therupon the Christian Magistrate permits usury and open stews heer with us adultery to be so slightly punisht which was punisht by death to these hard-hearted Iews why wee should strain thus at the matter of divorce which may stand so much with charity to permit and make no scruple to allow usury esteem'd to be so much against charity But this it is to embroile our selves against the righteous and all wise judgements and statutes of God which are not variable and contrarious as wee would make them one while permitting and another while forbidding but are most constant and most harmonious each to other For how can the uncorrupt and majestick law of God bearing in her hand the wages of life and death harbour such a repugnance within her self as to require an unexempted and impartial obedience to all her decrees either from us or from our Mediator and yet debase her self to faulter so many ages with circumcis'd adulteries by unclean and slubbeâ—ing permissions Yet Beza's opinion is that a politick law but what politick law I know not unlesse one of Matchiavel's may regulate sin may bear indeed I grant with imperfection for a time as those Canons of the Apostles did in ceremonial things but as for sin the essence of it cannot consist with rule and if the law fall to regulate sin and not to take it utterly away it necessarily confirms and establishes sin To make a regularity of sin by law either the law must straiten sin into no sin or sin must crook the law into no law The judicial law can serve to no other end then to be the protector and champion of Religion and honest civility as is set down plainly Rom. 13. and is but the arme of moral law which can no more be separate from Justice then Justice from vertue their office also in a different manner steares the same cours the one teaches what is good by precept the other unteaches what is bad by punishment But if we give way to politick dispensations of lewd uncleannesse the first good consequence of such a relaxe will be the justifying of papal stews joyn'd with a toleration of epidemick whordom Justice must revolt from the end of her authority and become the patron of that wherof she was created the punisher The example of usury which is commonly alleg'd makes against the allegation which it brings as I touch'd before Besides that usury so much as is permitted by the Magistrate and demanded with common equity is neither against the word of God nor the rule of charity as hath been often discus't by men of eminent learning and judgement There must be therfore some other example found out to shew us wherin civil policy may with warrant from God settle wickednes by law make that lawfull which is lawlesse Although I doubt not but upon deeper consideration that which is true in Physick will be found as true in polity that as of bad pulses those that beat most in order are much wors then those that keep the most inordinate circuit so of popular vices those that may be committed legally will be more pernicious then those which are left to their own cours at peril not under a stinted priviledge to sin orderly and regularly which is an implicit contradiction but under due and fearles execution of punishment The political law since it cannot regulate vice is to restraine it by using all means to root it out but if it suffer the weed to grow up to any pleasurable or contented higth upon what pretext soever it fastens the root it prunes and dresses vice as if it were a good plant Lastly if divorce were granted as he sayes not for men but to release afflicted wives certainly it is not only a dispensation but a most mercifull Law and why it should not yet be in force beeing wholly as needfull I know not what can be in cause but senslesse cruelty Esteeming therfore to have asserted thus an injur'd law of Moses from the unwarranted and guilty name of a dispensation to be again a most equall and requisite law wee have the word of Christ himself that he came not to alter the least tittle of it and signifies no small displeasure against him that shall teach to doe so On which relying I shall not much waver to affirm that those words which are made to intimate as if they forbad all divorce but for adultery though Moses have constituted otherwise those words tak'n circumscriptly without regard to any precedent law of Moses or attestation of Christ himself or without care to preserve those his fundamental and superior laws of nature and charitie to which all other ordinances give up their seals are as much against plain equity and the mercy of religion as those words of Take eat this is my body elementally understood are against nature and scuse And surely the restoring of this degraded law hath well recompenc't the diligence was us'd by enlightning us further to finde out wherfore Christ took off the Pharises from alleging the law and referr'd them to the first institution not condemning altering or abolishing this precept of divorce which is plainly moral for that were against his truth his promise and his prophetick office but knowing how fallaciously they had cited and conceal'd the particular and natural reason of the law that they might justifie any froward reason of their own he lets goe that sophistry unconvinc't for that had bin to teach them els which his purpose was not And since they had tak'n a liberty which the law gave not he amuses repells their tempting pride with a perfection of paradise which the law requir'd not not therby to oblige our performance to that wherto the law never enjoyn'd the fal'n estate of man for if the first institution must make wedlock whatever happen inseparable to us it must make it also as perfect as meetly helpfull and as comfortable as God promis'd it should be at least in some degree otherwise it is not equal or proportionable to the strength of man that he should be reduc't into such indissoluble bonds to his assured misery if all the other conditions of that covnant be manifestly alter'd Next he saith they must be one flesh which when all conjecturing is don wil be found to import no more but only to make legitimate and good the carnal act which els might seem to have somthing of pollution in it And inferrs thus much over that the fit union of their souls be such as may even incorporate them to love and amity but that can never be where no correspondence is of the minde nay instead of beeing one flesh they will be rather two carkasses chain'd unnaturally together or as it may happ'n a living soule bound to a dead corps a punishment too like that inflicted by the tyrant Mezentius so little worthy to be receav'd as that remedy of lonelines which God meant us Since wee know it is not the joyning of
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
especially when he was framing their laws and them to all possible perfection But they were to look back to the first iustitution nay rather why was not that individual institution brought out of Paradise as was that of the Sabbath and repeated in the body of the Law that men might have understood it to be a command for that any sentence that bears the resemblance of a precept set there so out of place in another world at such a distance from the whole Law and not once mention'd there should be an obliging command to us is very disputable and perhaps it might be deny'd to be a command without further dispute however it commands not absolutely as hath bin clear'd but only with reference to that precedent promise of God which is the very ground of his institution if that appeare not in some tolerable sort how can wee affirm such a matrimony to be the same which God instituted In such an accident it will best behove our sobernes to follow rather what moral Sinai prescribes equal to our strength then fondly to think within our strength all that lost Paradise relates Another while it shall suffice them that it was not a moral but a judicial Law and so was abrogated Nay rather was not abrogated because judicial which Law the ministery of Christ came not to deale with And who put it in mans power to exempt where Christ speaks in general of not abrogating the least jot or tittle in special not that of divorce because it follows among those Laws which he promis'd expresly not to abrogate but to vindicate from abusive traditions And if we mark the 31. ver. of Mat. the 5. he there cites not the Law of Moses but the licencious Glosse which traduc't the Law that therfore which he cited that he abrogated and not only abrogated but disallow'd and flatly condemn'd which could not be the Law of Moses for that had bin foulely to the rebuke of his great servant To abrogate a Law made with Gods allowance had bin to tell us only that such a Law was now to cease but to refute it with an ignominious note of civilizing adultery casts the reprooff which was meant only to the Pharises ev'n upō him who made the Law But yet if that be judicial which belongs to a civil Court this Law is lesse judicial then nine of the ten Commandements for antiquaries affirm that divorces proceeded among the Iews without knowledge of the Magistrate only with hands and seales under the testimony of some Rabbies to be then present And it was indeed a pure moral economical Law too hastily imputed of tolerating sin being rather so clear in nature and reason that it was left to a mans own arbitrement to be determin'd between God and his own conscience And that power which Christ never took from the master of family but rectify'd only to a right and wary use at home that power the undiscerning Canonist hath improperly usurpt into his Court-leet and bescribbl'd with a thousand trifling impertinencies which yet have fil'd the life of man with serious trouble and calamity Yet grant it were of old a judicial Law it need not be the lesse moral for that being conversant as it is about vertue or vice And our Saviour disputes not heer the judicature for that was not his office but the morality of divorce whether it be adultery or no if therfore he touch the law of Moses at all he touches the moral part therof which is absurd to imagine that the covnant of grace should reform the exact and perfect law of works eternal and immutable or if he touch not the Law at all then is not the allowance therof disallow'd to us Others are so ridiculous as to allege that this licence of divorcing was giv'n them because they were so accustom'd in Egypt As if an ill custom were to be kept to all posterity for the dispensation is both universal and of time unlimited and so indeed no dispensation at all for the over-dated dispensation of a thing unlawfull serves for nothing but to encrease hardnes of heart and makes men but wax more incorrigible which were a great reproach to be said of any Law or allowance that God should give us In these opinions it would be more Religion to advise well lest wee make our selves juster then God by censuring rashly that for sin which his unspotted Law without rebuke allows and his people without being conscious of displeasing him have us'd And if we can think so of Moses as that the Jewish obstinacy could compell him to write such impure permissions against the rule of God his own judgement doubtles it was his part to have protested publickly what straits he was driv'n to and to have declar'd his conscience when he gave any Law against his minde for the Law is the touch-stone of sin and of conscience must not be intermixt with corrupt indulgences for then it looses the greatest praise it has of being certain and infallible not leading into error as all the Iews were led by this connivence of Moses if it were a connivence But still they fly back to the primitive institution and would have us re-enter Paradise against the sword that guards it Whom I again thus reply to that the place in Genesis contains the description of a fit and perfect mariage with an interdict of ever divorcing such a union but where nature is discover'd to have never joyn'd indeed but vehemently seeks to part it cannot be there conceav'd that God forbids it nay he commands it both in the Law and in the Prophet Malachy which is to be our rule And Perkins upon this chap. of Mat. deals plainly that our Saviour heer confutes not Moses Law but the false glosses that deprav'd the Law which being true Perkins must needs grant that somthing then is left to that law which Christ found no fault with and what can that be but the conscionable use of such liberty as the plain words import So that by his own inference Christ did not absolutely intend to restrain all divorces to the only cause of adultery This therfore is the true scope of our Saviours will that he who looks upon the Law concerning divorce should look also back upon the first institution that he may endeavour what is perfectest and he that looks upon the institution should not refuse as sinfull and unlawfull those allowanees which God affords him in his following Law lest he make himself purer then his maker and presuming above strength slip into temptations irrecoverably For this is wonderfull that in all those decrees concerning mariage God should never once mention the prime institution to disswade them from divorcing and that he should forbid smaller sins as opposite to the hardnes of their hearts and let this adulterous matter of divorce passe ever unreprov'd This is also to be marvell'd at that seeing Christ did not condemn whatever it was that Moses suffer'd and that
our choisest home-blessings and coin them into crosses for want wherby to hold commerce with patience If any therfore who shall hap to read this discours hath bin through misadventure ill ingag'd in this contracted evill heer complain'd of and finds the fits and workings of a high impatience frequently upon him of all those wild words which men in misery think to ease themselves by uttering let him not op'n his lips against the providence of heav'n or tax the waies of God and his divine Truth for they are equal easy and not burdensome nor do they ever crosse the just and reasonable desires of men nor involve this our portion of mortall life into a necessity of sadnes and malecontent by Laws commanding over the unreducible antipathies of nature sooner or later found but allow us to remedy and shake off those evills into which human error hath led us through the middest of our best intentions and to support our incident extremities by that authentick precept of sovran charity whose grand Commission is to doe and to dispose over all the ordinances of God to man that love truth may advance each other to everlasting While we literally superstitious through customary faintnes of heart not venturing to peirce with our free thoughts into the full latitude of nature and religion abandon our selvs to serv under the tyranny of usurpt opinions suffering those ordinances which were allotted to our solace and reviving to trample over us and hale us into a multitude of sorrows which God never meant us And where he set us in a fair allowance of way with honest liberty and prudence to our guard wee never leave subtilizing and casuisting till wee have straitn'd and par'd that liberal path into a razors edge to walk on between a precipice of unnecessary mischief on either side and starting at every fals alarum wee doe not know which way to set a foot forward with manly confidence and Christian resolution through the confused ringing in our ears of panick scruples and amazements Another act of papal encroachment it was to pluck the power arbitrement of divorce from the master of family into whose hands God the law of all Nations had put it Christ so left it preaching only to the conscience and not authorizing a judiciall Court to tosse about and divulge the unaccountable and secret reasons of disaffection between man wife as a thing most improperly answerable to any such kind of trial But the Popes of Rome perceaving the great revenu and high autority it would give them ev'n over Princes to have the judging and deciding of such a main consequence in the life of man as was divorce wrought so upon the superstition of those ages as to devest them of that right which God from the beginning had entrusted to the husband by which means they subjected that ancient and naturally domestick prerogative to an external unbefitting judicature For although differences in divorce about dowries jointures and the like besides the punishing of adultery ought not to passe without referring if need be to the Magistrate yet for him to interpose his jurisdictive power upon the inward and irremediable disposition of man to command love and sympathy to forbid dislike against the guiltles instinct of nature is not within the province of any law to reach were indeed an uncommodious rudenes not a just power For if natures resistles sway in love or hate be once compell'd it grows careles of it self vitious useles to friend unserviceable and spiritles to the Common-wealth Wch Moses rightly foresaw and all wise Lawgivers that ever knew man what kind of creature he was The Parliament also and Clergy of England were not ignorant of this when they consented that Harry the 8th might put away his Q. Anne of Cleve whom he could not like after he had bin wedded half a year unles it were that contrary to the Proverb they made a necessity of that which might have bin a vertu in them to do For ev'n the freedom and eminence of mans creation gives him to be a Law in this matter to himself beeing the head of the other sex which was made for him whom therfore though he ought not to injure yet neither should he be forc't to retain in society to his own overthrow nor to hear any judge therin above himself It being also an unseemly affront to the sequester'd vail'd modesty of that sex to have her unpleasingnes and other concealements bandied up and down and aggravated in open Court by those hir'd maisters of tongue-fence Such uncomely exigences it befell no lesse a Majesty then Henry th 8th to be reduc't to who finding just reason in his conscience to forgoe his brothers wife after many indignities of beeing deluded and made a boy of by those his two cardinal Judges was constrain'd at last for want of other prooff that shee had bin carnally known by Prince Arthur ev'n to uncover the nakednes of that vertuous Lady to recite openly the obscene evidence of his brothers chāberlain Yet it pleas'd God to make him see all the tyranny of Rome by discovering this which they exercis'd over divorce and to make him the beginner of a reformation to this whole Kingdom by first asserting into his familiary power the right of just divorce T is true an adultres cannot be sham'd anough by any publick proceeding but that woman whose honour is not appeach't is lesse injur'd by a silent dismission being otherwise not illiberally dealth with then to endure a clamouring debate of utterles things in a busines of that civil secrecy and difficult discerning as not to be over-much question'd by neerest friends Which drew that answer from the greatest and worthiest Roman of his time Paulus Emilius beeing demanded why he would put away his wife for no visible reason This Shoo saith he and held it out on his foot is a neat shoo a new shoo and yet none of yee know where it wrings me much lesse by the unfamiliar cognisance of a fee'd gamester can such a private difference be examin'd neither ought it Lastly All law is for some good that may be frequently attain'd without the admixture of a wors inconvenience but the Law forbidding divorce never attains to any good end of such prohibition but rather multiplies evil If it aim at the establishment of matrimony wee know that cannot thrive under a loathed and forc't yoke but is daily violated if it seek to prevent the sin of divorcing that lies not in the law to prevent for he that would divorce and marry again but for the law hath in the sight of God don it already Civil or political sin it never was neither to Jew nor Gentile nor by any judicial intendment of Christ only culpable as it transgresses the allowance of Moses in the inward man which not any law but conscience only can evince The law can only look whether it be an injury to the divorc't which
THE DOCTRINE AND DISCIPLINE OF DIVORCE RESTOR'D TO THE GOOD OF BOTH SEXES From the bondage of Canon Law and other mistakes to Christian freedom guided by the Rule of Charity Wherein also many places of Scripture have recover'd their long-lost meaning Seasonable to be now thought on in the Reformation intended MATTH. 13. 52. Every Scribe instructed to the Kingdome of Heav'n is like the Maister of a house which bringeth out of his treasurie things old and new LONDON Printed by T. P. and M. S. In Goldsmiths Alley 1643. THE DOCTRINE AND DISCIPLINE OF DIVORCE RESTOR'D TO THE GOOD OF BOTH SEXES MAny men whether it be their fate or fond opinion easily perswade themselves if GOD would but be pleas'd a while to withdraw his just punishments from us and to restraine what power either the devill or any earthly enemy hath to worke us woe that then mans nature would find immediate rest and releasement from all evils But verily they who think so if they be such as have a minde large â—nough to take into their thoughts a generall survey of humane things would soone prove themselves in that opinion farre deceiv'd For though it were granted us by divine indulgence to be exempt from all that can be harmfull to us from without yet the perversnesse of our folly is so bent that we should never lin hammering out of our owne hearts as it were out of a flint the seeds and sparkles of new miseries to our selves till all were in a blaze againe And no marvell if out of our own hearts for they are evill but ev'n out of those things which God meant us either for a principall good or a pure contentment we are still hatching and contriving upon our selves matter of continuall sorrow and perplexitie What greater good to man then that revealed rule whereby God vouchsafes to shew us how he would be worshipt and yet that not rightly understood became the cause that once a famous man in Israel could not but oblige his conscience to be the sacrificer or if not the jayler of his innocent and onely daughter And was the cause oft-times that Armies of valiant men have given up their throats to a heathenish enemy on the Sabbath day fondly thinking their defensive resistance to be as then a work unlawfull What thing more instituted to the solace and delight of man then marriage and yet the mis-interpreting of some Scripture directed mainly against the abusers of the Law for divorce giv'n them by Moses hath chang'd the blessing of matrimony not seldome into a familiar and co-inhabiting mischiefe at least into a drooping and disconsolate houshold captivitie without refuge or redemption So ungovern'd and so wild a race doth superstition run us from one extreme of abused libertie into the other of unmercifull restraint For although God in the first ordaining of marriage taught us to what end he did it in words expresly implying the apt and cheerfull conversation of man with woman to comfort and refresh him against the evill of solitary life not mentioning the purpose of generation till afterwards as being but a secondary end in dignity though not in necessitie yet now if any two be but once handed in the Church and have tasted in any sort of the nuptiall bed let them finde themselves never so mistak'n in their dispositions through any error concealment or misadventure that through their different tempers thoughts and constitutions they can neither be to one another a remedy against lonelines nor live in any union or contentment all their dayes yet they shall so they be but found suitably weapon'd to the lest possibilitie of sensuall enjoyment bemade spight of antipathy to fadge together and combine as they may to their unspeakable wearisomnes despaire of all sociable delight in the ordinance which God establisht to that very end What a calamitie is this and as the Wise-man if he were alive would sigh out in his own phrase what a sore evill is this under the Sunne All which we can referre justly to no other author then the Canon Law and her adherents not consulting with charitie the interpreter and guide of our faith but resting in the meere element of the Text doubtles by the policy of the devill to make that gracious ordinance become unsupportable that what with men not daring to venture upon wedlock and what with men wearied out of it all inordinate licence might abound It was for many ages that mariage lay in disgrace with most of the ancient Doctors as a work of the flesh almost a defilement wholly deny'd to Priests and the second time disswaded to all as he that reads Tertullian or Ierom may see at large Afterwards it was thought so Sacramentall that no adultery could dissolve it yet there remains a burden on it as heavy as the other two were disgracefull or superstitious and of as much iniquirie crossing a Law not onely writt'n by Moses but character'd in us by nature of more antiquitie and deeper ground then mariage it selfe which Law is to force nothing against the faultles proprieties of nature yet that this may be colourably done our Saviours words touching divorce are as it were congeal'd into a stony rigor inconsistent both with his doctrine and his office and that which he preacht onely to the conscience is by canonicall tyranny snatcht into the compulsive censure of a judiciall Court where Laws are impos'd even against the venerable secret power of natures impression to love what ever cause be found to loath Which is a hainous barbarisme both against the honour of mariage the dignitie of man and his soule the goodnes of Christianitie and all the humane respects of civilitie Notwithstanding that some the wisest and gravest among the Christian Emperours who had about them to consult with those of the fathers then living who for their learning holines of life are still with us in great renown have made their statutes edicts concerning this debate far more easie and relenting in many necessary cases wherein the Canon is inflexible And Hugo Grotius a man of these times one of the best learned seems not obscurely to adhere in his perswasion to the equitie of those imperiall decrees in his notes upon the Evangelists much allaying the outward roughnesse of the Text which hath for the most part been too immoderately expounded and excites the diligence of others to enquire further into this question as containing many points which have not yet been explain'd By which and by mine owne apprehension of what publick duty each man owes I conceive my selfe exhorted among the rest to communicate such thoughts as I have and offer them now in this generall labour of reformation to the candid view both of Church and Magistrate especially because I see it the hope of good men that those irregular and unspirituall Courts have spun their utmost date in this Land and some better course must now be constituted He therefore that by adventuring
particular of each person be consider'd then of those three ends which God appointed that to him is greatest which is most necessary and mariage is then most brok'n to him when he utterly wants the fruition of that which he most sought therin whether it were religious civill or corporali society Of which wants to do him right by divorce only for the last and meanest is a pervers injury and the pretended reason of it as frigid as frigidity it self which the Code and canon are only ser sible of Thus much of this controversie I now return to the former argument And having shewn that disproportion contrariety or numnesse of minde may justly be divorc't by proving already that the prohibition therof opposes the expresse end of Gods institution suffers not mariage to satisfie that intellectuall and innocent desire which God himself kindl'd in man to be the bond of wedlock but only to remedy a sublunary and bestial burning which frugal diet without mariage would easily chast'n Next that it drives many to transgresse the conjugall bed while the soule wanders after that satisfaction which it had hope to find at home but hath mis't Or els it sits repining even to Atheism finding it self hardly dealt with but misdeeming the cause to be in Gods Law which is in mans unrighteous ignorance I have shew'd also how it unties the inward knot of mariage which is peace love if that can be unti'd which was never knit while it aimes to keep fast the outward formalitie how it lets perish the Christian man to compell impossibly the maried man The sixt place declares this prohibition to be as respectles of human nature and therfore is not of God He teaches that an unlawfull mariage may be lawfully divorc't And that those who having throughly discern'd each others disposition which ofttimes cannot be till after matrimony shall then finde a powerfull reluctance and recoile of nature on either side blasting all the content of their mutuall society that such persons are not lawfully maried to use the Apostles words Say I these things as a man or saith not the Law also the same for it is writt'n Deut. 22. Thou shalt not sowe thy vineyard with divers seeds lest thou defile both Thou shalt not plow with an Oxe and an Asse together and the like I follow the pattern of St. Pauls reasoning Doth God care for Asses and Oxen how ill they yoke together or is it not said altogether for our sakes for our sakes no doubt this is writt'n Yea the Apostle himself in the forecited 2 Cor. 6. 14. alludes from that place of Deut. to forbid mis-yoking mariage as by the Greek word is evident though he instance but in one example of mis-matching with an Infidell yet next to that what can be a souler incongruity a greater violence to the reverend secret of nature then to force a mixture of minds that cannot unite to sowe the furrow of mans nativity with seed of two incoherent and uncombining dispositions Surely if any noysomnes of body soon destroys the sympathy of mind to that work much more will the antipathy of minde infuse it self into all the faculties and acts of the body to render them invalid unkindly and even unholy against the fundamentall law book of nature which Moses never thwarts but reverences therfore he commands us to force nothing against sympathy or naturall order no not upon the most abject creatures to shew that such an indignity cannot be offer'd to man without an impious crime And when he forbids all unmatchable and unmingling natures to consort doubtles by all due consequence if they chance through misadventure to be miscoupl'd he bids them part asunder as persons whom God never joyn'd Seventhly The Canon Law and Divines consent that if either party be found contriving against the others life they may be sever'd by divorce for a sin against the life of mariage is greater then a sin against the bed the one destroys the other but defiles The same may be said touching those persons who beeing of a pensive nature and cours of life have summ'd up all their solace in that free and lightsom conversation which God man intends in mariage wherof when they see themselves depriv'd by meeting an unsociable consort they ofttimes resent one anothers mistake so deeply that long it is not ere grief end one of them When therfore this danger is foreseen that the life is in perill by living together what matter is it whether helples greef or wilfull practice be the cause This is certain that the preservation of life is more worth then the compulsory keeping of mariage and it is no lesse then cruelty to force a man to remain in that state as the solace of his life which he and his friends know will be either the undoing or the disheartning of his life And what is life without the vigor and spiritfull exercise of life how can it be usefull either to private or publick employment shall it be therfore quite dejected though never so valuable and left to moulder away in heavines for the superstitious and impossible performance of an ill driv'n bargain nothing more inviolable then vows made to God yet we read in Numbers that if a wife had made such a vow the meer will and authority of her husband might break it how much more may he break the error of his own bonds with an unfit and mistak'n wife to the saving of his welfare his life yea his faith and vertue from the hazard of over-strong temptations for if man be Lord of the Sabbath to the curing of a Fevor can he be lesse then Lord of mariage in such important causes as these Eighthly It is most sure that some ev'n of those who are not plainly defective in body are yet destitute of all other mariagable gifts and consequently have not the calling to marry unlesse nothing be requisite therto but a meer instrumentall body which to affirm is to that unanimous Covnant a reproach yet it is as sure that many such not of their own desire but by perswasiō of friends or not knowing themselves do often enter into wedlock where finding the difference at length between the duties of a maried life and the gifts of a single life what unfitnes of mind what wearisomnes what scruples and doubts to an incredible offence and displeasure are like to follow between may be soon imagin'd whom thus to shut up and immure in an unequall and mischosen match is not a cours that christian wisdome and tendernes ought to use As for the custom that some parents and guardians have of forcing mariages it will be better to say nothing of such a savage inhumanity but only this that the Law which gives not all freedome of divorce to any creature endu'd with reason so assasinated is next in crueltie Ninthly I suppose it will be allow'd us that mariage is a human society and that all human society must proceed from
of a Christian which is inestimable should be over-tempted and cast away considering also that many properties of nature which the power of regeneration it self never alters may cause dislike of conversing even between the most sanctify'd which continually grating in harsh tune together may breed some jarre and discord and that end in rancor and strife a thing so opposite both to mariage and to Christianitie it would perhaps be lesse scandal to divorce a natural disparity then to link violently together an unchristian dissention committing two ensnared souls inevitably to kindle one another not with the fire of love but with a hatred inconcileable who were they disseverd would be straight friends in any other relation But if an alphabetical servility must be still urg'd it may so fall out that the true Church may unwittingly use as much cruelty in forbidding to divorce as the Church of Antichrist doth wilfully in forbidding to marry But what are all these reasonings worth will some reply when as the words of Christ are plainly against all divorce except in case of fornication let such remember as a thing not to be deny'd that all places of Scripture wherin just reason of doubt arises from the letter are to be expounded by considering upon what occasion every thing is set down and by comparing other Texts The occasion which induc't our Saviour to speak of divorce was either to convince the extravagance of the Pharises in that point or to give a sharp and vehement answer to a tempting question And in such cases that we are not to repose all upon the literall terms of so many words many instances will teach us Wherin we may plainly discover how Christ meant not to be tak'n word for word but like a wise Physician administring one excesse against another to reduce us to a perfect mean Where the Pharises were strict there Christ seems remisse where they were too remisse he saw it needfull to seem most severe in one place he censures an unchast look to be adultery already committed another time he passes over actuall adultery with lesse reproof then for an unchast look not so heavily condemning secret weaknes as open malice So heer he may be justly thought to have giv'n this rigid sentence against divorce not to cut off all remedy from a good man who finds himself coÌ„suming away in a disconsolate and uninjoy'd matrimony but to lay a bridâ—e upon the bold abuses of those over-weening Rabbies which he could not more effectually doe then by a countersway of restraint curbing their wild exorbitance almost into the other extreme as when we bow things the contrary way to make them come to thir naturall straitnes And that this was the only intention of Christ is most evident if we attend but to his own words and protestation made in the same Sermon not many verses before he treats of divorcing that he came not to abrogate from the Law one jot or tittle and denounces against them that shall so teach So that the question of divorce following upon this his open profession must needs confirm us that what ever els in the politicall Law of more speciall relation to the Iews might cease to us yet that of those precepts concerning divorce not one of them was repeal'd by the doctrine of Christ for if these our Saviours words inveigh against all divorce and condemn it as adultery except it be for adultery and be not rather understood against the abuse of those divorces permitted in the Law then is that Law of Moses Deut. 24. 1. not only repeal'd wholly anull'd against the promise of Christ his known prfession not to meddle in matters judicial but that which is more strange the very substance and purpose of that Law is contradicted and convinc't both of injustice impurity as having authoriz'd maintain'd legall adultery by statute Moses also cannot scape to be guilty of unequall and unwise decrees punishing one act of secret adultery by death and permitting a whole life of open adultery by Law And albeit Lawyers write that some politicall Edicts though not approv'd are yet allow'd to the scum of the people and the necessitie of the times these excuses have but a weak pulse for first we read not that the scoundrel people but the choisest the wisest the holiest of that nation have frequently us'd these laws or such as these Secondly Be it yeelded that in matters not very bad or impure a human law-giver may slacken somthing of that which is exactly good to the disposition of the people and the times but if the perfect the pure the righteous law of God for so are all his statutes and his judgements be found to have allow'd smoothly without any certain reprehension that which Christ afterward declares to be adultery how can wee free this Law from the horrible endightment of beeing both impure unjust and fallacious Neither will it serv to say this was permitted for the hardnes of thir hearts in that sense as it is usually explain'd for the Law were then but a corrupt and erroneous School-master teaching us to dash against a vital maxim of religion by dooing foul evil in hope of some uncertain good Wee cannot therfore with safety thus 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 the scope of charity commanding by his expresse commission in a higher strain But all rather of necessity must be understood as only against the abuse of that wise and ingenuous liberty which Moses gave and to terrify a roaving conscience from sinning under that pretext Others think to evade the matter by not granting any Law of divorce but only a dispensation which is contrary to the words of Christ who himself calls it a Law Mark 10. 5. But I answer admitting it to be a dispensation yet this is a certain rule that so long as the cause remains the dispensation ought Let it be shewn therfore either in the nature of the Gospel or of man why this dispensation should be made void The Gospel indeed exhorts to highest perfection but bears with weakest infirmity more then the Law The nature of man is as weak and yet as hard and that weaknes and hardnes as unfit and as unteachable to be harshly dealt with as ever I but say they there is a greater portion of spirit powr'd upon the Gospel which requires perfecter obedience But that coÌ„sequence is deceavable for it is the Law that is the exacter of our obedience ev'n under the Gospel how can it then exact concerning divorce that which it never exacted before The Gospel is a covnant reveling grace not commanding a new morality but assuring justification by faith only contented if we endeavour to square our moral duty by those wise and equal Mosaick rules which were as perfect as strict and as unpardonable to the Iews as to us otherwise
thought because there was not yet found a help meet for man And can wee so slightly depresse the all-wise purpose of a deliberating God as iâ— his consultatioÌ„ had produc'â— no other good for man but to joyn him with an accidentall companion of propagation which his sudden word had already made for every beast nay a farre lesse good to man it will be found if she must at all aventures be fasten'd upon him individually And therefore even plain sense and equity and which is above them both the all-interpreting voice of Charity her self cries loud that this primitive reason this consulted promise of God to make a meet help is the onely cause that gives authority to this command of not divorcing to be a command And it might be further added that if the true definition of a wife were askt in good earnest this clause of beeing a meet help would shew it self so necessary and so essential in that demonstrative argument that it might be logically concluded therfore shee who naturally perpetually is no meet help can be no wife which cleerly takes away the difficulty of dismissing such a one Hence is manifest that so much of the first institution as our Saviour mentions for he mentions not all was but to quell and put to nonplus the tempting Pharises and to lay open their ignorance and shallow understanding of the Scriptures For saith he have ye not read that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female and said for this cause shall a man cleave to his wife which these blind usurpers of Moses chair could not gainsay as if this single respect of male and female were sufficient against a thousand inconveniences and mischiefs to clogge a rational creature to his endles sorrow unrelinquishably What if they had thus answer'd Master if thou intend to make wedlock as inseparable as it was from the beginning let it be made also a fit society as God intended it which wee shall soon understand it ought to be if thou recite the whole reason of the Law doubtles our Saviour had applauded their just answer For then they had expounded this command of Paradise even as Moses himself expounds it by his laws of divorce that is with due and wise regard had to the premises and reasons of the first command according to which without unclean and temporizing permissions he instructs us in this imperfect state what wee may lawfully doe about divorce But if it be thought that the Disciples offended at the rigor of Christs answer couâ—d yet obtain no mitigation of the former sentence pronounc't to the Pharises it may be fully answer'd that our Saviour continues the same reply to his Disciples as men leaven'd with the same customary licence which the Pharises maintain'd and displeas'd at the removing of a traditional abuse wherto they had so long not unwillingly bin us'd it was no time then to contend with then flow and prejudicial belief in a thing wherin an ordinary measure of light in Scripture with some attention might afterwards inform them well anough After these considerations to take a law out of Paradise giv'n in time of original perfection and to take it barely without those just and equal inferences and reasons which mainly establish it nor so much as admitting those needfull safe allowances wherwith Moses himself interprets it to the faln condition of man argues nothing in us but rashnes and contempt of those means that God left us in his pure and chast Law without which it will not be possible for us to perform the strict imposition of this command or if we strive beyond our strength wee shall strive to obay it otherwise then God commands it And lamented experience daily teaches the bitter and vain fruits of this our presumption forcing men in a thing wherin wee are not able to judge either of their strength or their sufferance Whom neither one vice nor other by naturall addiction but only mariage ruins which doubtles is not the fault of that ordinance for God gave it as a blessing nor always of mans mis-choosing it beeing an error above wisdom to prevent as examples of wisest men so mistaken manifest it is the fault therfore of a pervers opinion that will have it continu'd in despight of nature and reason when indeed it was never truly joynd All those expositers upon the fifth of Mat. confesse the Law of Moses to be the Law of the Lord wherin no addition or diminution hath place yet coming to the point of divorce as if they fear'd not to be call'd lest in the kingdom of heav'n any slight evasion will content them to reconcile those contradictions which they make between Christ and Moses between Christ and Christ Some will have it no Law but the granted premises of another Law following contrary to the words of Christ Mark 10. 5. and all other translations of gravest authority who render it in form of a Law agreeable to Malach. 2. 16. as it is most anciently and modernly expounded Besides the bill of divorce declares it to be orderly legal And what avails this to make the matter more righteous if such an adulterous condition shall be mention'd to build a Law upon without either punishment or so much as forbidding they pretend it is implicitly reprov'd in these words Deut. 24. 4. after she is defil'd but who sees not that this defilement is only in respect of returning to her former husband after an intermixt mariage els why was not the defiling condition first forbidden which would have sav'd the labour of this after law nor is it seemly or piously attributed to the justice of God and his known hatred of sin that such a hainous fault as this through all the Law should be only wip't with an implicit and oblique touch which yet is falsly suppos'd that his peculiar people should be let wallow in adulterous mariages almost two thousand yeares for want of a direct Law to prohibit them t is rather to be confidently assum'd that this was granted to apparent necessities as being of unquestionable right and reason in the Law of nature in that it still passes without inhibition ev'n when greatest cause is giv'n us to expect it should be directly forbidd'n But it was not approv'd so much the wors that it was allow'd as if sin had over masterd the law of God to conform her steddy and strait rule to sins crookednes which is impossible Besides what needed a positive grant of that which was not approv'd it restrain'd no liberty to him that could but use a little fraud it had bin better silenc't unlesse it were approv'd in some case or other Can wee conceave without vile thoughts that the majesty and holines of God could endure so many ages to gratifie a stubborn people in the practice of a foul polluting sin and could he expect they should abstain he not signifying his mind in a plain command at such time
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.
the mind rather then the body els it would be but a kind of animal or beastish meeting if the mind therfore cannot have that due company by mariage that it may reasonably and humanly desire that mariage can be no human society but a certain formalitie or gilding over of little better then a brutish congresse and so in very wisdome and purenes to be dissolv'd But mariage is more then human the covnant of God Pro. 2. 17. therfore man cannot dissolve it I answer if it be more then human so much the more it argues the chief society therof to be in the soul rather then in the body and the greatest breach therof to be unfitnes of mind rather then defect of body for the body can have left affinity in a covnant more then human so that the reason of dissolving holds good the rather Again I answer that the Sabbath is a higher institution a command of the first Table for the breach wherof God hath far more and oftner testify'd his anger then for divorces which from Moses till after the captivity he never took displeasure at nor then neither if we mark the Text and yet as oft as the good of man is cōcern'd he not only permits but commands to break the Sabbath What covnant more contracted with God lesse in mans power then the vow which hath once past his lips yet if it be found rash if offensive if unfruitfull either to Gods glory or the good of man our doctrin forces not error and unwillingnes irksomly to keep it but counsels wisdom and better thoughts boldly to break it therfore to injoyn the indissoluble keeping of a mariage found unfit against the good of man both soul and body as hath been evidenc't is to make an Idol of mariage to advance it above the worship of God and the good of man to make it a transcendent command above both the second and the first Table which is a most prodigious doctrine Next Wheras they cite out of the Proverbs that it is the covnant of God and therfore more then human that consequence is manifestly false for so the covnant which Zedeckiah made with the infidell King of Babel is call'd the covnant of God Ezech. 17. 19. which would be strange to hear counted more then a human covnant So every covnant between man and man bound by oath may be call'd the covnant of God because God therin is attested So of mariage he is the author and the witnes yet hence will not follow any divine astriction more then what is subordinate to the glory of God and the main good of either party for as the glory of God their esteemed fitnes one for the other was the motive which led them both at first to think without other revelation that God had joyn'd them together So when it shall be found by their apparent unfitnes that their continuing to be man and wife is against the glory of God and their mutuall happines it may assure them that God never joyn'd them who hath revel'd his gratious will not to set the ordinance above the man for whom it was ordain'd not to canonize mariage either as a tyrannesse or a goddesse over the enfranchiz'd life and soul of man for wherin can God delight wherin be worshipt wherin be glorify'd by the forcible continuing of an improper and ill-yoking couple He that lov'd not to see the disparity of severall cattell at the plow cannot be pleas'd with any vast unmeetnes in mariage Where can be the peace and love which must invite God to such a house may it not be fear'd that the not divorcing of such a helples disagreement will be the divorcing of God finally from such a place But it is a triall of our patience they say I grant it but which of Iobs afflictions were sent him with that law that he might not use means to remove any of them if he could And what if it subvert our patience and our faith too Who shall answer for the perishing of all those souls perishing by stubborn expositions of particular and inferior precepts against the general and supreme rule of charitie They dare not affirm that mariage is either a Sacrament or a mystery though all those sacred things give place to man and yet they invest it with such an awfull sanctity and give it such adamantine chains to bind with as if it were to be worshipt like some Indian deity when it can conferre no blessing upon us but works more and more to our misery To such teachers the saying of St. Peter at the Councell of Ierusalem will do well to be apply'd Why tempt ye God to put a yoke upon the necks of Christian men which neither the Iews Gods ancient people nor we are able to bear and nothing but unwary expounding hath brought upon us To these considerations this also may be added as no improbable conjecture seeing that sort of men who follow Anabaptism Famelism Antinomianism and other fanatick dreams be such most commonly as are by nature addicted to a zeal of Religion of life also not debausht and that their opinions having full swinge do end in satisfaction of the flesh it may come with reason into the thoughts of a wise man whether all this proceed not partly if not cheefly from the restraint of some lawfull liberty which ought to be giv'n men and is deny'd them As by Physick we learn in menstruous bodies where natures current hath been stopt that the suffocation and upward forcing of some lower part affects the head and inward sense with dotage and idle fancies And on the other hand whether the rest of vulgar men not so religiously professing doe not give themselves much the more to whordom and adulteries loving the corrupt and venial discipline of clergy Courts but hating to hear of perfect reformation when as they foresee that then fornication shall be austerely censut'd adultery punisht and mariage the appointed refuge of nature though it hap to be never so incongruous displeasing must yet of force be worn out when it can be to no other purpose but of strife and hatred a thing odious to God This may be worth the study of skilful men in Theology the reason of things and lastly to examin whether some undue and ill grounded strictnes upon the blameles nature of man be not the cause in those places where already reformation is that the discipline of the Church so often and so unavoidably brok'n is brought into contempt and derision And if it be thus let those who are still bent to hold this obstinate literality so prepare themselves as to share in the account for all these transgressions when it shall be demanded at the last day by one who will scanne and sift things with more then a literal wisdom of enquiry for if these reasons be duely ponder'd and that the Gospel is more jealous of laying on excessive burdens then ever the Law was lest the soul