaking of Cymon's Marrying his Sister Elpinice Habuit autem in Matrimonio sororem nomine Elpinicen non magis amore quam patrio more ductus nam Atheniensibus licet eodem patre natas uxores ducere The Arabians had anciently a Custom that one should be Wife to all her Brothers whereby they become all Brethren and the eldest should lie with her at Night and at Day the other Every one as they came first set his Staff at her door to give notice to the rest to forbear whereby they were all Brethrâ—n An Adulterer was punish'd amongst them with death The Britains had Ten or Twelve Wives apeice as Caesar saith which they held common amongst Brothers and Parents and Dio saith The Children thus begotten were brought up in common amongst them Eusebius saith That many Britains kept one Wife in common In Arabia the Happy it 's accounted Adultery to lye with any Woman except of their own kindred as Sisters Mothers Cousins and the like whom they likewise take to be Wives It
Infallible or any Book which hath more Seditious and Rebellious principles of Disloyalty This I only say now but when I have what I now want time and opportunity I can and will 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 make it good how dangerous and when believed and practised how pernitious to Kings and Princes the principles of that Law are I hope all Bishops will hereafter be of the same mind and not own the Canon Law to be the Rule of Marriages and Legitimations or Successions of Protestant Kings and Princes or their Subjects or for their Pardons and Excommunications or fit to be any longer the Ecclesiastical Law for the Government in any thing of Three Protestant Kingdoms As to the Feudal Law I shall defer it till I come to speak of the wicked obligations of some Tenures Feudal Law to prostitute the Virginities of their Daughters to the Lords of the Land It is enough for to shew the slavery of Feudal Laws if we but remember the late Wardships of Tenures wherein the marriages of Men and Women were bought and sold as if Beasts in the Market and the unjust Laws yet remaining in customary Estates prohibiting Widows to marry and marrying young Women to old decrepit Men not fit for marriage to get a Widow's Estate whereby they are left exposed to infinite Temptations The wicked custom of Marchâ—ta Mulieris belongs to the Feudal Law Marchâ—ta mulieris dicitur Virginalis pudicitiae prima violatio delibatio quae ab Eveno Rege sibi capitalibus dominis fuit impie permissa de omnibus novis nuptis prima nuptiarum nocte sed pie à Malcolmo 3 sublata fuit in capite sequente certo vaccarum numero quasi pretio redimitur Sken Reg. Ma. lib. cap. 31. 1. It is to wit that conform to the Law of Scotland the Marchet of ane Woman noble or Servant or Hireling is ane Zoung Kow or three shillings And the right duty to the Sergeant three pennys 2. And she be Dochter of an Frie-man and not of the Lord of the Village her Marchet shall be one Kow or six shillings and for the Sergeants duty sax pennys 3. Item The Marchet of ane Thane or Ochiern twa Rye or Twelve shillings and the duty to the Sergeant Twelve pennys 4. Item The Marchet of the Daughter of an Earl pertains to the Queen and is twelve Rye The Spaniards in the West Indies setting a Tribute to the King and the inferior Lords to be paid yearly by every married person To encrease these yearly Tributes from married persons they every year survey by List the married persons of every Town and cause their Children Sons and Daughters to be brought before them to see if they be fit to be married and if of growth fit they threaten the Parents for not marrying them and raise his Tribute by way of Fine till he marry them And the set time they appoint for marriage to the Indians is 14 to the Man and 13 to the Woman yea some they compel to marry scarce 12 or 13 years of Age if they appear of more forward strength yea it is a shame to see how young they are inforced to it pag. 155. So between the King of Spain and the Pope the poor Indians pay dear for marriage which God left free The Civil Law is said to be Jus Leoninum The Canon Law Jus Vulpinum The Feudal Law Jus Asmarium in regard of the intollerable oppression and servitude in it I conclude therefore Marriage Filiation and Succession not fit to be judged by any of these three Laws CHAP. IV. Marriage Matrimony Legitimtaion or Succession not to be judged by the Law of Mahomet YOU will not offend God in speaking a word in secret to Women that you research in marriage although you conceal in your minds your design to espouse them he understandeth whatever you think of them Alch. cap. 2. pag. 23. Of Persons with whom Marriage is forbidden Marry not the Wives of your Fathers what is past was Incest abomination and a wicked way your Mothers are forbidden you your Daughters Aunts Nieces Nurses and your foster Sisters The Mothers of your Wives the Daughters that your Wives have had by other Husbands The Daughters of Women that you shall have known are also forbidden you if you have not known them it will be no sin The Wives of your Sons are likewise prohibited and two Sisters for what is past God is Gracious and Merciful Married Wives are likewise forbidden except the Women-slaves that you shall have acquired God hath so commanded you Except what is above forbidden it is lawful for you to marry at your pleasure Of the Time of approaching Wives When your Wives shall be clean approach them according to what God hath commanded He loveth them that repent of their Error and are clean and purified Your Wives are your Tillage go to your Tillage at your pleasure And do good to your Souls you shall one day find it fear God and preach his Commandments to true Believers Alchor cap. 2. pag. 21. Of forbearing to touch Wives God will be Gracious and Merciful to such as shall swear not to touch their Wives the space of four Months if he return to them he is Gracious and Merciful but if they desire to repudiate them he understandeth and knoweth all things Women Divorced shall tarry until their Terms be past four times it is not permitted them to conceal what God hath created in their Wombs if they believe in his Divine Majesty and the day of Judgment Alchor cap. 2. p. 22. Of the propriety of the Wife in her Goods distinct from the Husband Oh ye that believe in God it is not lawful for you to inherit what is your Wives by force Take not violently away from them what you have given them unless they be surprized in manifest Adultery see them with civility if you have an aversion from them it may chance that you have a thing wherein God hath placed much Good But if you desire to repudiate your Wives to take others and that you have given them any thing take not any thing that appertaineth to them Will you take their wealth with a lye and a manifest sin how shall you take it since you have approached each other with a promise to use each other civilly Alchor cap. 4. pag. 49. Of giving Suck by the Mother and Aliment to her and her Child and Aliment by the Heir to his Parents The Women shall give Suck to their Children two years intire if they desire to accomplish the time appointed to suckle them the Father shall nourish and cloth the Wife and his Children according to his faculties Expend not but according to the measure of your Goods the Father and Mother shall not necessitate themselves for their Children The Heir shall perform what is above ordained he shall entertain his Father and Mother according to his abilities If the Parents would wean their Children before two
years be expired they may do it without offending God if they both agree to it If you cause your Children to be Nursed by other Women than your own Wives God will not be offended in giving them their Sallary according to reason and honesty Fear God and know that he seeth whatever you do Alchor c. 2. p. 23. Of Legitimation and Succession of Children All the Children the Mahometans have by their Wives or Slaves are alike Legitimate and succeed to the Father's Goods in such manner as did the Twelve Sons of Jacob. And the Grand Seignior of the Turks himself esteemeth her though she be a Bond-woman his Sultana or Empress who bringeth him the first Son who is likewise Heir to the Empire though never any Ceremonies of marriage by a Priest or in a Temple were used Of Succession of Children to the Goods of Parents and of Parents to theirs and of Collateral Heirs God recommendeth to you your Children The Son shall have as much as two Daughters if there be more then two Daughters they shall have two thirds of the Succession of the Dead if there be but one she shall have the moyity and her kindred a sixth part of what shall be left by the Dead If there be no Children and the kindred be Heirs the Mother of the dead shall have a third if there be Brethren the Mother shall have a sixth after satisfaction of Legacies contained in the Testament and of debts You understand to whom it is most requisite to do good to your Children or to your Father and Mother give them the Portion ordained of God the moyity of what their Wives shall leave belongerh to you if they have no Children If they have you shall give the fourth part of what they shall leave after payment of the Legacies and Debts they shall have the fourth of your Succession if you have no Children if you have they shall have the Eighth Portion If a Man and a Woman be Heirs of each other and have neither Father nor Mother nor Children and have a Brother or Sister each of them shall have a sixth part of the Succession if they be more they shall share the Third after payment of Legacies and Debts without fraud following what God hath ordained He knoweth all your actions and is prudent in what he ordaineth it is God ordained by his Divine Majesty he that shall obey him and his Prophet shall enter into Paradise where many Rivers flow and shall dwell in Eternal felicity He that shall disobey God and his Prophet shall be cast Head-long into the fire of Hell where he shall suffer ignominious Torments Alchor cap. 4. pag. 48 49. Of Succession of Brothers and Sisters If a Man decease without Issue and hath a Sister she shall have a moyity of what he shall leave and shall Inherit it if he hath no Children If they be two Sisters they shall have two Thirds of what the deceased left If they be many Brothers and many Sisters the Son shall have as much as Two Daughters God teacheth you his Commandments depart not from the right way he is Omniscient Alchor cap. 4. p. 64. Of Fornication Those that know no other Women but their own and their slaves These Mahomet numbers amongst the Righteous Alchor cap. 70. p. 362. If you desire Women for Money and neither commit Concubinage nor Adultery give them Salary for which you shall agree so you shall not offend God He that shall not be able to espouse Women of a free condition shall marry such Women and Maids as are slaves The marriage of slaves is for them that fear Whoredom Alchor cap. 4. Of Desertion by Wives of their Husbands If Women fly from their Husbands they shall be brought again to them which is a thing reasonable they ought to honour them and their Husbands likewise ought to honour them but the Husbands have a degree of advantage above them God is Omnipotent and most Wise in what he ordaineth Alchor cap. 2. pag. 22. Of Adultery by Wives If your Wives commit Adultery take four Witnesses of their fault that be of your Religion if they bear witness keep them Prisoners in your Houses until death or until God shall otherwise ordain If they Repent of their fault do them no harm God is Gracious and Merciful to them that Repent Alchor cap. 1. p. 49. Of Divorce When you shall repudiate your Wives appoint them the time they must tarry before they again marry take them with civility and modesty and in like manner dismiss them give them presents according to your ability and take them not to abuse or torment them They that do thus offend their own Souls Alchor cap. 2. pag. 22. He that hath repudiated his Wife thrice shall not resume her until she hath been married to another who hath Divorced her Alchor c 2. p. 22. Then they may return to each other again and marry without sin ibid. If the Women Divorced be with Child allow them what is necessary for them till they be delivered if they desire to Nurse their Children you shall give them an honest Salary if ye like not this ye shall cause them to be Nursed by another whose pains ye shall reward if ye be not wealthy ye shall allow according to your power Alchor cap. 66. Of the time Women are to tarry before a second Marriage Widows shall tarry four Months and ten Nights after the death of their Husbands before they marry again Alchor cap. 2. pag. 23. The like time required after Divorce The word Alchoran signifies a Collection of these Laws of Mahomet concerning Marriage and Succession which seem to be no other but a Collection of some old Arabic customs which he as well as the Pope and many other Legislators to insnare the consciences of the Ignorant Superstitious counterfeited to come from God in which though each of the Persons are equally guilty of Blasphemy yet as to the Laws the Mahometan far excel the Pontificial And pardon me if I think our own Municipal Laws derived from so impure a Legislator as Rome For first here is in these Arabic customs no Dispensation of what is truly Incest by the Law of Nature nor any prohibition of any within the fourth degree not prohibited by the Law of God or Nature 2. Here is no prohibition of Septuagesima Advent or Rogation times to get money for Licenses to marry 3. Here is no Banes carrying of Women to Temples buying of the Priests Benedictions nor money given for Licenses to marry without them 4. Here is no inslaving Women by marriage unless slaves whom they buy in the Market for money or take Captive in Wars by Robbing them of the propriety of their Goods nor any ridiculous and unjust punishment of the Man for the Woman or the Woman for the Man's offences 5. Here is no letting Stews or Fornication to Rent 6. Here the Father hath liberty to acknowledge his own Children and the Children their Father
and no Certificate of Bishops hath power to take that right from them 7. Here the wantonness of Widows is forbidden who are for new Husbands as soon as the old is put in his Grave whereby who are Fathers of their Children is made uncertain 8. Here is no false Fathering of Children on those who are within four Seas 9. Here is no punishing Men twice for one offence once by the Temporal Court and then by the Spiritual Court or contrary punishments by contrary Courts one by the Contentious Court and another by the Penitential Court 10. Here is no Auricular Confession of their Wives or Daughters by Priests in Temples or Chambers and defiling thereby of their Families 11. Here is no punishing of Women for bringing forth Children nor the Murders of so many Infants caused thereby as by the Papist Laws is continually done Yet I conclude though the Law of the Turk is far better than that of the Pope and shall rise in Judgment against such as plant his Canons in their Courts in defiance of the Law of God and Nature I think neither a fit Rule to judge Marriage Legitimation or Succession by CHAP. V. Marriage Filiation Aliment and Succession not to be judged by Ecclesiastical Laws THE Question is Whether Marriage Legitimation and Succession ought to be judged by Ecclesiastical Laws No English Lawyer can mention my Lord Coke without great honour but how he came so biass'd as to endeavour to set up Papal and Episcopal Laws under the name of Regal appears not Object 1 It is objected by Coke lib. 5.1 part 40. in Cawdryes Case That the Kingdom of England is an absolute Monarchy and if the King cannot Authorize by his Commission or Writ Ecclesiastical Judges to determin and judg those great and important Causes of Matrimony Divorce and general Bastardy by Certificate of the Bishop who is the Ecclesiastical Witness and Judg both of Fact and Law and by the Canon Laws which by use and custom are now our Ecclesiastical Laws Then he is disabled to be supreme Governour of this Realm in all Spiritual things or Causes as well as Temporal according to the Oath of Supremacy due to him And that he could not then cause Justice to be administred to his Subjects in these so great and important causes of Matrimony Divorce and general Bastardy on which depends the strength of mens Descents and Inheritances This I conceive though not in the same words yet in sence and substance to be the weight of my Lord Coke's Argument whereby he would make use of Marriage as one means amongst his many other to set up an Ecclesiastical Law and Judg over the Temporal Freeholds and Inheritances and other Birth-rights of the Subjects To which is answer'd First As to the words Absolute and Supream I suppose he intended no such absolute Monarchy or Supremacy as is not under the Law of God though it be not so express'd in the form of the Oath of Supremacy For though Regum timendorum in proprios greges Ecclesiastical Laws not needful to the King's Supremacy but hurtful Reges in ipsos imperium est Jovis then I think he doth not intend it to be above the Law of the Land seeing the King himself by his Oath is pleased to oblige himself to his People to govern according to that Law where it is not contrary to the Law of God Then as to the pretended want of Power of doing Justice concerning causes of Free-hold and Inheritance depending on marriage except by Ecclesiastical Laws and Judges that is very strange for how was Justice done in the times of Primitive Christianity for many Hundred Years after Christ when neither Bishops or any other Ecclesiastical Judges ever pretended Jurisdiction todetermin Temporal Right or Propriety but left the same to be judged by the Imperial Laws How was Justice done in the time of Henry the Second when the Jurisdiction of all Matrimonial causes remained in the Temporal Courts Richard the First his Son being the first as Matthew Paris writes whom the Clergy got by his publick Edict to give the Jurisdiction of Power and Gifts by reason of Marriage and of all Matrimonial causes to the Bishops Courts and the same Richard likewise gave them Jurisdiction of all breach of Faith Promises and Oaths whereby if much of the Power so rashly granted had not been by him so speedily resumed they had hookt to themselves the whole Jurisdiction from the King's Courts of all Contracts and Conveyances Bonds and Obligations as well as Marriages concerning Temporal Goods and Inheritances And why cannot general as well as special Bastardy be tryed at Common Law And how likewise are all Rights depending on all Marriages made during the late Civil Wars by pretence of any Ordinance of Parliament made by 12. Car. 2. cap. 33. to be tryed by a Jury and the Common Law and not by Certificate of the Bishop or any Ecclesiastical Judg to the advancement and not prejudice of Justice and a far greater expedition and advantage to the same would it be if by the like Act the Jurisdiction of all Marriages and Legitimations as it was in the time of Henry the Second were again restored to the Common-Law-Courts So likewise anciently Bastardy alledged in an Action of Trespass was triable by Jury but now usurped by Bishops as well in personal as real Actions 4. Edw. 4.35 Object 2 Coke lib. 5.1 part in the same case of Cawdry it is further alledged Circumspectè agatis gives no Jurisdiction of Marriage to Bishops That the Statutes of Circumspectè agatis made 13. Eliz. 1. of Articuli Cleri made 9. E. 2. Anno Domini 1315. of 15. E. 3. Cap. 6. of 31. E. 3. Cap. 11. give Jurisdiction of marriage to Bishops To which is answer'd That in the Statute of Circumspectè agatis there is not a word mention'd of marriage but only by it Jurisdiction is given to the Bishops of Fornication and Adultery which is not Marriage but rather Anti-marriage for Marriage is an Ordinance of God Fornication and Adultery are Ordinances of the Devil and whereas before the Jurisdiction of Fornication and Adultery as acknowledged by Coke lib. 5.1 part 488. was in Leets under the name of Letherwit or more properly Lecherwit yet had Leets never Jurisdiction of Marriage or Divorce neither consequently could Bishops have it from them As for Articuli Cleri and the other Statutes there is not a word in them concerning Marriage nor so much as of Fornication and Adultery the Jurisdiction therefore pretended was never given by any Statute Linwood likewise expounds the words of the Statute of Circumspectè agatis which gives Bishops Jurisdiction of all deadly Sins as Fornication and Adultery and the like Non intelligas de omni peccato mortali sed de tali cujus punitio spectat merè ad forum Ecclesiasticum nam si de ratione cujuslibet peccati mortalis cognosceret Ecclesia sic periret temporalis gladii Jurisdictio
Juvenal Veniet cum signatoribus Auspex and of Ovid Mense malum Maio nubere vulgus ait and they declared to the parties the unlucky Ides Kalends and all the dismal times and days which got the Cheats much money from the foolish people and to continue the same Trade the same was revived by Popes and Councels of Laodicea Iterda and Trent by their prohibitions of Marriage in times of Advent Septuagesima and Rogation Pope Soter made the Law prohibiting Marriage without delivery of the Woman by the Father and receiving a Benediction from the Priest Delivery by the Father and Benediction by the Priest yet Christ saith For this cause shall a man leave father and mother and though a Father may deny to give his Daughter so liberal a Portion if she marry without his consent as he would give with it yet can he not prohibit her to marry and when Rachel said to Jacob Give me children or I die and he in anger replyed Am I God he thereby shews that 't is not the Benediction of the Priest or Pilgrimages to Saints cause fertility or sterility but Children are the gift of God Marriage within the fourth degree Pope Calixtus made the Law prohibiting Marriage within the fourth degree either of Consanguinity or Affinity and others extend the same as well to Spiritual as Carnal kindred The Law prohibiting Marriage without License was first set up by the Priests of Priapus and Venus License to marry And the Priests of Diana her self could no more live without License-money for Marriage then those of Venus which made the Virgins of Greece before they presumed to marry humbly to beg the Goddess's pardon that they left her Nunnery for which they brought good Fees and Offerings to the Priests Power of the Pope translated to the Arch-Bishop of Canterbury The Law of Dispensations Legitimations and Confirmations of Marriages and Children and the whole Papal power therein translated to the Arch-Bishop of Canterbury by 25 H. 8.21 was made by Papists in a time of Popery The Law of Banes was invented by Popes and revived by the late long Parliament Banes and the Laws of New England only translating the Marriage to the Magistrate instead of the Priest Marriage without a Priest or Temple The Law prohibiting marriage without a Priest and a Temple was invented by the Priests of Priapus and Venus and revived by the Pope and Council of Trent In all these Ecclesiastical Laws of Marriage the two Strumpets Theodora of Justinian Strumpets and Theodora of Pope Sergius and that impudent Quean Marozia and other Strumpets of the Popes had a great hand We are like therefore to have excellent Laws in the Bishops Courts and Justice for Marriage Fillation and Succession while the Laws of such Legislators continue All Laws prohibitory of Marriage or Meats came from the Devil Lastly There needed not to those who believe the Scripture this Recital of so many wicked persons to be Authors of this mention'd Ecclesiastical Laws for it is manifest by the Scripture it self that all Laws prohibitory of Marriage or Meats they being things not indifferent but necessary for the preservation of Humane Nature in the least Ceremony or Circumstance where they are not prohibited by the Law of God came from the Devil as appears 1 Tim. 4.1 2 3. Now the Spirit saith expresly That in the latter times some shall depart from the faith giving heed to seducing Spirits and Doctrines of Devils speaking lyes in Hypocrisie having their consciences seared with an hot Iron forbidding to marry and commanding to abstain from meats which God hath created to be received with thanksgiving I conclude therefore that all the fore-mentioned Ecclesiastical Laws prohibiting marriage without their Popish Ceremonies or Circumstances not appointed by God came from the Devil or many Devils The Final causes of the Ecclesiastical Laws concerning Marriage invented by Daemons and the Priests of Priapus and Venus were Lust Covetousness and Ambition of the Priests The second Reason against Ecclesiastical Laws is the wicked ends for which they were invented which were no other but only to satisfie the insatiable Lust Covetousness and Ambition of Priests As to which the Indian Histories mention That in the Kingdom of Molabar neither the King or People are allowed to have a Wife Luft Covetousness Ambition of Priests the only ends of Ecclesiastical Laws of Marriage unless sanctified for him by the first nights Lodging of the holy Bramin who is their Priest which is the reason that there the King's Sons succeed not to the Kingdom but their Sister's Sons for they say they know not the Father but they know the Mother Linschot Little better is done in Catholic Kingdoms often times though not openly yet secretly by those unchristian Bramins the Cardinal Confessors and it is common in Italy for Catholics to jeer one another that their Children are Fils de Prestre The Benyan Indians give their Priests the first fruits of their Wives and think the Marriage will not be blessed without it The Southern Americans in divers parts think it a great Devotion to offer their Daughters to be first defloured by the Priest The Algier Mahometans and the people of other parts of Africa think it a meritorious work to prostitute their Wives to their Morabates or holy Saints whom they esteem their Prophets And Leo Afer who was that Countrey-man tells a story of one of these holy Prophets who came to a Town and espying a handsom Woman being a person of very good quality and great esteem in the Town yet the Prophet took her being at a Bath and lay with her openly in the concourse of a great multitude of people who applauded the Fact as a great honour to the Lady and many of them ran to congratulate her Husband how happy he was to have so holy a Man partner with him in his Wife and when some of the better sort of people whose discretion was a degree above the common superstition of their Religion went and informed the Magistrates of the Town of the foul and shameful act was committed by a Vagabond Prophet and they sent their officers to apprehend him the people rose upon them and would have knockt out the Brains both of Officers and Magistrates had they not speedily desisted Carpenter reporteth from a Monk of Doway That not long ago it was a custom in Biscay a Province in Spain that every Man having married a Wife sent her the first night to the Priest of the Parish which it seems was the Fee due to the Priest for his labour the same day of marrying her in his Temple Carp 193. So it was at the door of the Tabernacle Hophni and Phinehas Sons of the Priest lay with the Women of the congregation 1 Sam. 2.22 To the Temple of Marriage the Popish Priests have of latter times added the Chappel of Ease of Auricular Confession Auricular Confession in a more commodious
would not cause the poor Man to be paid for his shoulder of Mutton without all that ado but I after understood that were not the Forms mixt with so many such absurdities there would be little work for them at the Bar. Of the Law of Transubstantiation of the Children of the Wife into the Children of the Husband if he is within the four Seas at the time of their begetting and no probation admitted to the contrary And of Intails on Marriages Husband within the four Seas no probation admitted that the Children were not his Fiction and Falsity allowed against Truth That no probation is admitted to the contrary appears 18. E. 4.30 where Littleton says That if a Man marries a Woman great with Child by another Man whether he knows it or not knows it and within three days after she is delivered of the Child this Child is legitimate and the true Son of the Man that married her And this by a Fiction in Law and with this agrees Coke Com. 244. So here is a Father made not by god but by the Father of lies and a false Child made Legitimate and the true Child of a Father who never begot him and the true Child if he begot any before he was married without a Priest and Temple made illegitimate and a false yea no Child to him who begot him and all this held very good and sound Divinity If marriage of the great bellied Woman be in facie Ecclesiae a brazen facies Ecclesiae it must be where the Devil gives God the Fiction the truth the lie And Coke and Littleton hold it too for good Law I wonder whose Law they mean and so stiff they are in it that Coke Com. 244. saith No proof shall be admitted to the contrary so here 't is not stabitur praesumptione donec probetur in contrarium but it is the sin of Presumption from which the two Fathers of the Law do not pray as the Patriarch David did Psal 19.13 Keep thy Servant also from presumptuous Sins let them not have Dominion over me then shall I be upright and I shall be innocent from the great transgression One of them at least defends the sin of Presumption so high that he saith 'T is presumption Juris de jure non admittitur probatio in contrarium and in fictione juris semper est equitas a meer repugnancy and contradiction which never came from the Law of God nor is consistent with it as appears Psal 96.13 For he cometh to judg the Earth he shall Judg the World with righteousness and the People with his truth And not with fictions and much less with lies so punctually forbidden James 3.14 Lie not against the truth and so severely threatned Revel 21.8 All liars shall have their part in the Lake which burneth with Fire and Brimstone And Revel 19.20 The false Prophet is to be cast in amongst them who though he seems to be the greatest lier in the World yet in none greater then in this his lie of Legitimation against which must be admitted no proof to the contrary The Law of Legitimation is further That if a Woman Elope or run from her Husband with an Adulterer and live in Adultery with him and have a Child by the Adulterer if her Husband be within the four Seas when 't was begot this Child shall be Legitimate and shall be adjudged the Husband's Child and no probation shall be admitted to the contrary as appears 43. E. 3.19.7 H. 4 9.44 E. 3.10 1. H. 6.7.19 H. 6.17 Coke Com. 244. A further descant on the words of Littleton and Coke concerning the transubstantiation of Children of Parents within the four Seas And of the Law of Intails When a Common Lawyer hath for his Fees in a Deed of Jointure very formally settled Lands Messuages Houses Tenements and Hereditaments c. To have and to hold the said Messuages Houses Lands Tenements and Hereditaments with their and every their Appurtenances unto the said A. B. and C. D. and to the Heirs of their two Bodies lawfully begotten and the Priest on Banes or Licence as formally per verba de praesenti contracted the said A. B. and C. D. which he calls Marriage You shall next hear what Heirs the Priest and Lawyer confederated to do their Faeminine Client a good turn by their Fictions whereat they are both good one will expound by the Gospel and the other interpret by the Law to be lawfully begotten of the Body of this Woman aforesaid First Littleton 18. E. Fol. 30. hath said If a Man marry a Woman great with Child by another Man and within three days after she is delivered of the Child this Child he saith is a Mulier that is to say Legitimate that is to say lawfully begotten of the Body of the said Woman by the said Man that married her Yet he saith In putting the case he was begot by another man and makes a very great Fiction in the premises and contradiction in the conclusion of his Case but let it be what it will Coke Com. 244. seconds him and thinks Littleton hath spoken over conscionably or wasts time to allow three days for cannot a Woman of full and lawful Age though she sup a Virgin if she lie with the Law by her side that Night as well have a Child next Day by dinner as if she stayed three whole days he therefore takes off two of the unnnecessary days and says plainly reserving to the Case of Littleton on the Margent That if the Issue is born a Month or a Day after Marriage between Parties of full lawful Age the Child is Legitimate that is as aforesaid lawfully begot And the reason he gives is Quia filiatio non potest probari from which Premises he makes three Conclusions First Ergo probatio non admittitur in contrarium Secondly Ergo if a Man marry a Woman got with Child by another Man and he is born but one day after the Marriage this Child is lawfully begot by the married Man Thirdly Ergo if a man is on or within the four Seas that is within the Jurisdiction of the King of England and a Child in his absence is begot by another Man on the Body of his Mirmaid he left at home this was lawfully begot by the Man on the four Seas Let any Logician if he dare deny the Sequel for here are two Aristostles for the Law but he hath but one for his Logick And there is a greater Aristotle too for the Gospel the Bishop himself to second my Lord Coke Bishop's Certificate Form hath given his Certificate in his Book of Entries Fol. 181. And the foresaid Bishop by his Letters Patents and Close hath certified to the Justices here That he by virtue of the foresaid Writ to him directed Convocating before him such as of right are to be Convocated hath diligently enquired and certified the truth of the matter that in the Chappel of B. in the County of G. in the
The word Assigns gave power to cut off Fee-simple Intails were afterwards made to him his Heirs and Assigns and the word Assigns added in favour of the true and natural Children which word Assigns gave the Lay-men power of cutting off the Fee-simple Intails being the cheat imposed on them by the Popish Priest and to Assign Dispose and Alien the same as well Extra familiam as Intra which it seems before without the word Assigns they could not do But it was not long after when the subtle Popish Priest who knew he could Reign not but by the Woman got a Latin Statute to be made Westminster 2 cap. 1. whereby he struck out the word Assigns and took clean away the power of Men to Assign Alien and Dispose of their own Lands and whereas the Intail of Fee-simple was only implicit he then by express words Intails it to Heirs begotten of the Body of the Woman whereby the adulterous might succeed as well as and before the Lawful if they came first which Intails likewise were after carried into Scotland for so says Craig Feud fo 70. Ab Anglis ad nos defluxisse puto And fo 59. he saith Neque enim tale Feudum ad collaterales extenditur inâ—ò quod majus est si Maevio Semproniae conjugibus concedatur Feudum baredibus inter ipsos procreandis nulli ex eo matrimonio supersint Et Maevius ex alia conjuge liberos susceperit hi in feudo non succedant Intails a Skreen to Adulteries This digression hath been made to shew that the Original of Intails to more Bodies than one on marriage came from the old Pagan Priests and now revived by Popes to be a skreen to Adulteries and Adulterous Successions and thereby their power over the Women without which no Sacerdotal Empire can subsist I shall now proceed to shew the other mischiefs insuing from Intails besides the Patronage of Adulteries Intails destroy Patriarchy and introduce Hierarchy Gynarchy Paedarchy First therefore Intails on Marriages destroy Patriarchy and introduce into Families Hierarchy Gynarchy and Paedarchy That Patriarchy was the first form of Government instituted in Families by God and Nature I think none will contend the Ancient Writers and Poets are full of it especially in their Celebrations of the Primaevous happiness of the Golden Age and old Homer begins Nec fora consiliis fervent nec judice tantum Antra colunt umbrosa altis in montibus Aedes Quisque suas regit uxorem Natosque Courts grew not hot with Judge or Lawyer then But each Man without strife In Mountain high rul'd or in shady Den His Children House and Wife Here Patriarchy was in its Throne and the Moon and Stars all bowed to the Sun till the Priests of Priapus and Venus as before touched and for the fore-mentioned ends of satisfying their own Lust Covetousness and Ambition first prohibited all Marriage except by a Priest in a Temple then Intailing all Estates to the Heirs Lawfully begotten of the Body of the Woman married by the Priest and the Priest to be Judge both of the marriage and the Lawful begetting by this the Priest introduced Hierarchy and got a greater Dominion over the Woman and the Children than the Husband or Father for he was not to be judge whether the Wife or Children were his but the Priest and now the Bishop by his Certificate and likewise hereby the Priest became Judge of the Alimony and Maintenance and gave what he pleased to the Wife and her Children in regard the Father had no power of Alienation by reason of the Pontificial Intail to the Heirs of the Woman and thereby the Hierarchy of the Priest the Gynarchy of the Wife and Paedarchy of the Sons necessarily arising from such principles turned the poor Patriarch out of Doors and took his Goods when and as they pleased Intails dâ—â—fraud civil and natural Debts 2. The Intail deprives the Father of power to provide for his younger Children but after his death the Sons are thereby left desperate and betake themselves to the High-way and the Daughters to be prostitutes to the dishonour and destruction of themselves and Families 3. Intails as they defraud the Children of the natural debts of Aliment due from their Parents so they defraud Creditors of the valuable debts due to them from their Debtors 4. They put the Subjects to infinite trouble vexations and charges for Fines Recoveries Licenses of Alienation to cut them off Bills of Discoveries and hazard and danger they being many times erroneous and the Intails secret and thereby not only all the cost and labour lost but likewise the whole Purchase-money disbursed bona fide by a Lawful Purchasor Intails cause the abuse of private Acts of Parliament 5. They are the chief occasions pretended of private Acts of Parliament whereby contrary to all justice the Lawful rights of Persons and Families are taken from them and they undone without Summons or Hearing or notice to make their claims whereas by the just and honourable practice of the Kingdom of Scotland they use to make Subsequent Acts of Salvo jure cujuslibet whereby the rights of all Persons are preserved and restored Acts of Salvo jure cujuslibet in Scotland against all private Acts precedent as appears by the Acts of Parliament Car. 1. p. 1. Act 31. p. 2. Act 70. p. 3. Act 42. Car. 2. p. 2. Act 29. 2 Sess Car. 2. p. 2. Act 52. Sess 3. Car. 2. Act 30. c. 6. To mention a word more how much the taking away of the Father's power of free disposing and Alienation of their Estates by Intails or any other irrevocable settlements on Children brings into Families the unexperienced Pride of Paedarchy whereby Children undo both their Parents and themselves by depriving of their Parents of the means of their Education in the true Religion and in Lawful Callings and Professions the Parents having no other Bridle on them to restrain them from vicious courses but to give them hopes and fears of increasing or lessening their Portions according to their demerits may appear Bodin 25. where he saith It was obtained of Constantine that the propriety of the Mother's Inheritance should be in the Children and the Father should have only the usu-fruct This was fair that the Inheritance which came by the Mother the Father should not have power to Alien from her Children But after it was obtained of Theodosius the younger That the propriety of all manner of Goods in general however they came by them should be to the Sons the use only to the Fathers so that they could not any-wise Alienate the propriety Children command Parents by Intails nor dispose thereof though for the benefit of their Children yea with us he saith not so much as the bare use of such Goods is left to the Father which hath so puffed up the hearts of Children as that they oftentimes command their Parents by necessity
constrained to obey them or to dye for hunger Of the Barbarous Law of Illegitimation or making Children incapable of Succession to the Goods of their own Parents And of the most excellent Law of the Emperour Anastasius decreeing all natural Children to be Legitimate and the repeal of the same caused by the Strumpet Theodora and the succeeding Popes and Bishops The power of Sale of Legitimations of natural Children was first in Pagan Rome usurped there by their Pagan Bishops and Priests and hath since in imitation of them been usurped by Christian Bishops in name but indeed Anti-Christian for the same filthy lucre amongst whom the Bishop of Rome and the Arch-Bishop of Canterbury have been the Primates But after the Emperours of Rome perceiving the vast Sums as it were ex lotio the Prerogative-Office and the Office of Faculties heaped together they swept them all into their own Exchequer and suffer'd no Legitimation to be granted unless they bought them of the Emperours who received great gain thereby till the Empire came into the hands of the vertuous Anastasius who seeing the great oppressions on his Subjects by taking from them that Birth-right which the Law of God and Nature gave not only to them but every Creature born into the World to be provided for by those who begot them and this to be continued only for the profit of his Exchequer he disdained such sordid and impious gain and made a most pious holy and honourable Decree That all natural Children should be Legitimate whereby all Intails to the Bodies of Women of the Husbands Estates were cut off and the mischiefs of bringing Fictitious Adulterous Supposititious and false Heirs into Families prevented But after Theodora who was a common Prostitute Theodora a common Prostitute the Author of the Ecclesiastical Laws of marriage came to be married to the Emp. Justinian and another Theodora as bad as she and her Daughter Marozia and other such Creatures came to be Strumpets to Pope Sergius and other Popes and had the chief hand in making all the Ecclesiastical Laws of Marriage by which the Bishops to this day judge Do any expect that these Whores of Babylon would ever bring any good Laws out of the Stews into the Church Certainly if any judicious and indifferent person will take the pains to take a full view of the Canons he will easily find there is not one which is not either a Gin to take their Prey or a Bait to cover it and that if all the Theodoras Marozias Laisses Thaisses Phrynes and Floras were to be alive again and sit in a Conclave of Women they nor all their Chaplain Priests could not invent better Laws for the advancement of their Trade or ways to destroy Religion Justice Vertue Modesty and Chastity then the Imperial Papal and Provincial Ganons are under the name of Ecclesiastical Laws And that notwithstanding Bishops amongst Protestants should be so long tolerated to judg arbitraties or according to them not only of Patrimonies and Matrimonies Filiations and Successions of the Subjects but of Kings and Kingdoms themselves is horrible But to return now to Theodora as Bodin Fol. 17. says and appears by divers Civil Laws compared after she had got the the Mastery of Justinian the Emperor her Husband a blockish and unlearned Prince when she had made all the Laws she could for the advantage of Women against their Husbands she got him to enact That it should be death for a man to lie with any Woman but his Wife but if the Wife lay with other Men besides her Husband she should only be infamous that is to say she should have no punishment at all for what honour can Infamy take from her who by Adultery hath already lost her honour and is totally defamed I forbear for brevity to recite other of her Laws but amongst them all there being not one good except for her Trade there cannot be a more wicked then the next For she having the command of her chous'd Husband caused him to repeal the excellent Law of the Emperor Anastasius which made as before mention'd all natural Children Legitimate that is to say where their Filiation was acknowledged by the Father by Adoption or other sufficient Declaration by him of the same whereby the old Ignoramus abrogated a better Law then ever he made or was in the whole heap raked together in his name by Theodora and Tribonian and they set up again the old Pontifical Intails of Husband's Lands to the Heirs of the Body of the Woman married before a Priest in a Temple That unlawful Marriages of Parents ought not to illegitimate the Children Child not to be punish'd for the Father's sin Desertion of Virgins after deflouring caused by Illegitimation First This is contrary to the Law of God to punish the sins of the Parents on the Children Secondly This incourages Fathers to deflour Virgins and when got with Child to desert both the Mother and the Child as a far cheaper way then by carrying her first to a Priest and Temple to draw a charge on himself of her and her Child as long as he lives this incourages likewise such Fathers to get Children by Incest and Adultery and Fornication and any other way which is not lawful rather then according to the lawful Ordinance of God because he can cast off all these Women and Children by only saying they are illegitimate and take an hundred more and serve them the like and they shall thereby be defrauded of Succession to his Goods and so much as Aliment from the same whereas if according to the Law of God and the excellent Law of Anastasius derived from the same all natural Children were to be adjudged Legitimate the Children would be provided for by being by Law made Successors to their Fathers Estate as far as the same will reach and Fathers would be discouraged to get Children unlawfully when they saw they could not thereby wickedly desert and make them illegitimate or evade the Obligation laid on them by the Law of God and Nature to provide for their own A wicked Father ought not to have a greater privilege then a good A Father not to take advantage of his own wrong Thirdly 'T is very unjust That a wicked Father should have greater privilege then a good and he who doth his Child injury then he who is his Benefactor for a Father who gets a Child unlawfully doth a double injury to the Child and rather ought to make double satisfaction to him then if he got him lawfully for he dishonors the Child and it is a rule in Law None shall take advantage of his own wrong if the Child is unlawfully begot who did the wrong but the Father who is therefore if proved to be punished for the wrong and not to take advantage of it against his injured Child to illegitimate and disinherit him nor much less ought the Law to do it for no other reason but because the Father
hath done him one wrong to do him another but in justice to be the readier to make the Father who injured him to make satisfaction by adjudging him right of Aliment and Succession to his Estate for as it is inconsistent with Mercy and the highest Cruelty Afflictionem addere afflicto so is it with Justice because the Coat is taken from an innocent to take his Cloak also or to make one injury done the warrant to do another No such word as illegitimation nor no such deed in the whole Scripture Fourthly Because there is no foundation for this unnatural Cruelty of illegitimation or indeed worse then beastly exposing Children to be destroyed in the whole Scripture neither is there such a word as Bastard in the whole Original Old Testament or New Hebrew Text or Septuagint but the same is falsely Translated by Papists and Bishops to deceive the World as shall be more fully shewn when I after come to the point of false-translation of all words concerning Marriage Fifthly All the examples of Scripture of unlawful Marriages yet Legitimate and make the Children Successors to their Fathers in such unlawful Marriages as Lot begot Moab and Ammon by Incest on his own Daughters yet were Moab and Ammon Legitimate Successors to their incestuous Father Judah begot Pharez by Incest on his Daughter in Law yet was he Legitimate Successor to his incestuous Father David got Solomon on an Adulteress with whom he had committed Adultery in her Husband's life time and kill'd her Husband to obtain yet did not this illegitimate Solomon but he Succeeded to his Father And according to the Law of Anastasius and the Law of God and Nature whether the marriage were lawful or unlawful yet the Law was amongst the whole Nation of the Israelites and Jews That all natural Children were Legitimate Illegitimation of Children shews Fathers worse then Pagans Insidels wild-beasts Monsters Serpents and Succeeded to their Fathers and the same Law was amongst the Aegyptians Athenians Phoenicians Persians Turks Tartars and Mahometans who though Infidels have been better then such counterfeit Christians who make Laws to illegitimate and not provide for their own Children O ye Jews Turks Heathens Pagans Infidels O ye wild Beasts in your Dens O you Serpents in the Desarts Oh ye Monsters in the Sea arise and witness against Popes and Bishops that your Dens Desarts and raging Seas are not such Hells as the Limbus puerorum of illegitimation Did you ever illegitimate your little Ones did ye not labour to provide for your own will you not with invincible Piety hazard your own lives in defence of your young Rise up in Judgment against these Romish wild Beasts Serpents and Monsters far more Cruel Poisonous and Monstrous then your selves who for gain teach to illegitimate starve and Murther their own self-begotten Babes before they can speak deploring their miserable Fate with weeping and wailing to be the Issue of so unnatural and cruel Parents Sixthly I shall only add a word concerning the Original cause which produced this wicked effect of illegitimation of Children which the cursed invention of Intails by the Priest of the Lands of the Husband to the Heirs of the Body of whatsoever Woman he married or certified married to the man whereby as is before mention'd the Priest by Certificate and the Woman by Secrecy had power to make Successors what Adulterous Heirs they pleased and most commonly begotten by the Priest himself to the Husbands Inheritance to cut off these Adulterous Intails the most ancient whereof we read were set up by Cecrops for the Owls of Athens and King Aegeus the natural Father of the famous Theseus was the first who invented Adoption to cut them off and accordingly Adopted his natural Son Theseus who thereby became his Successor to his Kingdom of Athens whereby the Certificate of the Bishop was abolish'd and the Supremacy of the Kingdom taken from the Priest to the King and the free disposing left to Fathers of their Estates to such Children as they acknowledged according to the deserving or undeserving of the Children After this Solon who is thought though not as wise yet to have been as great a lover of women as Solomon and to have been drawn by them into as great Idolatry for Solon as a principal peice of his Government intended to be set up by his Laws as shall be after further touched Consecrated and Founded Priests and a Temple to the Goddess Venus and endowed the same with great Revenues and Privileges and Consecrated a multitude of Curtesans to exercise their Trade and pray for the prosperity of Greece in the same And did what he could to restrain the free liberty of Adoption by Husbands whereby the Ladies were prejudiced in their power of instituting Heirs to their Husbands Estates in as free a manner as their Goddess Venus gave them leave But the more Masculine Princes both of Greece and Rome vindicated their own Power of Adoption both against the Priests and the Ladies And Anastasius without any Formality of Adoption cut off at a stroke all Feminine Intails by making all natural Children as they ought to be Legitimate which continued till as before mention'd the Strumpet Theodora and her Bishops got the Law of Anastasius repealed and Adulterous Intails again set up And the like Law was in England Fathers gave what they were bound by the Law of Nature to give to their natural Children for provision for them and they Succeeded to the same 'till the Bishops for the same ends as the Pagan and Theodoran Bishops did set up Here likewise by the Statute of Westmin 2. Cap. 2. those Feminine and Adulterous Intails have been since endeavour'd to be cut off by Fines and Recoveries But the many Inconveniences of those ways make the Remedy almost as bad as the Disease No remedy but abolishing Intails and restoring the Law of Anastasius To conclude therefore there is no way to prevent the exposing and desertion of Children by Fathers the Adulteries of Mothers and the murders of so many Infants occasion'd by this Diabolical Pontifical invention of Illegitimation as the abolishing all Intails to more Bodies then one and the restoring of that most excellent Law of Anastasius That all natural Children shall be Legitimate and the Innocent Babes be no longer punished and destroyed for the sins of the Parents Of the Law of Consensus non Concubitus facit Matrimonium Of the Pagan Goddess Juno and the Popish Mother of St. Kentigern both got with Child without a Man Of the Lady Ann of Britain married to the bare Leg of the Embassador of the Emperour Maximilian Of the Lady Pulcheria Sister to Theodosius the Emperour married to Martianus the Lady Etheldred to two Husbands the Lady Amigunda to the Emperour Henry the Second the Lady Editha to Edward the Confessor and the Lady Ann of Cleve to Henry the Eighth all married by Priests but not by their Husbands Intention of the mind The
the colour and pretence of a former Contract made with another the which Contract divers times was but very slenderly proved and often but surmised by the malice of the party who desired to be dissolved from the Marriage which they liked not and to be coupled with another There was an Act made That all and every such Marriages as within the Church of England should be Contracted and Solemnized in the face of the Church and Consummate with Bodily knowledge or fruit of Children or Child being had between the parties so married should be by Authority of the said Parliament Deémed Iudged and taken to be Lawful Good Iust and Indissolvable notwithstanding any pre-contract or pre-contracts of Matrimony not Consummate with Bodily knowledge which either of the Persons so married or both had made with any other Person or Persons before the time of Contracting of that Marriage which is Solemnized or Consummated or whereof such fruit is ensued or may ensue as by the same Act more plainly may appear Since the time of which Act. although the same was Godly meant the unruliness of Men hath ungodlily abused the same and divers inconveniences intolerable in manner to Christian Ears and Eyes followed thereupon Women and Men breaking their own promises and faiths made by the one unto the other so set upon sensuality and pleasure that if after the Contract of Matrimony they might have whom they more favoured and desired they could be contented by lightness of their nature to over-turn all that they had done afore and not afraid in manner even from the very Church-door and Marriage Feast the Man to take another Spouse and the Spouse to take another Husband more for Bodily lust and carnal knowledge then for surety of faith truth or having God in their good remembrance contemning many times also the Commandment of the Ecclesiastical Iudge forbidding the parties having made the Contract to attempt or do any thing in prejudice of the same Be it therefore Enacted by the King's Highness The Lords Spiritual Temporal and the Commons in this present Parliament assembled That as concerning pre-contracts the said former Statute shall from the first day of May next coming cease be repealed and of no force or effect and be reduced to the estate and order of the King 's Ecclesiastical Laws of this Realm which immediately before the making of the said Statute in this case were used in this Realm So that from the said first day of May when any cause or contract of Marriage is pretended to have beén made it shall be lawful to the King 's Ecclesiastical Iudge of that place to hear and examine the said Cause And having the said Contract sufficiently and lawfully proved before him to give sentence for Matrimony commanding Solemnization Co-habitation Consummation and Tractation as it becometh Man and Wife to have with inflicting all such pains upon the disobedients and disturbers thereof as in times past before the said Statute the King 's Ecclesiastical Iudges by the Kings Ecclesiastical Laws ought and might have done if the said Statute had never been made Any Clause Article or Sentence in the said Statute to the contrary in any wise notwithstanding Of the Law making private Marriage or carnal knowledge between persons not prohibited by the Law of God to marry Fornication Private Marriage or carnal knowledge is of two sorts the one without publick Witness the other without any Witness at all and both by the Popish Laws because if permitted they would spoil their gains are prohibited and called clandestine Marriages The publick Witnesses are the Priest or Magistrate private Witnesses are any other Marriage without Witness nor clandestine not appointed by Law The Law of England makes all private Marriage and carnal knowledge without publick Witness Fornication The Law of Scotland in some cases relieves though there be a defect and no publick Witness of the Marriage by the Priest as appears in the before cited Author Craig Feud 269. If there appear private Witnesses of Men or Instruments but in all cases likewise where there are neither publick or private Witnesses they leave it to be Fornication That which I here affirm against both is Marriage without Witness not Fornication 1. That carnal knowledge between parties not prohibited by the Law of God to marry is not Fornication nor any other Crime though in the highest secrecy and without any Testimony of Men or Instruments whatsoever 2. That privacy of Marriage being not prohibited nor publication commanded by God all parties ought to have liberty of Conscience to use the one or the other according as suits best with their occasions As to the first there are these reasons That private Marriage without Witness is not Fornication nor any other Crime 1. There is no Law of God prohibiting private Marriage without Witness Where there is therefore no Law there is no transgression Rom. 4.15 2. It is before shewen That for any human Law to prohibit Marriage or Meat where not prohibited by the Law of God the same came from the Devil 1 Tim. cap. 4. v. 1 2 3. And that therefore the Law of the Pope and Council of Trent which nulls all Marriages except made before a Priest in a Temple and two Witnesses came from the Devil and the Priests of Priapus and Venus for filthy lucre to the Priests 3. Isa 45.7 It is said I create evil And Isa 5.20 It is said Wo unto them that call good evil and evil good That put darkness for light and light for darkness Here is therefore a curse pronounced against those who if God created not marriage without Witnesses evil of their own heads call it evil and where God created it to be in darkness and natural modesty of their own heads will have it by Torch-light and the whole Parish of Witnesses 4. All Fornication is Polyandry and Confusio seminum whereby the Child cannot know the Father nor the Father the Child but here is no such thing it is impossible therefore to be Fornication Liberty Conscience to marry with or without Witnesses As to the second Point which I am to maintain That privacy of Marriage without Witnesses being not prohibited by the Law of God nor publication commanded by the same no human power ought to presume to prohibit what Marriage God hath not prohibited but all persons ought to be left liberty of Conscience to marry publickly or privately with or without Witnesses as it suits best with their conveniences and occasions as is the use and practice in all other civil Contracts which men do with or without Witnesses as they think best and were never accused of sin if they had no Witnesses whereon to bring their Action only that Party is justly charged with sin who wilfully breaks his Contracts because there are no Witnesses but God to prove it against him Against these Positions I shall first answer the Objections and then shew further Reasons to confirm the same
Object 1 First It is Objected That without the publick Testimony of the Marriage by the Priest and Bishop the Woman is in danger of desertion by the Man after he hath devirginated and got her with Child whereas she having the said publick Testimony of the Bishop if the Man take another Woman to Church and marry her by the Law he shall be hanged Answer To which is Answer'd That this Law or Penalty doth no way prevent the desertion for though the Law which Theodora got her Husband Justinian to make That it should be death for the Husband to lie with any other Woman but his Wife might perhaps have something restrained the Man yet this Law that the Husband shall marry no other Woman in Church signifies nothing of restraining him from lying with an hundred elsewhere Object 2 In like manner it is Objected That the Wife if there were no publick Witnesses might desert her Husband for another Man whereas now if she go to Church with another man and is married to him while her Husband is alive she shall be hanged Answer To which is Answer'd That though the Law of Moses Levit. 20.10 which makes Adultery in a Wife Death might perhaps something have restrained the Woman the present Law restrains her no more then it doth the man Object 3 The Third Objection is If Banes and Marriage were not in the presence of publick Witnesses none who had right to a Woman could know when or how to make his claim Answer To which is Answer'd First This preserves not the Claymant's right nor prevents the other man's lying with the Woman if she hath a mind to another Which it appears she hath otherwise she would not have band her self openly with him Secondly If he hath a pre-promise or pre-contract he ought not to recover the Woman in Specie against her will but only damage for breach of promise as to which the Banes make it neither better nor worse Thirdly Admit the man who is the Claymant of the Woman hath not only had pre-promise pre-contract but pre-copulation of the Woman before the other man who is publickly band with her yet to what purpose is a claim made of a Woman who is now became an Adulteress by banning her self with another man and ought not by the Law of God to be claimed by the first man for by retaking an Adulteress the Husband becomes a Pandor to the Wife a destroyer of the Adultererous Child by depriving him of the natural Father and a destroyer of his own Children by bringing in Adulterous Heirs amongst them which is so far abhor'd by the Scripture that in case of Divorce though the Woman is innocent yet it is said Deut. 24.1 2 3 4. according to the Original When a man hath taken a Woman and been a Man unto her and it come to pass that she find no favour in his eyes because he hath found some uncleanness in her then let him write her a Bill of Divorcement and give it in her hand and send her out of his House And when she is departed out of his House she may go and be another man's Woman And if the latter man hate her and write her a Bill of Divorcement and give it in her hand and sendeth her out of his House or if the latter man die which took her to be his Woman her former man which sent her away may not take her again to be his Woman after she is defiled for that is abomination before the Lord and thou shalt not cause the Land to sin which the Lord thy God giveth thee for an inheritance If therefore a Woman innocent put away is not to be received again much less is a Woman guilty of running away with another man to be claimed again in Specie but there is a more just remedy if the Party is thereby damaged to Sue the Woman for breach of her Contract and the Adulterer for taking her away for Damages Object 4 Another Objection is made That without Witnesses of the Marriage if the right of Successions to Goods or Lands come in question the Bishop can make no Certificate of Filiation of the Child who is to Succeed nor can the Common-Law Judges or Juries judg of the matter Answer To which is Answer'd First That lawful Marriage is impossible to be without carnal knowledg and so is likewise Filiation both which are impossible to be witnessed by any but the Parents Marriage what As to carnal knowledg that which makes Marriage the same may be defined to be a Seminal Conjunction of Man and Woman in the natural Act of Generation mention'd Levit. 15.18 Cum vir concubuerit cum ea Semine concubitus which if between Persons prohibited is an unlawful if not prohibited is a lawful Marriage The Jews had three sorts of Conjunctions between Man and Woman which they called Marriages 1. Coemptione 2. Copulatione 3. Instrumentis That which was Copulatione was by their filthy Custom to be done before two Witnesses Witnesses of Marriage any impossible but the parties but the Witnesses here in question are not of the Copulation but of matters impertinent and evidence which tends not to the issue and they are only to Testifie that A. and B. went to Church together and there said words de praesenti and the Priest pronounced them Man and Wife as though the Child was straight begot by the Tongues of the Parties and the Priest in the Sacrament of Marriage as it is in that of the transubstantiation and thereon the Bishop gives his Non sequitur Sentence that here was a Marriage which includes carnal knowledg though 't is not so much Testified nor known by the Witnesses or Bishop whether the Parties were a Man and a Woman or two Women they never having been eye-witnesses of the same nor any Ventre inspiciendo appointed for that purpose Secondly Admit there had been a couple of beastly Jewish Witnesses who would see 't was a Man and a Woman lay together yet it being an undeniable exception against all Witnesses of any matter of Fact that unless they show Causam Scientiae to be one or more of their five Senses their Testimony is worth nothing and such Witnesses having no Sence but their Sight to Testifie Copulation it is impossible though their eyes saw the external Copulation that they should see the internal to be Semine Concubitus without which the external Testimony signifies nothing to make a Marriage Thirdly Admit it were possible these Witnesses saw the man lie with the Woman yet it is impossible and Perjury for them to swear that they saw the man get the Child or that it was not got by another man before or after It was an usual saying of Cato that he wondred how one Aruspex could forbear laughing when he met another they both knowing how each gull'd the people If he were now alive he would much more wonder how one Bishop who is a Father finder could hold his
causeth dishonour to each Party and if any Man address himself publickly to a Lady as a Suiter and after sight likes her not but deserts her this will disparage her the thoughts of the next that is wished are that she hath been blown on and refused the like will it be to the Man if the Lady refuse him Causeth Fornication Adultery Stews and Brothels Sixthly Denial of liberty of private Marriage and punishing the same as Fornication compells men to what is true Fornication and Adultery for if men cannot be allowed secret Marriage and secret Wives without Witnesses they will take secret Fornication and Adultery and secret Whores and Adulteresses without Witnesses which is a Thousand times worse So what St. Austin says Deme lupanaria turbabis omnia libidinibus is not true nor is Toleration of Stews the Remedy appointed by God to cure Lust but private Marriage is the Remedy appointed by God to cure the Stews for it is said by Paul To avoid Fornication let every Man have his own Woman and every Woman her own Man which if denied to such Persons with whose Conveniencies or Conscience it stands not to take a Woman or a Man publickly before Witnesses and a Priest in a Temple is to deny them to take any Man or Woman at all Whereas if liberty were given of private Marriage without Witnesses to such Persons as are not by the Law of God prohibited to marry this would destroy all Stews and Brothel-Houses for what Man or Woman who have liberty to choose whom they like best and to enjoy them privately to themselves would be so mad to hazard themselves in common Stews to be infected with those miserable and deadly Diseases to be robbed stript have their Throats cut or at least spirited to a Ship sold to Barbado's or Barbary or if they scape those greater dangers to be all their Lives persued by Constables Parators Bedels hooted at by Boys Carted Whipt Pumpt and to come to Bridewell and Beggary at last Seventhly Publick Marriages are too costly for the Poor therefore to prohibit them private Marriage Too costly for the poor is to prohibit them all Marriage except such as will undo them the Grand Seignior himself dares not venture on that is publick or the cost of it which is one reason he is never married publickly by a Priest in a Temple One Man may have reason to marry privately and another not and one to marry public and another not Eighthly There may be many reasons likewise both for Rich and Poor to marry secretly and one man may have a Reason which another hath not and it may be not only inconvenient but dangerous to one and not to another therefore it is fit every man seeing it is not prohibited by God should have liberty to marry publick or private with or without Witnesses as it suits best with his conveniencies Henry the Eighth married Ann Bulloigne the Mother of Queen Elizabeth on the 14 of Novemb. and kept the same so secret that it was not known till Easter after when she appeared great with Child And Arch-Bishop Cranmer was married and kept it so secret that it was not known till discovered by the King No doubt the King and Arch-Bishop both had very good reasons for what they did though they thought not fit to divulge them either before or after So Abraham and Isaac both endeavoured to keep their Marriages secret by telling lies they had very good reason for their Secrecy though not for their Lies From what hath been said appears therefore to be proved First That private marriage or carnal knowledg without Witnesses between Persons not prohibited by the Law of God to marry is not Fornication or any other Crime Secondly That it is a remedy provided by God to prevent Fornication and that the same if not forbidden by Papal Episcopal Pontifical or other Diabolical Laws would overthrow all Stews Brothels and common Whores and the whole Mystery of Iniquity of the Romish Anti-Christ which fills his Coffers and supports his Power by these filthy gains and far worse then those Ex lotio collected by the covetous Emperour Vespasian Thirdly That it is a great sin to forbid to marry And that those forbid to marry who forbid either publick or private marriage where not prohibited by God or take away the free liberty of either or compel to either dissentients in Conscience or differents in Convenience and thereby become accessaries to all the Fornications Adulteries and other wickedness which ensue thereby Of the Law requiring Witnesses of Marriage and Filiation where both are acknowledged by the Parents and no third party claims the Father Mother or Child This irrational Law is put in practice where a Man and Woman not prohibited to marry by the Law of God cohabit or keep private company and the pretence is That every Man should have his own Wife and every Woman her own Husband by the testimony of Witnesses which is as frivolous when the parties themselves acknowledge though as is before proved they are not bound to acknowledg it neither is it a sin and none else pretends claim to the Man or Woman as 't is to require Witnesses of every one possessed of Lands or Goods or to force him to answer to a Bill of discovery of his Title where none other claimeth or pretendeth a Title better than his possession The like is it where a Man and Woman acknowledg a Child to be theirs they ought not to be examined nor forced to produce Witnesses whose the Child is unless another as the Harlot did before Solomon claim or pretend right to the Child for where there is no Controversie or Crime proved there needs no Witness or Judge In like manner where a Child is acknowledged by Parents in their life time the Inheritance ought to be suffer'd to continue to him as left without proof of Witness or Enquiry where no other pretends to be a Child to the same Parents or a better right then Filiation for where there is no Controversie between some parties nor Crime proved nor Suspicion there needs neither Inquisition nor Witness nor Judge Of the Law when claim is made by Corrivals of one Woman of Sequestration of her pendente placito and Sentencing either Man or Woman to be restored in Specie and not in Value That where there is a Breach of promise or Contract of Marriage between a Man or Woman they ought to have liberty to repair themselves in damage is granted but that a Woman is to be Sequestred pendente placito or that either Man or Woman is to be adjudged to be restored in specie is denied Sequestration of a Woman unlawful 1. As to the Sequestration of the Woman this is contrary to Magna Charta and the Petition of right to imprison a free Person before Judgment 2. None ought to be taken in Pledge Distrained or Sequestred which cannot be returned in as good Condition as when Taken
hire or gifts there would be no Whore Deutr. 23.18 It is said Thou shalt not bring the Hire of a Whore nor the price of a Dog into the House of the Lord. And it is said Ezek. 16.31 And hast not been as an Harlot in that thou scornest Hire but as a Wife that committeth Adultery that taketh strangers instead of her Husband They give gifts to all Whores but thou givest gifts to all thy Lovers that they may come unto thee on every side for thy Whoredom Mich. 1.7 It is said They shall return to the Hire of an Harlot And amongst the Greeks 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which may be Englished a Rogue and a Whore came both from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 vendo to sell which were the Lady of Pleasure and the Gallant which let themselves to hire for money Gifts in Law from Women to Men and Men to Women Besides these gifts by acts of parties there are worse and more mercenary gifts and hire given by acts of Law Super-alimentary to hire Men and Women to lye together To the Man if he can deceive such a Woman he shall have all her Goods and Chattels as is before shewen by Transubstantiation by force while she is alive and after her death all her Lands and Tenements by courtesie as long as he can live And the Woman if she will lye with such a Man shall steal and beg all she can from him while alive and when he is dead she shall have Dower and Thirds besides which gifts in Law on both sides are for no other end then ob turpem causam Copulationis As to Aliment 't is granted the Husband ought to provide for the Wife and the Wife for the Husband but Super-alimentary gifts are the matters here questioned The mischiefs of gifts Super-alimentary on Marriages either by act of the Parties or of Law are Mischless of Gifts Super-alimentary in Marriage First In regard of Publick Government Religion is thereby depraved Protestant Men are enticed to marry Papist Wives for great Portions and Tenancy by Courtesie and Protestant Women to marry Papist Husbands for great Jointures Dowers and Thirds 2. By these gifts Super-alimentary the Wealth of many Families is accumulated in one especially by Daughters Heiresses A great Soâ—oecisin in the Policy both of Monarchies and States for it is apparent by the Coats and Titles that many Families quarter the Subjects grow more Rich and Potent than the Prince This was prevented by Moses's Law by raising up Seed to the Brother and by marrying of Inheritrixes to the next Kinsman as likewise did the Athenians It was prevented in Persiâ— Armenia Africk and almost through all the East by limiting the Succession of Inheritances by a kind of Salique Law only to the Males and giving only the Moveables to the Daughters till Theodora to set up her Foeminine Militia got her Blunderbus Justinian to repeal that Antient Law Now though a Family Salique is of excellent use to preserve the equality of private Families yet in Royal Families it is contrary to all sound Policy hindring the Union of Kingdoms by Marriage for private Families may be too Potent but Kingdoms cannot In other Nations equality of private Families are preserved by Gavelkind amongst the Sons and Parcenary amongst the Daughters and amongst the Jews by limiting Primogeniture to no more than a double Portion 3. Another Mischief to the Publick of marrying Daughters with great Protions is it foments Seditions and hinders the Union between Patricians and Plebeians and between Poor and Rich as we see in Rome where they married for great Portions they would take the handsomest Daughters of the Plebeians and abuse but not marry them because though they had Beauty to answer their Lust they had no money to answer their Covetousness But amongst the great Eastern Princes where they buy and receive no Portion from their Wives they marry the Poor equally with the Rich which is no question a great obligation on their Subjects by becoming as it were the same flesh and blood with them who seeing the Daughter of a Mason Queen in the great Kingdom of China and the Daughter of an Herb-Woman Sultana to the Grand Seignior and their Princes born of these they think themselves highly honoured to be of equal blood with their Princes In like manner the Antient Custom of the Babylonians and Indians of selling the fairest Virgins to the Rich for Money and giving that Money to the unhandsom to be Wives for the Poor united the Poor and Rich by Marriages 4. Another great Inconvenience is The Father gives so great a Jointure to the Mother that when he dies she marries another Husband and starves her first Husband's Children and the Father he gets so great a Portion and Courtesie of the whole Estate of the Mother that he marries when she dies another Wife and brings in a Step-Mother over his first Wive's Children whose good quality the Poet expresseth Lurida terribiles miscent Aconitoe Novercae Step-Mothers terrible poison'd in spight Sons of first Mothers with blue Aconite 5. To marry for Money shackles Young Men to Old Women and Young Women to Old Men and persons loath'd one to another whereby they become miserable both Body and Soul and fall into Adultery and Fornication and often to poison or otherwise destroy one another Whereas were there not the Temptation of great Portions Tenancies by Courtesie Jointures Dowers Thirds every one would marry where they best liked and might thereby live vertuously and happily all their days This hath been endeavour'd to be remedied by the Civil Law in the Title De Donationibus inter virum uxorem by making all Gifts void between a Man and his Wife and the same Law gives another Reason of it Ne nimio amore spolientur lest the party who loved least should rob most and the worst Nature make a prey of the best The Common Law pretended likewise in imitation of the Civil Law to make all Gifts void between Baron and Feme but it dissembled for it forbid such Gifts to be made directly but encouraged them to be done indirectly by Chancery trusts which is ten times worse In Scotland to prevent the taking away the Estate of one Family by another by these Marriage-Gifts or Covenants they have an Excellent Law and of great Equity which makes them void as appears by Craig Feud 307. but 't is only in one Case which is when two persons have Marriage-Covenants for Portion and Jointure agreed and signed and they are accordingly married thereon If either the Man or Woman die within the Year after Marriage without any Issue between them the Writings of the Portion and Marriage shall be all void and the right of the Portion return to the Father of the Woman and the Jointure to the Father of the Man and both Families be in Statu quo they were before the Marriage The Arabians Brittons and other Nations to the
just cause by Divorce one of another without publishing the cause and if there be no cause amongst the Children by taking away as much of their Portions as the offence deserves and giving the same to the innocent Children and by good instruction reproofs and virtuous example of the Parents which will prevent more offences in Children then Tribunals can ever reform though they have Witnesses So Lycurgus by commanding in his Laws That all Captains of Armies and Priests of Temples should marry and that Husbands themselves should come to their Wives Furtim verecunde and the Children be modestly Educated left Sparta so clean from unchast demeanour that when Geradas an old Spartan was asked by a stranger What was the Punishment of Adultery in Sparta for he could find no Law made by Lycurgus concerning that Crime Oh Friend says he There is no Adulterer with us When he reply'd But what if there should be any Geradas told him He should pay a Bull so big as should be able to stretch his Neck over Taygetus and Drink of Eurotas when the other laughing said There is not such a Bull to be found Neither quoth Geradas Is an Adulterer to be found in Sparta where Riches Luxury and wantoness of Apparel are counted a disgrace and Modesty and Obedience to Magistrates an Honour Where the Seminaries of Vices are not permitted how can Vices grow First Therefore as to Man and Wife as Bodin lib. 1. cap. 3. says Nothing seems more pernicious then to compel the cause of Divorce to be shewn before a Judg for in so doing the honour of one or both Parties is hazarded which would not be if neither of them were compel'd to prove the same before a Judg as Plutarch in Alcib relates That when the Wife of Alcibiades went to complain of him before the Judg he came after her into the Court and took her by force and carried her away home on his Shoulders Ne Secreta Fori Panderet whereat the Judg only smiled The Hebrews likewise used to make their Bills of Divorce without a cause neither is it prohibited by Christ if there were a true cause to put her away by private Bill without publick Tribunal or Judg for such were all the Bills of Moses and no publick Judg required to judg of the Cause but only the Conscience of the Party And Joseph having a just cause of suspicion against Mary his Wife did not bring her before a Judg and is commended for so doing to be a just man as Matth. 1.19 is said Then Joseph her Husband being a just man and not willing to make her a publick Example was minded to put her away privily So doth Plutarch in Aemil. relate of Paulus Aemilius Who according to the Custom of the Romans shewed no cause of putting away his Wife but affirmed her very honest wife and nobly descended and by whom he had also many fair Children but when he was press'd by her Friends to shew the cause why he would then Divorce he shewed them his Shoo which was very handsomely and well made and yet says he None of you know but my self feeleth where it wrings my Foot By which doing the Woman is not dishonour'd but may marry with another suitable to her quality and the same liberty had the Wives to divorce themselves from their Husbands without proving or shewing any cause before a publick Judg. This likewise preserves the repute of the Children who though innocent will likewise perpetually bear the reproach if the dishonour either of their Father or Mother be publish'd before a Judg. And further as to drawing the secret offences of uncleanness of Children especially of Daughters before a Judg who are under the Family Jurisdiction either of Father or Mother or Husband the same is an undoing to those who offend for though they never so much repent and amend yet there can be no repairing of their shame or name when publish'd and the innocent who are the Father and Mother and Husband and the other Children the dishonour can never be taken again from them Seneca therefore who in all other things was a great honourer of the virtue of Augustus yet blames as a great oversight in that wise Emperour that he punished the Adulteries of his Daughter Julia publickly by Banishment Quae potius saith he Principi tacenda quà m vindicanda sunt Secondly It makes every petty difference between Man and Wife irreconcilable and heightens Contention from a small spark by blowing it abroad to so great a flame that it is at last unquenchable for the publishing of many things neither criminous nor sinful may affect some modest Natures with as deep a sence of disgrace as those that are false as much as those that are true and when once published cannot by repentance be again revoked but may cause such hatred between the Parties as will never again admit them to live together Thirdly Where offences are not published they oft times may with honour be forgiven and the Parties reconciled which if publish'd cannot So Antonius Pius forgave the Adultery of Faustina and would not draw it to publick Judgment to prevent his own shame And Ael Spart writes That the Emperour Adrian did the like to his Empress who though he suspected yet put not away but only removed such Courtiers from his Court as he suspected Of the Law compelling Persons Married though mortal Enemies to Cohabitation Another great mischeif is in the Ecclesiastical Laws they compel Cohabitation of Men and Women when they are mortal Enemies and take off Exequenda Matrimonialia Officia and due benevolence when one insidiates for the life of the other of which take Bodin further Fol. 19. but says he If the Cause seem not sufficient to the Judg which he intends the Cause alledged of Divorce to an Ecclesiastical Judg or be not well proved it is therefore meet to inforce the Parties to live together in that Society which is of all other the straightest Test having always the one and the other the object of their grief still before their Eyes Truly says he I am not of that opinion for seeing themselves brought into extream servitude fear and perpetual discord hereof ensue Adulteries and oftentimes Murthers and Poisonings for the most part to men unknown And for this cause free Divorce to both Parties and non-Cohabitation was permitted by the Roman Laws not out of wantonness but out of the greatest necessity and Piety for preservation of those ends for which Marriage was instituted with the least danger and dishonour that might be to either Party wherein they must of necessity suffer if either free Divorce be tolerated or the examination of the causes of the same drawn to publick Tribunals One cause Cato the Censor complains of for which the freedom of Divorce and non-Cohabitation ought to be permitted was because he used to say That all Adulteresses were Poisoners and this likewise appears by Valer. Max. lib. 2. p. 8. where it is thus
related Veneficii questio moribus Legibus Romanis ignota quam plurium matronarum patefacto scelere orta est quae cùm viros suos clandestinis insidiis veneno perimerent unius Ancillae indicio protractae pars capitali judicio damnata centum Septuaginta numerum compleverunt An Inquisition was made concerning Poisoning being an offence not known to our Manners or Laws and the wickedness of many Matrons being disclosed who by secret Treachery had kill'd their Husbands by Poison they being drawn forth by discovery of a Maid that part of them who were condemned to death amounted to the number of One Hundred and Seventy A great number for one City at one time and was no doubt not one of the smallest causes why Divorces grew so frequent in after-times not as is vainly pretended out of wantonness but of necessity Whereas if this private way of Justice and defence should not be tolerated to Families without publick litis contestations neither the honour or safety of any Family or Persons therein could be preserved and such as had a mind to separate if they could not do it but by publick Judgment would likewise either as the Muscovites are said to do Hire some false Witnesses or Knights of the Post to defame one another or oftentimes if that will not do to destroy the lives of one another or before the Party can make publick proof Poison or otherwise kill him whereby after it will be too late as it was in these 170 Husbands for any complaint to be made to the publick and the Wives are likewise in as great danger if they have not the same liberty of providing for them themselves on the first discovery of danger Had it not been better for all these murther'd Husbands and Wives to have parted on either side then to have acted such a Tragedy together So Aegisteus corrupting Clytemnestra to Adultery thereby got her concurrence to the death of her Husband Agamemnon And Sejanus having received an affront from Drusus plotted no other way to destroy him but by corrupting his Wife as saith Tacit. Annal. lib. 4. Cuncta tentanti promptissimum visum ad uxorem ejus Liviam convertere hanc ut amore incensus Adulterio pellexit ad conjugii spem consortium Regni necem mariti impulit So the Brother of Lewis the First King of Hungary was strangled by his Wife and she married a new Husband Lewis the King goeth into Italy to revenge his Brother's death she and the new Husband fly to the Pope who protects them Here neither the corruption of Clytemnestra nor the Wife of Drusus nor the Hungarian Hang-woman could have been discovered before a publick Judge till it had been too late What are therefore such Elccesiastical Laws and Judges who compel such secret and deadly Enemies to Co-habitation in one House but accessary to their Murders and who forbid them to marry others but accessary to the great sins of their Fornications and Adulteries Divorce by consent Authent Col. 23.140 The Title of the Law is Vt consensu Matrimonium solvi potest And the Law it self ends with this Reason Eos siquidem qui violento affectu odioque correpti fuerunt perquam difficile est reconâ—iliare contingit enim ut ex his nonnulli ad mutuas insidias procederent venenisque aliis quibusdam quae lethalia essent uterentur in tantum ut saepe liberi qui ipsis communiter nati essent eas in unam candemque voluntatem conjungere non potuerint Of the Law of Divorce à Mensa Thoro. Haddon in the new draught appointed in the times of Henry the Eighth and Edward the Sixth for Reformation of Ecclesiastical Laws expresly abolisheth Divorce à Mensa Thoro in these words Mensae societas Thori solebat incertis Criminibus adimi Conjugibus salvo tamen inter illos reliquo Matrimonii jure quae constitutio cùm à Sacris literis aliena sit maximam perversitatem habeat malorum sentinam in Matrimonium comportaverit illud Authoritate nostra totum aboliri placet To prohibit Divorce à vinculo matrimoni for adultery or other Lawful cause and to prohibit the same to be done privately between the parties themselves without drawing the cause to publick Tribunals is to contradict Christ himself who speaks of a private Divorce by a Bill both from the Husband and the Wife according to Moses's Law and not a publick Sentence of any Judge and by the exception of uncleanness allowed the Innocent party to marry another but the Pope's Law which prohibits it doth it to no other end then to get the gains to his Courts by the Jurisdiction of Divorces and to compel the parties either to make use of his Stews whence he gathers his common Rents or to pay him a private Taxa Camerae for such Women as he will allow when he hath tied him from his Wife by the Divorce Neither doth Christ take the private Jurisdiction from the Husband or Wife of Divorce given by Moses but only prohibits to use it without a Lawful cause In the same manner did the Laws of the Romans allow the same Jurisdiction both to the Husband and the Wife as appears by many examples By the Law of Scotland Divorce for Adultery is allowed à vinculo matrimonii and the parties may marry again But by the Laws of England the parties can neither be Divorced à vinculo matrimonii nor marry again which is touched by Craig Feud 269. Apud Anglos Matrimonium ob Adulterium non dirimatur sed tantùm separatio à Thoro Tabula permittitur which is certainly clean contrary to the Law of God and the Doctrine of Christ Notwithstanding which our Episcopal Canons rather follow the Pope then Christ and are so outragiously oppressive on Innocent parties Can. 4.7 that in all such Divorces they order Bond and Sureties to be given not to marry again during each other's life which is as before shewen a Doctrine of Devils forbidding to marry where God hath not forbidden Of the Custom of Protestants marrying with Papists There is no Religion in the World established by any wife Legislator which he desires to perpetuate but the chief means he takes care of to effect the same is by his Law to prohibit his followers to marry with Women of another Religion for they both seduce the Fathers and the Children And while even in their Nursing and before they have learnt their Mother-tongue they will with their Milk be so far season'd with Old-wives Fables as the greatest Doctors of truth will not often-times be able all their life after to get out again Moses as to this is very strict and positive Deut. 7.3 Where speaking of the Idolatrous Nations of the Land saith Neither shalt thou make Marriages with them thy Daughter thou shalt not give unto his Son nor his Daughter shalt thou take unto thy Son for they will turn away thy Son from following me that they
may serve other gods so will the anger of the Lord be kindled against thee and destroy thee suddenly And Nehem. 13.23 It is said In those days also I saw Jews that had married Wives of Ashdod of Ammon and of Moab and their Children spake half the speech of Ashdod and could not speak in the Jews Language but according to the Language of each people and I contended with them and cursed them and smote certain of them and plucked off their Hair and made them swear by God saying ye shall not give your Daughters unto their Sons nor take their Daughters unto your Sons or for your selves did not Solomon King of Israel sin by these things So doth Mahomet command his followers to marry only those of his Religion whom he calls True Believers and saith It is better to marry Slaves who are True Believers than great Princesses who are Vnbelievers So do the Popish Laws and Canons forbid Papists to marry Protestants under the name of Hereticks except with the Pope's Dispensation or License which is only used where he sees a fit opportunity to put such a snare about the Neck of a Protestant as the Philistines did with their Dalilah about Sampson to betray and destroy him So it appears both Jew Pope and Turk are wiser in their generation then the Children of Light The Papists make Laws and prohibit Marriage with Protestants and illegitimate their Children to make them incapable to succeed to a Papists Inheritance The Protestant sleeps and never makes so much as one Law to prohibit Marriage with Papists or to make Papist Children incapable to succeed to a Protestant Inheritance CHAP. VII Marriage Filiation Aliment and Succession ought not to be judged by Ceremonial Laws BY the Law of the Patriarchs or Moses there were no Ceremonies instituted of Marriage and the Marriage of Abraham to Sarah his first Wife was no more then of Adam to Eve Gen. 4.1 And Adam knew Eve his Wife and she conceived and bare Cain and said I have gotten a Man from the Lord. And this appears Gen. 20.2 where it is said And Abraham said of Sarah his Wife she is my Sister And Abimelech King of Gerar sent and took Sarah But God came to Abimelech in a Dream by Night and said to him as Mr. Selden de jur Nat. Gent. 573. translates the Hebrew Text Ecce tu morieris propter mulierem quam accepisti nam concubuit cum ea maritus Behold thou shalt dye for the Woman which thou hast taken for her Male hath lain with her God doth not say he hath carried her to Church and shook her by the hand before a Priest or took her per verba de praesenti or that Consensus non Concubitus facit Matrimonium but the contrary that he had married her because he had lain with her And the very same Marriage without any Ceremony doth Abraham likewise make with his second Wife Hagar Gen. 16.3 And Sarah Abraham's Wife took Hagar her Maid the Egyptian after Abraham had dwelt ten years in the Land and gave her to her Husband Abraham to be his Wife And he went in unto Hagar and she conceived Here Hagar is made Abraham's Wife by no other Ceremony but going in unto her and her conception thereupon And besides going in unto her there is no Ceremony appointed for Marriage in the whole Law of Moses nor had the Jews any custom of carrying the Woman to Church before a Priest but the contrary When they married it was in the open Air and thought it not Lawful in any House whence they might behold the Heavens in memory of God's promise to Abraham Gen. 15.5 And he brought him forth abroad and said Look now towards Heaven and tell the Stars if thou be able to number them and he said unto him so shall thy Seed be But admit Moses had made as many Ceremonial Laws for Marriage as he did for Sacrifices admit the Jews had superstitiously observed as many more by their Customs and Traditions yet were it to no purpose for both Ceremonial Laws and Traditions are all now abolished by Christ Col. 2.14 Blotting out the Hand-writing of Ordinances that was against us which was contrary to us and took it out of the way nailing it to his Cross And Math. 15.1 Where the Scribes and Pharisees asked Christ Why do thy Disciples transgress the Traditions of the Elders v. 3. He answer'd and said unto them Why do you also transgress the Commandment of God by your Tradition For God commandeth saying Honour thy Father and Mother but ye say Whosoever shall say to his Father and Mother It is a gift by whatsoever thou mightest be profited by me and honour not his Father and his Mother he shall be free Thus have ye made the Commandment of God of none effect by your Tradition And vers 9. But in vain do they worship me teaching for Doctrines the Commandments of Men. Here is the very same thing done by Bishops which was done by the Scribes and Pharisees for they on a Ceremonial Form of words used by Children gave them liberty not to honour their Father And the Bishops on a Ceremonial Form of words used by the reputed Father per verba de praesenti presently make the Child honour him who is not his Father nor begat him and if such Ceremonial Form of words be not used and a Certificate of the Bishop thereof then they command the Child not to honour the Father who begat him and command the true Father to illegitimate and abdicate his Child which was truly begotten And this they do either by the Ceremonial Law and Canons or Traditions of Popes But if both Ceremonial Laws and Traditions of Moses and Jews are abolished by Christ and by the Moral Law of God of honouring the Father much more are the Ceremonial Laws and Traditions of Popes and Bishops abolished by the same Moral Law I shall only mention a word more of the abolishing of the Ceremonials by the Testimony of the Popish Writers themselves who though in their works they keep alive all the Ceremonials of Moses's Law whence they can male profit yet in words and Doctrine they so far confess them abolished that they say it were a deadly sin to use them Aquinas therefore on the Question concludes Ceremonialia adeo sunt evacuata ut non solum sunt mortua sed mortifera Judicialia sunt quidem mortua quia non habent vim obligandi non tamen sunt mortifera quia siquis Princeps in regno suo ordinaret illa judicialia observari non peccaret nisi forte hoc modo observarentur vel observari mandarentur tanquam habentia vim obligandi ex veteris legis institutione talis enim intentio observandi esset mortifera The Ceremonial Laws are so utterly void that they are not only dead but deadly and the Judicials are dead but not deadly because if any Prince in his Kingdom will command those judicials to be observed he
the Man doth hold his hand by the Priest's hand and the Womans hand by her Husband's hand and all have the Cow by the Tail and then they pour Water out of the Pot on the Cows Tail and it runneth through all their hands and they lave up Water with their hands then the Priest ties them together by the Cloths which done they go round about the Cow and Calf give some Money to the Poor and their Idol and lest the man should think himself married to the Cow and Calf he gives the Cow and Calf to the Priest which is more then they give to the Poor and so they are Man and Wife and whom the Cows Tail hath joined let no Man put asunder which if they do 't were fit the Priest lost his Cow and Calf In Cambaia as Texera reports They have so great esteem of their Cows that a Merchant Banyan spent 10 or 12 Thousand Dukets in the Ceremony of a Nuptial Feast of marrying his Cow to his Friend's Bull for the greater publication of it not suffering it to be private in the Woods and what were the Cow or Calf the better for all this or who could the sooner know whether the Calf were the legitimate Issue of the married Bull or some other in the Woods CHAP. VIII Marriage Filiation Aliment and Succession ought only to be judged by the Moral Law of God THE debate of the lawfulness of the Marriage of Henry the Eighth with Queen Katherine having been his Brother's Wife being in Agitation it happen'd that Cranmer who was after Arch-Bishop and in time of Queen Mary Martyr'd and Dr. Stephens and Dr. Fox met at Waltham one day at Dinner where falling in discourse about the case the other Doctors thought the Marriage might be proved unlawful by the Civil-Law but said Cranmer It may better be proved unlawful by the Law of God And so it may be said here Marriage Filiation and Succession may be better proved as it is in truth lawful or unlawful by the Moral-Law of God then by Laws of Moses of Nations of Emperours of Popes of Bishops of Mahomet of England Scotland Ireland or any human Laws in the whole World First Because the Moral Law is the Law of Nature Secondly Because the Law of Nature is the unquestionable Law of God Thirdly Because it is a perfect Law and comprehends in it all the innumerable Cases which are impossible to be contained in any human writing Fourthly Because it is a Law universally given as well to Gentil as to Jew and no Nation in the World exempted from the Jurisdiction of the Moral-Law Fifthly Because it is a Law immutable and endureth for ever and neither Jew Pope Turk nor any Power in Heaven or Earth except the Legislator himself is able to change it The Jews have an old Tradition That God when he Created the World left a great hole in Heaven that if any other God arrogated the glory of the Creation the true Creator might bid him stop that hole first When a Jew shall stop the hole Left in Heaven near the Pole When the Sun is in a Sack And the Stars turn spots of black When the Moon 's in Mah'met 's sleive And a Priest shall Nature shrieve And her Palace turn a Grange Jew Pope and Turk her Law shall change When the Moon her head shall dress In the Western Wilderness When in Heaven for a Sign Charles his Wain shall cross the Line When the Earth and Water shall Make two Globes and not one Ball. Then Oh then what is more strange Nature 's God her Law shall change Chang'd may Second-Nature be But no Eye shall ever see Highest Nature change from Good Though by us not understood Yea though none him see or know He Eternal Good will do Through all Forms though Nature range Nature 's God will never change It will be ask't perhaps by some In what Tables God hath writ the Law of Nature concerning Marriage Filiation Aliment and Succession and how it may be read To which I Answer That the Tables are of two kinds the External and Internal and the Readers and Witnesses are of two kinds the External and Internal the External Tables of Marriage are express'd by Christ Matth. 19.4 when the Pharisees question of Divorce whether lawful for a man to put away his Wife for every cause He Answer'd and said unto them have ye not read that he which made them at the beginning made them Male and Female The Male and Female are therefore the External and visible Tables wherein God hath written in living Hieroglyphicks or Figurations of the Sexes his Law of Marriage As to External Tables of Filiation Christ expresseth likewise the same Matth. 18.2 And Jesus called a little Child unto him and set him in the midst of them and said Verely I sayunto you Except ye be converted and become as little Children ye shall not enter into the Kingdom of Heaven Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little Child the same is greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven And whoso shall receive one such little Child in my name receiveth me But whoso shall offend one of these little ones it were better for him that a Milstone were hanged about his Neck and that he were drowned in the depth of the Sea As to the External Tables of Aliment they are expressed in his own Mother Luke 11.27 Blessed is the Womb that bare thee and the Paps that thou hast sucked The Paps therefore wonderfully prepared to overflow with Milk just against the time the Child is to be born are External Tables wherein God hath written to Innocents in letters as white as Snow that the Mother ought to aliment them with the Milks of her Breasts And when he hath made the Teeth to break through the Coral Gums he writes in those Ivory Tables That the Father ought to provide stronger meat for the Child The Internal Tables are expressed by Paul 2 Cor. 3.3 Written not with Ink but with the Spirit of the living God not in Tables of Stone but in the fleshly Tables of the Heart The External Readers and Witnesses are all Creatures as appears Job 12.7 But ask now the Beasts and they shall teach thee and the Fowls of the Air and they shall tell thee or speak to the Earth and it shall teach thee and the Fishes of the Sea and they shall declare unto thee Go then and ask the Fowls of the Air concerning Marriage Filiation Aliment and Succession they will shew thee their Mateing their Pairing keeping true Wedlock their private retirement to secret places their holes their Caves their Nests they build for their young their Males and Females who procreated them and not the Bishops to be Judges to which they belong their Grand-mother Earth their dry-Nurse the Sea their wet-Nurse Provision for them all their feeding their sucking their young their teaching them when able go to their Grand-mother and take their Diet with her
Children if within the four Seas neither doth he give more reason why he would have a Child call'd a Base-natural or his Fictions in Law beleived above the truth of the Fact then he doth why a Man-child ought to be called Mulier Fifthly As little reason doth Grotius give why a Giant should be translated Bastard according to a certain Latin Translation of the Bible of which there are a multitude all variant one from another 1 Sam. 17.4 which is thus Et egressus est quidem spurius è Castris Pelischthoeorum Goliah nomine Giant falsely translated Bastard Gatho oriundus cujus altitudo erat sex Cubitorum cum spithama which is in English And there went out of the Tents of the Philistins a certain Bastard by name Goliah whose height was six Cubits and a span so because he was a Giant this Latin Translation hath translated him a Bastard And Grotius though he were as great a Giant of learning as Goliah was of Body indeavours to give a reason which is not so tall as a Dwarf for he saith The Hebrews called Giants Bastards because they lived without Matrimony which he intends to be the Ceremony of coupling Male and Female together used by a Priest in a Temple Which cannot be for of all Nations in the World the Hebrews were most free from having so vile a word or a thing as Bastard amongst them and for Marriage in a Temple they never had any at all but always contracted in the open Air and not under any Roof And both they and all other Nations have had so honourable opinions of Giants and esteemed their descent to be so far from being ignoble as they derived them from their gods themselves So Hercules they would have begot by Jupiter And Ajax boasts of himself Sic à Jove tertius Ajax And both Jews and Christians affirm them to be begotten by the Sons of God As Gen. 6.4 it is said There were Giants in the Earth in those days and also after that when the Sons of God saw the Daughters of Men and they bare Children unto them the same became mighty Men which were of old Men of renown Angels beget not Giants Some expound these Sons of God to be Angels but that is contrary to Christ who says Angels neither marry nor are given in Marriage But though Giants and such Hero's were not begotten by Angels they all agree to father them on more honourable Titles of the Sons of God and therefore never intendâ—d they should be translated or called Bastards or base Naturals As low a reason doth Grotius likewise give why he should be called Nothus and not be inheritable whose Mother at her Marriage had not a Torch carried before her Ac nec nupta quidem Taedaque accepta jugali Cur nisi ne caperes regna paterna Nothus Grot. de jur Bel. Pac. p. 168. 1. This authority of Ovid which he cites That the not vouchsafing to have a Torch or other Ceremonies Nuptial at the Marriage ought to make the Child a Nothus or Illegitimate as to Succession proves against him and that it ought not but is an injury and injustice if it should For this is written by Phaedra a later Wife of Theseus to Hippolitus his Son by Hippolita the Amazon a former Wife deceased with whom she being his Step-mother fell in love and to tempt him to her and not to forbear out of reverence to his Father's bed who had been so injurious to him as not to marry his Mother with due Rites and Ceremonies that he might have a pretence to dis-inherit and put him by the Succession of the Kingdom She to make her argument the stronger and the more inciting joyns her self with him to be as highly injured as himself that he might the more assuredly trust to find her ready to join with him in revenge as well as love for so she saith having first repeated her own wrongs she had suffer'd Sola nec haec nobis injuria venit ab illo In magnis laesi rebus uterque sumus And after she saith of the Marriage of his Mother Ac nec nupta quidem taedaque accepta jugali Cur nisi ne caperes regna paterna Nothus And then she saith I nunc I meriti lectum reverere parentis Quem fugit factis abdicat ille suis But the most vertuous and valiant Hippolitus remaining invincible in Chastity as to his Step-mother and in Loyalty as to his Father she as Potiphar's Wife did Joseph to her Husband falsly accused him of attempting to force her which he over-credulous to believe sought to kill his Son And he flying his Father's jealousie and causless anger had by his frighted Horses his Chariot overthrown and himself torn to pieces amongst the Rocks So infortunate was innocence in all things except his Fame which hath lasted through so many Ages His Father on Phaedra's confession understanding the Innocence of his Son and falseness of her calumny she first killing her self after the just Funeral Rites performed and Lamentation answerable made is swallowed up with grief for the loss of a Son so dearly by him beloved Here therefore appears That had it not been for the false calumnies of his Step-mother Hippolitus had succeeded to his Father Theseus's Kingdom notwithstanding his Mother Hippolita had not a Torch carried before her nor was ever married by the Ceremonies of a Priest in a Temple wherein though Grotius need no other answer to his Ceremonial Marriage then what in this example he thought to vouch for them and his principal Goliah-argument being fallen there need no trouble of encountring the petty accessary Reasons Yet I shall likewise persue them in their flight at least to discover what they are His first reason is he saith Where the Father doth not vouchsafe the Woman the Lawful Ceremonies of Marriage he makes the Child contemptible to be his Successor To which is answer'd That we need look no further then his own example whether Hippolitus was a person contemptible or not meriting in all respects to succeed to his Father's Kingdom after his Death 2. It is further answer'd That these Ceremonies whereon he founds his Doctrin of Ceremonial Marriage and the compulsion to the same are before shewen to come from the Devil and the Priests of Priapus and Venus and in imitation of them from Popery Therefore in such Kingdoms as are Protestant and not Pagan or Popish though there may be a toleration given to such as desire to marry with a Torch or any other public Ceremonies suiting with their Conscience and Convenience yet ought not there to be compulsion of Dissentients either in Conscience or Convenience nor so impious a punishment as Illegitimation laid on the innocent Child for such Toys as Ceremonies neglected or dissented to by the Parents 3. There is greater authority in point then either Latin or Greek Poets That the Father though he contemn yea hate the Mother ought not to illegitimate
the Child as to Succession as appears Deut. 21.15 If a Man have two Wives one beloved and the other hated and they have born him Children both the beloved and the hated and the first-born Son be hers that was hated Then it shall be when he makes his Sons to inherit that which he hath that he may not make the Son of the beloved first-born before the Son of the hated who is indeed the first-born but he shall acknowledg the Son of the hated for the first-born in giving him a double Portion of all be hath for he is the beginning of his strength and the right of the first-born is his The Reasons given by Skene why Nothus should signifie a Bastard are 1. Because he saith Bastards are commonly got and procreat of Common Women who are in Greek called Bassaris As to the Etymology 't is answer'd before as to the matter of the Children of Common Women 't is deny'd that they have commonly any Children at all for either they make themselves barren by some wicked Arts of Sterility according to the Poet. Et jacet aurato jam rara puerpera lecto Tantum hujus Artes tantum Medicamina possunt According to which we do not hear of Lais Thais Phryne Flora or others who are famous or rather infamous at the Trade to have had any Children at all which was one cause that Flora made the Common-wealth her Heir And we see by experience that the Children born as they call it out of Wedlock are for the greatest part of such as have kept themselves chast to one Man yea more chast then many Wives who have been coupled to the Husbands by a Priest in a Temple or a Justice of Peace in his Hall And further in Nature the too thick sowing of the field and the too soon plowing after sowing destroyes the Harvest So in greatest probability such a Woman as hath a Child ought to be presumed she hath not been common and the Child cannot be here filius populi but his Father is better known then of the Children of a Woman married by the Priest in a Temple though the Husband hath been always within the four Seas 2. He says Nothia signifies by the Athenian Law a Portion given to a Child not born within Wedlock which was not to exceed Mille Drachmae ergo Nothos signifies a Bastard Negatur sequela For the Child which he himself makes a Bastard he says cannot be Heir or Successor to any which is he cannot be Successor Testamentory or otherwise to any filial Portion at all which the Athenian Law did suffer him to be so it exceeded not the value of Mille Drachmae And further Reg. Majest cited by him saith a Bastard can neither be Heir or succed to the Lands or Goods of the Parents nor the Parents to him A most inhuman Law and subverting the course of Nature which the Athenian was not And what was the end of this Episcopal cruelty of taking away the inheritance of the Parents from the Child and of the Child from the Parents but that they themselves might be Successors to his movables and if he bought not of them for money his Legitimation then they might forfeit all was left to the King not out of any good will they bore to the King but to force the parties Parents and Children to pay them what they pleased or quod non capit Christus capiat fiscus a kind of Anti-Christian Blasphemy against Christ and Treason against their Princes to fâ—ill their Treasuries with the spoils and curses of miserable Children and Parents under pretence of the names of God and the King to make them thought Patrons and Accessaries to their Rapines 3. He says Ismael was a Bastard and succeeded not to the inheritance but had a Portion As to Ismael's being a Bastard it is false and contrary to the Text of Scripture Gen. 16.3 which expresly saith Agar his Mother was Abraham 's Wife If his Mother therefore we Abraham's Wife he could not be Abraham's Bastard for he himself affirms before that a Bastard is got of a Common Woman 4. Abraham's giving him a filial Portion and the Sons of Keturah likewise their filial Portions is an acknowledgment and not a dis-acknowledgment of them to be his Sons Therefore though he excluded them from the inheritance he doth not intend thereby to make them Bastards for it was the Patria potestas of every Father then to dispose of his own Estate how he pleased and to those who pleased him best and might give the inheritance from the eldest if he thought fit till after restrained by the Law of Primogeniture to give him a double Portion 5. The Arabians who descended from Ismael and Turks to this day affirm Ismael to be the right Heir and not Isaac and on no other Title possess the Land of Palestine but on the Primogeniture of Ismael 'T is therefore very unadvised to call Ismael Bastard against a Succession so long derived from him by the Sword without better reasons or a better Sword to argue it against the possessors 6. Other reasons have been made likewise in behalf of the Primogeniture and Legitimation of Ismael which shew him to have been no Bastard as first That the Marriage between Abraham and Sarah being Brother and Sister was Incestuous and therefore the Marriage with Agar more Lawful then hers Next that uncertainty of Filiation was more in Isacc then in Ismael and Ismael had better probation of himself to be the Son of Abraham then Isaac had for Agar was kept in perpetual custody of her Husband from the time of his begetting to her bringing forth Ismael whereas Sarah was let loose to the custody of Abimelech and his Courtiers 7. He says for a Reason That a Child born out of Matrimony is not Sib or Kin or of Consanguinity to any nor any to him which is contrary to the express Text of Scripture Levit. 21.2 There shall none be defiled for the dead amongst the people except for his Kin that is near to him that is for his Mother and for his Father and for his Son yet here was no Father or Son made by the Ceremony of a Priest in a Temple Not much unlike to this was the whimsey which lasted a while of our Episcopal Courts and Common Lawyers that a Mother was not kin to her Son as appears Swimburn 7. part 119. The Case was in the Reign of King Edward the Sixth Charles Duke of Suffolk having issue a Son by one Venter and a Daughter by another made his last Will wherein he devised Goods to his Son after whose death the Son also died intestate without Wife and without issue his Mother and his Sister by the Father's side for she was born of the former Venter being then living the Mother took the Administration of her Son's Goods by the Stat. 21 H. 8.5 whereby it is Enacted That in case any person die intestate the Administration of his Goods shall be
committed to the next of Kin c. The Administration being thus granted to the Mother the Sister by th Father's side doth commence Suit before the Ecclesiastical Judg pretending her self to be next of kin and the Mother not to be kin at all to the party Deceased and therefore desireth the Administration formerly granted the Mother to be revoked and committed to her as next kin to the Deceased by force of the said Statute Hereupon the most Learned as well in the Laws of the Realm as in the Civil Law were consulted and both Common Lawyers and Civilians unanimously declared it to be an Article of their Faith contrary to Scripture and common sence that a Mother was not kin to her Son so Judgment was pass'd against the Mother whereby she lost her Son and her money too perhaps some that she gave him And in those days this precedent did so much prevail that many other Judgments passed accordingly against the Mothers Then in Rama was there a voice heard lamentation and weeping and great mourning Rachel weeping for her Children and would not be comforted because they were not yea weeping it over again Qualis populea maerens Philomela sub umbra Amissos queritur faetus quos durus arator Observans nido implumes detraxit at illa Flet noctes ramoque sedens miserabile carmen Integrat maestis late loca questibus implet Yea our Rachel had twice more cause to weep then Philomel for Philomel wept only because her Children were not but Rachel wept both because hers were not and because she must not be kin to them neither And surely her mourning had continued for ever had not in process of time the Tears of Women and the Beauty of Truth for what is stronger then Truth and women against Popery prevailed in England but could not in Scotland because Skene put it on the Father The Child not the Child of the Mother Natural affection no consideration to raise an Use to a natural Son but good to an Adulterate Son who is not so apt to weep as the Mother that he should be no Sib or Kin to his Son But will you not wonder My Lord Coke will present you with a couple of rarer absurdities if possible then this for he saith lib. 10. in Leonard Loveis his Case fol. 83. That if a Woman have a Bastard which he intends a Child not born of a Ceremonial Marriage that this Child is not in truth but only in reputation her Child And therewith agrees Dyer M. 17. 18. Eliz. fo 345. 12 Eliz. 290. And then he in his Commentaries and the Judges in Plowden's Commentaries agree in Sharington and Pledal's Case That if a Man in consideration of natural affection covenant to stand seized of such a piece of Land to the use of his Son this natural affection is a sufficient consideration to raise an Use as they call it and to vest the Estate in the Son though he were the Son of an Adulterer and not the Son of his reputed Father if his Mother were married by a Priest in a Temple and his reputed Father within the four Seas But if the Son be his true natural Son begotten by himself then the consideration of natural affection to his true Son is no consideration to raise an Use nor to pass the Land to him but the same is void and null In the first Case where there is no ground for natural affection they talk all of nature extolling her above all considerations and cry out Naturae vis maxima and Natura bis maxima and give away the Estate from the true natural Child to the false Child of the Adulterer Then in the latter Case where there is a just and righteous cause of natural affection commanded by God to Men and instincted by him to Beasts to provide for their own There they are void of natural affection their blind Eye of the Law must see the Infernal darkness of Fictions in the Law and be shut against the Sun of Truth They pretend the Law of Nature in their words but in their works omnia naturae contraria legibus ibunt Nothus made the true Son and the true Son made Nothus They will not allow natural affection of the true Father to his true natural Child to be a consideration to raise an Use in so much as one Acre of Land where they will allow it to the true Nothus and Fictitious Child of an Adulterer against whom probatio non admittitur in contrarium sufficient to invest him in the thousands of Acres of Seigniories and Baronies 'T is strange that Men who profess Law and Justice should not be ashamed of so gross and repugnant absurdities and contrary not only to all Law and Justice but common sence and reason Reasons shewing further that Mamzer in the Old Testament and Nothus in the New are falsly translated Bastard Mamzer Alienigena 1. The word Mamzer is by the best Criticks affirmed to signifie naturally and properly Alienigena seu de alienae gentis foemina natus And that Deut. 23.2 ought to be translated Alienigena non introibit and not Spurius non introibit or in English a Bastard shall not enter but the Translation ought to be in English An Alien born shall not enter into the Congregation of the Lord even to his tenth generation shall be not enter So as the Law here as the Laws of most other Nations do doth put a distinction in priviledge between Alien and Denizen born and not between unlawful and lawful born for an Alien is as lawfully born as a Denizen but hath not the same priviledge either as to Religion of entring into the Congregation or of acquiring propriety in the Land either by Purchase or Succession for if that should be permitted there would ensue the derision or corruption of all natural Religions by contrary Nations and the buying of one Nation out of their Land by another Enemy Nation who were richer in mony then they And that the intention as well as the words of the Law was only against Aliens born as appears manifestly by the next Verse in the same Chapter where it is said An Ammonite or a Moabite shall not enter into the Congregation of the Lord which as the verse before spake of Aliens in general speaks next of Aliens in special Ammonites and Moabites who being of kindred to the Israelites might have been doubted whether intended to be excluded under the general word Aliens which this naming them specially clears and likewise clears that it is intended the National and not the getting or birth of Children in private Families And this is manifest by the constant practice of the whole Israelitish Nation who had no such thing as Illegitimation of the Children of any Ebrew Woman but whether the Wives were one or many the Children all Succeeded alike to their natural Parents if the Father did not for any special reason or otherwise expresly
dispose of his Estate which was a Patria potestas without which propriety of Fathers in their own Goods could not consist nor Adulteries of Wives and Rebellions of Children be prevented And to the potestas Patria Intails to Children of Adulterers and not of the Husband and potestas Dominii potestas instituendi haeredis as to Children and alienandi as to strangers was amongst all Nations incident till the Tyranny of Pontifical Imperial and Feudal Laws set up Intails made the Priests Judges who should be Lawful married and who should be Lawful begotten Heirs of their Bodies to be their Successors whether they would or no and whether the Children were the Children of Adulterers or the Husband 's Nothus a counterfeit 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Secondly 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is by Hesychius and other Authors of approved skill in the Greek-Tongue affirmed to signifie Fictus which is what is feigned or counterfeit and the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which in the plural Number is put in the Text Heb. 12.8 signifies Filius genitus natus or naturalis and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifies Filiatio in the true and natural sense but in the fictitious sence which is made ad placitum imponentis it is made to signifie Adoption which is a feigned or counterfeit Filiation Many ways of counterfeiting Sons have been used 1. When the Wife being Barren to please her Husband feigns a great Belly and a Delivery and presents him with a suppositious Child instead of her own so is it related of Algive the Wife of Canutus that she brought him such a Child whom he called Sweyne and afterward made him King of Norway and many other examples have been of the like 2. When the Person who would make himself Son deceives the Father so Isaac being blind Jacob putting on Kids-skin-Gloves the hair left on deceived the old man to beleive him his true eldest Son who was but a counterfeit And I my self knew a Woman in time of the Wars who having two Sons the Elder was Twenty Years before sent beyond Sea and died there whereby the younger had the Land of his Father settled upon him but at length the Soldiers in their marches passing the Country one amongst them of the like Age and Feature as was the Eldest Son of the Woman who Twenty Years before died beyond Sea Quarter'd in the Parish where the Woman lived and being informed by some of the House where he Quarter'd how like he was to that Person and thereupon enquiring out as many particular passages as he could which had passed between the Woman and her Son and others and what particular marks the Eldest Son had the Soldier went to the Woman's House enquiring for his Father and Mother whose blessing he asked and they being thereat much surprized he told them he was their Eldest Son and what Fortunes Providence had carried him thorough to bring him home again at which the doubtful Parents examin'd him and askt him many questions to try whether he were their very Son Esau or not and took more time and the Woman likewise examin'd him in private by her self but he at last so persuaded the Woman that she beleived and affectionately received him for her Eldest Son who had been thought so long dead till at length the younger Brother who feared to be again disinherited of what was settled on him with much ado discover'd the counterfeit 3. When the Mother is Deliver'd of a true Son and a changling is brought home by the Nurse or other Artifice instead of the true 4. When the Father having no natural Son adopts a Son begotten by another Father so did Claudius adopt Nero and many other of the Roman Emperors and many Persons of private Families having no Son of their own convey and settle their Names Titles Arms and Lands to the Son of a stranger now these Adopted Sons are all Counterfeit Sons and neither Emperor nor Pope nor Bishop nor Act of Parliament nor Legitimation nor Dispensation can make these true or natural or lawful begotten Sons whom God hath not made so 5. When Sons who are not natural are testified to be natural Sons by false Witnesses which is often practised in the Biships Courts such are counterfeit Sons 6. When such as are not natural Sons are testified Sons by the Bishops Certificate such are false and counterfeit Sons and this way of Filiation Aliment and Succession by the Bishops Certificate is of all other the most wicked and abominable Quia Probatio non admittitur in contrarium Whence it is concluded That neither the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 nor 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 seeing they have both a true and natural signification ought not to be translated to words of a counterfeit signification The said Text of Scripture therefore Heb. 12. 8. Ye are Bastards and not Sons are falsely translated and ought to have been translated Ye are Counterfeits and not natural Sons for as to the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 it is manifest to signifie a Counterfeit and therefore ought to be so translated and the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 't is manifest it signifies not a Son in general for that comprehends both true and counterfeit Sons but a natural Son in special which only signifies a true Son as 't is opposite to a counterfeit where therefore the Genus is translated for the Species or the Species for the Genus this is grossly false Translation Genus translated for the Species Species translated for the Genus as hath been shewn likewise before Secondly A word of general signification ought not to be translated into a word of special signification and this shews the Latine Translation which is Supposititit estis non filii is false translated though not so wickedly as the English because a Supposititious Son is but a Species of Nothus the Genus as Virgil says Suppositos de matre nothos furata creavit A certain word into an ambiguous Thirdly A word that is certain ought to be translated into a word of incertain ambiguous significations Now the word Nothus in the time it was writ by Paul which was before Justinian's and Pope's Heads were hot with their Civil or Canon-Laws the word therefore ought to be translated in the certain significat wherein Paul writ it which is a counterfeit and not in the signification of what it is made since of a new invented Vocabulum Artis by the Civil Canon or Common-Law for then it must have been understood all the writers time by way of Prophecy how Tribonian Gratian Coke Skene and Grotius would expound it and how the Bishops would translate it to be a Bastard and him a Bastard whose Mother would not give them Money for their Licence to Marry which was a thing impossible for the Christians of those times to understand or how to reconcile the variant and contradictory expositions would in the later days be for gain made
on the same Some make Nothi and Flii naturales all one as Nov. 99. de Nothis makes Nothus the natural Son and illegitimate as Insulanus Naturalis Filius à vulgo barbarorum dicitur qui sit ex illegitimo toro suscitatus sed parum aptè est enim Filius naturalis qui sanguine natura est tuus non adoptione factus A natural Son is he who is by Blood and Nature thine and not made so by Adoption Cato says there is no such word in Latine as Nothus nor any of the like signification but that which comes nearest it is Spurius and Plutarch says it was a name amongst the Romans as Sextus and Decimus and Caius were and as other names were was written short with two of the first Letters S P. but whether it was a name of honour or dishonour is not known as appears by Hartm Pistor lib. 1. q. juris q. 30. only it is said of them that they were 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 fatherless which is less suspicious of dishonour then before for they called their god Vulcan 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 fatherless and their god Mars was brought out by Juno without a Father as they would have us beleive and the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or fatherless did signifie only an Orphan whom misfortune had deprived of his Father And it was therefore true what Cato before said Romans had no such word or thing as Nothus That the Latines had no word amongst them which agreed in signification with Nothus in Greek and having no such word they must have no such thing for if they had had such a thing they would questionless have had a word to express it So as Anti-Christian Christian Rome against the fatherless is worse then Pagan Rome and neither Papal nor Episcopal Religion is pure but unclean for it is declared Jam. 1.27 Pure Religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this to visit the fatherless but it seems they think they have a better Scripture of Coke and Littleton of non habet ipsum patrem to defend them as if it were a sufficient cause to rob a Child of what is dearer then his life his good name and lay Ignominy on him because he is fatherless but let them remember though the fatherless hath no Reverend Father in God to own him he hath a greater even God himself for so he is called Psal 68.5 Father of the fatherless and though he is forsaken as David by his natural Father and Mother yet may he say as he saith Psal 27.10 When my Father and Mother forsake me then the Lord will take me up And as there was no Nothus amongst the Pagan Romans so there was no illegitimation amongst them or the Greeks but all natural Children were legitimate and Probation of Filiation was a Probation of Legitimation Legitimation or Illegitimation of a natural Child impossible for there was no such word or thing as Legitimation or making Children legitimate who were not born so it being impossible to make a Child or a Son of such a man who was not born so or to make any not to be the Child or Son of such a man if he were born so till the Bishops made Marriage a Sacrament and made infatuated People beleive such absurdities as were impossible to be beleived of any but à mente captis as of transubstantiation of two Persons into one Person of transubstantiation of the Children of the Wife into Children of the Husband of making the Child of the man not to be his Child nor of his Blood nor of his Sib or Kin and making the Child born of the Mother not to be her Child nor she of kin to it and the like unheard of Fopperies in former Ages and accordingly Connan lib. 2. cap. 16. num 5. saith That amongst the ancient Lawyers there is no such word to be found as Legitimation and if not of Legitimation there could be none of Illegitimation or Bastardy To translate therefore the word Nothus into a word of so many ambiguous significations as are so many Authors variant and contradictory on the same and into a word which was not nor the thing it is made signifie in Rerum natura at the time of writing Nothus is a false and a foul translation Fourthly A word in Scripture which is modest ought not to be translated into a word of Scurrility but Nothus or a Counterfeit is a word modest it is therefore filthily and falsely translated into inhonestum infame vocabulum which they would derive a Sporo Pudendo Muliebri Fifthly The word Nothus doth not revile the innocent Child with the Crime of the Malefactor but Coke though it be said 1 Cor. 6.10 No Revilers shall inherit the Kingdom of God reviles God's Eldest Daughter Nature to be a Whore and her Children to be Bastards for he saith Aerd signifies Nature and Base signifies Base and a Bastard is a Base-natural or one born of base Nature if therefore he makes the Child a Bastard he must make the Mother a Whore and by making her Children Base he makes none Noble but the Children of the Whore of Babylon of whom she is deliver'd by the Man-Midwifry of a Priest in a Temple There being therefore no such word in the whole Original Scripture Old Testament or New which signifies a Bastard or illegitimate Child nor any such thing amongst the Hebrews or Barbarous Nations themselves as illegitimation of natural Children nor in Rerum Natura amongst the wild Beasts Monsters and Serpents as illigitimation of their Young till that more and monstrous old Serpent and Romish Dragon appear'd described Rev. 12.3 Having Seven Heads and Ten Horns and Seven Crowns upon his Heads And his Tail drew the third part of the Stars of Heaven and did cast them to the Earth and the Dragon stood before the Woman which was ready to be delivered for to devour his Child as soon as it was born And Verse 16. And the Earth helped the Woman and the Earth opened her mouth and swallowed up the Flood which the Dragon cast out of his mouth And the Dragon was wroth with the Woman and went to make War with the remnant of her seed which keep the Commandments of God and have the Testimony of Jesus Christ Now though none here undertake to unfold Mysteries or expound Prophecies yet it will be a more proper Exposition then the Episcopal translation of Mamzer and Nothus and their Expositions on the same If any should say allusively though not prophetically and expound Prelacy to be the Dragon with many Heads and Horns Woman-kind to be the Woman the multitude of Provincial and Ecclesiastical Laws of Marriage to be the Flood of Waters cast out of the Dragons mouth against the Woman the illegitimation of all Children not born of a Marriage made by a Priest in a Temple to be the standing of the Dragon before the Woman ready to be deliver'd for to
Christian And there are too many who say make me a Bishop and I will be a Protestant So did the Bishop of Spalato in late memory leave Italy while Paul the Fifth was Pope because his Ambition was not so high prefer'd as he desired and fled to England and profess'd himself as Protestant and Preached against the Pope but when the old Pope was dead and his Kinsman got into the Chair being not made a Bishop here he return'd back again to Rome and turn'd Catholick again in hope of great preferment there from his Kinsman but in stead of the same they took him and burnt him for an Apostate There want not likewise in the present time Examples of those who profess'd themselves Protestants till not finding there Ambitious expectations satisfied with Bishopricks and other great places have turned Papists in hope to find the same amongst Them 2. If Frame err not too many have been promoted to their Bishopricks by the Moyne and Recommendations of Great Catholicks whose Creatures they were and how unfit Judges of Marriage Filiation and Succession to Protestant Kingdoms such Bishops must be is left to all true Protestants to consider 10. They Judg by Fictions and not by Truth Grant a Judg but liberty to judg by Fictions he will make what Religion what Law what Equity what Justice he pleaseth he will be the only God to be adored and Judg to be feared He will be like the Pope the only Proprietor of the World and justifie his Title to the Sale of Heaven Earth and Hell The Fictions by which Bishops judg Marriage and the mischiefs which insue by them have been most touch'd before As that Intention of minds and not conjunction of Bodies makes Marriage P. 83. 2. That Sponsa before a Priest in a Temple is Vxor ib. 86. 3. That Verba de Praesenti are Facta de Praeterito Futuro P. 84. 4. That Children begot by Adulterers were begot by the Husband if he was within the Four Seas P. 72 73. 5. That two Persons are Transubstantiated into one by the words of the Priest pronouncing them Man and Wife P. 66 67. c. That a Child is not Sib or Kin or of Consanguinity nor a Child to the Father who begot him or the Mother who bare him P. 14 15. 6. There is another Fiction by which they judg not mention'd before which is Benediction of the Priest for it was an old Superstition nursed in the People by the old Pagan Priests That their Wives should be Barren unless they were bless'd by the Priest Hence the old Arabians were wont to Swear by God and the Bellies of their Wives and Mahomet himself Alchor Cap. 4. P. 47. teacheth the same as a most Sacred Oath and Sterility the greatest Curse to be feared And though Jacob teach That the blessing of Children ought only to be asked and expected from God and not from Man and certainly it were in truth the greatest Idolatry to desire or expect that Blessing from the Priest and were to make him God as appears Benediction of the Priest on Marriage a Fiction Gen. 30.1 And when Rachel saw she bare Jacob no Children Rachel envied her Sister and said unto Jacob give me Children or else I die And Jacob 's anger was kindled against Rachel and said Am I in Gods stead who hath withheld from thee the fruit of the Womb But to infuse the like Superstition into the Hearts of Christians for the increase of his gain Soter Pope of Rome decreed No Marriage should be lawful without the Parties receiving the Benediction of the Priest Plat. Func And by a Decree in France all Children born in Marriages not blessed by a Romish Priest are made incapable to succeed to any Goods of Father and Mother Everard 24. The multitude of Pilgrimages to Saints and Idols that is to say to the Priests who keep them and take the gifts of all they can delude to ask of them the Benediction of Children are known Mr. Stopford Paganopap 111. of this Superstition or Idolatry mentions a noted Example Henry the Third King of France sent a Princely Gift to the Virgin of Loretto viz. a worthy Cup to obtain Issue Male by her Intercession a Gift for substance and work most excellent for the Cup it self is of Hollowed Gem at this day called the Azure Stone 'T is also very big and intermingled with Golden Veins the Cover whereof is of turned Crystal set in Gold and adorned with many excellent Jewels in the top of the Cover an Angel of Gold doth hold in his hand a Lilly of Diamonds the Arms of the Kingdom of France which Lilly doth consist of three Diamonds joined together in Gold with admirable Art the Foot of the Cup being Emerald is bound about and supported with Gold and beautified with Pretious Stones and rich Orient Pearls in the bottom of the Foot the Giver and the Cause of the Gift is engraven in manner following O Queen who by thy worthy Son Didst joyful Blessing bring To all the World Bless with a Son The Kingdom and the King Henry III. King of France and Polonia in the Year of our Salvation MDLXXXIV Certificate of a Bishop false St. Germyn lib. 2.69 raises a Question Whether if the true Heir is certified by the Bishop a Bastard as Ten to One if there happen a Contest between two Heirs but he is whether he that is of Council with the Adverse Party may with good Conscience advise his Client to make Use of this false Certificate of the Bishop in which without any Conscience which he so much pretends he saith he may for these Reasons First because it is a Maxime in the Law That a private mischief shall be suffer'd before a publick Inconvenience and the publick inconvenience would be that if the Certificate of the Bishop should not be final then in this Case if another Writ should be after sent to another Bishop in another Action to certifie whether he were a Bastard or not peradventure that Bishop would certifie that he were a Mulier that is to say lawfully begot and then he should recover as Heir and so he should in one self-Court be taken for Mulier and Bastard for avoiding which contrariety the Law will suffer no more Writs to go forth in that Case and suffers all men to take advantage of the Certificate rather than suffer such a Contradiction which in Law is called an Inconvenience The Second Reason he gives is because the Certificate of the Bishop is the higest kind of Trial that is in the Law in this behalf But with due respect to so grave an Author whose failings are rather to be imputed to the time of Popery wherein he was born and writ than to his Person In answer to his Reasons alledged I say first to the Maxim That 't is better to suffer a private mischief than a publick Inconvenience or which is much like it is better one man perish than the
is manifest that the Canon of the Council of Trent which nulls all Marriages except before a Priest in a Temple and the Certificates of Bishops and Penance gives a general License for Money either the Taxa Camerae of the Pope or the Commutation Money of the Bishops to have all Women common for by decreeing no Marriages shall be of Validity except with a Woman brought before a Priest and a Temple they null and dissolve all Marriages made by the Moral Law of God and the Obligations of them whereby if any man lie with an Hundred Women and get them with Child if he hath been so cunning as not to lead any of them to a Priest in a Temple there is no obligation on him to own any of these for Wife or Child in regard the Moral Law of God is abolish'd by the Papal and Episcopal Canons and made of no effect by their Traditions and wicked Customs and the Party is left free to lie with as many more and to have common amongst them Sans nombre if he will but give them Money for their Hire and the Bishop Commutation Money and what is this but to have Women common to the Rich and to exclude the Poor who have not Money from having any But this would be prevented if the Bishops would as they ought to do compel the man who gets a Virgin with-Child to marry her according to the Moral Law of God and the express Precept of Scripture Exod. 22.16 If a man entice a Maid who is not betrothed he shall surely endow her to be his Wife Which enticement is as well intended by Money as Wantonness and the Law the same as well in case of Force or Rape as enticement but more Penal Deut. 22.28 If a man find a Damsel that is a Virgin which is not betrothed and lay hold on her and lie with her and they be found then the man that lay with her shall give the Virgins Father Fifty Sheckels of Silver and she shall be his Wife because he hath humbled her he may not put her away all his days This is the clear Moral Law of God and the clear Texts of Scripture and there is by them laid an indissoluble obligation on the man according to the old Form of Espousal Se post Concubitum invitam non deserturum and if there is a Child born by reason of the further Obligation of Parents laid on them by the manifest Act of God it is not in the Power of these Virgins who are now become Mothers will they nill they nor of any human Power to dissolve that which the Divine Power by giving birth to a Child hath once established But Popes and Bishops are so far from compelling these deflowrers of Virgins to Marry then and these begetters of Children to acknowledg them according to this most clear and just Law of God and according to the Obligations both Ex Contractu Reali which are the lying with them and getting them with-Child and Ex Malesicio Reali which are the same that they like the Giants who would storm Heaven Oh Hellish presumption Level all the Canons they have against the Divine Laws of God himself and with them tear in pieces all Obligations laid by them of Husbands to Wives and Fathers to Children that Women may be in common and Children in common Nullius Filii Populi Filii confounding Heaven and Earth and all Divine and Human Rights and subverting the course of Nature as far as they are able to obtain to themselves the inexhaustible Treasure and invincible Power over Princes and People over Emperors and Kings incident to the Jurisdiction of Marriage Filiation and Succession But how easily are these Giants quell'd and all the mischiefs ensue by their letting the World loose to Community of Women and Community of Children 1. 'T is but to give liberty to those who Marry to Marry according to the Moral Law of God and to free them from compulsion to the Ceremonial Law of a Priest in a Temple 2. 'T is but to give Power to the Temporal Judges and Magistrates to compel such as have had Children by Virgins and desert them to acknowledg those Virgins according to the clear Texts of Scripture to be their Wives and not to leave them and their Children in common which ought to be their inclosed Propriety Whence would ensue that if any man saw that whatsoever Virgin he did first touch he should be compell'd to take he would follow the Poets Counsel Multis è millibus unam Elige cui dicas tu mihi sola places Ovid. He would certainly choose unless corrupted by Money one whom he liked above all others and having so fair a Garden inclosed of his own choice he would be the more unlikely to run to graze in a Common or if be should he might find his expectation much deceiv'd for the same Justice having been done by the Magistrate on all others as well as himself he would find no Common to run in but every Quillet inclosed nor should a single Woman be let would she take him where another had Right to claim him As to Fornication Adultery Stews Brothels how great a cause the compulsion of Publick Appearance in Marriage before a Priest in a Temple by prohibition of Private Marriage is the same is shewn already before P. 107 and as to the dissemination by Fornication Adultery Stews and Brothels not only of that miserabile scortorum flagellum the Lues Venerea the inseparable concomitant of those Vices and Places but likewise of all other Epidemical contagious and deadly Diseases amongst the People the same is notorious but Episcopal Courts get as much by the Dead as the Living and more by the Vicious than Vertuous It is their Interest therefore to continue it so long as they can It will be objected against the giving Power to Temporal Magistrates to compel every Man who hath a Child or Children by a Virgin to acknowledg her for his Wife and her Children his on Probation made of the Fact that 't is impossible if Marriages are tolerated without a Priest in a Temple or a Justice of Peace in his Hall or Banns at the Church or Market-Cross to have Witnesses or any other Testimony or Evidence of the Fact unless the Magistrate should give Sentence as the Bishop doth without Probation To which is answer'd First That Toleration of Private Marriage without Publick Witness of Priest or Magistrate is no denial of liberty to those who desire Publick Witness of their Contracts of Marriage no more than the Toleration of passing Lands by Livery and Seisin in Pays is a denial to pass them by Fines and Recoveries or other matter of Record which is publick Testimony but Parties may use one or the other or both as they desire and think suits best with their Conveniences but that which is here press'd is that no Mans Christian Liberty be infringed nor he be compell'd to make publick Witnesses either of
Priest or Magistrate but be left free where God hath not prohibited him to do as best suits with his own Conscience and Convenience without unjust Penalties laid on himself his Wife or his Children for omission of a Ceremony never instituted by God but full of great danger and mischief to many though not to all whose Consciences and Conveniences are not alike but of different States as is already before shewn P. 108. especially between Poor and Rich for the Poor need neither Writing nor Witnesses for Portions or Jointures as perhaps the Rich think themselves to need Secondly Parties that desire Witnesses may no question have better Witnesses at their own Home in Private and with less inconvenience as well for Contract of Marriage as they have for all other Civil Contracts than a Priest in a Temple or Justice of Peace in his Hall or Bishop in his Cathedral or ony other Publick Officer whatsoever and one of the Jews ways which was never question'd but lawful and convenient was to Marry by written Instruments of Contract without Priest or Temple Thirdly Though Parties that Marry have neither Witness Publick or Private yet they have Power if they can Write to give a Note in Writing one to another or if they cannot to give such secret Tokens or Pledges as without Witnesses will be sufficient to evidence their secret Congresses when their happens any necessity as Judah when he went in to Tamar his Daughter in Law Gen. 38.18 He said What Pledg shall I give thee and she said Thy Signet and thy Bracelers and thy Staff that is in thy hand and he gave it her and came in unto her and she Conceived by him and after being accused of Whoredom Verse 25. When she was brought forth she sent to her Father in Law saying by the Man whose these are am I with-with-Child and she said discern I pray thee whose these are the Signet and Bracelets and Staff and Judah acknowledged them Fourthly If the Law were made as it ought to be That Private Marriage without Witness and Procreation of a Child between two Persons not prohibited by the Law of God to Marry should be a Civil Act Sine poena aut infamia and not a Criminal as it is unjustly made in the Bishops Courts if done without their Ceremonies of a Priest in a Temple the Proceeding of a Temporal Judg would be then Legal and according to the ordinary course of Justice if a Woman came before him and first took her Oath that such a man had her Virginity and that the Child she hath is his Child to put the man to his Oath concerning the same for this is then no Oath Ex Officio nor Self-accusation of a Crime when the Fact is made no Crime and is no other than like an Oath of discovery of a Civil Contract in Chancery or Wager of Law of No Debt or Non-Summons at Common Law and only gives the Woman and her Child the Civil Benefit to be in as good a State and Condition as if she had been Married by the Ceremony of a Priest in a Temple and no farther and this without Penalty to the Father who being put to his Oath if he deny not what is alledged against him nothing is more just than that he should be compell'd if he refuse to acknowledg the Woman to be his Wife and the Child his Child Fifthly when once it were known that the Magistrate had a Legal Power to perform this he would be rarely troubled concerning any secret Marriage but every man concerned in the same will be careful so much the more to perform the duty both of an Husband and Father in a Secret than a Publick Marriage by how much the more he desires to keep it secret 10. It causeth Prostitutions of Brides to Priests Lords Guests and others Examples of this in Priests are before shewn P. 53 54. of Lords P. 24 25. Sabellicus reports of the like Custom amongst the old Carthaginians the like was amongst the ancient Scots Persians Vri Swiss under-Waldensians Moors and others all which wicked Customs had been easily prevented and avoided had not the People been compell'd to Marry by the Publick Ceremony of a Priest and a Temple 11. It caused the Consecration of Incest Whores and Sodomites to attend the Service of the Priests and Temples The way of Consecration of the Persian Magi by lying with their Mothers Sisters and Daughters is before toucht P. 44. and the way Pope Alexander obtained his Holiness seems not much to differ from the Magi by the Epitaph of his Saint Hoc jacet in tumulo Lucretia nomine sed re Thais Alexandri Filia Sponsa nurus The Consecration of Whores and Sodomites whom the Priests let to hire in the Temples and Groves for their gain was so common amongst the old Pagan Nations that the Jews made Use of the word signifying a Person Consecrated to signifie a Whore and a Sodomite as the Hebrew word Kadash Jos 2.1 is translated in English Harlot and Rahab is so called and 1 Kings 14.24 the same is translated Sodomite yea at this day the Devil under the name of Holiness so much possesses the American Priests of Pegu that they keep in the Temples Consecrated Sodomites to make gains of them to the Priest who are esteemed by the People most Sacred Oh to what height of wickedness doth the Devil draw people where he makes the Priest his Instrument to counterfeit Holiness with their Ceremonious Fopperies of Consecration and bring the same into a Temple with the Name and Doctrine of being Sacred The same was done amongst the Greeks a wise Nation and by a wise Legislator of theirs even Solon himself yet did the Devil and Priest delude him under the name of Holiness for he caused by his Laws as a Fundamental of Government to begin his Magna Charta with the Privileges of the Holy Church and to that end he appoints a Temple to be Dedicated to Venus and Priests to be Consecrated and Sacrifices instituted and to be well govern'd by the Priests he stocked the Temple with a multitude of Consecrated Whores to be let to hire to increase the Priests Profit and Pleasure and this Holy Church he endowed with great Revenues and Privileges There were the like Holy Churches filled with the like Holy Sisters at Ephesus at Corinth and Abydos and so great veneration they were in amongst the People no doubt by the many pious Sermons of the Priests what Miracles these Female Angels could do that they attributed the whole overthrow of Xerxes with his almost innumerable Army to the Holy Prayers of these Consecrated Whores in their Temples or Stews to their Goddess Venus Here Whoredom for the gains of the Priests and Temples is Consecrated and believed not only by the grosser sort of People but by the chief Princes and Governour to be a Thing most Sacred And is not Adultery with us more wickedly than Fornication amongst the Heathen Consecrated by
compulsion to the Ceremony of a Priest in a Temple It is for if A. get B. with-Child and deserts her and C. get D. with-Child Adultery Consecrated under the name of Marriage and deserts her and A. gets the good will of D and C gets the good will of B and the two Women being both with-Child and both deserted grow more politick to prevent after desertions and tell their new Courtiers peremptorily that they shall expect no farther favour from them until they lead them before a Priest in a Temple and Marry them there now the only lawful way had been for these two Women to relieve themselves against their unjust Desertors that a Magistrate had a Legal Power on complaint of the Women injured to compel each Desertor to acknowledg his proper Wife and Child but they take here a course to leap out of the Pan into the Fire and to cure or cover a lesser Evil by committing a greater and go to Church to commit Cross-Adultery and Cross-Marry one the Man who had got the other with-Child and the other the Man who had got the first with-Child and the Priest accordingly joins them and contracts and pronounces each Couple Man and Wife and gives his Benediction is not here Adultery Consecrated under the name of Marriage and false Wives given to false Husbands and false Children to false Fathers and this Consecration of Adultery makes it so indissoluble that no Probation shall be admitted to the contrary either for Husband or Wife or Father or Child Certainly this is far worse than any Consecration of Fornication amongst the Pagan Priests of Priapus or Venus Well doth Arnob. contra gent. therefore say Where are Whoredoms more committed than by Priests in the Temples and by the Altars where are Uncleanness more practised and Adulteries more meditated Lastly burning Lust is more frequently discharged in Chancels than in Brothels I shall only add a word from a Poet concerning the Romish Clergy Nulla hic Arcana revelo Non ignota loquor liceat vulgata referre Sic urbes populique ferunt ea fama per omnem Jam vetus Europam mores extirpat honestos Sanctus ager Scurris venerabilis Ara Cynoedis Servit honorandis divum Ganymedibus aedes I had not defiled Paper with so much of their Filthiness had not this Romish Ceremony of a Priest and a Temple so far besotted the Senses of many ignorant People as they imagine Marriage made by a Ceremony of so unclean an Original and causing so great and abominable Uncleanness should make a Marriage more Holy than one made without it according to Gods own Holy Ordinance in his Moral Law 12. It caused the Consecration and Adoration of Priapus Baal-Peor Venus Adonis and Flora for Gods and Goddesses and was the first which defiled the Virgin-World with Whoredom and Idolatry The World in its Primitive Innocence kept all Wives secured under the Custody of their Husbands and all Daughters under the Custody of their Parents the strictness of which appears to this day in many Southern and Eastern Nations till the Priests of Priapus and Venus for they were the most ancient of which any Histories speak and as Cornelius Agrippa mentions none were to be admitted Priests who were not first initiated in the Mysteries of Priapus These therefore could not pretend to be Priests unless they had a God or Goddess to whom they might pretend to Sacrifice and Serve and become mediators to present the Prayers of the People a God they could not have unless they made an Idol and an Idol they could not have without a Temple to secure it and their rich Offerings against the Spoil either of Thieves or Weather So the Building of Temples was the first means of setting up Idols and the setting up Idols the first means of Consecration and Adoration of them for Gods and Goddesses and to draw a Conflux of Worshippers there was no better way of Temptation of the Men than by the Women and of the Women than by the Men and of both them by Feasting with Sacrifice Musick Dancing Dalliance and Whoredom whence so frequently Idolatry in Scripture is called going a Whoreing after Idols for indeed the Priests became thereby the Pandars-General as Cornelius Agrippa calls them by drawing Women to their Temples both for Marriages and Whoredoms and first made them offer their Virginities for Sacrifices to their Idols and Priests before this Spiritual Court of theirs would give them Licenses to Marry for which as now they compell'd them to pay their Fees and to colour this Uncleaness the better they Consecrated those impure Gods and Goddesses Priapus Baal-Peor Milcom Adonis whose Worshippers were the same the Scripture calls the Mourners for Tamuz Venus and Flora and instituted to them Sacrifices and Adorations as the most Sacred and Potent Deities and though the Feminine part of the World remained then in the strictest Custody whether Wives or Daughters which in the first is allowed and commended even by the wanton Love-Poet himself Nupta virum timeat rata sit Custodia nuptae Hoc decet hoc leges jusque pudorque jubent Wife fear thy Husband Let thy Wardship stand 'T is fair this Laws Right modesty command Neither had it been possible to have undermin'd in the Worlds Infancy those strong Fortifications of the Modesty of Wives and Chastity of Daughters had not the Magical Priest and Devil both conspired to have charmed them out of the holes of their Rocks with the Songs Musick Dancing and Festivals of Sacrifices under the pretence of the command and service of these Sacred and potent Gods before mention'd to the Publick places of Sacrifice and Temples where when they once had them they did with them what they pleased sometimes in their Mattens and Vespers by day and sometimes in their Vigils by night and by degrees brought them first by Inticements and at last by Compulsion not to Marry without a Priest in a Temple 13. It first destroyed in the World the Omnipresential Worship of God In all the times before Moses except amongst Idolaters there was no Publick Temple built for the Worship of God nor Tabernacles nor do we find any publick Conventions of Worship except as aforesaid yet were those Times full of men Famous for Piety Abraham himself Gen. 21. planted a Grove to call upon the name of the Lord which was for Privacy and not to be Publick the dwelling in Tents not affording that convenience of Secrecy which Christ commands of Prayer in the Closet and he went to an Hill alone to Sacrifice Isaac and would not so much as suffer one Servant to go with him Gen. 22.5 And in old time they called every high Hill which afforded the benefit of Privacy of Prayer the Hill of God And Christ himself Matth. 14.23 When he had sent the multitude away he went up into a Mountain apart to Pray which was for Privacy and he compell'd not the multitude to Pray with him nor so much as any
for a Farthing and one of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father Yea the Child himself who is of more value than many Sparrows And in the midst of all these Enemies how shall he cry for help to his Father who is so many Millions of Miles as is the New Jerusalem absent from him How doth his Body live so long how shall his Soul after Death break through so many Regions and Legions as stand in Battalia against her ascent to so unimaginable an Height before she can reach her Fathers House as a Mill-stone cast thence with impetuous swiftness would not fall on Earth or into the Sea in Thousands of years unless it be intended every Soul which goes to Heaven must borrow Mahomet's Elborach and that would not serve neither if true what he Relates That after he had Rid like a Witch by night through the Air and was come to his last Stage within Threescore Miles of Gods Palace where he dwelt all the way was so Impassible with huge heaps of Frost and Snow that had he not been an hot Bodyed and hot Headed man he had been utterly lost and frozen to death before he had got through and being got at length to the Presence-Chamber God living in the midst of all that Snow put a cold Complement on him for he clapt him on the shoulder but it was not to Knight him with his hand so cold That it pierced him to the very Reins of his back and cast him all over into a Terrible shivering and surely if it were possible for a Soul to pass so long a Journey through so many Thousand Legions of Devils as are in the way to intercept her and she should at length Recover faint and weary to the beginning of the Threescore Northern Miles of these Mountains of Frost and Snow being so naked as Souls use to be when they come in and go out of the World and not Turbanted Coated Shooed as the Body of Mahomet It is doubted by many before she gets haâ—f way through she must turn up her Heels if she have any much sooner without Feathers than a Robin doth with them in Winter The Priests have brought their Soul to a fair pass and left her between fire and frost the Pope to burn one half and the Turk to freez the other neither do they shew a Remedy nor if the Soul is after death sensible of Good or Evil as doubtless it is or aâ—l Religion were in vain do they shew in all the Piles of their Theology how so much as one Sparrow shall be secure from falling on the ground or one Soul shall Injoy the Protection of Providence in the Center of so many Enemies as she is incircled with both in Life and after Death who seek to take all the Good from her and lay all the Evil on her they can Alas Poor Soul And why do they conceal from thee thy greatest and only present and Eternal comfort the Omnipresence of God Which if granted none of this Evil can ever happen to thee Thou art ever in his Embraces he hears thee he sees thee he is with thee and as is sayd Rom. 8 38. Neither death nor life nor Angels nor Principalities nor Powers nor things present nor to come nor height nor depth nor any other Creature shall be able to separate Vs from the Love of God though as Job saith 9.11 Lo he goeth by me and I see him not be passeth on also but I perceive him not This neither Pope nor Turk dare deny yet seek to bury in Oblivion and hide in Clouds of Darkness forbidding all Disputes of the Premisses least the truth of Conclusions which must necessary follow shake the Fundamentals of all their false Religions and the vast gains accrue to them by the same Some of the gainful Practices arising from suppressing the knowledg of the Omnipresence of God I have touch't before and some Others I have added as followeth 1. If the Light of the Omnipresence shouâ—d shine through the World they could not pretend and deceive with Magick in the name of Theology with Necromancy under the name of Prayer at the Tombs of Saints and to their bones and Reliques they could not deceive with Witchcraft and Malice under the Name of Converse with God and Good Angels nor could they pretend to be Inspirators without Miracle if God is Omnipresent in every Soul alike Divers Popes have been by Histories Nâ—ted to pretend Inspiration who have been great Magicians and the Acting or Counterfeiting many Miracles by the Romish Saints both beneficial and maleficial are common in their Legends and the Turks have as many as they And seldom a Tyrant goes to Sea but he will if he can have a Witch so will they in their Land-Enterprizes have their prophets which are the same The Tartar Chinese and American Priests are generally Magicians and are Consulted in all their Wars so were the Magi of the Persians and Brachmans of the Indians The Druids of the Gauls and Brittons and many other Nations all Witches who sometimes by the help of the Devil foretold truly and sometimes falsly success of Wars and shared with the Souldiers in the spoil Now though amongst the Heathens they were not ashamed to worship Devils whom they called gods and it was the Professed Divinity of Polytheist to Worship and Consult Inferior Spirits as well as the Supreme yet amongst Christians the Profession being only to Worship the Supreme if they Publish the Supreme to be Omnipresent they cannot pretend these Magical spirits to be God or Good Angels who confine themselves only to some Persons or Places and do Malefices either to Nations or private Persons seeing if they Pray to God Omnipresentially they may be sure to be heard for all Lawful and necessary Prayers and the unlawful and Maleficious never to be granted by him whereby the Priest will loose all his Customers for he that believeth God Omnipresent will Pray alone and not Imploy another to Pray for him to avoid the foremention'd Dangers First because for ought he knows the Priest who Prays for him may be a Magician Secondly He will not Pray to a Saint or Angel nor bring offerings as the Priest would have him because for ought he knows this Saint or Angel may be a Daemon Transformed into an Angel of Light whereby he himself should become a Magician and incite this Daemon to do Malefice 2 Such as believe the Omnipresâ—nce will not only avoid Praying by a Priest or to an Angel or Saint by whom he pretends to have Power to obtain unlawful Prayers and to do Malefice but likewise to obtain Lawful Prayers and to Receive Benefits because the Granting of a Payer both by God or an Angel or any Invisible Power is a Miracle and the Priest takes Money for every Miracle or benefit succeeds by his Prayers of benefit to the Party for whom he Prays whereby it will be manifest that the success of this Prayer is
neither granted by God nor a Good Angel for God never sells his Mercies for Money And this was the Theology of Simon Magus a Magician to think the Holy Ghost might be bought with Money to which was made a Tart Answer Act. 8.20 Peter said unto him Thy money perish with thee because thou hast thought that the Gift of God may be purchased with money And Christ gives express Command to his Disciples Missionated by him with Power of Signs and Miracles to do good to the People Matth. 10.7 Go Preach saying The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand Heal the sick cleanse the Lepers raise the dead cast out Devils freely ye have received freely give So Elijah when he had cured Naaman of the Leprosy took no Money of him but punished Gehazi for doing the same 2 Kings 5.20 And Moses when he did provide the Miracle of Manna he did not ask any Money or sell it to those who needed for that had been to have deprived God of thanks for his own Gift And Petrus Quinqueranus Relates That when some Neopolitan Kings had inclosed a place with a Wall which was of great Resort of Poor for the gathering of Manna there that they might be Excluded from gathering unless they paid a Tribute or Impost for the same The Manna suddenly ceased and fell no more and when as the Doors were again set open it fell as before The Place was again the Second Third and many times shut up for Tryal and still when it was shut the Manna fell not at all but when open as at first it Continued to fall Plentifully Camerar Centur. 2. cap. 160. p. 401 402 403. It is not here affirmed That if such as are Preachers or Teachers of the Truth of God receive necessary maintenance for their study and pains in Executing the same unless they pretend to Preach by Inspiration That their Doctrine is from Daemons and not from God for the Labourer is worthy of his Hire and these have not Received their Gift freely but by long study and Paynes but only this is affirmed That if they pretend to any Extraordinary and Miraculous Gift from God or Angels as to be Mediators for Prayers or to keep God under Lock and Key in a Temple and Receive money for Executing the same it is a Manifest sign they have neither their Gift from God nor Good Angels but from Daemons Some that have Writ of Witchcraft say That such as Pray though to God for unlawful things if they succeed and have Their Prayers granted It is a Sign That they have made a Covenant with the Devil for God never grants unlawful Prayers therefore it must be the Devil or Fortune And that a Man may be a Witch yet not know it There being therefore two great Dangers to Pray by a Priest who takes money for his Prayers first That he Prays to Daemons under the Name of God Secondly That he will make unlawful Prayers Quid non mortalia pectora cogit Auri sacra fames Flectere si nequeat superos Acheronta Movebit Should the Doctrine of the Omnipresence spread men would rather Pray to God as Christ Commands in secret and Omnipresentially to whom they may Pray and He Exacts no money of them nor Compels their Consciences to Pray in unlawful Forms or for unlawful Matters rather than Imploy so Chargeable and Dangerous a Mediator who if God is in Person Omnipresent is not only useless but hurtful whereby he will lose all his Money and Hire for his Prayers and the Silver-Smiths of Diana have their Trade utterly spoiled 3 Men would be induced to worship in secret and Omnipresentially to avoid another Danger incident to Prayer by a Priest for the Prayer by a Priest would be in Publick in a Synagogue or Temple which is lyable to a double danger one of Daemons the other of Men to neither of which any Modest or Prudent Petitioner desires to have his Prayers known not to Daemons because he may have Errors and Imperfections in his Prayers which if discovered only to God He is ready to prevent those Dangers he would draw on his own head by his Rash Petitions and like a Father in pity to his Child to forgive them whereas if Discovered to Daemons they if not by God restrained would be ready to grant him success in all the Noxious things he asks to Insnare and Ruin him Not to Men first because for any to confess his private Sins or Enumerate his private Wants or Desires in Publick would but afford matter of Derision to the Heathens Secondly The malice of Men would be apt to wrest all the Words though innocently intended of his Prayers sometimes to Herefie sometimes to Sedition sometimes to Treason it self and the same would kindle the hatred and sometimes provoke the Rage of all Dissentients against him As at Vassy in France Fifteen hundred Protestants being assâ—mbled in a Church on a Sabbath day to Pray and hear the Word of God the Duke of Guise suddenly Compassed the Church with Armed Souldiers himself standing in the Door with a drawn Sword and Cruelly sent his Souldiers who killed all without Distinction of Age or Sex Acts and Mon. 4 Granting the Omnipresence Bishops could not pretend Power to Nâ—ll and Dissolve private Marriage Consummated by Birth of a Child nor separate those at whose Matrimonial Acts God was present as a Witness and Party and thereby joined them not to be put assunder by Man 5 Granting God to be Omnipresent and present in the Internal Sâ—irit and heart of Man and sees and knows thereby all of his thoughts all External Ceremonies of Worship are useless yea the Compulsion to them is the highest Denial of his Internal presence and all the Difference and Distinction taken away how to know the Worship of God from the worship of Men and the Counterfeit Worship from the True for though to the worship of Men External Ceremonies are necessary and the Internal thoughts of the Heart cannot be Express'd to Men but by External acts of the Body yet to God it is otherwise for he being present in the Heart it self it were as Impertinent that the Heart should be Compelled to Pray or Express it's Intentions by External Ceremonies without the Body as to Compel a Vassal when his Prince is in the midst of the House with him to throw his Petiâ—ion out of the Window to be sent to him many Miles off by the Priest who is in the outer Court And as Compulsion to Worshâ—p by the outward Ceremonies of a Priest or a Tempâ—e is unnecessary so is it the way to Compel an Hypocritical and Counterfeit Worship contrary to the Command of Christ Joh. 4.21 Where he talking with the Woman Concerning to the Two Places of Worship the Temple of Samaria and the Temple of Jerusalem Saith Woman believe me the hour cometh when ye shall neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem worship the Father And vers 23. The hour cometh and now is
Commutation Money he pleaseth to Demand for his Remission of this Penance and Pardon of her Sins and that he may have Power to set what Taxes he pleaseth on Gods Ordinance of Marriage and all Acts incident to the same which ought to be free and thereby set to Hire and Sale all Women Lawful and Unlawful and the Successions not only to all private Patrimonies but Kingdoms and thereby fill his Chests with Gold and Silver The Sin or Offence for which the Punishment is Imposed is Child-bearing and nothing else whatever is pretended which is proved by these Reasons 1. If he say That he punisheth the Mother for disobedience to his Ecclesiastical Laws and Canons in not Publishing her Intention to Marry to the Priest in the Temple and the Boys in the Parish and what is the bottom of the Business not paying him his Fees for Publication according to the Canons This is easily Answered by asking who made him a Legislator and Canon-Maker over a Free People and their Children This already is before proved That neither Ecclesiastical nor Temporal Law can be made nor Tax imposed on Marriage or any thing else without the Assent of the House of Commons and that was never given to any Papal or Episcopal Laws or Canons as hath been already proved And as hath likewise been proved All Ecclesiastical Laws and Canons made by any Popes or Bishops Councils or Synods from the beginning of the World to these presents in regard they never had the Assent of the House of Commons in Parliament are utterly Void and Null to bind the People or their Posterity No Law in England for standing in a White Sheet So there being not so much as a Law of Man in England Prohibiting Marriage without a Priest and Temple under the Penalty of standing in a White Sheet and there being no Law there can be no Offence Besides if there were such a Law it is already before shewn that all Laws Prohibiting Marriage Except by a Priest in a Temple are the Doctrine of Daemons and came Originally from Daemons and the Priests of Priapus and Venus and Contrary to the Moral Law of God and Nature the Bishop hath therefore no pretence to Punish the Woman for that 2. There are no other Offences in Bearing a Child which a Woman can commit but breach of Contract Incest Fornication or Adultery As to breach of Contract and Incest the Bishop punisheth Persons Free and not Prohibited by any Law of God to Marry As to Fornication and Adultery the first Offence cannot as hath already been shewn be Committed without Polyandry in the Woman and the second without Polygynecy in the Man But the Bishop punisheth her who bears a Child though the Father and Mother were no way Prohibited to Marry by any Law of God or Man and they were at the time of Begetting the Child both Virgins and neither Guilty of Polyandry or Polygynecy and so still continue Chast and Constant one to another The Bishop therefore punishing such a Woman doth punish her for Child-Bearing or for nothing 3. There is no Probation by two or more Witnesses of any Offence but Child bearing and Probation by Compulsion of the Woman to self-Accusation or by Compulsion of Canonical Purgation are unlawful The Bishop therefore punishing such a Woman if he punish her not for Child-bearing only he punisheth her for Facts whereof he hath no Lawful Probation It being therefore proved That the Bishop punisheth Lawful Child-bearing It appears further That he punisheth the Lawful more than the Unlawful for such Women as are common in Stews or Brothels seldom bear a Child as hath been shewen before and such Women as are Married to Husbands and therefore can only be Guilty of Adultery if the Husband be within the Four Seas of the time of Begeting the Children on their Wives by Adulterers it hath been shewen already That Littleton and Coke will by Fiction have it be believed that these Adulterous Children were got by the absent Husband And that Probatio non admittitur in Contrarium whereby Marriage by a Priest in a Temple is made a Sanctuary for Adulteresses and for Adulterous Child-bearing they are Exempt from punishment but the Poor Lawful Child-bearing Woman against whom there is neither Fact nor Probation of any Crime to be shewen is the Chief Subject of the Bishops punishment a Fact so Barbarous as not to be parallel'd in the Example of Turks Tartars Americans or any Ethniek Nation Except Gaeramantes who have a wicked Custom that if any Married Woman Procreate more than three Children she shall be Divorced from her Husband because a Multitude of Children caused Men to have Covetous hearts and besides the Divorce of the Mother such Supernumerary Children were to be slain before the Parents eyes But Bishops are worse than the Garamantes for they punish though but one Child-bearing whereas the other punish'd not till after Three and exercise those Inhumanities for their Gain against Child-Bearing Women which the Scripture Prohibits to be Exercised to the very Brutes Deuter. 22.6 If a Birds nest chance to be before thee in the way in any Tree or on the Ground whether they be young ones or Eggs and the Dam sitting upon the Young or upon the Eggs thou shalt not take the Dam with the Young But thou shalt in any wise let the Dam go and take the Young to thee that it may be well with thee and that thou mayest prolong thy days The Bird is not any wise to be punished for this Natural Piety to her Young but to be set at Liberty and let go and that they may Defile their Marriages by the Example of the Garamantes with Blood as they do by Example of Priapus and Venus with uncleanness they most Cruelly to that Misery Nature hath Imposed on the Mother in Sorrow to bring forth though of it self of pains Equal with Death and oft tiâ—â—es brings Death add their Punishment of Exposing the Mother to Publick Reproach and Shame which to the Modest is worse than Death And by how much the more Modest the Mother is by so much the more easily is she tempted by the Devil with a Praestat Emori quà m per dedecus vivere to destroy her Infant to cover her own shame and his Pope Gregory intending to Fish in a Deep Pond in Rome near a Nunnery the Water being let out found therein above Six Thousand Sculls of Infants 6000 Infants Skuls found in a Fish-pond so the punishing of Child-bearing Women and Prohibiting Marriage Except by a Priest in a Temple under this Infamous Punishment contrary to the Law of God and according to the Law of Devil who was a Murderer from the beginning caused the Destroying of these Six Thousand Infants and were all the like Instances recited which for Brevity are here to be omitted it would appear That this punishing of Child-births because the Mother went not first to a Priest in a Temple hath Murderd Millions
of Babes and is the true Popish Limbus Puerorum Translated into the Romish Church from Hell according to the Poet Continuo auditae voces vagitus Ingens Infantumque animae flentes in Limine primo Quos Dulcis vitae Exortes ab ubere raptos Abstulit atra dies funere mersit acerbo Virg. Aen.l. 6. And these Papal and Episcopal Destroyers make the Child-bearing Woman justly take up the complaint of her Described Jer. 4.31 I have heard a voice of a Woman in travel and the anguish as of her who bringeth forth her first Child that bewaileth her self that spreadeth her hands saying wo is me now for my Soul is wearyed because of Murderers Surely these Bloody Legislatours must have a Dreadful account who make Laws for their gains to destroy the most Innocent of all Creatures little Children Luk. 17.1.2 Then said be unto his Disciples it is impossible but offences will come but wo unto him through whom they come It were better for him that a Milstone were hanged about his neck and he cast into the Sea than that he should offend one of these little ones O how far in this is the Practice of such as call themselves Christians different from the Doctrine of Christ Matth. 18.2 And Jesus called a little Child unto him and set him in the midst of them and said verily I say unto you except ye be Converted and become as little Children ye shall not enter into the Kingdom of Heaven And vers 6. Whoso receiveth one such little Child in my Name receiveth me But alas how doth this corrupted age receive such a little one They receive him indeed as He Himself was received Matth. 26.55 In that same hour said Jesus to the multitude Are you come out as against a Theif with swords and with staves for to take me But this was not the Receiving he intended of a little one though now amongst those who profess his name no sooner doth God send a Child to be born in a Parish unless the Mother bought a Licence of the Bishop to bear him and bought which none but God can give more than the Child the Benediction of a Priest in the Temple but the whole Multitude presently rise with swords and staves and are all in Arms against a poor naked Infant weeping and wailing as the first tast of his misery to be born into so wicked a World and against the more miserable Mother like the Dam sitting on her Young whom they throw into some Dung-Cart or other filthy Carriage to draw her and her Child out of their bounds and unless she is Rich enough to hire a House of Ten Pounds per annum value they will not suffer her to come into it Oh Prodigious Oppression Oh Antichristian Cruelty What benefit now have the Poor who have not Ten Pounds per annum of the Gospels the whole Land is in Hostility against them they will neither suffer them to enter into their Parishes nor their Churches what benefit have these hundreds of thousands who have not ten Pounds per annum of Magna Charta What of the Petition of Right The Foxes have holes and the Birds of the Air have nests but the Woman with Child like her pursuâ—d with the Dragon Rev. 12.2 Cryed travailing in birth and pained to be delivered Quis talia fando temperet à Lachrymis hath not where to lay her Young her Child unborn by reason of Papal and Episcopal Laws which are the flood of Waters cast out of the mouth of the true Romish Dragon heu miserande puer damnatus antequam natus Hospitals to prevent the Murder of Children not born under Popish Matrimony There are Hospitals in Italy and Spain and many other places of large Revenues to which Mothers who have Children without the Popish Ceremonial Marriage of a Priest in a Temple may by night secretly bring or send their Babes who shall be their Received Alimented and Educated without knowledg or enquiry by Bishops Citations or Justice of Peace's Warrants and there is now one in Paris by the name of l' Hostle pur les Enfantes troves or the Hospital of Infant Fondlings wherein there are now no less than four Thousand But in Great Britain there is not the least Relique of any such Charity but on the Contrary most cruel Laws made to punish Mothers for bringing forth Children the most part of them lawfully joined to men according to the Moral Law of God only on pretence of prohibition by Papal and Episcopal Laws and their Doctrine of Devils contrary to the Law of God whereby they may get Money the wicked Price of Blood and of the Blood of those who are of all other the most Innocent the blood of Infants and are so far from providing Hospitals for Babes when they are born that they will not in England suffer their Mothers to bring them as is already said to an House of their own if not of the Value of above Ten Pounds per Annum and so far from being Fathers to the Fatherless that by their inhuman prosecution of the Punishments of those Cruel Laws against Babes born of Parents not licensed by the Bishop and benedicted by a Priest in a Temple they make thâ— Child for whom God had provided Parents by compelling them to flie from him for fear of their own punishment both Fatherless and Motherless or what is more horrible to be Murder'd by them who would have otherwise as affectionately preserved him as all other Natural Parents and Creatures both Human and Brutish do their Young Oh is it not a sufficient misery for an Infant to be born unless he is likewise pursued to be destroyed by the Cruelty of Ecclesiastical Monsters and hurried from the Womb to the Tomb of their Coemeterial Aceldamas before he knows any thing of Life but Misery if Bishops pity him not let Lucretius do it to their shame though an Atheist Tum porro Puer ut Saevis projectus ab undis Navita Nudus humi jacet Infans indigus omni Vitali Auxilio cum primum in Luminis oras Nixibus ex alveo Matris Natura profundit Vagituque locum Lugubri complet ut aequum est Cui tantum in Vita restat transire malorum Like Shipwrackt Mariners the Child at Birth Cast from Rough Seas lies Naked on the Earth Wanting all Vital help when first from throws Of Mothers Womb Nature doth him disclose He Weeps and Wails not without cause alas Why so much Evil in this Life must pass All Mariages lawful not prohibited by the Moral Law of God All these Murders of Children would cease better than by a Thousand Hospitals if only this wicked Ceremonial Law invented by him who was a Murderer from the beginning forbidding to Marry without a Priest in a Temple were abolished and all Marriage Publick or Private not prohibited by the Moral Law of God and Consummate by the birth of a Child Established to be Sine poena
by breaking the Custom and being drawn by the Deceit of Roxolana to Marry her by a Priest The Reasons why the Grand Seigniors Marry not themselves by a Priest or in a Temple or by a Magistrate or with any other Publick Solemnity but only make Use of Private Natural Marriage are 1. It prevents the great Charge of a Dower or Jointure which Turkish Emperors are bound to give their Queens who are Married by a Priest for as Withers Relates amongst the Grand Seigniors Seraglio of Women Marriage made by the first birth of a Child and not by words of a Priest she is esteemed Empress who brings him the first Son and they were formerly Married before the Mufti or Arch-Priest which was only to give one another their Assent before him and he to make an Hodget or Note in Writing of it and of the Dower the Emperor was to give her which except as to the Dower was no other than as our Certificate of the Bishop touching which Selymus being Uxorious and having given in his Marriage Five Hundred Thousand Chequins a Year to his Queen made a Law no Successor if they Married should give less than he had done to their Queens whereupon the Emperors succeeding forebore and it grew out of fashion to Marry by the Priest to save their Dower and other excessive Expences incident to Publick Marriages of Princes and had thereby likewise their Queens far more obsequious than before they thereby depending wholly on the Love of their Husbands to give them what they pleased according to their merit 2. By not Marrying by a Priest he is clear from all Burden of Allyances of his Sultana Poor or Rich. 3. The Grand Seignior thereby regained into his own hands the Patria Potestas belonging to every Father of being Judg who were his own Children which had been by his Superstitious Predecessors unwarily Alien'd to his Arch-Mufti or Arch-Bishop for by giving him Power by his Hodget or Certificate to declare the Marriage there followed as incident thereto the Arch-Bishop's Legitimation of his Children and Declaration of his Heir Apparent and Successor Then further the Mahometan Law allowing Plurality if Married by the Priest they could not be Married altogether but one after another or if they were a Child of a Woman Married after might come sooner which Priority of Marriage by the Mother would have destroyed the Custom of Primogeniture of the Son first born of any Wife whether the beloved or hated or first Married or after Married so 4. he kept the Right of Primogeniture and Peace in his own Family which if he having an Elder Son by a first Wife not Married by a Priest should have a Younger Son by a Second Wife Married by a Priest this pretence might cause Murder or Civil Wars between his Elder and Younger Sons one standing on his Right of Primogeniture and the other on the Hodget or Certificate of the Arch-Bishop of Prior Marriage of the Later Mother by the Priest as happen'd in the Example of Solyman the Magnificent and Roxolana Turk Hist 758. where it appears that Solyman the Magnificent begot of his first Empress a Circassian Bond-woman not Married by a Priest Mustapha his Eldest Son who proved a Prince of great Excellency and most dearly beloved by the Army and People after Solyman according to their Custom of Plurality of Wives grows wanton and begets four Sons more of Roxolana another of his Bond-women namely Mahomet Selymus Bajazet and Tzithanger and one Daughter called Chameria Married to Rustan the Great Basha Roxolana being her self a great Beauty and having so fair an Issue and a Potent Son in Law to assist her and no obstacle but the Primogeniture of Mustapha to make her own Son the Heir apparent of the Greatest Empire in the World discover'd her self to be more adorned with Gold and Pearls than Vertue yet counterfeits Religion to bring her Designs to pass but first take the Epigram by Knolles subscribed to her Picture Fronti nulla fides nulla est fiducia formae Pectore dum savo dira venena Latent Philtra viro Miscet fallax miserumque coegit Sanguine natorum Commaculare manus No Trust there is to Face or Beauty when The Breast of Poison'd Serpents is the Den. Her wretched Husband her Love-Cups untrue Made in his own Sons blood his hands imbrue This Woman to begin her intended Tragedy under colour of Good-will and Love had procured Mustapha the Young Prince and his Mother to be sent as she pretended for their greater Honour and Estate with a Princely Train and Revenue to Caramâ—nia to Govern that Great Countrey and having thus cunningly Rid the Court of the two Competitors both of her Love and the Empire rested not so but began straight way to plot in her malicious head the Destruction of him to whom all others wished Happiness and though she had removed him far absent in his Person yet the continually encreasing Fame of his Valour Vertues and Perfections seem'd to be still before her Eyes and in her Ears the great and only disturbance of her Desires and Clouds which kept the Sun from shining on them and doubting of any sufficient Assistants or Instruments amongst the Military Forces in regard all the Soldiers were at the Devotion of the Prince and not of Rustan her Son in Law whom they hated though she had got him to be Chief Commission-Officer over them she therefore fixes the other part of her hopes on the Priest and Resolves to try what could be supplied by the Gown which was defective in the Sword and to prepare the way the better she on a sudden Counterfeits her self to be very Religious and having grown by the favour of Solyman exceeding Rich pretended as if it had been on a devout Zeal for the health of her Soul after the manner of their Turkish Superstition to build an Abby with an Hospital and a Church which so Godly a purpose she imparted to the Mufti or Chief Mahometan Priest demanding of him if such works of Charity were not acceptable to God and available to her Souls health to which the Mufti answer'd That those Works were no doubt gratious in the sight of God but nothing at all meritorious for her Souls health being a Bond-woman yet very profitable for the Soul of the Great Emperour Solyman unto whom as unto her Lord both she and all that she had appertained at which answer of the great Priest she seemed to be exceedingly troubled and thereupon became wonderful pensive and Melancholick her Chearful Countenance was Replete with Sadness and her fair Eyes flowed with Tears her Mirth was Mourning and her Joy Heaviness which thing Solyman perceiving and sorry to see his Love upon Conceit so to languish sent her word to be of good chear and to comfort her self promising in short time to take such a Course as should ease her of all her Griefs of which she had made some discovery to him which he did solemnly Manumising
either Party both on matters principal and incident till there be a Contumacy to return Answer or a Litiscontestation made and a Commission desired to examine Witnesses and the Parties for Probation this would cause all those little Shreds of Sheeps-skins which so unnecessarily torment the Countrey and the dead Pots to be laid aside as the Popish Agnusses Dei or rather Agnusses Diaboli were and so the Successors to the Popish Clerks would lose their Fees in the one as well as the other to the great joy of all the Protestants 2. What is worse they would lose their Eight pence per Sheet for but Eight words in a Line and Fifteen Lines in a Sheet in Chancery and for Six half words in a Line with a Dash and Twelve Lines in a Sheet at Common Law all which a Boy would far better transcribe for a Peny per Sheet for want of which Oblatio Libelli by the Plaintiff a Rich man will of purpose draw his Bill in Chancery and stuff it with nothing but Falsi iâ—s so long to multiply the Sheets against a Poor man that it will cost him many times Three or Four Pounds for a Transcript for which he must send an Hundred Miles besides before he shall know what he must Answer So that the Rich need do nothing else to undo the Poor but suggest and throw him into the Lions Dens of Chancery Common Law and Checquer-Clerks for Copies of those Legends of Lies they themselves invented whereas if these rich and vexatious Plaintiffs were compell'd to serve Defendants by sending them from their Pallaces but a Copy to their poor dwelling Houses or Cottages what their wills and pleasures are to have right or wrong they would pay as far as they were able rather than if they told them they should first go so far to Clerks to buy Copies of their Will and Pleasure before they would vouchsafe to reveal the same and after be less able to pay than before 3. They would lose all the Gains of those unnecessary and hurtful Entries and Inrollments of the Bills Declarations and Pleas of the Parties in those huge heaps of Mouldy Rolls wherein it is easie for them to forge what they please for no Averment is allowed against Clerks and their Records which should be far better and more Authentick were the Copies delivered Signed by the Parties themselves and only filed orderly as received from the Parties and not Enter'd nor Inroll'd by the Clerks but kept by Filazers 4. They would lose all the Gains de Temere Litigantibus which is more than they have from â—uitors which Sue of necessity and for just Cause and would not have one Suit in Ten which they now have before them for the Countrey-man where the Writ is served before the Bill or Declaration think they shall Conquer presently their Adversary if they but Arrest Outlaw or have a Commission of Rebellion against him whereby they are encouraged by Attornies to rush blindly into unwarrantable Suits which many times undo them Whereas if the Law were as it ought to be by the Precept of Christ That every Plaintiff should first send a Copy of his Bill to the Defendant and heir his Exceptions against it or sind his Contumacy before he Summon'd him before a Judg he would before he would rashly en angle himself in Law-Suits consult Councel and have his Bill or Declaration drawn by them and hear the Exceptions of his Adverâ—ary against it after which there would not one of Twenty dare run headlong on a wrong Suit except Pâ—â—sons extreamly Litigious and shameless Whereas now on Summons and Arrests tolerated before a Copy of the Bill or Declaration given the Defendant vexations Contentions both in Chancery and Common Law are infinite and endless Of giving a Copy before an Oath of Calumny That he who gives it believes the same true and just The Oath of Calumny may by the Civil Law be required not only of the Parties Litigant but of their Advocates and Procurators who are in our Language their Councellors and Attornies and the same is appointed by an Act of Parliament of Scotland the Practice of the Courts there and the same is done not only to the Bill but to all parts of Process alledged either by Plaintiff or Defendant and is of excellent Use to clear those Contagious Plagues and Pests of Judicial Proceedings Fictions and Falsities and to restore Truth which is impossible to be kept alive in Religion or Justice without abolishing the other The Causes which introduce Fictions and Falsities into Judicial Proceeding are Four One the not using the Oath of Calumny The Second the not admitting Averment or Probation to the contrary The Third the not giving the Adverse Party notice of the time and place the Swearer is appointed to be Sworn and liberty to be there present himself or by his Commissioners to except against him if he have cause The Fourth is denial of Travers and Contrary Probation to all that is doubted to be false In the Civil Law there was but one Fiction which was Fictio Postliminii the occasion whereof was the Romans to incite their Soldiers to Conquer or Die which is to take no Quarter toucht by Virgil Jaciat si quem fati sors dura peremit and Horace p. 75. Si non perit immiserabilis captiva pubes If Captive Youth should not be suffer'd to perish without Pity and Redemption it would saith he be a pernitious Example to Posterity had this Cruel Law or Custom That who was a Captive lost the Rights of a Citizen and who died a Captive in the Power of the Enemy his Estate should be confiscated to the Publick Treasury and he should have no Heir to succeed him ff de Captiv postlimin To abate the rigor and severity of this Law the Judges helped the Captive by a Fiction feigning that he was never taken Captive but always remained in the City and the Legislative in imitation of the Judges that they might the less be taken notice of to derogate from their Military Discipline stretched the former Fiction a little further and enacted by their Lex Cornelia in favour of the Heir whose Father happen'd to die Captive to the Enemy a Charitable Fiction not to punish the Child for the Fathers offence that the Father died the next hour before he was supposed to have been taken Captive L. Si is qui pro Emptore in addit marg de Vsucapio And like that of the Midwives of Aegypt to preserve young Children from Destruction seems excusable if it was not possible to do it any way else but these Episcopal Fictions That Marriage is of Souls not Bodies of Spouses not Wives begetting of Children is by Husbands absent within the four Seas not by Adulterers within the Spouses Bed That Sons are not of the blood or kin to the Father who begot them but of him of whom the Bishop will please to certifie them these are not Mendacia Officiosa but
Children the same ought to be wholly and intirely performed to such Sons and Daughters in all Successions whether to a Testament or an Intestate And in short that they ought not to be made unlike other Children in Successions whom Nature hath made like Hence it appears that the Civil Law wills the Succession of Children shall be according to the Law of Nature and not according to any Canon Law or Law made by the Priest Natura duce errare nullo modo potest Tul. 1. de leg Cum vero parentibus rediti deinde Magistris traditi sumus tum ita variis imbuimur erroribus ut vanitati veritas opinioni confirmatae natura ipsa cedit 3. Tusc Where nature is our Guide it is impossible to err but when we fall into the hands of Parents and are delivered to Shool-Masters we are then infected with so many Errors that all truth gives place to vanity and Nature it self yields to opinion accustomed To fight against Nature is like Giants to fight against God Cato major Of the Final Causes of Marriage by the Law of God and Nature The Final causes of Marriage which is the Ordinance of God and not of Man are not to fill Priests pockets with money or to satisfie their insatiable Covetousness and Ambition to set their Foot on the Necks of Emperours and Kings in their Legitimations and Successions and thereby to dispose of the Kingdoms of Princes and the Liberty Propriety and Goods of the Subjects at their Arbitrary will and pleasure But the Final causes of Marriage by the Law of God and Nature are three 1. Procreation of Children 2. That Man might have an Help-meet for him there being many necessities especially in time of sickness wherein Man cannot be without the help of a Woman 3. To make his life more pleasant and delightful Tristis sine conjuge lectus As for the first part which is the greatest and chiefest end of Marriage namely procreation of Children without which the World cannot be continued To be the shorter I shall only mention one Poet as follows Providei ille maximus mundi-Parens Cùm tam rapaces cerneret fati minas Vt damna semper sobole repararet nova Excedat agedum rebus humanis Venus Quae supplet ac restituit exhaustum genus Orbis jacebit squalido turpis situ Vacuum sine ullis classibus stabit mare Alesque Coelo deerit silvis fera Solis Aer pervius ventis erit Sen. in Hippol. Fates cruel Threats when the great Parent saw Against his Creatures by as great a Law He then Inacted all those whom it slew Sould by new Births perpetually renew Should Venus lease and should not still restore With fresh Supplies Natures exhausted store On squalid Earth no Beauty would remain No gallant Fleets would dance upon the Main No Deer in Woods no Birds would be in Skie Winds only through sad Air would sighing flie There could be neither King nor Parliament nor People nor Governours nor Governed neither could the Protestant Religion defend it self against Pope or Turk without Marriage for though it be Apocrypha it is truly said Esdras 4.15 Women have born the King and all the People that bear rule by Sea or Land The End of the First Book THE CONTENTS Of the Second Book BY what Judg Marriage Filiation Aliment and Succession ought not and ought to be Judged Of the Five Competitors to be Judges of Marriage Filiation Aliment and Succession 1. The Bishop 2 The Magistrate 3. The Souldier 4 The Parents 5. The King and Parliament 137 Exceptions against Bishops being Judges in reference to the Legislative ib. Except 1. They assume to be Judges Jure Divino without a Sign of Mission from God which overthrows the Legislative Power of the King and Parliament ib. Of the Sign of Mission required by the Grand Seignior from Sabatai Sevi a counterfeit Jewish Messiah 139 2. They have falsely translated the Scripture in all words relating to Marriage 142 They have falsely translated Ish Isha Zona Kadesh Philiegesh 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Husband Wife Harlot Concubine c. 142 No such as word as Concubine in the whole Original Scripture ib. They have falsely translated the Seventh Commandment Lo Tinaph to be Adultery 145 They have falsely translated 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to be Fornication ib. They have falsely translated the Tenth Commandment in the words Wife Man-Servant Maid-Servant 146 They have falsely translated Mamzer in the Old and Nothus in the New Testament Bastard Wherein are noted the Errors of Coke Skene and Grotius in following Episcopal and other Popish translations ib. Of the absurdity of Common and Ecclesiastical Lawyers who make the Child born without the Ceremonies of a Priest and Temple no Sib Kin or of Blood to the Father who begot or the Mother who bare him 154 155 Further Reasons shewn that they have falsely translated Mamzer in the Old and Nothus in the New Testament Bastard 156 No such word or thing as Bastard in the whole Original Scripture or amongst the Hebrews Greeks or Romans 3. They have corrupted the Press both as to Scripture and Acts of Parliament and interdict Protestants to Print against or answer Papists 162 A Counterfeit Act of Parliament Printed by Bishops against Protestants and the true supprest 163 Mischiefs which follow the Interdiction of the Press to Protestants 164 165 4. By pretence of giving the King the name of Supremacy they have taken the thing to themselves 167 5. By pretence of giving the King Supremacy by the Ceremonies of the Coronation they take it from him to themselves 169 David Anointed and Crowned by his Parliament and not by the Priest 173 6. They assume in all matters concerning Marriage Filiation Aliment and Succession to be above Appeal to the Kings Courts 175 Of the abominable Judgement pass'd by the Common Law Judges in Kennes Case Coke lib. 7.42 whereby they gave away the Supremacy of the King's Courts to Bishops and made them in all causes Matrimonial subject to no Appeal ib. Exceptions against Bishops being Judges in reference to the Judicial Power 180 1. They are prohibited by the example of Christ to Judg Marriage Filiation Aliment or Succession ib. 2. They are totally ignorant of the Fact and were never Educated in the Laws by which they pretend to Judg Marriage 181 3. They Judg by a Chancellour and not in Person 4. They have Plurality of Offices and more than they are able to serve yet will be Judges of Marriage besides ib. 5. They are ambidextrous and amphibious Judges 182 6. They Judg Marriage by pretended Canons and Laws made by Bishops without assent of Parliament ib. 183 7. They take to themselves Fines and Penalties of their own Judgments 184 8. They Licence Dispence and Pardon all Crimes within their pretended Jurisdiction for Money 9. They cannot be known whether Protestants or Papists if Bishops 185 10. They Judg by Fictions and not by Truth 11. They Judg
Pernitiosa not to preserve Children but to destroy them and not only those of Subjects but of their Prince though not captived in War yet exiled by War No Digression to father on Bishops the Fictions and Preposterations of Common Law as well as Spiritual Judges by which it was impossible to use the Episcopal Ceremonies of Common Prayer-Books in Marriage or without danger of his Life to Marry otherwise than by the Moral Law of God And let it not seem here a Digression that I am enforced to Father on Romish Bishops not only all the pernitious Fictions and Preposterations in Judicial Proceedings of Spiritual but likewise of Temporal Courts and to make it part of the Exception against them That they are not fit Judges of Marriage Filiation Aliment and Succession 1. Because Romish Bishops as is already shewn were the Formers of all the Common Law Writs in the Register and Forms of Judicial Proceedings in the Book of Entries and the Compile of the Common Laws was trusted to Britton a Bishop as well as the Forms of the Citations Libells Litiscontestations Compurgations Excommunications and Provincial Laws and Canons were to other Bishops and the Bishops have been the chief Judges in the Common Law Courts of Westminster and Chancellors in the Chancery and have rid the Circuit with the Earls in the Countries and after them with the Sheriffs which Earls and other Lay-Judges in time of Popery were only Assessors or Executioners of the Sentence of the Bishop and he only the pretended infallible Oracle both of Law and Gospel to Judg how he pleased 2. Because what is a good exception against a Common Law Judg is a good exception against a Spiritual Judg and what Fiction is a good exception against Succession by the Verdict of the Jury is a good exception against Succession by the Certificate of a Bishop 3. Because by a kind of Conspiracy between the Spiritual and Common Law Courts in time of Popery their Preposterations Fictions and Formalities are so complex'd and intangled one with another that 't is impossible to divide them or carry on a perfect Discourse of one without the other or of Preposteration without Fiction and Formality the one being commonly cause of the other 4. It is necessary to prevent any Excuse the Spiritual Judg may pretend if he should say The Common Law Judg is suffer'd to Summon and Arrest before Copy to Copy before Oath of Calumny and to use Hundreds of Fictions and Falsities in his Judicial Proceedings and why should not the Spiritual Judg be allowed as well as he but where they are both censured they can neither recriminate And how guilty they both are of nursing that viperous brood of the old Serpent who have eaten through the Bowels of Justice may appear by the particulars following The Subpoena in Chancery is a Writ or Summons formed by the Bishops themselves when Chancellors wherein notwithstanding the Holy Catholick Fathers formed as many Lies as Lines 1. It begins as West hath it Proceeding in Chancery p. 183. Jacobus Dei gratia Angliae Scotiae Franciae Hiberniae Rex Fidei Defensor Fictions and Falsities fomented in all Forms of Judicial Proceedings Subpana's full of Fictions c. A. C. salutem Quibusdam certis de causis coram nobis in Cancel ' nostra propositis This is not true for though here and in other Nations anciently Princes sat in their Courts of Judicature in Person 't is not so now neither are any Causes proposed coram nobis before the King in Person unless as some presume they will attribute the incomprehensible Attribute of Omnipresence to Humanity neither is it sufficient to reply that he is present there by his Delegate for a Delegate is only where the Prince is absent or will not himself receive the Complaint which is signified by the words of Absalom 2 Sam. 15.3 See thy matters are good and right for there is no man deputed of the King to hear thee Intimating if there had been a Judg Deputed he needed not fear the Kings presence to have his matters so severely weighed as if he had Judged in Person And we see to avoid the Fiction of Human Omnipresence in an Action of Debt returnable in the Common Pleas where the King sat not in Person but Judged by Delegates the Sheriff is commanded Sum ' per bonos Sum ' praedictum A quod sit coram Justitiariis nostris apud Westmonasterium and if it had been Coram Nobis it would have been a Fiction but that which makes the Certis de Causis coram nobis in Cancel ' nostra propositis not only a Fiction but a gross Falsity is that the Complainant hath taken out his Subpoena before he hath any Bill presented either to the King in Person or the Chancellor or the meanest Clerk in the Court It goes on and say Tibi praecipimus firmiter injungentes quod omnibus aliis praetermissis excusatione quacunque cessante Yet ought the Defendant to be admitted to offer a lawful cause of Excuse or Essoin Next it says In propria persona tua yet may the Defendant be admitted to appear by Attorney Next Sis coram nobis in dicta Canc ' nostra à die Paschae proxim ' futu◠' in unum Mensem Yet to appear Quarto die post the Return-day is sufficient then ubicunque tunc fuerit ad respond ' super his quae objicientur an Objection cannot be unless there is some allegation first put in by the Defendant any more than an Answer can before some Bill put in by the Plaintiff here is therefore a double Falsity and the Poor Countrey man is fool'd to ride up an Hundred Miles when he never put in a Bill himself to be objected against nor when he with much labour is got to Town weary quarto die post is there any Bill put in against him by the Complainant for him to Answer Then it is further said Et ad faciend ' ulterius recipiend ' quod Curia nostra consideraverit in hac parte yet had neither Party Plaintiff or Defendant a Bill or Answer in Court how can it then be said In hac parte where there is no Party Et hoc Sub poena Centum librarum nullatenus omittatis This is likewise a Menacing Fiction the Chancellor having no Power to impose any Fine or Forfeiture on any Subject of a Farthing Et habeas ibi hoc breve Teste meipso apud Westmonasterium when the King is a Hundred Miles off Westminster 12 die Febr. Anno Regui Domini c. George c. But if the Defendant is a Noble-man then no Subpoena is awarded but a Letter by the Lord Chancellor or Lord-Keeper thus A Note of the Fictions of the Episcopal Form of the Letter in Chancery usually sent to a Noble-man instead of a Subpoena to Answer The Superscription is which first comes to be read and is directed thus To my very good Lord I. L. D. These This