the law were unjust giving grace of pardon without the Gospel or if it give allowance without pardon it would be dissolute and deceitfull saying in general do this and live and yet deceaving and damning with obscure and hollow permissions Wee find also by experience that the Spirit of God in the Gospel hath been alwaies more effectual in the illumination of our minds to the gift of faith then in the moving of our wills to any excellence of vertue either above the Iews or the Heathen Hence those indulgences in the Gospel All cannot receive this saying Every man hath his proper gift with strict charges not to lay on yokes which our Fathers could not bear But this that Moses suffer'd for the hardnes of thir hearts he suffer'd not by that enacted dispensation farre be it but by a meer accidental sufferance of undiscover'd hypocrites who made ill use of that Law for that God should enact a dispensation for hard hearts to do that wherby they must live in priviledg'd adultery however it go for the receav'd opinion I shall ever disswade my self from so much hardihood as to beleeve Certainly this is not the manner of God whose pure eyes cannot behold much lesse his perfect Laws dispence with such impurity and if we consider well we shall finde that all dispensations are either to avoid wors inconveniences or to support infirm consciences for a time but that a dispensatioÌ„ should be as long liv'd as a Law to tolerate adultery for hardnes of heart both sins perhaps of like degree and yet this obdurate disease cannot be conceav'd how it is the more amended by this unclean remedy is a notion of that extravagance from the sage principles of piety that who considers throughly cannot but admire how this hath been digested all this while What may we doe then to salve this seeming inconsistence I must not dissemble that I am confident it can be don no other way then this Moses Deut. 24 1. establisht a grave and prudent Law full of moral equity full of due consideration towards nature that cannot be resisted a Law consenting with the Laws of wisest men and civilest nations That when a man hath maried a wife if it come to passe he cannot love her by reason of some displeasing natural quality or unfitnes in her let him write her a bill of divorce The intent of which Law undoubtedly was this that if any good and peaceable man should discover some helples disagreement or dislike either of mind or body wherby he could not cherfully perform the duty of a husband without the perpetual dissembling of offence and disturbance to his spirit rather then to live uncomfortably and unhappily both to himself and to his wife rather then to continue undertaking a duty which he could not possibly discharge he might dismisse her whom he could not tolerably and so not conscionably retain And this Law the Spirit of God by the mouth of Salomon Pro. 30. 21. 23. testifies to be a good and a necessary Law by granting it that to dwell with a hated woman for hated the hebrew word signifies is a thing that nature cannot endure What follows then but that Law must remedy what nature cannot undergoe Now that many licentious and hard hearted men took hold of this Law to cloak thir bad purposes is nothing strange to beleeve And these were they not for whom Moses made the Law God forbid but whose hardnes of heart taking ill advantage by this Law he held it better to suffer as by accident where it could not be detected rather then good men should loose their just and lawfull privilege of remedy Christ therfore having to answer these tempting Pharises according as his custom was not meaning to inform their proud ignorance what Moses did in the true intent of the Law which they had ill cited suppressing the true cause for which Moses gave it and extending it to every slight matter tells them thir own what Moses was forc't to suffer by their abuse of his Law Which is yet more plain if wee mark that our Saviour in the fiâ—th of Matth. cites not the Law of Moses but the Pharisaical tradition falsly grounded upon that law And in those other places Chap. 19. Mark 10. the Pharises cite the Law but conceale the wise and human reason there exprest which our Saviour corrects not in them whose pride deserv'd not his instruction only returns them what is proper to them Moses for the hardnes of your hearts sufferd you that is such as you to put away your wives and to you he wrote this precept for that cause which to you must be read with an impression and understood limitedly of such as cover'd ill purposes under that Law for it was seasonable that they should hear their own unbounded licence rebuk't but not seasonable for them to hear a good mans requisit liberty explain'd And to amaze them the more because the Pharises thought it no hard matter to fulfill the Law he draws them up to that unseparable institution which God ordaind in the beginning before the fall when man and woman were both perfect and could have no cause to separate just as in the same Chap. he stands not to contend with the arrogant young man who boasted his observance of the whole Law whether he had indeed kept it or not but skrues him up higher to a task of that perfection which no man is bound to imitate And in like manner that pattern of the first institution he set before the opinionative Pharises to dazle them and not to bind us For this is a solid rule that every command giv'n with a reason binds our obedience no otherwise then that reason holds Of this sort was that command in Eden Therfore shall a man cleave to his wife and they shall be one flesh which we see is no absolute command but with an inference Therfore the reason then must be first consider'd that our obedience be not mis-obedience The first is for it is not single because the wife is to the husband flesh of his flesh as in the verse going before But this reason cannot be sufficient of it self for why then should he for his wife leave his father and mother with whom he is farre more flesh of flesh and bone of bone as being made of their substance And besides it can be but a sorry and ignoble society of life whose unseparable injunction depends meerly upon flesh bones Therfore we must look higher since Christ himself recalls us to the beginning and we shall finde that the primitive reason of never divorcing was that sacred and not vain promise of God to remedy mans lonelines by making him a help meet for him though not now in perfection as at first yet still in proportion as things now are And this is repeated ver. 20. when all other creatures were fitly associated brought to Adam as if the divine power had bin in some care and deep
another body will remove lonelines but the uniting of another compliable mind and that it is no blessing but a torment nay a base and brutish condition to be one flesh unlesse where nature can in some measure fix a unity of disposition Lastly Christ himself tells us who should not be put asunder namely those whom God hath joyn'd A plain solutiō of this great controversie if men would but use their eyes for when is it that God may be said to joyn when the parties and their friends consent No surely for that may concurre to leudest ends or is it when Church-rites are finisht Neither for the efficacy of those depends upon the presupposed fitnes of either party Perhaps after carnal knowledge lest of all for that may joyn persons whom neither law nor nature dares joyn t is left that only then when the minds are fitly dispos'd and enabl'd to maintain a cherfull conversation to the solace and love of each other according as God intended and promis'd in the very first foundation of matrimony I will make him a help meet for him for surely what God intended and promis'd that only can be thought to be of his joyning and not the contrary So likewise the Apostle witnesseth 1 Cor. 7. 15. that in mariage God hath call'd us to peace And doubtles in what respect he hath call'd us to mariage in that also he hath joyn'd us The rest whom either disproportion or deadnes of spirit or somthing distastfull avers in the immutable bent of nature renders uncōjugal error may have joyn'd but God never joyn'd against the meaning of his own ordinance And if he joynd them not then is there no power above their own consent to hinder them from unjoyning when they cannot reap the soberest ends of beeing together in any tolerable sort Neither can it be said properly that such twain were ever divorc't but onely parted from each other as two persons unconjunctive and unmariable together But if whom God hath made a fit help frowardnes or private injuries have made unfit that beeing the secret of mariage God can better judge then man neither is man indeed fit or able to decide this matter however it be undoubtedly a peacefull divorce is a lesse evil and lesse in scandal then a hatefull hard hearted and destructive continuance of mariage in the judgement of Moses and of Christ that justifies him in choosing the lesse evil which if it were an honest civil prudence in the law what is there in the Gospel forbidding such a kind of legal wisdom though wee should admit the common Expositers Having thus unfoulded those ambiguous reasōs wherwith Christ as his wont was gave to the Pharises that came to sound him such an answer as they deserv'd it will not be uneasie to explain the sentence it self that now follows Whosoever shall put away his wife except it be for fornication and shall marry another committeth adultery First therfore I will set down what is observ'd by Grotius upon this point a man of general learning Next I produce what mine own thoughts gave me before I had seen his annotations Origen saith he notes that Christ nam'd adultery rather as one example of other like cases then as one only exception And that it is frequent not only in human but in divine Laws to expresse one kind of fact wherby other causes of like nature may have the like plea as Exod. 21. 18 19 20. 26. Deut. 19. 5. And from the maxims of civil Law he shews that ev'n in sharpest penal laws the same reason hath the same right and in gentler laws that from like causes to like the Law interprets rightly But it may be objected saith he that nothing destroys the end of wedlock so much as adultery To which he answers that mariage was not ordain'd only for copulation but for mutual help and comfort of life and if we mark diligently the nature of our Saviours commands wee shall finde that both their beginning and their end consists in charity whose will is that wee should so be good to others as that wee be not cruel to our selves And hence it appears why Mark and Luke and St. Paul to the Cor. mentioning this precept of Christ adde no exception because exceptions that arise from natural equity are included silently under general terms it would be consider'd therfore whether the same equity may not have place in other cases lesse frequent Thus farre he From hence is what I adde first that this saying of Christ as it is usually expounded can be no law at all that man for no cause should separate but for adultery except it be a supernatural law not binding us as wee now are had it bin the law of nature either the Iews or some other wise and civil Nation would have pres't it or let it be so yet that law Deut. 24. 1. wherby a man hath leave to part whenas for just and natural cause discover'd he cannot love is a law ancienter and deeper ingrav'n in blameles nature then the other therfore the inspired Law-giver Moses took care that this should be specify'd and allow'd the other he let vanish in silence not once repeated in the volume of his law ev'n as the reason of it vanisht with Paradise Secondly this can be no new command for the Gospel enjoyns no new morality save only the infinit enlargement of charity which in this respect is call'd the new Commandement by St. Iohn as being the accomplishment of every command Thirdly It is no command of perfection further then it partakes of charity which is the bond of perfection Those commands therfore which compell us to self-cruelty above our strength so hardly will help forward to perfection that they hinder set backward in all the common rudiments of Christianity as was prov'd It being thus clear that the words of Christ can be no kind of command as they are vulgarly tak'n wee shall now see in what sense they may be a command and that an excellent one the same with that of Moses and no other Moses had granted that only for a natural annoyance defect or dislike whether in body or mind for so the Hebrew words plainly note which a man could not force himself to live with he might give a bill of divorce therby forbidding any other cause wherin amendment or reconciliation might have place This law the Pharises depraving extended to any slight contentious cause whatsoever Christ therfore seeing where they halted urges the negative part of that law which is necessarily understood for the determinate permission of Moses binds them from further licence and checking their supercilious drift declares that no accidental temporary or reconciliable offence except fornication can justifie a divorce he touches not heer those natural and perpetual hindrances of society which are not to be remov'd for such as they are aptest to cause an unchangeable offence so are they not capable of reconcilement because not of amendment Thus is
in truth it can be none as a meer separation for if she consent wherin has the law to right her or consent not then is it either just and so deserv'd or if unjust such in all likelihood was the divorcer and to part from an unjust man is a happines no injury to be lamented But suppose it be an injury the Law is not able to amend it unlesse she think it other then a miserable redresse to return back from whence she was expell'd or but entreated to be gon or els to live apart still maried without mariage a maried widow Last if it be to chast'n the divorcer what law punishes a deed which is not moral but natural a deed which cannot certainly be found to be an injury or how can it be punisht by prohibiting the divorce but that the innocent must equally partake So that wee see the Law can to no rational purpose forbid divorce it can only take care that the conditions of divorce be not injurious But what Shall then the disposal of that power return again to the maister of family Wherfore not Since God there put it and the presumptuous Canon thence bereft it This only must be provided that the ancient manner be observ'd in presence of the Minister and other grave selected Elders who after they shall have admonisht and prest upon him the words of our Saviour he shall have protested in the faith of the eternal Gospel and the hope he has of happy resurrection that otherwise then thus he cannot doe and thinks himself this his case not contain'd in that prohibition of divorce which Christ pronounc't the matter not beeing of malice but of nature and so not capable of reconciling to constrain him surder were to unehristen him to unman him to throw the mountain of Sinai upon him with the waight of the whole Law to boot flat against the liberty and essence of the Gospel and yet nothing available either to the sanctity of mariage the good of husband wife or children nothing profitable either to Church or Common wealth But this would bring in confusion Be of good cheer it would not it wrought so little disorder among the Iews that from Moses till after the captivity not one of the Profets thought it worth rebuking for that of Malachy well lookt into will appeare to be not against divorcing but rather against keeping strange Concubines to the vexation of their Hebrew wives If therfore wee Christians may be thought as good and tractable as the Iews were and certainly the prohibiters of divorce presume us to be better then lesse confusion is to be fear'd for this among us then was among them If wee bee wors or but as bad which lamentable examples confirm wee are then have wee more or at least as much need of this permitted law as they to whom God expresly gave it under a harsher covnant Let not therfore the frailty of man goe on thus inventing needlesse troubles to it self to groan under the fals imagination of a strictnes never impos'd from above enjoyning that for duty which is an impossible and vain supererogating Bee not righteous overmuch is the counsel of Ecclesiastes why shoulà st thou destroy thy self Let us not be thus over-curious to strain at atoms and yet to stop every vent and cranny of permissive liberty lest nature wāting those needful pores and breathing places which God hath not debarr'd our weaknes either suddenly break out into some wide rupture of open vice and frantick heresy or els inwardly fester with repining and blasphemous thoughts under an unreasonable and fruitles rigor of unwarranted law Against which evils nothing can more beseem the religion of the Church or the wisdom of the State then to consider timely and provide And in so doing let them not doubt but they shall vindicate the misreputed honour of God and his great Lawgiver by suffering him to give his own laws according to the condition of mans nature best known to him without the unsufferable imputation of dispencing legally with many ages of ratify'd adultery They shall recover the misattended words of Christ to the sincerity of their true sense from manifold contradictions and shall open them with the key of charity Many helples Christians they shall raise from the depth of sadnes and distresse utterly unfitted as they are to serv God or man many they shall reclaime from obscure and giddy sects many regain from dissolute and brutish licence many from desperate hardnes if ever that were justly pleaded They shall set free many daughters of Israel not wanting much of her sad plight whom Satan had bound eighteen years Man they shall restore to his just dignity and prerogative in nature preferring the souls free peace before the promiscuous draining of a carnal rage Mariage from a perilous hazard and snare they shall reduce to be a more certain hav'n and retirement of happy society when they shall judge according to God and Moses and how not then according to Christ when they shall judge it more wisdom and goodnes to break that covnant seemingly keep it really then by compulsion of la w to keep it seemingly and by compulsion of blameles nature to break it really at least if it were ever truly joyn'd The vigor of discipline they may then turn with better successe upon the prostitute loosenes of the times when men finding in themselvs the infirmities of former ages shall not be constrain'd above the gift of God in them to unprofitable and impossible observances never requir'd from the civilest the wisest the holiest Nations whose other excellencies in moral vertu they never yet could equal Last of all to those whose mind still is to maintain textual restrictions wherof the bare sound cannot consist somtimes with humanity much lesse with charity I would ever answer by putting them in remembrāce of a command above all commands which they seem to have forgot and who spake it in comparison wherof this which they so exalt is but a petty and subordinate precept Let them goe therfore with whom I am loath to couple them yet they will needs run into the same blindnes with the Pharises let them goe therfore and consider well what this lesson means I will have mercy and not sacrifice for on that saying all the Law and Prophets depend much more the Gospel whose end and excellence is mercy and peace Or if they cannot learn that how will they hear this which yet I shall not doubt to leave with them as a conclusion That God the Son hath put all other things under his own feet but his Commandments he hath left all under the feet of charity The end Omitted pa. 19. lin. 28. WHom thus to shut up and immure together the one with a mischosen mate the other in a mistak'n calling is not a course c. Omitted pa. 24. lin. 22. Uncertain good This only text not to be match't again throughout the whole Scripture wherby God in his perfet Law should seem to have granted to the hard hearts of his holy people under his own hand a civil immunity and free charter to live and die in a long successive adultery under a covnant of works till the Messiah and then that indulgent permission to be strictly deny'd by a covnant of grace besides the incoherence of such a doctrin cannot must not be thus interpreted to the raising of a paradox never known till then only hanging by the twin'd thred of one doubtfull Scripture against so many other rules and leading principles of religion of justice and purity of life For what could be granted more either to the fear or to the lust of any tyrant or politician then this autority of Moses thus expounded which opens him a way at will to damme up justice and not only to admit of any Romish or Austrian dispences but to enact a Statute of that which he dares not seem to approve ev'n to legitimate vice to make sin it self a free Citizen of the Common-wealth pretending only these or these plausible reasons And well he might all the while that Moses shall be alleg'd to have don as much without shewing any reason at all Yet this could not enter into the heart of David Psal 94. 20. how any such autority as endeavours to fashion wickednes by law should derive it self from God And Isaiah lays woe upon them that decree unrighteous decrees 10. 1. Now which of these two is the better Lawgiver and which deservs most a woe he that gives out an Edict singly unjust or he that confirms to generations a fixt and unmolested impunity of that which is not only held to be unjust but also unclean and both in a high degree not only as they themselvs affirm an injurious expulsion of one wife but also an unclean freedom by more then a patent to wed another adulterously How can wee therfore with safety thus dangerously confine the free simplicity of our Saviours meaning to that which meerly amounts from so many letters whenas it can consist neither with his former and cautionary words nor with other more pure and holy principles nor finally with the scope of charity c.