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

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

that thus peremptorily defames and attaints of wickednesse unspotted Churches unblemisht Parlaments and the most eminent restorers of Christian Doctrine deserve not to be burnt first And if his heat had burst out onely against the opinion his wonted passion had no doubt bin silently born with wonted patience But since against the charity of that solemne place and meeting it serv'd him furder to inveigh opprobriously against the person branding him with no lesse then impudence onely for setting his name to what he had writt'n I must be excus'd not to be so wanting to the defence of an honest name or to the reputation of those good men who afford me their society but to be sensible of such a foule endeavour'd disgrace not knowing ought either in mine own deserts or the Laws of this Land why I should be subject in such a notorious and illegal manner to the intemperancies of this mans preaching choler And indeed to be so prompt and ready in the midst of his humblenesse to tosse reproaches of this bulk and size argues as if they were the weapons of his exercise I am sure not of his Ministery or of that dayes work Certainly to subscribe my name at what I was to own was what the State had order'd and requires And he who lists not to be malicious would call it ingenuity cleer conscience willingnesse to avouch what might be question'd or to be better instructed And if God were so displeas'd with those Isa 58. who on the solemne fast were wont to smite with the fist of wickednesse it could be no signe of his own humiliation accepted which dispos'd him to smite so keenly with a reviling tongue But if onely to have writ my name must be counted impudence how doth this but justifie another who might affirm with as good warrant that the late Discourse of Scripture and Reason which is certain to be chiefly his own draught was publisht without a name out of base fear and the sly avoidance of what might follow to his detriment if the party at Court should hap to reach him And I to have set my name where he accuses me to have set it am so far from recanting that I offer my hand also if need be to make good the same opinion which I there maintain by inevitable consequences drawn parallel from his own principal arguments in that of Scripture and Reason which I shall pardon him if he can deny without shaking his own composition to peeces The impudence therfore since he waigh'd so little what a grosse revile that was to give his equall I send him back again for a phylactery to stitch upon his arrogance that censures not onely before conviction so bitterly without so much as one reason giv'n but censures the Congregation of his Governors to their faces for not being so hasty as himself to censure And whereas my other crime is that I address'd the Dedication of what I had studied to the Parlament how could I better declare the loyalty which Iowe to that supreme and majestick Tribunal and the opinion which I have of the high-entrusted judgement and personall worth assembl'd in that place With the same affections therfore and the same addicted fidelity Parlament of England I here again have brought to your perusal on the same argument these following Expositions of Scripture The former book as pleas'd some to think who were thought judicious had of reason in it to a sufficiencie what they requir'd was that the Scriptures there alleg'd might he discuss'd more fully To their desires thus much furder hath been labour'd in the Scriptures Another sort also who wanted more autorities and citations have not been here unthought of If all this attain not to satisfie them as I am confident that none of those our great controversies at this day hath had a more demonstrative explaining I must confesse to admire what it is for doubtlesse it is not reason now adayes that satisfies or suborns the common credence of men to yeeld so easily and grow so vehement in matters much more disputable and farre lesse conducing to the daily good and peace of life Some whose necessary shifts haeve long enur'd them to cloak the defects of their unstudied yeers and hatred now to learn under the appearance of a grave solidity which estimation they have gain'd among weak perceivers find the ease of slighting what they cannot refute and are determin'd as I hear to hold it not worth the answering In which number I must be forc'd to reck'n that Doctor who in a late equivocating Treatise plausibly set afloat against the Dippers diving the while himselfwith a more deep prelatical malignance against the present state Church-government mentions with ignominy the Tractate of Divorce yet answers nothing but instead thereof for which I do not commend his marshalling sets Moses also among the crew of his Anabaptists as one who to a holy Nation the Common-wealth of Israel gave Laws breaking the bonds of mariage to inordinate lust These are no mean surges of blasphemy not onely dipping Moses the divine Law-giver but dashing with a high hand against the justice and purity of God himself as these ensuing Scriptures plainly and freely handl'd shall verifie to the launcing of that old apostemated error Him therefore I leave now to his repentance Others which is their courtesie confesse that wit and parts may do much to make that seem true which is not as was objected to Socrates by them who could not resist his efficacy that he ever made the worse cause seem the better and thus thinking themselves discharg'd of the difficulty love not to wade furder into the fear of a convincement These will be their excuses to decline the full examining of this serious point So much the more I presse it and repeat it Lords and Commons that ye beware while time is ere this grand secret and onely art of ignorance affecting tyrany grow powerfull and rule among us For if sound argument and reason shall be thus put off either by an undervaluing silence or the maisterly censure of a rayling word or two in the Pulpit or by rejecting the force of truth as the meer cunning of eloquence and Sophistry what can be the end of this but that all good learning and knowledge will suddenly decay Ignorance and illiterate presumption which is yet but our disease will turn at length into our very constitution and prove the hectic evill of this age worse to be fear'd if it get once to reign over us then any fift Monarchy If this shall be the course that what was wont to be a chief commendation and the ground of other mens confidence in an Author his diligence his learning his elocution whether by right or by ill meaning granted him shall be turn'd now to a disadvantage and suspicion against him that what he writes though unconfuted must therefore be mistrusted therfore not receiv'd for the industry the exactnesse the labour in it confess'd to

not allow them for the greater Thus is won both from the word fornication the reason of adultery that the exception of divorce is not limitted to that act but enlarg'd to the causes above specify'd And who so marieth her which is put away doth committ adultery By this clause alone if by nothing els we may assure us that Christ intended not to deliver heer the whole doctrin of divorce but only to condemn abuses Otherwise to marry after desertion which the Apostle and the reformed Churches at this day permitt is heer forbid as adultery Be she never so wrongfully deserted or put away as the law then suffer'd if thus forsak'n and expulst she accept the refuge and protection of any honester man who would love her better and give her self in mariage to him by what the letter guides us it shall be present adultery to them both This is either harsh and cruel or all the Churches teaching as they doe the contrary are loos and remiss besides that the Apostle himselfe stands deeply fin'd in a contradiction against our Saviour What shall we make of this what rather the common interpreter can make of it for they be his own markets let him now trie let him trie which way he can wind in his Vertumnian distinctions and evasions if his canonical gabardine of text and letter do not now sit too close about him and pinch his activity which if I erre not hath heer hamper'd it selfe in a springe fitt for those who put their confidence in Alphabets Spanheim a writer of Evangelic doubts comes now and confesses that our Saviours words are to be limited beyond the limitation there exprest and excepted beyond their own exception as not speaking of what happn'd rarely but what most commonly Is it so rare Spanheim to be deserted or was it then so rare to put away injuriously that a person so hatefully expell'd should to the heaping of more injury be turn'd like an infectious thing out of all maried fruition upon pain of adultery as not considerable to the brevity of this halfe sentence Of what then speakes our Saviour of that collusion saith he which was then most frequent among the Jews of changing wives and husbands through inconstancy and unchast desires Colluders your selves as violent to this law of God by your unmercifull binding as the Pharises by their unbounded loosning Have thousands of Christian souls perisht as to this life and God knows what hath betided their consciences for want of this healing explanation and is it now at last obscurely drawn forth only to cure a scratch and leave the main wound spouting Who so ever putteth away his wife except for fornication committeth adultery That shall be spoke of all ages and all men though never so justly otherwise mov'd to divorce in the very next breath And who so marieth her which is put away committeth adultery the men are new and miraculous they tell you now you are to limit it to that age when it was in fashion to chop matrimonies and must be meant of him who puts away with his wives consent through the lightnes and leudnes of them both But what rule of Logic or indeed of reason is our commission to understand the Anteeedent one way and the Consequent another for in that habitude this whole vers may be fider'd or at least to take the parts of a copulat axiom both absolutely affirmative and to say the first is absolutely true the other not but must bee limited to a certain time and custome which is no lesse then to say they are both false For in this compound axiom be the parts never so many if one of them doe but falter be not equally absolute and generall the rest are all fals If therefore that he who marries her which is put away committs adultery be not generally true neither is it generally true that he committs adultery who puts away for other cause then fornication And if the marrying her which is put away must be understood limited which they cannot but yeild it must with the same limitation must be understood the putting away Thus doth the common exposition confound it selfe and justify this which is heer brought that our Saviour as well in the first part of this sentence as in the second prohibited onely such divorses as the Jewes then made through malice or through plotted licence not those which are for necessary and just causes where charity and wisedome disjoyns that which not God but Error and Disastre joyn'd And there is yet to this our exposition a stronger siding freind then any can be an adversary unlesse Saint Paul be doubted who repeating a command concerning divorce 1 Cor. 7. which is agreed by writers to be the same with this of our Saviour and appointing that the wife remaine unmaried or be reconcil'd to her husband leavs it infallible that our Saviour spake cheifly against putting away for casual and choleric disagreements or any other cause which may with human patience and wisedom be reconcil'd not hereby meaning to hale and dash together the irreconcilable aversations of nature nor to tie up a faultlesse person like a parricide as it were into one sack with an enemy to be his causelesse tormenter and executioner the length of a long life Lastly let this sentence of Christ bee understood how it will yet that it was never intended for a judicial law to be inforc'd by the Magistrat besides that the office of our Saviour had no such purpose in the Gospel this latter part of the sentence may assure us And who so marrieth her which is put away committs adultery Shall the exception for adultery belong to this clause or not if not it would be strange that he who marries a woman really divorc't for adultery as Christ permitted should become an adulter by marrying one who is now no other mans wife himself being also free who might by this meanes reclaim her from common whordome And if the exception must belong hither then it followes that he who marries an adultresse divorc'd commits no adultry which would soone discover to us what an absurd and senseles peece of injustice this would be to make a civil statute of in penal courts whereby the adultresse put away may marry another safely and without a crime to him that marries her but the innocent and wrongfully divorc'd shall not marry again without the guilt of adultery both to her selfe and to her second husband This saying of Christ therefore cannot be made a temporal law were it but for this reason Nor is it easie to say what coherence there is at all in it from the letter to any perfet sense not obnoxious to som absurdity and seems much lesse agreeable to what ever els of the Gospel is left us written doubtles by our Saviour spok'n in that fiercenes and abstruse intricacy first to amuse his tempters and admonish in general the abusers of that Mosaic law next to let Herod know a

the way that still as the Church corrupted as the Clergie grew more ignorant and yet more usurping on the Magistrate who also now declin'd so still divorce grew more restrain'd though certainly if better times permitted the thing that worse times restrain'd it would not weakly argue that the permission was better and the restraint worse This law therefore of Theodosius wiser in this then the most of his successors though not wiser then God and Moses reduc't the causes of divorce to a certain number which by the judiciall law of God and all recorded humanitie were left before to the brest of each husband provided that the dismisse was not without reasonable conditions to the wife But this was a restraint not yet come to extreames For besides adultery and that not only actual but suspected by many signes there set down any fault equally punishable with adultery or equally infamous might bee the cause of a divorce Which informes us how the wisest of those ages understood that place in the Gospel whereby not the pilfering of a benevolence was consider'd as the main and only breach of wedloc as is now thought but the breach of love and peace a more holy union then that of the flesh and the dignity of an honest person was regarded not to bee held in bondage with one whose ignominy was infectious To this purpose was constituted Cod. l. 5. tit 17. and Authent collat 4. tit 1. Novell 22. where Justinian added three causes more In the 117. Novell most of the same causes are allow'd but the liberty of divorcing by consent is repeal'd but by whom by Justinian not a wiser not a more religious emperor then either of the former but noted by judicious writers for his fickle head in making and unmaking lawes and how Procopius a good historian and a counselor of state then living deciphers him in his other actions I willingly omitt Nor was the Church then in better case but had the corruption of a 100. declining yeare swept on it when the statute of consent was call'd in which as I said gives us every way more reason to suspect this restraint more then that liberty which therfore in the reign of Justin the succeeding Emperor was recall'd Novel 140. establisht with a preface more wise christianly then for those times declaring the necessity to restore that Theodosian law if no other meanes of reconcilement could be found And by whom this law was abrogated or how long after I doe not finde but that those other causes remain'd in force as long as the Greek empire subsisted and were assented by that Church is to bee read in the Canons and edicts compar'd by Photius the Patriarch with the avertiments of Balsamon and Matthaeus Monachus thereon But long before those dayes Leo the son of Basilius Macedo reigning about the yeare 886. and for his excellent wisdome surnam'd the Philosopher constituted that in case of madnesse the husband might divorce after three yeares the wife after 5. Constitut Leon. 111. 112. this declares how hee expounded our Saviour and deriv'd his reasons from the institution which in his preface with great eloquence are set downe whereof a passage or two may give som proofe though better not divided from the rest There is not saith he a thing more necessary to preserve mankind then the helpe giv'n him from his own rib both God and nature so teaching us which being so it was requisite that the providence of law or if any other care be to the good of man should teach and ordaine those things which are to the helpe and comfort of maried persons and confirme the end of mariage purpos'd in the beginning not those things which afflict and bring perpetuall misery to them Then answers the objection that they are one flesh if Matrimony had held so as God ordain'd it he were wicked that would dissolve it But if we respect this in matrimony that it be contracted to the good of both how shall he who for some great evil feard perswades not to marry though contracted not perswade to unmarry if after marriage a calamity befall should we bid beware least any fall into an evil and leave him helplesse who by humane error is fall'n therein This were as if we should use remedies to prevent a disease but let the sick die without remedy The rest will be worth reading in the author And thus we have the judgement first of primitive fathers next of the imperial law not disallow'd by the universal Church in ages of her best authority and lastly of the whole Greeke Church and civil state incorporating their Canons and edicts together that divorce was lawfull for other causes equivalent to adultery contain'd under the word fornication So that the exposition of our saviours sentence heer alleg'd hath all these ancient and great asserters is therefore neither new nor licentious as some now would perswade the commonalty although it be neerer truth that nothing is more new then those teachers themselves nothing more licentious then some known to be whose hypocrisie yet shames not to take offence at this doctrine for licence when as indeed they feare it would remove licence and leave them but few companions That the Popes Canon law incroaching upon civil Magistracy abolisht all divorce eevn for adultery What the reformed Divines have recover'd and that the famousest of them have taught according to the assertion of this booke But in these western parts of the empire it will appeare almost unquestionable that the cited law of Theodosius and Valentinian stood in force untill the blindest and corruptest times of Popedom displac't it For that the volumes of Justinian never came into Italy or beyond Illiricum is the opinion of good Antiquaries And that only manuscript thereof found in Apulia by Lotharius the Saxon and giv'n to the state of Pisa for their aid at sea against the Normans of Sicily was receav'd as a rarity not to bee matcht And although the Gothes and after them the Lombards and Franks who over-run the most of Europ except this Island unlesse wee make our Saxons and Normans a limm of them brought in their owne customes yet that they follow'd the Roman laws in their contracts and mariages Agathias the historian is alleg'd And other testimonies relate that Alaricus Theodoric their Kings writ their statutes out of this Theodosian Code which hath the recited law of Divorce Neverthelesse while the Monarchs of Christendome were yet barbarous and but halfe Christian the Popes tooke this advantage of their weake superstition to raise a corpulent law out of the canons and decretals of audacious preists and presum'd also to set this in the front That the constitutions of princes are not above the constitutions of clergy but beneath them Using this very instance of divorce as the first prop of their tyranny by a false consequence drawn from a passage of Ambrose upon Luke where hee saith though Mans law grant it yet Gods law