either from divine writt or human learning or human practice in any nation or well-form'd republick but only from the customary abuse of this text Usually they allege the Epistle of Cicero to Atticus wherein Cato is blam'd for giving sentence to the scumme of Romulus as if he were in Plato's common wealth Cato would have call'd some great one into judgemēt for bribery Cicero as the time stood advis'd against it Cato not to endammage the public treasury would not grant to the Roman Knights that the Asian taxes might bee farm'd them at a lesse rate Cicero wisht it granted Nothing in all this will bee like the establishing of a law to sinne here are no lawes made here onely the execution of law is crav'd might be suspended between which and our question is a broad difference And what if human law givers have confest they could not frame their lawes to that perfection which they desir'd we heare of no such confession from Moses concerning the lawes of God but rather all praise and high testimony of perfection given them And although mans nature cannot beare exactest lawes yet still within the confines of good it may and must so long as lesse good is far anough from altogether evil As for what they instance of usury let them first prove usury to be wholly unlawfull as the law allowes it which learned men as numerous on the other side will deny them Or if it be altogether unlawfull why is it tolerated more then divorce he who said divorse not said also lend hoping for nothing againe Luk. 6. 35. But then they put in that trade could not stand And so to serve the commodity of insatiable trading usury shall be permitted but divorce the onely meanes oft times to right the innocent outrageously wrong'd shall be utterly forbid This is egregious doctrine and for which one day charity will much thanke them Beza not finding how to salve this perplexity and Cameron since him would secure us although the latter confesses that to permit a wicked thing by law is a wickednesse from which God abhorrs yet to limit sin and prescribe it a certaine measure is good First this evasion will not helpe heere for this law bounded no man he might put away whatever found not favour in his eyes And how could it forbid to divorce whom it could not forbidd to dislike or command to love If these be the limits of law to restraine sinne who so lame a sinner but may hoppe over them more easily then over those Romulean circumscriptions not as Remus did with hard succes but with all indemnity Such a limiting as this were not worth the mischeif that accompanies it This law therefore not bounding the supposed sinne by permitting enlarges it gives it enfranchisement And never greater confusion then when law and sin move their land markes mixe their territories and correspond have intercourse and traffic together When law contracts a kindred and hospitality with transgression becomes the godfather of sinne and names it Lawfull when sin revels and gossips within the arcenal of law plaies and dandles the artillery of justice that should be bent against her this is a faire limitation indeede Besides it is an absurdity to say that law can measure sin or moderate sin sin is not in a predicament to be measur'd and modify'd but is alwaies an excesse The least sinne that is exceeds the measure of the largest law that can bee good and is as boundlesse as that vacuity beyond the world If once it square to the measure of Law it ceases to be an excesse and consequently ceases to be a sinne or else law conforming it selfe to the obliquity of sin betraies it selfe to be not strait but crooked and so immediatly no law And the improper conceit of moderating sin by law will appeare if wee can imagin any lawgiver so senselesse as to decree that so farre a man may steale and thus farre bee drunk that moderately he may cozen and moderatly committ adultery To the same extent it would be as pithily absurd to publish that a man may moderately divorce if to doe that be intirely naught But to end this moot the law of Moses is manifest to fixe no limit therein at all or such at lest as impeaches the fraudulent abuser no more then if it were not set only requires the dismissive writing without other caution leaves that to the inner man and the barre of conscience But it stopt other sins This is as vaine as the rest and dangerously uncertain the contrary to be fear'd rather that one sin admitted courteously by law open'd the gate to another However evil must not be don for good And it were a fall to be lamented an indignity unspeakable if law should becom tributary to sin her slave and forc't to yeild up into his hands her awfull minister Punishment should buy out her peace with sinne for sinne paying as it were her so many Philistian foreskins to the proud demand of Trangression But suppose it any way possible to limit sinne to put a girdle about that Chaos suppose it also good yet if to permitt sin by Law bee an abomination in the eyes of God as Cameron acknowledges the evil of permitting will eate out the good of limiting For though sin be not limited there can but evil come out of evil but if it be permitted decreed lawfull by divine law of force then sin must proceed from the infinit Good which is a dreadfull thought But if the restraining of sinne by this permission beeing good as this author testifies be more good then the permission of more sin by the restraint of divorce and that God waighing both these like two ingots in the perfet scales of his justice and providence found them so and others coming without authority from God shall change this counter poise and judge it better to let fin multiply by setting a judicial restraint upon divorce which Christ never set then to limit sin by this permission as God himselfe thought best to permitt it it will behoove them to consult betimes whether these their ballances be not fals and abominable and this their limiting that which God loosen'd and their loosning the sinnes that he limited which they confesse was good to doe and were it possible to doe by law doubtlesse it would be most morally good and they so beleeving as we heare they doe and yet abolishing a law so good and moral the limiter of sin what are they else but contrary to themselves for they can never bring us to that time wherein it will not be good to limit sinne and they can never limit it better then so as God prescrib'd in his law Others conceav it a more defensible retirement to say this permission to divorce sinfully for hardnesse of heart was a dispensation But surely they either know not or attend not what a dispensation meanes A dispensation is for no long time is particular to som persons rather then
judgements eevn as the Lord my God commanded mee keep therfore and doe them For this is your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of Nations that shall hear all these Statutes and say surely this great Nation is a wise and understanding people For what Nation is ther so great who hath God so nigh to them and what Nation that hath Statutes and Judgements so righteons as all this Law which I set before you this day Thus whether wee look at the purity and justice of God himself the jealousy of his honour among other Nations the holines and moral perfection which hee intended by his Law to teach this people wee cannot possibly think how he could indure to let them slugg grow inveteratly wicked under base allowances whole adulterous lives by dispensation They might not eat they might not touch an unclean thing to what hypocrisy then were they train'd up if by prescription of the same Law they might be unjust they might be adulterous for term of life forbid to soile thir garments with a coy imaginary pollution but not forbid but countnanc't and animated by Law to soile thir soules with deepest defilements What more unlike to God what more like that God should hate then that his Law should bee so curious to wash vestures and so careles to leav unwasht unregarded so foul a scab of Egypt in thir Soules what would wee more the Statutes of the Lord are all pure and just and if all then this of Divorce Because hee hath found som uncleannes in her That wee may not esteem this law to bee a meer authorizing of licence as the Pharises took it Moses adds the reason for som uncleannes found Som heertofore have bin so ignorant as to have thought that this uncleannes means adultery But Erasmus who for having writ an excellent Treatise of Divorce was wrote against by som burly standard Divine perhaps of Cullen or of Lovain who calls himself Phimostomus shews learnedly out of the Fathers with other Testimonies and Reasons that uncleannes is not heer so understood defends his former work though new to that age and perhaps counted licentious and fears not to ingage all his fame on the Argument Afterward when Expositers began to understand the Hebrew Text which they had not done of many ages before they translated word for word not uncleannes but the nakednes of any thing and considering that nakednes is usually referr'd in Scripture to the minde as well as to the body they constantly expound it any defect annoyance or ill quality in nature which to bee joyn'd with makes life tedious and such company wors then solitude So that heer will be no cause to vary from the generall consent of exposition which gives us freely that God permitted divorce for whatever was unalterably distastful whether in body or mind But with this admonishment that if the Roman law especially in contracts and dowries left many things to equity with these cautions exfide bonâ quod aequius melius erit ut inter bonos bene agier wee will not grudge to think that God intended not licence heer to every humor but to such remediles greevances as might move a good and honest and faithfull man then to divorce when it can no more bee peace or comfort to either of them continuing thus joyn'd And although it could not be avoided bat that men of hard hearts would abuse this liberty yet doubtles it was intended as all other privileges in Law are to good men principally to bad only by accident So that the sin was not in the permission nor simply in the action of divorce for then the permitting also had bin sin but only in the abuse But that this Law should as it were bee wrung from God and Moses only to serve the hard heartednes and the lust of injurious men how remote it is from all sense and law and honesty and therfore surely from the meaning of Christ shall abundantly be manifest in due order Now although Moses needed not to adde other reason of this law then that one there exprest yet to these ages wherin Canons and Scotisms and Lumbard Laws have dull'd and almost obliterated the lively Sculpture of ancient reason and humanity it will be requisit to heap reason upon reason and all little enough to vindicat the whitenes and the innocence of this divine Law from the calumny it findes at this day of beeing a dore to licence and confusion When as indeed there is not a judicial point in all Moses consisting of more true equity high wisdom and God-like pitty then this Law not derogating but preserving the honour and peace of Mariage and exactly agreeing with the sense and mind of that institution in Genesis For first if Mariage be but an ordain'd relation as it seems not more it cannot take place above the prime dictats of nature and if it bee of natural right yet it must yeeld to that which is more natural and before it by eldership and precedence in nature Now it is not natural that Hugh marries Beatrice or Thomas Rebecca beeing only a civill contract and full of many chances but that these men seek them meet helps that only is natural and that they espouse them such that only is mariage But if they find them neither fit helps nor tolerable society what thing more natural more original and first in nature then to depart from that which is irksom greevous actively hateful and injurious eevn to hostility especially in a conjugal respect wherin antipathies are invincible and wher the forc't abiding of the one can bee no true good no real comfort to the other For if hee find no contentment from the other how can he return it from himself or no acceptance how can hee mutually accept what more equal more pious then to untie a civil knot for a natural enmity held by violence from parting to dissolv an accidental conjunction of this or that man woman for the most natural and most necessary disagreement of meet from unmeet guilty from guiltles contrary from contrary It beeing certain that the mystical and blessed unity of mariage can bee no way more unhallow'd and profan'd then by the forcible uniting of such disunions and separations Which if wee see oft times they cannot joyn or peece up to a common friendship or to a willing conversation in the same house how should they possibly agree to the most familiar and united amity of wedlock Abraham and Lot though dear friends and brethren in a strange Country chose rather to part asunder then to infect thir friendship with the strife of thir servants Paul and Barnabas joyn'd together by the Holy Ghost to a Spiritual work thought it better to separate when once they grew at variance If these great Saints joynd by nature friendship religion high providence and revelation could not so govern a casual difference a sudden passion but must in wisdom divide from the outward duties of a
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
be more then ordnary as if wisdome had now forsak'n the thirstie and laborious inquirer to dwell against her nature with the arrogant and shallow babler to what purpose all those pains and that continual searching requir'd of us by Solomon to the attainment of understanding why are men bred up with such care and expence to a life of perpetual studies why do your selves with such endeavour seek to wipe off the imputation of intending to discourage the progresse and advance of learning He therfore whose heart can bear him to the high pitch of your noble enterprises may easily assure himself that the prudence and farre-judging circumspectnesse of so grave a Magistracy sitting in Parlament who have before them the prepar'd and purpos'd Act of their most religious predecessors to imitate in this question cannot reject the cleernesse of these reasons and these allegations both here and formerly offer'd them nor can over-look the necessity of ordaining more wholsomly and more humanly in the casualties of Divorce then our Laws have yet establisht if the most urgent and excessive grievances hapning in domestick life be worth the laying to heart which unlesse charity be farre from us cannot be neglected And that these things both in the right constitution and in the right reformation of a Common-wealth call for speediest redresse and ought to be the first consider'd anough was urg'd in what was prefac'd to that monument of Bucer which I brought to your remembrance and the other time before Hence forth except new cause be giv'n I shall say lesse and lesse For if the Law make not timely provision let the Law as reason is bear the censure of those consequences which her own default now more evidently produces And if men want manlinesse to expostulate the right of their due ransom and to second their own occasions they may sit hereafter and bemoan themselves to have neglected through faintnesse the onely remedy of their sufferings which a seasonable and well grounded speaking might have purchas'd them And perhaps in time to come others will know how to esteem what is not every day put into their hands when they have markt events and better weigh'd how hurtfull and unwise it is to hide a secret and pernicious rupture under the ill counsell of a bashfull silence But who would distrust ought or not be ample in his hopes of your wise and Christian determinations who have the prudence to consider and should have the goodnesse like gods as ye are call'd to find out readily and by just Law to administer those redresses which have of old not without God ordaining bin granted to the adversities of mankind ere they who needed were put to ask Certainly if any other have enlarg'd his thoughts to expect from this government so justly undertak'n and by frequent assistances from heaven so apparently upheld glorious changes and renovations both in Church and State he among the formost might be nam'd who prayes that the fate of England may tarry for no other Deliverers JOHN MILTON TETRACHORDON Expositions upon the foure chiefe places in Scripture which treat of Mariage or nullities in Mariage Gen. 1. 27. So God created man in his owne image in the image of God created he him male and female created he them 28. And God blessed them and God said unto them be fruitfull c. Gen. 2. 18. And the Lord God said It is not good that man should be alone I will make him a helpe meet for him 23. And Adam said This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh she shall be called Woman because she was taken out of Man 24. Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother and shall cleave unto his wife and they shall be one flesh Gen. 1. 27. SO God created man in his owne image To be inform'd aright in the whole History of Mariage that we may know for certain not by a forc't yoke but by an impartial definition what Mariage is and what is not Mariage it will undoubtedly be lafest fairest and most with our obedience to enquire as our Saviours direction is how it was in the beginning And that we begin so high as man created after Gods owne Image there want not earnest causes For nothing now adayes is more degenerately forgott'n then the true dignity of man almost in every respect but especially in this prime institution of Matrimony wherein his native pre-eminence ought most to shine Although if we consider that just and naturall privileges men neither can rightly seek nor dare fully claime unlesse they be ally'd to inward goodnesse and stedfast knowledge and that the want of this quells them to a servile sense of their own conscious unworthinesse it may save the wondring why in this age many are so opposite both to human and to Christian liberty either while they understand not or envy others that do contenting or rather priding themselves in a specious humility and strictnesse bred out of low ignorance that never yet conceiv'd the freedome of the Gospel and is therefore by the Apostle to the Colossians rankt with no better company then Will-worship and the meer shew of wisdome And how injurious herein they are if not to themselves yet to their neighbours and not to them only but to the all-wise and bounteous grace offer'd us in our redemption will orderly appear In the Image of God created he him It is anough determin'd that this Image of God wherin man was created is meant Wisdom Purity Justice and rule over all creatures All which being lost in Adam was recover'd with gain by the merits of Christ For albeit our first parent had lordship over sea and land and aire yet there was a law without him as a guard set over him But Christ having cancell'd the hand writing of ordinances which was against us Coloss 2. 14. and interpreted the fulfilling of all through charity hath in that respect set us overlaw in the free custody of his love and left us victorious under the guidance of his living Spirit not under the dead letter to follow that which most edifies most aides and furders a religious life makes us holiest and likest to his immortall Image not that which makes us most conformable and captive to civill and subordinat precepts whereof the strictest observance may oftimes prove the destruction not only of many innocent persons and families but of whole Nations Although indeed no ordinance human or from heav'n can binde against the good of man so that to keep them strictly against that end is all one with to breake them Men of most renowned vertu have sometimes by transgressing most truly kept the law and wisest Magistrates have permitted and dispenc't it while they lookt not peevishly at the letter but with a greater spirit at the good of mankinde if alwayes not writt'n in the characters of law yet engrav'n in the heart of man by a divine impression This Heathens could see as the well-read in
story can recount of Solon and Epaminondas whom Cicero in his first booke of invention nobly defends All law saith he we ought referr to the common good and interpret by that not by the scrowl of letters No man observes law for laws sake but for the good of them for whom it was made The rest might serv well to lecture these times deluded through belly-doctrines into a devout slavery The Scripture also affords us David in the shew-bread Hezechiah in the passeover sound and safe transgressors of the literall command which also dispenc'd not seldom with it self and taught us on what just occasions to doe so untill our Saviour for whom that great and God-like work was reserv'd redeem'd us to a state above prescriptions by dissolving the whole law into charity And have we not the soul to understand this and must we against this glory of Gods transcendent love towards us be still the servants of a literall indightment Created he him It might be doubted why he saith In the Image of God created he him not them as well as male and female them especially since that Image might be common to them both but male and female could not however the Jewes fable and please themselvs with the accidentall concurrence of Plato's wit as if man at first had bin created Hermaphrodite but then it must have bin male and female created he him So had the Image of God bin equally common to them both it had no doubt bin said In the image of God created he them But St. Paul ends the controversie by explaining that the woman is not primarily and immediatly the image of God but in reference to the man The head of the woman saith he 1 Cor. 11. is the man he the image and glory of God she the glory of the man he not for her but she for him Therefore his precept is Wives be subject to your husbands as is fit in the Lord Coloss 3. 18. In every thing Eph. 5. 24. Neverthelesse man is not to hold her as a servant but receives her into a part of that empire which God proclaims him to though not equally yet largely as his own image and glory for it is no small glory to him that a creature so like him should be made subject to him Not but that particular exceptions may have place if she exceed her husband in prudence and dexterity and he contentedly yeeld for then a superior and more naturall law comes in that the wiser should govern the lesse wise whether male or female But that which far more easily and obediently follows from this verse is that seeing woman was purposely made for man and he her head it cannot stand before the breath of this divine utterance that man the portraiture of God joyning to himself for his intended good and solace an inferiour sexe should so becom her thrall whose wilfulnes or inability to be a wife frustrates the occasionall end of her creation but that he may acquitt himself to freedom by his naturall birth-right and that indeleble character of priority which God crown'd him with If it be urg'd that sin hath lost him this the answer is not far to seek that from her the sin first proceeded which keeps her justly in the same proportion still beneath She is not to gain by being first in the transgression that man should furder loose to her because already he hath lost by her means Oft it happens that in this matter he is without fault so that his punishment herein is causeles and God hath the praise in our speeches of him to sort his punishment in the same kind with the offence Suppose he err'd it is not the intent of God or man to hunt an error so to the death with a revenge beyond all measure and proportion But if we argue thus this affliction is befaln him for his sin therefore he must bear it without seeking the only remedy first it will be false that all affliction comes for sin as in the case of Joh and of the man born blind Joh. 9. 3 was evident next by that reason all miseries comming for sin we must let them all lye upon us like the vermin of an Indian Catharist which his fond religion forbids him to molest Were it a particular punishment inflicted through the anger of God upon a person or upon a land no law hinders us in that regard no law but bidds us remove it if we can much more if it be a dangerous temptation withall much more yet if it be certainly a temptation and not certainly a punishment though a pain As for what they say we must bear with patience to bear with patience and to seek effectuall remedies implies no contradiction It may no lesse be for our disobedience our unfaithfulnes and other sins against God that wives becom adulterous to the bed and questionles we ought to take the affliction as patiently as christian prudence would wish yet hereby is not lost the right of divorcing for adultery No you say because our Saviour excepted that only But why if he were so bent to punish our sins and try our patience in binding on us a disastrous mariage why did he except adultery Certainly to have bin bound from divorce in that case also had bin as plentifull a punishment to our sins and not too little work for the patientest Nay perhaps they will say it was too great a sufferance And with as slight a reason for no wise man but would sooner pardon the act of adultery once and again committed by a person worth pitty and forgivnes then to lead a wearisom life of unloving unquiet conversation with one who neither affects nor is affected much lesse with one who exercises all bitternes and would commit adultery too but for envy lest the persecuted condition should thereby get the benefit of his freedom 'T is plain therefore that God enjoyns not this supposed strictnes of not divorcing either to punish us or to try our patience Moreover if man be the image of God which consists in holines and woman ought in the same respect to be the image and companion of man in such wise to belov'd as the Church is belov'd of Christ and if as God is the head of Christ and Christ the head of man so man is the head of woman I cannot see by this golden dependance of headship and subjection but that Piety and Religion is the main tye of Christian Matrimony So as if there be found between the pair a notorious disparity either of wickednes or heresie the husband by all manner of right is disingag'd from a creature not made and inflicted on him to the vexation of his righteousnes the wife also as her subjection is terminated in the Lord being her self the redeem'd of Christ is not still bound to be the vassall of him who is the bondslave of Satan she being now neither the image nor the glory of such a person nor made for
good leav by mutual consent Therfore where conjunction is said they who comment the Institutes agree that conjunction of minde is by the Law meant not necessarily conjunction of body That Law then had good reason attending to its own definition that divorce should be granted for the breaking of that conjunction which it holds necessary sooner then for the want of that conjunction which it holds not necessary And wheras Tuningus a famous Lawyer excuses individual as the purpos of Mariage not always the success it suffices not Purpos is not able to constitute the essence of a thing Nature her self the universal Mother intends nothing but her own perfection and preservation yet is not the more indissoluble for that The Pandects out of Modestinus though not define yet well describe Mariage the conjunction of male and female the society of all life the communion of divine and human right which Bucer also imitates on the fifth to the Ephesians But it seems rather to comprehend the several ends of Mariage then to contain the more constituting cause that makes it what it is That I therefore among others for who sings not Hylas may give as well as take matter to be judg'd on it will be lookt I should produce another definition then these which have not stood the tryal Thus then I suppose that Mariage by the natural and plain order of Gods institution in the Text may be more demonstratively and essentially defin'd Mariage is a divine institution joyning man and woman in a love fitly dispos'd to the helps and comforts of domestic life A divine institution This contains the prime efficient cause of Mariage as for consent of Parents and Guardians it seems rather a concurrence then a cause for as many that marry are in thir own power as not and where they are not thir own yet are they not subjected beyond reason Now though efficient causes are not requisite in a definition yet divine institution hath such influence upon the Form and is so a conserving cause of it that without it the Form is not sufficient to distinguish matrimony from other conjunctions of male and female which are not to be counted mariage Joyning man and woman in a love c. This brings in the parties consent until which be the mariage hath no true beeing When I say consent I mean not error for error is not properly consent And why should not consent be heer understood with equity and good to either part as in all other freindly covnants and not be strain'd and cruelly urg'd to the mischeif and destruction of both Neither doe I mean that singular act of consent which made the contract for that may remain and yet the mariage not true nor lawful and that may cease and yet the mariage both true and lawful to their sin that break it So that either as no efficient at all or but a transitory it comes not into the definition That consent I mean which is a love fitly dispos'd to mutual help and comfort of life this is that happy Form of mariage naturally arising from the very heart of divine institution in the Text in all the former definitions either obscurely and under mistak'n terms exprest or not at all This gives mariage all her due all her benefits all her beeing all her distinct and proper beeing This makes a mariage not a bondage a blessing not a curse a gift of God not a snare Unless ther be a love and that love born of fitnes how can it last unless it last how can the best and sweetest purposes of mariage be attain'd and they not attain'd which are the cheif ends and with a lawful love constitute the formal cause it self of mariage how can the essence thereof subsist how can it bee indeed what it goes for Conclude therfore by all the power of reason that where this essence of mariage is not there can bee no true mariage and the parties either one of them or both are free and without fault rather by a nullity then by a divorce may betake them to a second choys if thir present condition be not tolerable to them If any shall ask why domestic in the definition I answer that because both in the Scriptures and in the gravest Poets and Philosophers I finde the properties and excellencies of a wife set out only from domestic vertues if they extend furder it diffuses them into the notion of som more common duty then matrimonial Thus farre of the definition the Consectary which flows from thence and altogether depends theron is manifestly brought in by this connexive particle Therfore and branches it self into a double consequence First individual Society therfore shall a man leav father and mother Secondly conjugal benevolence and they shall bee one flesh Which as was shewn is not without cause heer mention'd to prevent and to abolish the suspect of pollution in that natural and undefiled act These consequences therfore cannot either in Religion Law or Reason bee bound and posted upon mankind to his sorrow and misery but receiv what force they have from the meetnes of help and solace which is the formal cause and end of that definition that sustains them And although it be not for the Majesty of Scripture to humble her self in artificial theorems and definitions and Corollaries like a professor in the Schools but looks to be analys'd and interpreted by the logical industry of her Disciples and followers and to bee reduc't by them as oft as need is into those Sciential rules which are the implements of instruction yet Moses as if foreseeing the miserable work that mans ignorance and pusillanimity would make in this matrimonious busines and endevouring his utmost to prevent it condescends in this place to such a methodical and School-like way of defining and consequencing as in no place of the whole Law more Thus wee have seen and if wee be not contentious may know what was Mariage in the beginning to which in the Gospel wee are referr'd and what from hence to judge of nullity or divorce Heer I esteem the work don in this field the controversie decided but because other places of Scripture seem to look aversly upon this our decision although indeed they keep all harmony with it and because it is a better work to reconcile the seeming diversities of Scripture then the reall dissentions of neerest friends I shall assay in three following Discourses to perform that Office Deut. 24. 1 2. 1. 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 som uncleannes in her then let him write her a bill of divercement and give it in her hand and send her out of his house 2 And when she is departed out of his house she may goe and be another mans wife THat which is the only discommodity of speaking in a cleer matter the abundance of argument that presses to bee utter'd
friendship or a Collegueship in the same family or in the same journey lest it should grow to a wors division can any thing bee more absurd and barbarous then that they whom only error casualty art or plot hath joynd should be compell'd not against a sudden passion but against the permanent and radical discords of nature to the most intimat and incorporating duties of love and imbracement therin only rational and human as they are free and voluntary beeing els an abject and servile yoke scars not brutish And that there is in man such a peculiar sway of liking or disliking in the affairs of matrimony is evidently seen before mariage among those who can bee freindly can respect each other yet to marry each other would not for any perswasion If then this unfitnes and disparity bee not till after mariage discover'd through many causes and colours and concealements that may overshadow undoubtedly it will produce the same effects and perhaps with more vehemence that such a mistakn pair would give the world to be unmarried again And thir condition Solomon to the plain justification of divorce expresses Prov. 30. 21. 23. Where hee rells us of his own accord that a hated or a hatefull woman when shee is married is a thing for which the earth is disquieted and cannot bear it thus giving divine testimony to this divine Law which bids us nothing more then is the first and most innocent lesson of nature to turn away peaceably from what afflicts and hazards our destruction especially when our staying can doe no good and is expos'd to all evil Secondly It is unjust that any Ordinance ordain'd to the good and comfort of man where that end is missing without his fault should be forc't upon him to an unsufferable misery and discomfort if not commonly ruin All Ordinances are establisht in thir end the end of Law is the vertu is the righteousnes of Law And therfore him wee count an ill Expounder who urges Law against the intention therof The general end of every Ordinance of every severest every divinest eevn of Sabbath is the good of man yea his temporal good not excluded But marriage is one of the benignest ordinances of God to man wherof both the general and particular end is the peace and contentment of mans mind as the institution declares Contentment of body they grant which if it bee defrauded the plea of frigidity shall divorce But heer lies the fadomles absurdity that granting this for bodily defect they will not grant it for any defect of the mind any violation of religious or civil society When as if the argument of Christ bee firm against the ruler of the Synagogue Luk. 13. Thou hypocrite doth not each of you on the Sabbath day loos'n his Oxe or his Asse from the stall and lead him to watering and should not I unbind a daughter of Abraham from this bond of Satan it stands as good heer yee have regard in mariage to the greevance of body should you not regard more the greevances of the mind seeing the Soul as much excells the body as the outward man excells the Ass and more for that animal is yet a living creature perfet in it self but the body without the Soul is a meer senseles trunck No Ordinance therfore givn particularly to the good both spiritual and temporal of man can bee urg'd upon him to his mischief and if they yeeld this to the unworthier part the body wherabout are they in thir principles that they yeeld it not to the more worthy the mind of a good man Thirdly As no Ordinance so no Covnant no not between God and man much less between man and man beeing as all are intended to the good of both parties can hold to the deluding or making miserable of them both For equity is understood in every Covnant eevn between enemies though the terms bee not exprest If equity therfore made it extremity may dissolv it But Mariage they use to say is the Covnant of God Undoubted and so is any covnant frequently call'd in Scripture wherin God is call'd to witnes the covnant of freindship between David and Jonathan is call'd the Covnant of the Lord 1 Sam. 20. The covnant of Zedechiah with the King of Babel a Covnant to bee doubted whether lawfull or no yet in respect of God invok't thereto is call'd the Oath and the Covnant of God Ezech. 17. Mariage also is call'd the Covnant of God Prov. 2. 17. Why but as before because God is the witnes therof Malach. 2. 14. So that this denomination adds nothing to the Covnant of Mariage above any other civil and solemn contract nor is it more indissoluble for this reason then any other against the end of its own ordination nor is any vow or Oath to God exacted with such a rigor where superstition reignes not For look how much divine the Covnant is so much the more equal So much the more to bee expected that every article therof should bee fairly made good no fals dealing or unperforming should be thrust upon men without redress if the covnant bee so divine But faith they say must bee kept in Covnant though to our dammage I answer that only holds true where the other side performs which failing hee is no longer bound Again this is true when the keeping of faith can bee of any use or benefit to the other But in Mariage a league of love and willingnes if faith bee not willingly kept it scars is worth the keeping nor can bee any delight to a generous minde with whom it is forcibly kept and the question still supposes the one brought to an impossibility of keeping it as hee ought by the others default and to keep it formally not only with a thousand shifts and dissimulations but with open anguish perpetual sadnes and disturbance no willingnes no cheerfulnes no contentment cannot bee any good to a minde not basely poor and shallow with whom the contract of love is so kept A Covnant therfore brought to that passe is on the unfaulty side without injury dissolv'd Fourthly The Law is not to neglect men under greatest sufferances but to see Covnants of greatest moment faithfullest perform'd And what injury comparable to that sustain'd in a frustrat and fals dealing Mariage to loose for anothers fault against him the best portion of his temporal comforts and of his spiritual too as it may fall out It was the Law that for mans good and quiet reduc't things to propriety which were at first in common how much more Law-like were it to assist nature in disappropriating that evil which by continuing proper becomes destructive But hee might have bewar'd So hee might in any other covnant wherin the Law does not constrain error to so dear a forfeit And yet in these matters wherin the wisest are apt to erre all the warines that can bee oft times nothing avails But the Law can compell the offending party to bee more duteous Yes if
all these kind of offences were fit in public to bee complain'd on or beeing compell'd were any satisfaction to a mate not sottish or malicious And these injuries work so vehemently that if the Law remedy them not by separating the cause when no way els will pacify the person not releev'd betakes him either to such disorderly courses or to such a dull dejection as renders him either infamous or useles to the service of God and his Country Which the Law ought to prevent as a thing pernicious to the Common wealth and what better prevention then this which Moses us'd Fifthly The Law is to tender the liberty and the human dignity of them that live under the Law whether it bee the mans right above the woman or the womans just appeal against wrong and servitude But the duties of mariage contain in them a duty of benevolence which to doe by compulsion against the Soul where ther can bee neither peace nor joy nor love but an enthrallment to one who either cannot or will not bee mutual in the godliest and the civilest ends of that society is the ignoblest and the lowest slavery that a human shape can bee put to This Law therfore justly and piously provides against such an unmanly task of bondage as this The civil Law though it favour'd the setting free of a slave yet if hee prov'd ungratefull to his Patron reduc't him to a servil condition If that Law did well to reduce from liberty to bondage for an ingratitude not the greatest much more became it the Law of God to enact the restorement of a free born man from an unpurpos'd and unworthy bondage to a rightfull liberty for the most unnatural fraud and ingratitude that can be committed against him And if that Civilian Emperour in his tide of Donations permit the giver to recall his guift from him who proves unthankful towards him yea though hee had subscrib'd and sign'd in the deed of his guift not to recall it though for this very cause of ingratitude with much more equity doth Moses permit heer the giver to recall no petty guift but the guift of himself from one who most injuriously deceitfully uses him against the main ends and conditions of his giving himself exprest in Gods institution Sixthly Although ther bee nothing in the plain words of this Law that seems to regard the afflictions of a wife how great so ever yet Expositers determin and doubtles determin rightly that God was not uncompassionat of them also in the framing of this Law For should the rescript of Antoninus in the Civil Law give release to servants flying for refuge to the Emperours statue by giving leav to change thir cruel Maisters and should God who in his Law also is good to injur'd servants by granting them thir freedom in divers cases not consider the wrongs and miseries of a wife which is no servant Though heerin the counter sense of our Divines to me I must confesse seems admirable who teach that God gave this as a mercifull Law not for man whom he heer names and to whom by name hee gives this power but for the wife whom hee names not and to whom by name hee gives no power at all For certainly if man beliable to injuries in mariage as well as woman and man be the worthier person it were a preposterous law to respect only the less worthy her whom God made for mariage and not him at all for whom mariage was made Seventhly The Law of mariage gives place to the power of Parents for wee hold that consent of Parents not had may break the wedlock though els accomplisht It gives place to maisterly power for the Maister might take away from an Hebrew servant the wife which hee gave him Exod. 21. If it be answer'd that the mariage of servants is no matrimony t is reply'd that this in the ancient Roman Law is true not in the Mosaic If it bee added she was a stranger not an Hebrew therfore easily divorc't it will be answerd that strangers not beeing Canaanites and they also beeing Converts might bee lawfully maryed as Rahab was And her conversion is heer suppos'd for an Hebrew maister could not lawfully give a heathen wife to an Hebrew servant However the divorcing of an Israelitish woman was as easy by the Law as the divorcing of a stranger and almost in the same words permitted Deut. 24. and Deut. 21. Lastly it gives place to the right of warr for a captiv woman lawfully maryed and afterward not belov'd might bee dismist only without ransom Deut. 21. If mariage may bee dissolv'd by so many exterior powers not superior as wee think why may not the power of mariage it self for its own peace and honour dissolv it self wher the persons wedded be free persons why may not a greater and more natural power complaining dissolv mariage for the ends why matrimony was ordain'd are certainly and by all Logic above the Ordinance it self why may not that dissolv mariage without which that institution hath no force at all for the prime ends of mariage are the whole strength and validity therof without which matrimony is like an Idol nothing in the world But those former allowances were all for hardnes of heart Be that granted untill we come where to understand it better if the Law suffer thus farr the obstinacy of a bad man is it not more righteous heer to doe willingly what is but equal to remove in season the extremities of a good man Eightly If a man had deflowr'd a Virgin or brought an ill name on his wife that shee came not a Virgin to him hee was amerc't in certain shekles of Silver and bound never to divorce her all his daies Deut. 22. which shews that the Law gave no liberty to divorce wher the injury was palpable and that the absolute forbidding to divorce was in part the punishment of a deflowrer and a defamer Yet not so but that the wife questionles might depart when shee pleas'd Otherwise this cours had not so much righted her as deliverd her up to more spight and cruel usage This Law therfore doth justly distinguish the privilege of an honest and blameles man in the matter of divorce from the punishment of a notorious offender Ninthly Suppose it might bee imputed to a man that hee was too rash in his choyse and why took hee not better heed let him now smart and bear his folly as he may although the Law of God that terrible law doe not thus upbraid the infirmities and unwilling mistakes of man in his integrity But suppose these and the like proud aggravations of som stern hypocrite more merciles in his mercies then any literall Law in the vigor of severity must be patiently heard yet all Law and Gods Law especially grants every where to error easy remitments eevn where the utmost penalty exacted were no undoing With great reason therfore and mercy doth it heer not torment an error if it be so
with the endurance of a whole life lost to all houshold comfort and society a punishment of too vast and huge dimension for an error and the more unreasonable for that the like objection may be oppos'd against the plea of divorcing for adultery hee might have lookt better before to her breeding under religious Parents why did hee not then more diligently inquire into her manners into what company she kept every glaunce of her eye every step of her gate would have propheci'd adultery if the quick sent of these discerners had bin took along they had the divination to have foretold you all this as they have now the divinity to punish an error inhumanly As good reason to be content and forc't to be content with your adultress if these objecters might be the judges of human frailtie But God more mild and good to man then man to his brother in all this liberty givn to divorcement mentions not a word of our past errors and mistakes if any were which these men objecting from their own inventions prosecute with all violence and iniquity For if the one bee to look so narrowly what hee takes at the peril of ever keeping why should not the other bee made as wary what is promis'd by the peril of loosing for without those promises the treaty of mariage had not proceeded Why should his own error bind him rather then the others fraud acquit him Let the buyer beware saith the old Law-beaten termer Belike then ther is no more honesty nor ingenuity in the bargain of a wedloc then in the buying of a colt Wee must it seems drive it on as craftily with those whose affinity wee seek as if they were a pack of sale men and complotters But the deceiver deceivs himself in the unprosperous mariage and therin is sufficiently punisht I answer that the most of those who deceiv are such as either understand not or value not the true purposes of mariage they have the prey they seek not the punishment yet say it prove to them som cross it is not equal that error and fraud should bee linkt in the same degree of forfeture but rather that error should be acquitted and fraud bereav'd his morsel if the mistake were not on both sides for then on both sides the acquitment will be reasonable if the bondage be intolerable which this Law graciously determins not unmindful of the wife as was granted willingly to the common Expositers though beyond the letter of this law yet not beyond the spirit of charity Tenthly Mariage is a solemn thing som say a holy the resemblance of Christ and his Church and so indeed it is where the persons are truly religious and wee know all Sacred things not perform'd sincerely as they ought are no way acceptable to God in thir outward formality And that wherin it differs from personal duties if they be not truly don the fault is in our selves but mariage to be a true and pious mariage is not in the single power of any person the essence whereof as of all other Covnants is in relation to another the making and maintaining causes thereof are all mutual and must be a communion of spiritual and temporal comforts If then either of them cannot or obstinatly will not be answerable in these duties so as that the other can have no peaceful living or enduring the want of what he justly seeks and sees no hope then strait from that dwelling love which is the soul of wedloc takes his flight leaving only som cold performances of civil and common respects but the true bond of mariage if there were ever any there is already burst like a rott'n thred Then follows dissimulation suspicion fals colours fals pretences and wors then these disturbance annoyance vexation sorrow temtation eevn in the faultles person weary of himself and of all action public or domestic then comes disorder neglect hatred and perpetual strife all these the enemies of holines and christianity and every one of these persisted in a remediles violation to matrimony Therfore God who hates all faining and formality wher there should bee all faith and sincerenes and abhorrs to see inevitable discord wher there should be greatest concord when through anothers default faith and concord cannot bee counts it neither just to punish the innocent with the transgressor nor holy nor honourable for the sanctity of mariage that should bee the unlon of peace and love to be made the commitment and close fight of enmity and hate And therfore doth in this Law what best agrees with his goodnes loosning a sacred thing to peace and charity rather then binding it to hatred and contention loosning only the outward and formal tie of that which is already inwardly and really brokn or els was really never joyn'd Eleventhly One of the cheif matrimonial ends is said to seek a holy seed but where an unfit mariage administers continual cause of hatred and distemper there as was heard before cannot choose but much unholines abide Nothing more unhallows a man more unprepares him to the service of God in any duty then a habit of wrath and perturbation arising from the importunity of troublous causes never absent And wher the houshold stands in this plight what love can ther bee to the unfortunat issue what care of thir breeding which is of main conducement to thir beeing holy God therfore knowing how unhappy it would bee for children to bee-born in such a family gives this Law either as a prevention that beeing an unhappy pair they should not adde to bee unhappy parents or els as a remedy that if ther be childern while they are fewest they may follow either parent as shall bee agreed or judg'd from the house of hatred and discord to a place of more holy and peaceable education Twelfthly All Law is available to som good end but the final prohibition of divorce a vails to no good end causing only the endles aggravation of evil and therfore this permission of divorce was givn to the Jews by the wisdom and fatherly providence of God who knew that Law cannot command love without which matrimony hath no true beeing no good no solace nothing of Gods instituting nothing but so sordid and so low as to bee disdain'd of any generous person Law cannot inable natural inability either of body or mind which gives the greevance it cannot make equal those inequalities it cannot make fit those unfitnesses and where there is malice more then defect of nature it cannot hinder ten thousand injuries and bitter actions of despight too suttle and too unapparent for Law to deal with And while it seeks to remedy more outward wrongs it exposes the injur'd person to other more inward and more cutting All these evils unavoidably will redound upon the children if any be and the whole family It degenerates and disorders the best spirits leavs them to unsettl'd imaginations and degraded hopes careles of themselvs their houshold and their freinds
unactive to all public service dead to the Common-wealth wherin they are by one mishapp and no willing trespas of theirs outlaw'd from all the benefits and comforts of married life and posterity It conferrs as little to the honour and inviolable keeping of Matrimony but sooner stirrs up temptations and occasions to secret adulteries and unchast roaving But it maintaines public honesty Public folly rather who shall judge of public honesty the Law of God and of ancientest Christians and all Civil Nations or the illegitimat Law of Monks and Canonists the most malevolent most unexperienc't and incompetent judges of Matrimony These reasons and many more that might bee alleg'd afford us plainly to perceav both what good cause this Law had to doe for good men in mischances and what necessity it had to suffer accidentally the hard heartednes of bad men which it could not certainly discover or discovering could not subdue no nor indeavour to restrain without multiplying sorrow to them for whom all was indeavour'd The guiltles therfore were not depriv'd thir needful redresses and the hard hearts of others unchastisable in those judicial Courts were so remitted there as bound over to the higher Session of Conscience Notwithstanding all this ther is a loud exception against this Law of God nor can the holy Author save his Law from this exception that it opens a dore to all licence and confusion But this is the rudest I was almost saying the most graceles objection and with the least reverence to God and Moses that could bee devis'd This is to cite God before mans Tribunal to arrogate a wisdom and holines above him Did not God then foresee what event of licence or confusion could follow did not hee know how to ponder these abuses with more prevailing respects in the most eevn ballance of his justice and purenes till these correctors cameup to shew him better The Law is if it stirre up sin any way to stirre it up by forbidding as one contrary excites another Rom. 7. but if it once come to provoke sin by granting licence to sin according to Laws that have no other honest end but only to permit the fulfilling of obstinat lust how is God not made the contradicter of himself No man denies that best things may bee abus'd but it is a rule resulting from many pregnant experiences that what doth most harm in the abusing us'd rightly doth most good And such a good to take a way from honest men for beeing abus'd by such as abuse all things is the greatest abuse of all That the whole Law is no furder usefull then as a man uses it lawfully St. Paul teaches 1 Tim. 1. And that Christian liberty may bee us'd for an occasion to the flesh the same Apostle confesses Galat. 5. yet thinks not of removing it for that but bidds us rather Stand fast in the liberty wherwith Christ hath freed us and not bee held again in the yoke of bondage The very permission which Christ gave to divorce for adultery may bee fouly abus'd by any whose hardnes of heart can either fain adultery or dares committ that hee may divorce And for this cause the Pope and hitherto the Church of England forbid all divorce from the bond of mariage though for openest adultery If then it bee righteous to hinder for the fear of abuse that which Gods Law notwithstanding that caution hath warranted to bee don doth not our righteousnes come short of Antichrist or doe we not rather heerin conform our selvs to his unrighteousnes in this undue and unwise fear For God regards more to releev by this Law the just complaints of good men then to curb the licence of wicked men to the crushing withall and the overwhelming of his afflicted servants He loves more that his Law should look with pitty upon the difficulties of his own then with rigor upon the boundlesse riots of them who serv another Maister and hinder'd heer by strictnes will break another way to wors enormities If this Law therfore have many good reasons for which God gave it and no intention of giving scope to leudnes but as abuse by accident comes in with every good Law and every good thing it cannot be wisdom in us while we can content us with Gods wisdom nor can be purity if his purity will suffice us to except against this Law as if it foster'd licence But if they affirm this Law had no other end but to permitt obdurat lust because it would bee obdurat making the Law of God intentionally to proclame and enact sin lawful as if the will of God were becom sinfull or sin stronger then his direct and Law-giving will the men would bee admonisht to look well to it that while they are so eager to shut the dore against licence they doe not open a wors dore to blasphemy And yet they shall bee heer furder shewn thir iniquity what more foul and common sin among us then drnnkennes and who can bee ignorant that if the importation of Wine and the use of all strong drink were forbid it would both clean ridde the possibility of committing that odious vice and men might afterwards live happily and healthfully without the use of those intoxicating licors Yet who is ther the severest of them all that ever propounded to loos his Sack his Ale toward the certain abolishing of so great a sin who is ther of them the holiest that less loves his rich Canary at meals though it bee fetcht from places that hazard the Religion of them who fetch it and though it make his neighbour drunk out of the same Tunne While they forbid not therfore the use of that liquid Marchandise which forbidd'n would utterly remove a most loathsom sin and not impair either the health or the refreshment of mankind suppli'd many other wayes why doe they forbid a Law of God the forbidding wherof brings into an excessive bondage oft times the best of men and betters not the wors Hee to remove a Nationall vice will not pardon his cupps nor think it concerns him to forbear the quaffing of that outlandish Grape in his unnecessary fullnes though other men abuse it never so much nor is hee so abstemious as to intercede with the Magistrate that all matter of drunkennes be banisht the Common-wealth and yet for the fear of a less inconvenience unpardnably requires of his brethren in thir extreme necessity to debarre themselves the use of Gods permissive Law though it might bee thir saving and no mans indangering the more Thus this peremptory strictnes we may discern of what sort it is how unequal and how unjust But it will breed confusion What confusion it would breed God himself took the care to prevent in the fourth verse of this Chapter that the divorc't beeing maried to another might not return to her former Husband And Justinians law counsels the same in his Title of Nuptials And what confusion els can ther bee in separation to separat upon extrem
urgency the Religious from the irreligious the fit from the unfit the willing from the wilfull the abus'd from the abuser such a separation is quite contrary to confusion But to binde and mixe together holy with Atheist hevnly with hellish fitnes with unfitnes light with darknes antipathy with antipathy the injur'd with the injurer and force them into the most inward neernes of a detested union this doubtles is the most horrid the most unnatural mixture the greatest confusion that can be confus'd Thus by this plain and Christian Talmud vindicating the Law of God from irreverent and unwary expositions I trust wher it shall meet with intelligible perufers som stay at least of mens thoughts will bee obtain'd to consider these many prudent and righteous ends of this divorcing permission That it may have for the great Authors sake heerafter som competent allowance to bee counted a little purer then the prerogative of a legal and public ribaldry granted to that holy seed So that from hence wee shall hope to finde the way still more open to the reconciling of those places which treat this matter in the Gospel And thether now without interruption the cours of method brings us TETRACHORDON MATT. 5. 31 32. 31 It hath beene said whosoever shall put away his wife let him give her a writing of divorcement 32 But I say unto you that whosoever shall put away his wife c. MATT. 19. 3 4. c. 3 And the Pharises also came unto him tempting him c. IT hath beene said What hitherto hath beene spoke upon the law of God touching Matrimony or divorce hee who will deny to have bin argu'd according to reason and all equity of Scripture I cannot edifie how or by what rule of proportion that mans vertue calculates what his elements are not what his analytics Confidently to those who have read good bookes and to those whose reason is not an illiterate booke to themselves I appeale whether they would not confesse all this to bee the commentary of truth and justice were it not for these recited words of our Saviour And if they take not backe that which they thus grant nothing sooner might perswade them that Christ heer teaches no new precept and nothing sooner might direct them to finde his meaning then to compare and measure it by the rules of nature and eternall righteousnes which no writt'n law extinguishes and the Gospel least of all For what can be more opposite and disparaging to the cov'nant of love of freedom of our manhood in grace then to bee made the yoaking pedagogue of new severities the scribe of syllables and rigid letters not only greevous to the best of men but different and strange from the light of reason in them save only as they are fain to stretch distort their apprehensions for feare of displeasing the verbal straightnesse of a text which our owne servil feare gives us not the leisure to understand aright If the law of Christ shall be writt'n in our hearts as was promis'd to the Gospel Jer. 31 how can this in the vulgar and superficiall sense be a law of Christ so farre from beeing writt'n in our hearts that it injures and dissallowes not onely the free dictates of nature and morall law but of charity also and religion in our hearts Our Saviours doctrine is that the end and the fulfilling of every command is charity no faith without it no truth without it no worship no workes pleasing to God but as they partake of charity He himselfe sets us an example breaking the solemnest and the strictest ordinance of religious rest and justify'd the breaking not to cure a dying man but such whose cure might without danger have beene deserr'd And wherefore needes must the sick mans bed be carried home on that day by his appointment and why were the Disciples who could not forbeare on that day to pluck the corne so industriously desended but to shew us that if he preferr'd the slightest occasions of mans good before the observing of highest and severest ordinances hee gave us much more easie leave to breake the intolerable yoake of a never well joyn'd wedlocke for the removing of our heaviest afflictions Therefore it is that the most of evangelick precepts are given us in proverbiall formes to drive us from the letter though we love ever to be sticking there For no other cause did Christ assure us that whatsoever things wee binde or slacken on earth are so in heaven but to signifie that the christian arbitrement of charity is supreme decider of all controversie and supreme resolver of all Scripture not as the Pope determines for his owne tyrany but as the Church ought to determine for its owne true liberty Hence Eusebius not far from beginning his History compares the state of Christians to that of Noah and the Patriarkes before the Law And this indeede was the reason why Apostolick tradition in the antient Church was counted nigh equall to the writt'n word though it carried them at length awry for want of considering that tradition was not left to bee impos'd as law but to be a patterne of that Christian prudence and liberty which holy men by right assum'd of old which truth was so evident that it found entrance even into the Councell of Trent when the point of tradition came to be discusst And Marinaro a learned Carmelite for approaching too neere the true cause that gave esteeme to tradition that is to say the difference betweene the Old and New Testament the one punctually prescribing writt'n Law the other guiding by the inward spirit was reprehended by Cardinall Poole as one that had spoken more worthy a German Collequie then a generall councell I omit many instances many proofes and arguments of this kind which alone would compile a just volume and shall content me heer to have shew'n breifly that the great and almost only commandment of the Gospel is to command nothing against the good of man and much more no civil command against his civil good If we understand not this we are but crackt cimbals we do but tinckle we know nothing we doe nothing all the sweat of our toilsomest obedience will but mock us And what wee suffer superstitiously returnes us no thankes Thus med'cining our eyes wee neede not doubt to see more into the meaning of these our Saviours words then many who have gone before us It hath beene said whosoever shall put away his wife Our Saviour was by the doctors of his time suspected of intending to dissolve the law In this chapter he wipes off this aspersion upon his accusers and shewes how they were the law brea kers In every common wealth when it decayes corruption makes two maine steps first when men cease to doe according to the inward and uncompell'd actions of vertue caring only to live by the outward constraint of law and turne the Simplicity of reall good into the craft of seeming so by law To this
hypocritical honesty was Rome declin'd in that age wherein Horace liv'd and discover'd it to Quintius Whom doe we count a good man whom but he Who keepes the lawes and statutes of the Senate Who judges in great suits and controversies Whose witnesse and opinion winnes the cause But his owne house and the whole neighbourhood Sees his foule inside through his whited skin The next declining is when law becomes now too straight for the secular manners and those too loose for the cincture of law This brings in false and crooked interpretations to ecke out law and invents the suttle encroachment of obscure traditions hard to be disprov'd To both these descents the Pharises themselves were fall'n Our Saviour therefore shews them both where they broke the law in not marking the divine intent thereof but onely the letter and where they deprav'd the letter also with sophisticall expositions This law of divorse they had deprav'd both waies First by teaching that to give a bill of divorse was all the duty which that law requir'd what ever the cause were Next by running to divorse for any triviall accidentall cause whenas the law evidently stayes in the grave causes of naturall and immutable dislike It hath been said saith he Christ doth not put any contempt or disesteeme upon the law struct but if he discerne his willingnesse and candor made use of to intrapp him will suddainly draw in himselfe and laying aside the facil vein of perspicuity will know his time to utter clouds and riddles If he be not lesse wise then that noted Fish when as he should bee not unwiser then the Serpent Our Saviour at no time exprest any great desire to teach the obstinate and unteachable Pharises but when they came to tempt him then least of all As now about the liberty of divorce so another time about the punishment of adultery they came to sound him and what satisfaction got they from his answer either to themselves or to us that might direct a law under the Gospel new from that of Moses unlesse we draw his absolution of adultery into an edict So about the tribute who is there can picke out a full solution what and when we must give to Caesar by the answer which he gave the Pharises If we must give to Caesar that which is Caesars and all be Caesars which hath his image wee must either new stamp our Coine or we may goe new stamp our Foreheads with the superscription of slaves in stead of freemen Besides it is a generall precept not only of Christ but of all other Sages not to instruct the unworthy and the conceited who love tradition more then truth but to perplex and stumble them purposely with contriv'd obscurities No wonder then if they who would determine of divorce by this place have ever found it difficult and unfatisfying through all the ages of the Church as Austine himselfe and other great writers confesse Lastly it is manifest to be the principal scope of our Saviour both here and in the 5. of Mat. to convince the Pharises of what they being evill did licentiously not to explaine what others being good and blamelesse men might be permitted to doe in case of extremity Neither was it seasonable to talke of honest and conscientious liberty among them who had abused legall and civil liberty to uncivil licence We doe not say to a servant what we say to a sonne nor was it expedient to preach freedome to those who had transgrest in wantonnesse When we rebuke a Prodigal we admonish him of thrift not of magnificence or bounty And to school a proud man we labour to make him humble not magnanimous So Christ to retort these arrogant inquisitors their own tooke the course to lay their hautinesse under a severity which they deserv'd not to acquaint them or to make them judges either of the just mans right and privilege or of the afflicted mans necessity And if wee may have leave to conjecture there is a likelyhood offer'd us by Tertullian in his 4. against Marcion whereby it may seeme very probable that the Pharises had a private drifr of malice against our Saviours life in proposing this question and our Saviour had a peculiar aim in the rigor of his answer both to let them know the freedome of his spirit and the sharpenesse of his discerning This I must now shew saith Tertullian Whence our Lord deduc'd this sentence and which way he directed it whereby it will more fully appeare that he intended not to dissolve Moses And there upon tells us that the vehemence of this our Saviours speech was cheifly darted against Herod and Herodias The story is out of Josephus Herod had beene a long time married to the daughter of Aretas King of Petra til hapning on his jorney towards Rome to be entertain'd at his brother Philips house he cast his eye unlawfully and unguestlike upon Herodias there the wife of Philip but daughter to Aristobulus their common brother and durst make words of marrying her his Neece from his brothers bed She assented upon agreement he should expell his former wife All was accomplisht and by the Baptist rebuk't with the losse of his head Though doubtlesse that staid not the various discourses of men upon the fact which while the Herodian flatterers and not a few perhaps among the Pharises endevout'd to defend by wresting the law it might be a meanes to bring the question of divorce into a hot agitation among the people how farre Moses gave allowance The Pharises therefore knowing our Saviour to be a friend of Iohn the Baptist and no doubt but having heard much of his Sermon in the Mount wherein he spake rigidly against the licence of divorce they put him this question both in hope to find him a contradicter of Moses and a condemner of Herod so to insnare him within compasse of the same accusation which had ended his friend and our Saviour so orders his answer as that they might perceive Herod and his Adultresse only not nam'd so lively it concern'd them both what he spake No wonder then if the sentence of our Saviour sounded stricter then his custome was which his conscious attempters doubtlesse apprehended sooner then his other auditors Thus much we gaine from hence to informe us that what Christ intends to speake here of divorce will be rather the forbidding of of what we may not doe herein passionately and abusively as Herod and Herodias did then the discussing of what herein we may doe reasonably and necessarily Is it lawfull for a man to put away his wife It might be render'd more exactly from the Greeke to loosen or to set free which though it seeme to have a milder fignification then the two Hebrew words commonly us'd for divorce yet Interpreters have noted that the Greeke also is read in the Septuagint for an act which is not without constraint As when Achish drove from his presence David counterfeting madnesse Psal 34. the Greeke word
fond supposals that have not the least footing in Scripture As that the Jews learnt this custome of divorce in Egypt and therefore God would not unteach it them till Christ came but let it stick as a notorious botch of deformity in the midst of his most perfect and severe law And yet he saith Levit. the 18th after the doings of Egypt ye shall not do Another while they invent a slander as what thing more bold then teaching Ignorance when he shifts to hide his nakednes that the Jews were naturally to their wives the cruellest men in the world would poison braine and doe I know not what if they might not divorce Certain if it were a fault heavily punisht to bring an evill report upon the land which God gave what is it to raise a groundles calumny against the people which God made choise of But that this bold interpretament how commonly so ever sided with cannot stand a minute with any competent reverence to God or his law or his people nor with any other maxim of religion or good manners might bee prov'd through all the heads and Topics of argumentation but I shall willingly bee as concise as possible First the law not onely the moral but the judicial given by Moses is just and pure for such is God who gave it Harken O Israel saith Moses Dent. 4. unto the statutes and the judgements which I teach you to doe them that ye may live c. ye shall not adde unto the word which J command you neither shall ye diminish ought from it that ye may keepe the commandements of the Lord your God which I command you And onward in the chapter Behold I have taught you statutes and judgements even as the Lord my God commanded me Keepe therefore and doe them for this is your wisedome and your understanding For what nation hath God so nigh unto them and what-nation hath statutes and judgements so righteous as all this law which I set before ye this day Is it imaginable there should bee among these a law which God allow'd not a law giving permissions laxative to unmarry a wife and marry a lust a law to suffer a kind of tribunall adultery Many other scriptures might be brought to assert the purity of this judicial law and many I have alleg'd before this law therefore is pure and just But if it permit if it teach if it defend that which is both unjust and impure as by the common doctrine it doth what thinke we The three generall doctrines of Justinians law are To live in honesty To hurt no man To give every one his due Shall the Roman civil law observe these three things as the onely end of law and shall a statute be found in the civil law of God enacted simply and totally against all these three precepts of nature and morality Secondly the gifts of God are all perfet and certainely the law is of all his other gifts one of the perfetest But if it give that outwardly which it takes away really give that seemingly which if a man take it wraps him into sinne and damns him what gift of an enemy can be more dangerous and destroying then this Thirdly Moses every where commends his lawes preferrs them before all of other nations and warrants them to be the way of life and safety to all that walke therein Levit. 18. But if they containe statutes which God approves not and traine men unweeting to committ injustice and adultery under the shelter of law if those things bee sin and death sins wages what is this law but the snare of death Fourthly the statutes and judgements of the Lord which without exception are often told us to be such as doing wee may live by them are doubtles to be counted the rule of knowledge and of conscience For I had not known lust saith the Apostle but by the law But if the law come downe from the state of her incorruptible majesty to grant lust his boon palpably it darkns and confounds both knowledge and conscience it goes against the common office of all goodnes and freindlinesse wich is at lest to counsel and admonish it subverts the rules of all sober education and is it selfe a most negligent and debaushing tutor Fiftly if the law permit a thing unlawfull it permitts that which else where it hath forbid so that hereby it contradicts it selfe and transgresses it selfe But if the law become a transgressor it stands guilty to it selfe and how then shall it save another it makes a confederacy with sin how then can it justly condemne a sinner and thus reducing it selfe to the stateof neither saving nor condemning it will not faile to expire solemnely ridiculous Sixtly the Prophets in Scripture declare severely against the decreeing of that which is unjust Psal 94. 20. Isaiah the 10th But it was done they say for heardnesse of heart To which objection the Apostles rule not to doe evill that good may come thereby gives an invincible repuls and here especially where it cannot be shewn how any good came by doing this evil how rather more evil did not hereon abound for the giving way to hardnesse of heart hard'ns the more and adds more to the number God to an evil and adulterous generation would not grant a signe much lesse would he for their hardnesse of heatt pollute his law with an adulterous permission Yea but to permitt evil is not to doe evil Yes it is in a most eminent manner to doe evil where else are all our grave and faithfull sayings that he whose office is to forbid and forbids not bids exhorts encourages Why hath God denounc'd his anger against parents maisters freinds magistrates neglectfull of forbidding what they ought if law the common father maister friend and perpetuall magistrate shall not onely not forbidd but enact exhibit and uphold with countnance and protection a deede every way dishonest what ever the pretence be If it were of those inward vices which the law cannot by outward constraint remedy but leaves to conscience and perswasion it had bin guiltlesse in being silent but to write a decree of that which can be no way lawfull and might with ease be hinder'd makes law by the doome of law it selfe accessory in the highest degree Seventhly it makes God the direct author of sin For although he bee not made the authour of what he silently permitts in his providence yet in his law the image of his will when in plaine expression he constitutes and ordaines a fact utterly unlawfull what wants hee to authorize it and what wants that to be the author Eightly to establish by law a thing wholy unlawfull and dishonest is an affirmation was never heard of before in any law reason philosophy or religion till it was rais'd by inconsideratglossists from the mistake of this text And though the Civilians have bin contented to chew this opinion after the canon had subdu'd them yet they never could bring example or authority
the whole law of nations as only sufferd for the same cause it being shewn us by Saint Paul 1 Cor. 6. that the very seeking of a mans right by law and at the hands of a worldly magistrat is not without the hardnesse of our hearts For why doe ye not rather take wrong saith he why suffer ye not rather your selves to be defrauded If nothing now must be suffer'd for hardnes of heart I say the very prosecution of our right by way of civil justice can no more bee suffer'd among Christians for the hardnes of heart wherwith most men persue it And that would next remove all our judiciall lawes and this restraint of divorce also in the number which would more then halfe end the controversy But if it be plaine that the whole juridical law and civil power is only suffer'd under the Gospel for the hardnes of our hearts then wherefore should not that which Moses suffer'd be suffer'd still by the same reason In a second signification hardnes of heart is tak'n for a stubborne resolution to doe evil And that God ever makes any law purposely to such I deny for he voutsafes not to enter gov'nant with them but as they fortune to be mixt with good men and passe undiscover'd much lesse that he should decree an unlawfull thing only to serve their licentiousnes But that God suffers this reprobate hardnes of heart I affirm not only in this law of divorce but throughout all his best and purest commandements He commands all to worship in singlenes of heart according to all his Ordinances and yet suffers the wicked man to performe all the rites of religion hypocritically and in the hardnes of his heart He gives us generall statutes privileges in all civil matters just good of themselves yet suffers unworthiest men to use them by themt o prosecute their own right or any colour of right though for the most part maliciously covetously nigorously revengefully He allow'd by law the discreet father and husband to forbidd if he thought fit the religious vows of his wife or daughter Num. 30. and in the same law suffer'd the hard heartednes of impious and covetous fathers or husbands abusing this law to forbidd their wives or daughters in their offrings and devotions of greatest zeal If then God suffer hardnes of heart equally in the best laws as in this of divorce there can be no reason that for this cause this law should be abolisht But other lawes they object may be well us'd this never How often shall I answer both from the institution of mariage and from other general rules in Scripture that this law of divorce hath many wise and charitable ends besides the being suffer'd for hardnes of heart which is indeed no end but an accident happning through the whole law which gives to good men right and to bad men who abuse right under false pretences gives only sufferance Now although Christ express no other reasons here but only what was suffer'd it nothing followes that this law had no other reason to be permitted but for hardnes of heart The Scripture seldome or never in one place sets down all the reasons of what it grants or commands especially when it talks to enemies and tempters St Paul permitting mariage 1 Cor. 7 seems to permit even that also for hardnes of heart only lest we should run into fornication yet no intelligent man thence concludes mariage allow'd in the Gospel only to avoid an evill because no other end is there exprest Thus Moses of necessity suffer'd many to put away their wives for hardnesse of heart but enacted the law of divorce doubtles for other good causes not for this only sufferance He permitted not divorce by law as an evil for that was impossible to divine law but permitted by accident the evil of them who divorc't against the lawes intention undiscoverably This also may be thought not improbably that Christ stirr'd up in his spirit against these tempting Pharises answer'd them in a certain forme of indignation usual among good authors wherby the question or the truth is not directly answer'd but som thing which is fitter for them who aske to heare So in the ecclesiastical stories one demanding how God imploy'd himself before the world was made had āswer that he was making hel for curious questioners Another and Libanius the Sophist as I remember asking in derision som Christian what the Carpenter meaning our Saviour was doing now that Julian so prevail'd had it return'd him that the Carpenter was making a coffin for the Apostat So Christ being demanded maliciously why Moses made the law of divorce answers them in a vehement scheme not telling them the cause why he made it but what was fittest to be told them that for the hardnes of their hearts he suffer'd them to abuse it And all beit Mark say not he suffer'd you but to you he wrote this precept Mark may be warrantably expounded by Mathew the larger And whether he suffer'd or gave precept being all one as was heard it changes not the trope of indignation fittest account for such askers Next for the hardnes of your hearts to you he wrote this precept inferrs not therfore for this cause only he wrote it as was parallell'd by other Scriptures Lastly It may be worththe observing that Christ speaking to the Pharises does not say in general that for hardnes of heart he gave this precept but you he suffer'd to you he gave this precept for your hardnes of heart It cannot be easily thought that Christ heer included all the children of Israel under the person of these tempting Pharises but that he conceals wherefore he gave the better sort of them this law and expresses by saying emphatically To you how he gave it to the worser such as the Pharises best represented that is to say for the hardnes of your hearts as indeed to wicked men and hardn'd hearts he gives the whole law and the Gospel also to hard'n them the more Thus many waies it may orthod oxally be understood how God or Moses suffer'd such as the demanders were to divorce for hardnes of heart Whereas the vulgar expositer beset with contradictions and absurdities round and resolving at any peril to make an exposition of it as there is nothing more violent and boistrous then a reverend ignorance in fear to be convicted rushes brutely and impetuously against all the principles both of nature piety and moral goodnes and in the sury of his literal expounding overturns them all But from the the beginning it was not so Not how from the beginning doe they suppose that men might not divorce at all not necessarily not deliberatly except for adultery but that som law like canon law presently attacht them both before and after the flood till stricter Moses came and with law brought licence into the world that were a fancy indeed to smile at Undoubtedly as to point of judiciall law divorce was more
permissive from the beginning before Moses then under Moses But from the beginning that is to say by the institution in Paradice it was not intended that matrimony should dissolve for every trivial cause as you Pharises accustome But that it was not thus suffer'd from the beginning ever since the race of men corrupted laws were made he who will affirme must have found out other antiquities then are yer known Besides we must consider now what can be so as from the beginning not only what should be so In the beginning had men continu'd perfet it had bin just that all things should have remain'd as they began to Adam Eve But after that the sons of men grew violent injurious it alter'd the lore of justice and put the goverment of things into a new frame While man and woman were both perfet each to other there needed no divorce but when they both degenerated to imperfection oft times grew to be an intolerable evil each to other then law more justly did permitt the alienating of that evil which mistake made proper then it did the appropriating of that good which Nature at first made common For if the absence of outward good be not so bad as the presence of a close evil that propriety whether by cov'nant or possession be but the attainment of some outward good it is more natural righteous that the law should sever us from an intimat evil then appropriate any outward good to us from the community of nature The Gospel indeed tending ever to that which is perfetest aim'dat the restorement of all things as they were in the beginning And therefore all things were in common to those primitive Christians in the Acts which Ananias Sapphira dearly felt That custome also continu'd more or less till the time of Justin Martyr as may be read in his 2d Apology which might be writt after that act of communion perhaps some 40. yeares above a hunder'd But who will be the man shall introduce this kind of common wealth as christianity now goes If then mariage must be as in the beginning the persons that marry must be such as then were the institution must make good in som tolerable sort what it promises toeeither party If not it is but madnes to drag this one ordinance back to the beginning and draw down all other to the present necessity and condition farre from the beginning even to the tolerating of extortions and opp ressions Christ only told us that from the beginning it was not so that is to say not so as the Pharises manuâ—'d the busines did not command us that it should be forcibly so again in all points as at the beginning or so at least in our intentions and desires but so in execution as reason and present nature can bear Although we are not to seek that the institution it selfe from the first beginning was never but conditional as all cov'nants are because thus and thus therefore so and so if not thus then not so Then moreover was perfetest to fulfill each law in it selfe now is perfetest in this estate of things to ask of charity how much law may be fulfill'd els the fulfilling oft times is the greatest breaking If any therefore demand which is now most perfection to ease an extremity by divorce or to enrage and fester it by the greevous observance of a miserable wedloc I am not destitute to say which is most perfection although som who beleev they thinke favourably of divorce esteem it only venial to infirmity Him I hold more in the way to perfection who forgoes an unfit ungodly discordant wedloc to live according to peace love Gods institution in a fitter chois then he who debarrs himself the happy experience of all godly which is peaceful conversatioÌ„ in his family to live a contentious and unchritian life not to be avoided in temptations not to be liv'd in only for the fals keeping of a most unreal nullity a mariage that hath no affinity with Gods intention a daring phantasm a meer toy of terror awing weak senses to the lamentable superstition of ruining themselves the remedy wherof God in his law voutsafes us Which not to dare use he warranting is not our perfection is our infirmity our little faith our timorous and low conceit of charity and in them who force us it is their masking pride and vanity to seem holier more circumspect then God So far is it that we need impute to him infirmity who thus divorces since the rule of perfection is not so much that which was don in the beginning as that which now is nearest to the rule of charity This is the greatest the perfetest the highest commandment V. 9. And I say unto you who so shall put away his wife except it be for Fornication and shall marry another committeth adultery and whose marrieth her which is put away doth commit adultery And I say unto you That this restrictive denouncement of Christ contradicts and refutes that permissive precept of Moses common expositers themselves disclaime and that it does not traverse from the closet of conscience to the courts of civil or canon law with any Christian rightly commenc't requires not long evincing If Christ then did not heer check permissive Moses nor did reduce matrimony to the beginning more then all other things as the reason of mans condition could beare we would know precisely what it was which he did and what the end was of his declaring thus austerely against divorce For this is a confesst oracle in law that he who lookes not at the intention of a precept the more superstitions he is of the letter the more he misinterprets Was it to shame Moses that had beene monstrous or all those purest ages of Israel to whom the permission was granted that were as incredible Or was it that he who came to abrogate the burden of law not the equity should put this yoke upon a blamelesse person to league himselfe in chaines with a begirting mischeif not to separat till death hee who taught us that no man puts a peece of new cloth upon an old garment nor new wine into old bottles that he should sow this patch of strictnes upon the old apparel of our frailty to make a rent more incurable when as in all other amendments his doctrine still charges that regard be had to the garment and to the vessel what it can endure this were an irregular and single peece of rigor not onely sounding disproportion to the whole Gospel but outstretching the most rigorous nervs of law and rigor it selfe No other end therefore can bee left imaginable of this excessive restraint but to bridle those erroneous and licentious postillers the Pharises not by telling them what may bee done in necessity but what censure they deserve who divorce abusively which their Tetrarch had done And as the offence was in one extreme so the rebuke to bring more efficaciously
comprehended under that name If saith he a divorce happ'n for any cause either fornication or adultery or any hainous fault the word of God blames not either the man or wife marrying again nor cutts them off from the congregation or from life but beares with the infirmity not that he may keep both wives but that leaving the former he may be lawfully joyn'd to the latter the holy word and the holy Church of God commiserates this man especially if he be otherwise of good conversation and live according to Gods law This place is cleerer then exposition and needs no comment Ambrose on the 16. of Luke teaches that all wedloc is not Gods joyning and to the 19. of Pro. That a wife is prepard of the Lord as the old latin translates it he answers that the septuagint renders it a wife is fitted by the Lord and temper'd to a kind of harmony and where that harmony is there God joyns where it is not there dissention reigns which is not from God for God is love This he brings to prove the marrying of Christian with Gentile to be no mariage and consequently divorc't without sin but he who sees not this argument how plainly it serves to divorce any untunable or unattonable matrimony sees little On the 1 to the Cor 7 he grants a woman may leave her husband not for only fornication but for Apostacy and inverting nature though not marry again but the man may heer are causes of divorce assign'd other then adultery And going on he affirms that the cause of God is greater then the cause of matrimony that the reverence of wedloc is not due to him who hates the author thereof that no matrimony is firm without devotion to God that dishonour don to God acquitts the other being deserted from the bond of matrimony that the faith of mariage is not to be kept with such If these contorted sentences be ought worth it is not the desertion that breaks what is broken but the impiety and who then may not for that cause better divorce then tarry to be deserted or these grave sayings of St. Ambrose are but knacks Jerom on the 19. of Matthew explains that for the cause of fornication or the suspicion thereof a man may freely divorce What can breed that suspicion but sundry faults leading that way by Jeroms consent therfore divorce is free not only for actuall adultery but for any cause that may encline a wise man to the just suspicion therof Austin also must be remember'd among those who hold that this instance offornication gives equal inference to other faults equally hateful for which to divorce therfore in his books to Pollentius he disputes that infidelity as being a greater sin then adultery ought so much the rather cause a divorce And on the Sermon in the Mount under the name of fornication will have idolatry or any harmfull superstition contain'd which are not thought to disturb matrimony so directly as som other obstinacies and dissaffections more against the daily duties of that cov'nant in the eastern tongues not unfrequently call'd fornication as hath bin shew'n Hence is understood faith he that not only for bodily fornication but for that which draws the mind from Gods law and fouly corrupts it a man may without fault put away his wife and a wife her husband because the Lord excepts the cause of fornication which fornication we are constrain'd to interpret in a general sense And in the first book of his retractations chap. 16. he retracts not this his opinion but commends it to serious consideration and explains that he counted not there all sin to be fornication but the more detestable sort of sins The cause of fornication therefore is not in this discours newly interpreted to signify other faults infringing the duties of wedloc besides adultery Lastly the councel of Agatba in the year 506. can 25. decreed that if lay men who divorc't without some great fault or giving no probable cause therfore divorc't that they might marry som unlawfull person or som other mans if before the provinciall Bishops were made acquainted or judgement past they presum'd this excommunication was the penalty Whence it followes that if the cause of divorce were som great offence or that they gave probable causes for what they did and did not therefore divorce that they might presume with som unlawfull person or what was another mans the censure of Church in those daies did not touch them Thus having alleg'd anough to shew after what manner the primitive Church for above 500. yeares understood our Saviours words touching divorce I shall now with a labour less disperst and sooner dispatcht bring under view what the civil law of those times constituted about this matter I say the civil law which is the honour of every true Civilian to stand for rather then to count that for law which the pontificiall Canon hath enthrall'd them to and in stead of interpreting a generous and elegant law made them the drudges of a blockish Rubric Theodosius and Valentinian pious Emperors both ordain'd that as by consent lawfull mariages were made so by consent but not without the bill of divorce they might be dissolv'd and to dissolve was the more difficult onely in favour of the children We see the wisedome and piety of that age one of the purest and learnedest since Christ conceav'd no hindrance in the words of our Saviour but that a divorce mutually consented might bee suffer'd by the law especially if there were no children or if there were carefull provision was made And further saith that law supposing there wanted the consent of either wee designe the causes of divorce by this most wholsom law for as we forbid the dissolving of mariage without just cause so we desire that a husband or a wife distrest by som advers necessity should be freed though by an unhappy yet a necessary releefe What dramm of wisedome or religion for charity is truest religion could there be in that knowing age which is not virtually summ'd up in this most just law As for those other Christian Emperours from Constantine the first of them finding thé Roman law in this point so answerable to the Mosaic it might bee the likeliest cause why they alter'd nothing to restraint but if ought rather to liberty for the helpe and consideration of the weaker sexe according as the Gospel seems to make the wife more equal to her husband in these conjugal respects then the law of Moses doth Therefore if a man were absent from his wife foure yeares and in that space not heard of though gon to warre in the service of the Empire she might divorce and mary another by the edict of Constantine to Dalmatius Co. l. 5. tit 17. And this was an age of the Church both antient and cry'd up still for the most flourishing in knowledge and pious government since the Apostles But to returne to this law of Theodosius with this observation by
who urgently requires a wicked thing though professing the same religion as from him who urges a heathenish or superstitious compliance in a different faith For if there be such necessity of our abiding wee ought rather to abide the utmost for religion then for any other cause seeing both the cause of our stay is pretended our religion to mariage and the cause of our suffering is suppos'd our constant mariage to religion Beza therfore by his owne definition of a deserter justifies a divorce from any wicked or intolerable conditions rather in the same religion then in a different Aretius a famous Divine of Bern approves many causes of divorce in his Problemes and adds that the lawes and consistories of Swizzerland approve them also As first adultery and that not actual only but intentional all eging Matthew the fifth Whosoever looketh to lust hath committed adultery already in his heart Wher by saith he our Saviour shewes that the breach of matrimony may be not only by outward act but by the heart and desire when that hath once possest it renders the conversation intolerable and commonly the fact followes Other causes to the number of 9. or 10. consenting in most with the imperial lawes may bee read in the author himselfe who averrs them to be grave and weighty All these are men of name in Divinity and to these if need were might be added more Nor have the Civilians bin all so blinded by the Canon as not to avouch the justice of those old permissions touching divorce Alciat of Millain a man of extraordinary wisedome and learning in the sixt book of his Parerga defends those imperial lawes not repugnant to the Gospel as the Church then interpreted For saith hee the antients understood him separat by man whom passions and corrupt affections divorc't not if the provincial Bishops first heard the matter and judg'd as the councel of Agatha declares and on some part of the Code hee names Isidorus Hispalensis the first computer of Canons to be in the same minde And in the former place gives his opinion that diuorce might be more lawfully permitted then usury Corasius recorded by Helvicus among the famous Lawyers hath been already cited of the same judgement Wesembechius a much nam'd Civilian in his comment on this law defends it and afficms that our Sauiour excluded not other faults equall to adultery and that the word fornication signifies larger among the Hebrewes then with us comprehending every fault which alienates from him to whom obedience is due and that the primitive Church interpreted so Grotius yet living and of prime note among learned men retires plainly from the Canon to the antient civility yea to the Mosaic law as being most just and undecevable On the fifth of Matt. he saith that Christ made no civil lawes but taught us how to use law that the law sent not a husband to the Judge about this matter of divorce but left him to his owne conscience that Christ therfore cannot be thought to send him that adultery may be judg'd by a vehement suspition that the exception of adultery seems an example of other like offences proves it from the manner of speech the maxims of law the reason of charity and common equity These authorities without long search I had to produce all excellent men som of them such as many ages had brought forth none greater almost the meanest of them might deserve to obtain credit in a singularity what might not then all of them joyn'd in an opinion so consonant to reason For although som speak of this cause others of that why divorce may be yet all agreeing in the necessary enlargement of that textual straitnes leave the matter to equity not to literal bondage and so the opinion closes Nor could I have wanted more testimonies had the cause needed a more sollicitous enquiry But herein the satisfaction of others hath bin studied not the gaining of more assurance to mine own perswasion although authorities contributing reason withall bee a good confirmation and a welcom But God I solemnly attest him with held from my knowledge the consenting judgement of these men so late untill they could not bee my instructers but only my unexpected witnesses to partial men that in this work I had not given the worst experiment of an industry joyn'd with integrity and the free utterance though of an unpopular truth Which yet to the people of England may if God so please prove a memorable informing certainly a benefit which was intended them long since by men of highest repute for wisedome piety Bucer Erasmus Only this one autority more whether in place or out of place I am not to omitt which if any can think a small one I must bee patitient it is no smaller then the whole assembl'd autority of England both Church and State and in those times which are on record for the purest and sincerest that ever shon yet on the reformation of this Iland the time of Edward the 6th That worthy Prince having utterly abolisht the Canon Law out of his Dominions as his Father did before him appointed by full vote of Parlament a Committy of two and thirty chosen men Divines and Lawyers of whom Cranmer the Archbishop Peter Martyr and Walter Haddon not without the assistance of Sir John Cheeke the Kings Tutor a man at that time counted the learnedest of Englishmen for piety not inferior were the cheif to frame anew som Ecclesiastical Laws that might be in stead of what was abrogated The work with great diligence was finisht and with as great approbation of that reforming age was receav'd and had bin doubtlesse as the learned Preface thereof testifies establisht by Act of Parlament had not the good Kings death so soon ensuing arrested the furder growth of Religion also from that season to this Those laws thus founded on the memorable wisedome and piety of that religious Parlament and Synod allow divorce and second mariage not only for adultery or desertion but for any capital cnmity or plot laid against the others life and likewise for evil and fierce usage nay the 12. Chap. of that title by plaine consequence declares that lesser contentions if they be perpetual may obtaine divorce which is all one really with the position by me held in the former treatise publisht on this argument herein only differing that there the cause of perpetual strife was put for example in the unchangeable discord of som natures but in these lawes intended us by the best of our ancestors the effect of continual strife is determin'd no unjust plea of divorce whether the cause be naturall or wilfull Wherby the warinesse and deliberation from which that discourse proceeded will appeare that God hath aided us to make no bad conclusion of this point seeing the opinion which of late hath undergon ill censures among the vulgar hath now prov'd to have don no violence to Scripture unlesse all these famous Authors alleg'd have done the like nor hath affirm'd ought more then what indeed the most nominated Fathers of the Church both ancient and modern are unexpectedly found affirming the lawes of Gods peculiar people of primitive Christendom found to have practis'd reformed Churches and states to have imitated and especially the most pious Church-times of this Kingdom to have fram'd and publisht and but for sad hindrances in the sudden change of religion had enacted by Parlament Hence forth let them who condemn the assertion of this book for new and licentious be sorry lest while they think to be of the graver sort and take on them to be teachers they expose themselves rather to be pledg'd up and down by men who intimatly know them to the discovery and contempt of their ignorance and presumption The End Errata Pag. 57. lin 16. and by them to prosecute no comma between Pag. 88. lin 3. Basilius Macedo no comma between