Grammer and to the sence and scope of the Canon which plainly intends to aver that all those degrees prohibited in that table are also forbidden by the laws of God A truth so certain that if either self-love or love of gaine did not betray the eye it is a wonder how it should abide a contradiction It is observable that neither statute nor canon speak of an expresse prohibition in Gods law And the Canon purposely distinguisheth the termes prohibited by Gods law and expressed in the Table as justly supposing there may be as strong a prohibition in a sense implyed as verbally expressed Else if our Lawes as is pretended should give allowance which God forbid to any marriages not expresly in terminis forbidden wee should have strange and uncouth mixtures God by Moses expresly forbad the uncovering the nakedness of Father and Mother hee expressed not the nakednesse of Son and Daughter he expresly names the nakednesse of the Fathers wife he expresseth not the nakednesse of the Mothers husband He expresly names the nakednesse of thy Sister he expresseth not the nakedness of thy Brother he expresseth the nakednesse of thy Sons Daughter he expresseth not the nakednesse of thy Daughters Son He expresseth the nakednesse of thy Fathers wives Daughter he expresseth not the Mothers Husbands Sonne he expresseth the Fathers Sister not the Mothers Brother He expresses the Daughter in law not the Son in law So as by this Rule if it should be carried only by meer verball expressions a woman might marry her Son in law the Nephew might marry his great aunt the neece her grea-uncle the Daughter might marry her Mothers husbands Sonne the Grand-mother might marry her Daughters son the Daughter might marry with her Mothers Husband Were these things to be allowed the world would be all Sodome These things therefore are of necessity included in the law by a clere Analogy no lesse then if they had beene expressed But have there been as hee saith precedents of this march I am sory to heare it surely the more the worse and the more need to redresse it the addition of this if neglected would help to strengthen an ill claim Cozens-german he saith have beene allowed to marry What is that to the present case The difference is as much as betwixt a Nephew and an Uncle The Uncle hath too much of the Parents both right and blood to challenge an equall claim with a Cozen. In the shutting up it pitties me to see your worthy Friend driven to this plea and like a drowning man to snatch at so small a twig Being done he saith it ought not to be undone Alas the Canon is peremptory It is incestuous and unlawfull what plea is there for continuance Speak not therfore of either connivence or dispensation This match is only capable of a late but much wished repentance on the Offenders part and a just diremption on the part of the Judges CASE II. Whether it be lawfull for a Man to marry his wives Brothers widow AMongst all the heads of Case Divinity there is no one that yeeldeth more scruples then this of Marriage whether wee regard the qualification of the Persons or the emergency of actions and events It is the lawfulness of this match that you inquire after not the expedience and I must shape my answer accordingly It hath been the wisdom and care of our godly and prudent Predecessors to ordaine a Table of all the prohibited degrees to be publiquely hang'd up in all the severall Churches of this Nation to which all commers might have recourse for satisfaction This Catalogue you have perused and find no exception of the case specified I know no reason therfore why you may not conclude it not unlawfull The question of the Expedience would require another debate doubt less in all cases of this nature it must needs be yeelded that it were more meet and safe since the world yeilds so large a latitude of choice to look further off a wise and good man will not willingly trespasse against the rules of just expedience and will be as carefull to consider what is fit to be done as what is lawfull but that comes not at this time within your inquiry Whiles therfore I give my opinion for the lawfulness of this Marriage with the Relict of the wives brother I doe no whit clash as you suggest with the judgement of Beza and Master Perkins who professe their dislike of such copulations I shal as readily cry them down for unmeet and inconvenient as those that with too much boldnesse come over neere to the Verge of a sinfull conjunction but for the not unlawfulnesse of this match I did upon the first hearing give my affirmative answer and the more I consider of it I am the more confirmed in that resolution That universal rule mentioned by you as laid down by those two worthy Authors must indure a limitation Cujus non licet inire nuptias ejus nec conjugis licet that there is the same degree and force of relation of a third person in the case of Marriage to the husband and to the wife so as proximity of blood in the one should not be a greater bar then the same proximity of alliance in the other Otherwise many more copulations will fall under censure then common practise will condescend unto and that ground of uxor pars quadam viri The wife is as a part of the husband as it holds not in naturall relation at all so not in all conjugall as might be too easily instanced in divers particulars And if there were not som difference in these relations those second persons which are interessed in the Husband or Wife might not come neer to the next in affinity to them For example my Brother may not marry my Sister therefore by this rule he might not marry my Wives Sister and so it should bee unlawfull for two Brothers to marry two Sisters then which nothing is more ordinary or lesse obnoxious to disallowance That generall rule therefore must be restrained necessarily to the first ranke of affinity if we descend lower it holds not For further explanation our Civilians and Canonists are wont to make two kinds or degrees of Affinity the one primary the other secondary In the first is the affinity between the husband and the Cozens of blood to his wife or è cōverse which indeed is justly held no lesse for a barr of marriage then his own naturall consanguinity for that is an affinity contracted upon interest of blood by virtue of that entire union between Man and Wife wherby they both become one flesh The Secondary affinity is that wherein there is another person added moreover to that first kinde now mentioned the affinity arising only from the interest of an affinity formerly contracted not from consanguinity and this is not so binding as either to hinder a marriage to be contracted or being contracted to dissolve it In this rank are the brothers wife and sisters
the publique I must seriously profess when I first did cast my eye upon the front of the book I supposed some great wit meant to try his skill in the maintenance of this so wild and improbable a paradox but ere I could have run over som of those too wel-penned pages I found the Author was in earnest and meant seriously to contribute this peece of good councel in way of Reformation to the wise and seasonable care of superiors I cannot but blush for our age wherein so bold a motion hath been amongst others admitted to the light what will all the Christian Churches through the world to whose notice those lines shall come think of our wofull degeneration in these deplored times that so uncouth a designe should be set on foot amongst us Or how can they construe it other then a direct contradiction to our Saviours sentence in maintaining that practise which hee expresly professeth to oppose for what was the Jewish guise here checked by our Saviour but a voluntary repudiation of a lawfull wife upon the terms of dislike other then fornication Their mis-interpretation of the law alluded unto argues no lesse The Law alluded unto is that of Deutronomy where God sayes When a man hath takâ—n a wife and hath been her husband and it shall be that she finde not grace in his eyes because he hath found in her matter of nakednesse he shall write her a bill of divorcement and send her away Deut. 24. 1. whereupon he infers with an Ego dico I say unto you Whosoever shall put away his wife saving for fornication causeth her to commit adultery the matter of nakednesse therefore for which the Jews were then wont to divorce their wives and offended in so divorcing them was any other displeasing qualitie besides the breach of wedlock through bodily uncleannesse for which only had they dismissed their wives our Saviour had neither faulted their Glosse nor their Practise so as herein Christ the giver of the Law decides one of those great controversies which were agitated between the emulous schools of Sammai and Hillel determining on Sammai's side that for no other nakedness but that of adultery it was lawfull to divorce a wife and flatly condemning by the like answer that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Mat. 19. 3. every cause of repudiation then ordinarily received as it was by the Pharisee purposely propounded unto him Answerable whereunto is that of the Prophet Malachi who in our just reading hath so fully decided the cause as if it had been expresly referred to his umpirage The Lord saith he hath been witnesse between thee and the wife of thy youth against whom thou hast dealt treacherously Yet is she thy companion and the wife of thy covenant Mal. 2. 14 15 16. Loe the wife of thy covenant therefore too sure setled to bee turn'd off upon every sleight occasion what was thy covenant to take her for thy wife till thou shouldst dislike her what were this but to mock God and the world thy covenant implies no less then firmitude and perpetuity Therefore take heed to your spirit and let none deal treacherously against the wife of his youth For the Lord the God of Israel saith that he hateth putting away For one covereth violence with his garment saith the Lord of hosts Therefore take heed to your spirit that you deal not treacherously What is this treachery which the Prophet cries out against thus vehemently thrice over with a breath but pretended and unjust suggestions against a lawfull wife for her undue divorce and what is that violence but the injurious execution of those suggestions upon which unsufficient grounds the Lord professes to hate putting away Yea how apparently contrary is this practise to the very originall institution of marriage it self He that made it in Paradise ordained thus Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother and shall cleave unto his wife and they two shall be one flesh Gen. 2. 24. Loe before ever there was father or mother or son in the world God hath appointed that the bonds betwixt husband and wife shall be more strait and indissoluble then betwixt the parent and child and can any man be so unreasonable as to defend it lawfull upon some unkinde usages or thwartness of disposition for a parent to abandon and forsake his child or the son to cast off his parent much lesse therefore may it be thus betwixt an husband wife They two are one flesh Behold here an union of Gods making A mans body is not more his own then his wives body is his And will a man be content to part easily with a peece of himselfe Or can we thinke that God will indure an union made by himself to be sleightly dissolved Or how is this bodily matrimony a lively image of the spirituall marriage betwixt Christ and his Church who hath said I will betroth thee unto me for ever Yea I will betroth thee unto me in righteousnesse and in judgement and in loving kindenesse and in mercies Hos. 2. 19. if upon small occasions it may be subject to utter dissolution Yea what speak I of Divinity Even modest Heathens would hisse this Libertinisme off the Stage Amongst the rest what a fool was Socrates The Oracle belike called him the wisest man of his time but what a fool was he to indure the unquiet clack of his Xantippe with such cool patience if he might have quit himself of the trouble with a sodain act of her dismission Or what use was there of those Delegates of Athens and the Harmosyni of Lacedaemon for the peecing up of these domestique breaches betwixt husband and wife if the imperious husband had power to right himself by turning the scold out of doors Lastly What silly counsail was that which the Jewish Rabbi gave to his client matcht with a shrew The bone that is falne to thy lot that doe thou gnaw upon if it were altogether free for him to leave that bone and take another But I have dwelt too long on so grosse a subject There may yet seem some better colour for the plea of the Romish doctors which admit infidelity and hereâ—ie into the rank of those causes which may warrant a divorce But herein the ambiguity of the word if heed be not taken may deceive you The Hebrew text to which our Saviour alludes uses a word which signifies excision or cutting off The Greek a departing away or putting off The Latine Divortium in his true sense is not so hainous as either of the other signifying rather a turning aside but in our ordinary acception amounts to no less then both But what unjust difference they make betwixt finall separation and dissolution we shall finde in our next discourse Onwards that such separation may not be made of man and wife lawfully joyned together for heresie or misbelief we need no other conviction then that peremptory and clear determination of our Saviour which we have
formerly insisted on For though his words on the mount were in a way of doctrinall assertion yet afterwards the same words were used by him in way of a satisfactory answer to the Pharises question concerning causes of divorce professedly resolving that there could be no allowable ground of such separation except fornication What words can be more plain It is but a shift to say as the Cardinall doth that our Saviour here meant only to expresse the proper cause of the separation of married persons which is the breach of marriage faith as having no occasion to speak of those generall grounds which reach to the just sundring of all humane societies such as Heresie and Infidelitie which are enough to unglew all naturall and civill relations betwixt father and son master and servant husband and wife For it is clear that neither question nor answer were bounded with any particularities The Pharisee asks Whether for every cause Our Saviour answers For no cause but fornication And it is spoken beside the book that child or servant should or may forsake parent or master in case of heresie or infidelity S. Paul teacheth other Doctrine Let as many servants as are under the yoke of bondage count their infidell masters worthy of all honor 1 Tim. 6. 5. not worthy therefore of desertion and disclamation And if the servants may not shake off the bonds of duty much lesse may the son brake or file off the bonds of nature and as for the matrimoniall knot how too sure it is to be loosed by infidelity it self let the Apostle speak If any brother hath a wife that beleeveth not and she be pleased to dwell with him let him not put her away 1 Cor. 7. 12. And the woman which hath an husband that beleeveth not and if he be pleased to dwell with her let her not leave him ver 13. And if even Infidelity have not power to dis-oblige the wife or husband much less Heresie In this pretended case therefore to separate from board and bed is no better then a presumptuous insolence It is the peremptory charge of Christ What God hath joyned together let not man put asunder Mat. 19. 6. In all lawfull marriages it is God that joyns the hands and hearts of the Married How dare man then undoe the work of God upon devises of his own Had the Lord ever said If thy wife be a wilfull mis-beleever rid thy hands of her this separation were just but now that his charge is clean contrary what an impious sauciness is it to dis-joyn those whom God hath united As therefore it is not in the power of any third person upon any whatsoever pretence violently to break the sacred bond of Marriage so neither may the husband or wife enthral each other by a wilfull desertion whether upon pretext of religion or any secular occasion In which cause what is to be don must come under a further disquisition Certainly it was never the intention of the holy and wise God by vertue of that which was ordained for mans comfort and remedy of sin to binde him to a remedilesse misery which must necessarily fall out if upon the departure of an unbeleeving or hereticall yoke-fellow the relict party must be tyed up to a perpetuall necessity of either containing if he can or if he can not of burning The wise Doctor of the Gentiles well fore-saw the dangerous inconvenience that must needs hereupon ensue and hath given order for prevention accordingly But if the unbeleeving depart let him depart A brother or a sister is not under bondage in such cases but God hath called us to peace 1 Cor. 7. 15. Not that it is free for a man or woman so forsaken to carve him or her self of redresse what an infinite confusion would follow upon such licentiousness but that after long and patient expectation and all probable means used for the reduction of the party deserting recourse be had as to the last refuge to publique ecclesiastical authority which is the fittest to manage these matrimoniall affairs in whose power it may be either by grave admonitions and just censures to bring back the offendor to his duty or upon his continuing contempt to set a day for the publication of the just freedom of the forsaken wherein they shall doe no other then execute that Apostolike sentence for exemption from an unjust bondage and providing for a just peace CASE III. Whether after a lawfull Divorce for Adultery the innocent party may marry again ALthough Matrimony be not according to the Romish tenet one of those Sacraments which imprint an indeleble Character in the receiver yet it hath as they hold such a secret influence upon the soul as that it leaves a perpetuall bond behind it never to be dissolved till death So as those offenders which by just censure are separated from the board and the bed cannot yet be freed from the bond of marriage upon this ground it is that they bar the innocent party from the benefit of a second marriage as supposing the obligation of the former still in force In the ordinary Bills of the Jewish divorce the repudiated wife had full-scope given her of a second choice as the words ran She was to be free and to have power over her own soul to goe away to be married to any man whom she would They were not more liberall then our Romish divorcers are niggardly The Jewish divorce being upon unwarrantable cause made their liberality so much more sinfull as their divorce was more unjust for the divorced woman was still in right the lawfull wife of that unrighteous husband that dismissed her the Romish doctrine makes their strait-handednesse so much more injurious as the cause of separation is more just Even this question also is expresly determined by our Saviour in his answer to the Pharisee Whosoever shall put away his wife except it be for fornication and marrieth another committeth adultery Mat. 19. Lo then he that for so just a cause as fornication putteth away his wife and marrieth another committeth not adultery the exception manifestly implies so much both in reason and common use neither indeed are the words capable of any other probable sense That which Bellarmine would fasten upon it referring the exception to the former clause of dismission only so as it might be lawfull to divorce only for fornication but not to marry after divorce cannot stand without a supply of words of his own which God never alow'd him to intersert and besides utterly destroies the sense casting such a doctrine upon our Saviour as he would hate to own for except that restraint be refered to the marrying again the sense would run thus whosoever puts away his wife commits adultery which stands not with truth or reason sith it is not the dismission that is adulterous but the marryage of another It is therefore the plain drift of our Saviour to teach the Pharisee that the marriage of a second wife
were Iscah Nahor his neece Milcha Amram his Aunt Jochebed and these not without a large bles-upon the bed Let him tell me also that Jacob married two Sisters and conversed conjugally with both which were now shamefully incestuous yet was herein blessed with the issue of six of those Patriarchs who were the root of those glorious stemmes of Israel If we should speak most favourably of these conjunctions to ranke them under malum quia prohibitum it must needs follow that till the prohibition came they could not bee censured as evill Though good Authors make it justly questionable whether these fore-alledged marriages should deservedly bee charged with a sin or excused by Gods extraordinary dispensation in the meane time the blessing was to the person not to the act even Lots incestuous copulatio with his daughters sped well two famous nations sprang thence of one of them the gracious progenitrice of the Saviour of the world Yet this is no plea for the allowance of that monstrous conjunction After â—he law one justifiable example were worth a thousand before it Lo good Caleb saith he married his daughter Achsah to his brother Othoniel Joshua 15. 16 17. Indeede this case comes as home to the businesse as it is farre off from the text See whether mes-prision of Scripture may mislead us a man that understands nothing but the english or vulgar latin may easily run into so foul an error weigh but the place well you will soon find the fault without me Othniel the son of Kenaz Calebs brother tooke Kerath-Sepher and Caleb gave him Achsah his daughter to wife The English wanting cases expresses it doubtfuly it will be cleare in the Latin as Montanus and Pagnine two great Masters of the Hebrew in their Interlinear read it Othniel filius Kenaz fratris Calebi Othniel the sonne of Kenaz which Kenaz was Caleb's brother both the Hebrew Chaldee cleare that sense So the Septuagint as Emanuel-Sa also urges upon that place Judg 1. 13. expresly say that Kenaz was the brother of Caleb and not Othoniel wherein yet I cannot much blame an unballanced judgement whiles I find the Septuagint contrary to themselves For in Josh. 15. 16 they say Othniel was Calebs younger brother In Judg. 3. 9. they say Kenaz the father of Othniel was so for which there is no excuse but the large sense of a brother in the Hebrew We are brethren saith Abraham to Lot yet he was Lots uncle so was Kenaz a progenitor to Othniel for Caleb is stiled the son of Jephunneh the Kenezite Josh. 14. 14. Num. 32 12. The case was only this Kenaz was the ancestor of Caleb and one of the same name was his brother the father of Othniel what can be more plain then 1 Chron. 4. 13. And the sons of Kenaz Othniel Seraiah So as if wee take this most strictly to the letter it implies nothing but the marriage of two cozens german Othniel the son of Kenaz and Achsah the daughter of Caleb brothers children as Bucer upon the place Melanchton in his Tract De Conjugio Junius and indeede who otherwise And now by this time you see what a poore ground this is to build upon rather you see a castle not built on the sand but in the ayre meer misconceit But saith the Advocate this marriage is no where directly forbidden in the Law I must tell him it is but a meer shuffle to stand upon the terms of a direct prohibition when there is one no lesse forceable convictive Two wayes may ought be effectually forbidden in the law Either in plain expression of terms or in clear implication of sense surely that is rather more in the law which it means irrefragably than what it verbally expresseth now however this be not in the letter of the law yet in the sense it is the same law that forbids the nephew to marry the aunt doth eadem operâ forbid the uncle to marry the neece In regard as of neerness yea identity of blood the case is the same however som inequality may be conceived in respect of government subjection And if upon som oeconomicall termes it be more unfit for a Nephew to marry his Aunt than for an Uncle to marry his Neece yet in regard of blood and that bodily conjunction which God principally aymes at in this prohibition what difference can possibly bee conceived Nature hath made no other distance betwixt the Nephew and the Aunt than bewixt the Neece the Uncle or if there be any they must be sharper eys than mine that can discerne it God himself me thinks hath put this out of doubt the reason wherewith hee backs his command is iresistible The Nephew shall not marry the fathers sister why so For she is thy fathers neer kinswoman v. 12. Lo it is the neerness of blood that makes this match unlawfull not respect of civil inequality Where the blood then is equally neere the marriage must be equally unlawfull That rule of law which is pretended in prohibitoriis quicquid non prohibetur permittitur What is not forbidden is permitted had neede of a fair construction Indeed that which is not forbidden either in words or in necessary analogy implication of sense is supposed to be left at large But what place hath this Axiome in a case not less really forbidden than the expressed And if wee should strictly follow the letter of this Maxime it would lead us into Sodome since there are marriages not specified which would be monstrously incestuous such as honesty would blush to mention as shall appeare in the sequele Neither is there any more force in that other In poenalibus non fit extensio That penall lawes should not bee stretcht further then their words import Certainly in som sense I know no law that is not penall but why this law Thou shalt not marry thy Aunt or Neece should be rather penal than Thou shalt not commit adultry I know not I am sure learned Zanchius accounts these of the 18. of Leviticus equally morall and Bucanus holds them to be against the law of nature And if in humane laws this axiom may challenge a place yet in the roy all laws of our Maker where under one sin mentioned all the species appendances and the whols claim of that wickednesse is wont to be comprised doubtless it is utterly unsufferable Neither is here any extension of this prohibition beyond those limits which God hath fixed in the undoubted sense of his law In the seventh Commandement nothing is expressed but adultry shall we therefore say neither fornication nor pollution nor sodomie is there forbidden were not this to destroy that lawe which God makes to be spirituall and to open the flood gates to a torrent of licentiousnesse surely it is easy to observe that Gods Spirit no lesse meanes that which he pleaseth to suppresse The Psalmist sayes Promotion comes neither from the East nor from the West nor from the South Psal. 75.