our choisest home-blessings and coin them into crosses for want wherby to hold commerce with patience If any therfore who shall hap to read this discours hath bin through misadventure ill ingag'd in this contracted evill heer complain'd of and finds the fits and workings of a high impatience frequently upon him of all those wild words which men in misery think to ease themselves by uttering let him not op'n his lips against the providence of heav'n or tax the waies of God and his divine Truth for they are equal easy and not burdensome nor do they ever crosse the just and reasonable desires of men nor involve this our portion of mortall life into a necessity of sadnes and malecontent by Laws commanding over the unreducible antipathies of nature sooner or later found but allow us to remedy and shake off those evills into which human error hath led us through the middest of our best intentions and to support our incident extremities by that authentick precept of sovran charity whose grand Commission is to doe and to dispose over all the ordinances of God to man that love truth may advance each other to everlasting While we literally superstitious through customary faintnes of heart not venturing to peirce with our free thoughts into the full latitude of nature and religion abandon our selvs to serv under the tyranny of usurpt opinions suffering those ordinances which were allotted to our solace and reviving to trample over us and hale us into a multitude of sorrows which God never meant us And where he set us in a fair allowance of way with honest liberty and prudence to our guard wee never leave subtilizing and casuisting till wee have straitn'd and par'd that liberal path into a razors edge to walk on between a precipice of unnecessary mischief on either side and starting at every fals alarum wee doe not know which way to set a foot forward with manly confidence and Christian resolution through the confused ringing in our ears of panick scruples and amazements Another act of papal encroachment it was to pluck the power arbitrement of divorce from the master of family into whose hands God the law of all Nations had put it Christ so left it preaching only to the conscience and not authorizing a judiciall Court to tosse about and divulge the unaccountable and secret reasons of disaffection between man wife as a thing most improperly answerable to any such kind of trial But the Popes of Rome perceaving the great revenu and high autority it would give them ev'n over Princes to have the judging and deciding of such a main consequence in the life of man as was divorce wrought so upon the superstition of those ages as to devest them of that right which God from the beginning had entrusted to the husband by which means they subjected that ancient and naturally domestick prerogative to an external unbefitting judicature For although differences in divorce about dowries jointures and the like besides the punishing of adultery ought not to passe without referring if need be to the Magistrate yet for him to interpose his jurisdictive power upon the inward and irremediable disposition of man to command love and sympathy to forbid dislike against the guiltles instinct of nature is not within the province of any law to reach were indeed an uncommodious rudenes not a just power For if natures resistles sway in love or hate be once compell'd it grows careles of it self vitious useles to friend unserviceable and spiritles to the Common-wealth Wch Moses rightly foresaw and all wise Lawgivers that ever knew man what kind of creature he was The Parliament also and Clergy of England were not ignorant of this when they consented that Harry the 8th might put away his Q. Anne of Cleve whom he could not like after he had bin wedded half a year unles it were that contrary to the Proverb they made a necessity of that which might have bin a vertu in them to do For ev'n the freedom and eminence of mans creation gives him to be a Law in this matter to himself beeing the head of the other sex which was made for him whom therfore though he ought not to injure yet neither should he be forc't to retain in society to his own overthrow nor to hear any judge therin above himself It being also an unseemly affront to the sequester'd vail'd modesty of that sex to have her unpleasingnes and other concealements bandied up and down and aggravated in open Court by those hir'd maisters of tongue-fence Such uncomely exigences it befell no lesse a Majesty then Henry th 8th to be reduc't to who finding just reason in his conscience to forgoe his brothers wife after many indignities of beeing deluded and made a boy of by those his two cardinal Judges was constrain'd at last for want of other prooff that shee had bin carnally known by Prince Arthur ev'n to uncover the nakednes of that vertuous Lady to recite openly the obscene evidence of his brothers chāberlain Yet it pleas'd God to make him see all the tyranny of Rome by discovering this which they exercis'd over divorce and to make him the beginner of a reformation to this whole Kingdom by first asserting into his familiary power the right of just divorce T is true an adultres cannot be sham'd anough by any publick proceeding but that woman whose honour is not appeach't is lesse injur'd by a silent dismission being otherwise not illiberally dealth with then to endure a clamouring debate of utterles things in a busines of that civil secrecy and difficult discerning as not to be over-much question'd by neerest friends Which drew that answer from the greatest and worthiest Roman of his time Paulus Emilius beeing demanded why he would put away his wife for no visible reason This Shoo saith he and held it out on his foot is a neat shoo a new shoo and yet none of yee know where it wrings me much lesse by the unfamiliar cognisance of a fee'd gamester can such a private difference be examin'd neither ought it Lastly All law is for some good that may be frequently attain'd without the admixture of a wors inconvenience but the Law forbidding divorce never attains to any good end of such prohibition but rather multiplies evil If it aim at the establishment of matrimony wee know that cannot thrive under a loathed and forc't yoke but is daily violated if it seek to prevent the sin of divorcing that lies not in the law to prevent for he that would divorce and marry again but for the law hath in the sight of God don it already Civil or political sin it never was neither to Jew nor Gentile nor by any judicial intendment of Christ only culpable as it transgresses the allowance of Moses in the inward man which not any law but conscience only can evince The law can only look whether it be an injury to the divorc't which
especially when he was framing their laws and them to all possible perfection But they were to look back to the first iustitution nay rather why was not that individual institution brought out of Paradise as was that of the Sabbath and repeated in the body of the Law that men might have understood it to be a command for that any sentence that bears the resemblance of a precept set there so out of place in another world at such a distance from the whole Law and not once mention'd there should be an obliging command to us is very disputable and perhaps it might be deny'd to be a command without further dispute however it commands not absolutely as hath bin clear'd but only with reference to that precedent promise of God which is the very ground of his institution if that appeare not in some tolerable sort how can wee affirm such a matrimony to be the same which God instituted In such an accident it will best behove our sobernes to follow rather what moral Sinai prescribes equal to our strength then fondly to think within our strength all that lost Paradise relates Another while it shall suffice them that it was not a moral but a judicial Law and so was abrogated Nay rather was not abrogated because judicial which Law the ministery of Christ came not to deale with And who put it in mans power to exempt where Christ speaks in general of not abrogating the least jot or tittle in special not that of divorce because it follows among those Laws which he promis'd expresly not to abrogate but to vindicate from abusive traditions And if we mark the 31. ver. of Mat. the 5. he there cites not the Law of Moses but the licencious Glosse which traduc't the Law that therfore which he cited that he abrogated and not only abrogated but disallow'd and flatly condemn'd which could not be the Law of Moses for that had bin foulely to the rebuke of his great servant To abrogate a Law made with Gods allowance had bin to tell us only that such a Law was now to cease but to refute it with an ignominious note of civilizing adultery casts the reprooff which was meant only to the Pharises ev'n upō him who made the Law But yet if that be judicial which belongs to a civil Court this Law is lesse judicial then nine of the ten Commandements for antiquaries affirm that divorces proceeded among the Iews without knowledge of the Magistrate only with hands and seales under the testimony of some Rabbies to be then present And it was indeed a pure moral economical Law too hastily imputed of tolerating sin being rather so clear in nature and reason that it was left to a mans own arbitrement to be determin'd between God and his own conscience And that power which Christ never took from the master of family but rectify'd only to a right and wary use at home that power the undiscerning Canonist hath improperly usurpt into his Court-leet and bescribbl'd with a thousand trifling impertinencies which yet have fil'd the life of man with serious trouble and calamity Yet grant it were of old a judicial Law it need not be the lesse moral for that being conversant as it is about vertue or vice And our Saviour disputes not heer the judicature for that was not his office but the morality of divorce whether it be adultery or no if therfore he touch the law of Moses at all he touches the moral part therof which is absurd to imagine that the covnant of grace should reform the exact and perfect law of works eternal and immutable or if he touch not the Law at all then is not the allowance therof disallow'd to us Others are so ridiculous as to allege that this licence of divorcing was giv'n them because they were so accustom'd in Egypt As if an ill custom were to be kept to all posterity for the dispensation is both universal and of time unlimited and so indeed no dispensation at all for the over-dated dispensation of a thing unlawfull serves for nothing but to encrease hardnes of heart and makes men but wax more incorrigible which were a great reproach to be said of any Law or allowance that God should give us In these opinions it would be more Religion to advise well lest wee make our selves juster then God by censuring rashly that for sin which his unspotted Law without rebuke allows and his people without being conscious of displeasing him have us'd And if we can think so of Moses as that the Jewish obstinacy could compell him to write such impure permissions against the rule of God his own judgement doubtles it was his part to have protested publickly what straits he was driv'n to and to have declar'd his conscience when he gave any Law against his minde for the Law is the touch-stone of sin and of conscience must not be intermixt with corrupt indulgences for then it looses the greatest praise it has of being certain and infallible not leading into error as all the Iews were led by this connivence of Moses if it were a connivence But still they fly back to the primitive institution and would have us re-enter Paradise against the sword that guards it Whom I again thus reply to that the place in Genesis contains the description of a fit and perfect mariage with an interdict of ever divorcing such a union but where nature is discover'd to have never joyn'd indeed but vehemently seeks to part it cannot be there conceav'd that God forbids it nay he commands it both in the Law and in the Prophet Malachy which is to be our rule And Perkins upon this chap. of Mat. deals plainly that our Saviour heer confutes not Moses Law but the false glosses that deprav'd the Law which being true Perkins must needs grant that somthing then is left to that law which Christ found no fault with and what can that be but the conscionable use of such liberty as the plain words import So that by his own inference Christ did not absolutely intend to restrain all divorces to the only cause of adultery This therfore is the true scope of our Saviours will that he who looks upon the Law concerning divorce should look also back upon the first institution that he may endeavour what is perfectest and he that looks upon the institution should not refuse as sinfull and unlawfull those allowanees which God affords him in his following Law lest he make himself purer then his maker and presuming above strength slip into temptations irrecoverably For this is wonderfull that in all those decrees concerning mariage God should never once mention the prime institution to disswade them from divorcing and that he should forbid smaller sins as opposite to the hardnes of their hearts and let this adulterous matter of divorce passe ever unreprov'd This is also to be marvell'd at that seeing Christ did not condemn whatever it was that Moses suffer'd and that
THE DOCTRINE AND DISCIPLINE OF DIVORCE RESTOR'D TO THE GOOD OF BOTH SEXES From the bondage of Canon Law and other mistakes to Christian freedom guided by the Rule of Charity Wherein also many places of Scripture have recover'd their long-lost meaning Seasonable to be now thought on in the Reformation intended MATTH. 13. 52. Every Scribe instructed to the Kingdome of Heav'n is like the Maister of a house which bringeth out of his treasurie things old and new LONDON Printed by T. P. and M. S. In Goldsmiths Alley 1643. THE DOCTRINE AND DISCIPLINE OF DIVORCE RESTOR'D TO THE GOOD OF BOTH SEXES MAny men whether it be their fate or fond opinion easily perswade themselves if GOD would but be pleas'd a while to withdraw his just punishments from us and to restraine what power either the devill or any earthly enemy hath to worke us woe that then mans nature would find immediate rest and releasement from all evils But verily they who think so if they be such as have a minde large â—nough to take into their thoughts a generall survey of humane things would soone prove themselves in that opinion farre deceiv'd For though it were granted us by divine indulgence to be exempt from all that can be harmfull to us from without yet the perversnesse of our folly is so bent that we should never lin hammering out of our owne hearts as it were out of a flint the seeds and sparkles of new miseries to our selves till all were in a blaze againe And no marvell if out of our own hearts for they are evill but ev'n out of those things which God meant us either for a principall good or a pure contentment we are still hatching and contriving upon our selves matter of continuall sorrow and perplexitie What greater good to man then that revealed rule whereby God vouchsafes to shew us how he would be worshipt and yet that not rightly understood became the cause that once a famous man in Israel could not but oblige his conscience to be the sacrificer or if not the jayler of his innocent and onely daughter And was the cause oft-times that Armies of valiant men have given up their throats to a heathenish enemy on the Sabbath day fondly thinking their defensive resistance to be as then a work unlawfull What thing more instituted to the solace and delight of man then marriage and yet the mis-interpreting of some Scripture directed mainly against the abusers of the Law for divorce giv'n them by Moses hath chang'd the blessing of matrimony not seldome into a familiar and co-inhabiting mischiefe at least into a drooping and disconsolate houshold captivitie without refuge or redemption So ungovern'd and so wild a race doth superstition run us from one extreme of abused libertie into the other of unmercifull restraint For although God in the first ordaining of marriage taught us to what end he did it in words expresly implying the apt and cheerfull conversation of man with woman to comfort and refresh him against the evill of solitary life not mentioning the purpose of generation till afterwards as being but a secondary end in dignity though not in necessitie yet now if any two be but once handed in the Church and have tasted in any sort of the nuptiall bed let them finde themselves never so mistak'n in their dispositions through any error concealment or misadventure that through their different tempers thoughts and constitutions they can neither be to one another a remedy against lonelines nor live in any union or contentment all their dayes yet they shall so they be but found suitably weapon'd to the lest possibilitie of sensuall enjoyment bemade spight of antipathy to fadge together and combine as they may to their unspeakable wearisomnes despaire of all sociable delight in the ordinance which God establisht to that very end What a calamitie is this and as the Wise-man if he were alive would sigh out in his own phrase what a sore evill is this under the Sunne All which we can referre justly to no other author then the Canon Law and her adherents not consulting with charitie the interpreter and guide of our faith but resting in the meere element of the Text doubtles by the policy of the devill to make that gracious ordinance become unsupportable that what with men not daring to venture upon wedlock and what with men wearied out of it all inordinate licence might abound It was for many ages that mariage lay in disgrace with most of the ancient Doctors as a work of the flesh almost a defilement wholly deny'd to Priests and the second time disswaded to all as he that reads Tertullian or Ierom may see at large Afterwards it was thought so Sacramentall that no adultery could dissolve it yet there remains a burden on it as heavy as the other two were disgracefull or superstitious and of as much iniquirie crossing a Law not onely writt'n by Moses but character'd in us by nature of more antiquitie and deeper ground then mariage it selfe which Law is to force nothing against the faultles proprieties of nature yet that this may be colourably done our Saviours words touching divorce are as it were congeal'd into a stony rigor inconsistent both with his doctrine and his office and that which he preacht onely to the conscience is by canonicall tyranny snatcht into the compulsive censure of a judiciall Court where Laws are impos'd even against the venerable secret power of natures impression to love what ever cause be found to loath Which is a hainous barbarisme both against the honour of mariage the dignitie of man and his soule the goodnes of Christianitie and all the humane respects of civilitie Notwithstanding that some the wisest and gravest among the Christian Emperours who had about them to consult with those of the fathers then living who for their learning holines of life are still with us in great renown have made their statutes edicts concerning this debate far more easie and relenting in many necessary cases wherein the Canon is inflexible And Hugo Grotius a man of these times one of the best learned seems not obscurely to adhere in his perswasion to the equitie of those imperiall decrees in his notes upon the Evangelists much allaying the outward roughnesse of the Text which hath for the most part been too immoderately expounded and excites the diligence of others to enquire further into this question as containing many points which have not yet been explain'd By which and by mine owne apprehension of what publick duty each man owes I conceive my selfe exhorted among the rest to communicate such thoughts as I have and offer them now in this generall labour of reformation to the candid view both of Church and Magistrate especially because I see it the hope of good men that those irregular and unspirituall Courts have spun their utmost date in this Land and some better course must now be constituted He therefore that by adventuring
the law were unjust giving grace of pardon without the Gospel or if it give allowance without pardon it would be dissolute and deceitfull saying in general do this and live and yet deceaving and damning with obscure and hollow permissions Wee find also by experience that the Spirit of God in the Gospel hath been alwaies more effectual in the illumination of our minds to the gift of faith then in the moving of our wills to any excellence of vertue either above the Iews or the Heathen Hence those indulgences in the Gospel All cannot receive this saying Every man hath his proper gift with strict charges not to lay on yokes which our Fathers could not bear But this that Moses suffer'd for the hardnes of thir hearts he suffer'd not by that enacted dispensation farre be it but by a meer accidental sufferance of undiscover'd hypocrites who made ill use of that Law for that God should enact a dispensation for hard hearts to do that wherby they must live in priviledg'd adultery however it go for the receav'd opinion I shall ever disswade my self from so much hardihood as to beleeve Certainly this is not the manner of God whose pure eyes cannot behold much lesse his perfect Laws dispence with such impurity and if we consider well we shall finde that all dispensations are either to avoid wors inconveniences or to support infirm consciences for a time but that a dispensatioÌ„ should be as long liv'd as a Law to tolerate adultery for hardnes of heart both sins perhaps of like degree and yet this obdurate disease cannot be conceav'd how it is the more amended by this unclean remedy is a notion of that extravagance from the sage principles of piety that who considers throughly cannot but admire how this hath been digested all this while What may we doe then to salve this seeming inconsistence I must not dissemble that I am confident it can be don no other way then this Moses Deut. 24 1. establisht a grave and prudent Law full of moral equity full of due consideration towards nature that cannot be resisted a Law consenting with the Laws of wisest men and civilest nations That when a man hath maried a wife if it come to passe he cannot love her by reason of some displeasing natural quality or unfitnes in her let him write her a bill of divorce The intent of which Law undoubtedly was this that if any good and peaceable man should discover some helples disagreement or dislike either of mind or body wherby he could not cherfully perform the duty of a husband without the perpetual dissembling of offence and disturbance to his spirit rather then to live uncomfortably and unhappily both to himself and to his wife rather then to continue undertaking a duty which he could not possibly discharge he might dismisse her whom he could not tolerably and so not conscionably retain And this Law the Spirit of God by the mouth of Salomon Pro. 30. 21. 23. testifies to be a good and a necessary Law by granting it that to dwell with a hated woman for hated the hebrew word signifies is a thing that nature cannot endure What follows then but that Law must remedy what nature cannot undergoe Now that many licentious and hard hearted men took hold of this Law to cloak thir bad purposes is nothing strange to beleeve And these were they not for whom Moses made the Law God forbid but whose hardnes of heart taking ill advantage by this Law he held it better to suffer as by accident where it could not be detected rather then good men should loose their just and lawfull privilege of remedy Christ therfore having to answer these tempting Pharises according as his custom was not meaning to inform their proud ignorance what Moses did in the true intent of the Law which they had ill cited suppressing the true cause for which Moses gave it and extending it to every slight matter tells them thir own what Moses was forc't to suffer by their abuse of his Law Which is yet more plain if wee mark that our Saviour in the fiâ—th of Matth. cites not the Law of Moses but the Pharisaical tradition falsly grounded upon that law And in those other places Chap. 19. Mark 10. the Pharises cite the Law but conceale the wise and human reason there exprest which our Saviour corrects not in them whose pride deserv'd not his instruction only returns them what is proper to them Moses for the hardnes of your hearts sufferd you that is such as you to put away your wives and to you he wrote this precept for that cause which to you must be read with an impression and understood limitedly of such as cover'd ill purposes under that Law for it was seasonable that they should hear their own unbounded licence rebuk't but not seasonable for them to hear a good mans requisit liberty explain'd And to amaze them the more because the Pharises thought it no hard matter to fulfill the Law he draws them up to that unseparable institution which God ordaind in the beginning before the fall when man and woman were both perfect and could have no cause to separate just as in the same Chap. he stands not to contend with the arrogant young man who boasted his observance of the whole Law whether he had indeed kept it or not but skrues him up higher to a task of that perfection which no man is bound to imitate And in like manner that pattern of the first institution he set before the opinionative Pharises to dazle them and not to bind us For this is a solid rule that every command giv'n with a reason binds our obedience no otherwise then that reason holds Of this sort was that command in Eden Therfore shall a man cleave to his wife and they shall be one flesh which we see is no absolute command but with an inference Therfore the reason then must be first consider'd that our obedience be not mis-obedience The first is for it is not single because the wife is to the husband flesh of his flesh as in the verse going before But this reason cannot be sufficient of it self for why then should he for his wife leave his father and mother with whom he is farre more flesh of flesh and bone of bone as being made of their substance And besides it can be but a sorry and ignoble society of life whose unseparable injunction depends meerly upon flesh bones Therfore we must look higher since Christ himself recalls us to the beginning and we shall finde that the primitive reason of never divorcing was that sacred and not vain promise of God to remedy mans lonelines by making him a help meet for him though not now in perfection as at first yet still in proportion as things now are And this is repeated ver. 20. when all other creatures were fitly associated brought to Adam as if the divine power had bin in some care and deep