Selected quad for the lemma: truth_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
truth_n	ancient_a	cause_n	great_a	172	4	2.0659	3	false

Text snippets containing the quad

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

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

to a rectitude and mediocrity stands not in the middle way of duty but in the other extreme Which art of powerfull reclaiming wisest men have also taught in their ethical precepts and gnomologies resembling it as when wee bend a crooked wand the contrary way not that it should stand so bent but that the overbending might reduce it to a straitnesse by its own reluctance And as the Physician cures him who hath tak'n down poyson not by the middling temper of nourishment but by the other extreme of antidote so Christ administers heer a sharpe corrosive sentence against a foul and putrid licence not to eate into the flesh but into the sore And knowing that our divines through all their comments make no scruple where they please to soften the high and vehem ent speeches of our Saviour which they call hyperbolics why in this one text should they be such crabbed masorites of the Letter as not to mollifie a transcendence of literal rigidity which they confesse to find often elsewhere in his manner of delivery but must make their exposition heer such an obdurat Cyclops to have but one eye for this text and that onely open to cruelty and enthralment such as no divine or human law before ever heard of No let the foppish canouist with his fardel of matrimonial cases goe and be vendible where men bee so unhappy as to cheap'n him the words of Christ shall be asserted from such elementall notaries and resolv'd by the now-only lawgiving mouth of charity which may be done undoubtedly by understanding them as followes Whosoever shall put away his wife That is to say shall so away as the propounders of this question the Pharisees were wont to doe and covertly defended Herod for so doing whom to rebuke our Saviour heer mainely intends and not to determine all the cases of divorce as appeares by Saint Paul Whosoever shall put away either violently without mutuall consent for urgent reasons or conspiringly by plot of lust or cunning malice shall put away for any sudden mood or contingency of disagreement which is not daily practice but may blow soone over and be reconcil'd except it bee fornication whosoever shall put away rashly as his choler prompts him without due time of deliberating and thinke his conscience discharg'd only by the bill of divorce giv'n and the outward law satisfi'd whosoever lastly shall put away his wife that is a wife indeede not in name only such a one who both can and is willing to bee a meet helpe toward the cheif ends of mariage both civil and sanctify'd except fornication be the cause that man or that pair committ adulcery Not he who puts away by mutuall consent with all the considerations and respects of humanity and gentlenesse without malicious or lustfull drift Not he who after sober and coole experience and long debate within himself puts away whom though he cannot love or suffer as a wife with that sincere affection that marriage requires yet loves at lest with that civility and goodnesse as not to keepe her under a neglected and unwelcom residence where nothing can be hearty and not beeing it must needs bee both unjoyous and injurious to any perceaving person so detain'd and more injurious then to be freely and upon good termes dismist Nor doth hee put away adulterously who complaines of causes rooted in immutable nature utter unfitnesse utter disconformity not concileable because not to be amended without a miracle Nor hee who puts away an unquenshable vexation from his bosom and flies an evil then which a greater cannot befall human society Nor hee who puts away with the the full suffrage and applause of his conscience not relying on the writt'n bill of law but claiming by faith and fulnes of perswasion the rights and promises of Gods institution of which hee finds himselfe in a mistak'n wedlock defrauded Doubtlesse this man hath baile anough to bee no adulterer giving divorc for these causes His Wife This word is not to be idle here a meere word without a sense much lesse a fallacious word signifying contrary to what it pretends but faithfully signifies a wife that is a comfortable helpe and society as God instituted does not signify deceitfully under this name an intolerable adversary not a helpelesse unaffectionate and sullen masse whose very company represents the visible and exactest figure of lonelines it selfe Such an associate he who puts away divorces not a wife but disjoyns a nullity which God never joyn'd if she be neither willing nor to her proper and requisite duties sufficient as the words of God institute her And this also is Bucers explicat●on of this place Except it bee for fornication or saving for the cause of fornication as Matt. 5th This declares what kind of causes our Saviour meant fornication being no natural and perpetual cause but onely accidental and temporary therefore shewes that head of causes from whence it is excepted to bee meant of the same sort For exceptions are not logically deduc't from a divers kind as to say who so puts away for any naturall cause except fornication the exception would want salt And if they understand it who so for any cause what ever they cast themselves granting divorce for frigidity a naturall cause of their own allowing though not heer exprest and for desertion without infidelity when as he who marries as they allow him for a desertion deserts as well as is deserted and finally puts away for another cause besides adultery It will with all due reason therefore be thus better understood who so puts away for any accidental and temporary causes except one of them which is fornication Thus this exception finds out the causes from whence it is excepted to be of the same kind that is casuall not continuall Saving for the cause of fornication The New Testament though it be said originally writt in Greeke yet hath nothing neer so many Atticisms as Hebraisms Syriacisms which was the Majesty of God not filing the tongue of Scripture to a Gentilish Idiom but in a princely manner offring to them as to Gentiles and Foreiners grace and mercy though not in forein words yet in a forein stile that might induce them to the fountaines and though their calling were high and happy yet still to acknowledge Gods ancient people their betters and that language the Metropolitan language He therefore who thinks to Scholiaze upon the Gospel though Greek according to his Greek Analogies and hath not bin Auditor to the oriental dialects shall want in the heat of his Analysis no accomodation to stumble In this place as the 5th of Matth reads it Saving for the cause of fornication the Greek such as it is sounds it except for the word report speech or proportion of fornication In which regard with other inducements many ancient and learned writers have understood this exception as comprehending any fault equivalent and proportional to fornication But truth is the Evangelist heer Hebraizes

urgency the Religious from the irreligious the fit from the unfit the willing from the wilfull the abus'd from the abuser such a separation is quite contrary to confusion But to binde and mixe together holy with Atheist hevnly with hellish fitnes with unfitnes light with darknes antipathy with antipathy the injur'd with the injurer and force them into the most inward neernes of a detested union this doubtles is the most horrid the most unnatural mixture the greatest confusion that can be confus'd Thus by this plain and Christian Talmud vindicating the Law of God from irreverent and unwary expositions I trust wher it shall meet with intelligible perufers som stay at least of mens thoughts will bee obtain'd to consider these many prudent and righteous ends of this divorcing permission That it may have for the great Authors sake heerafter som competent allowance to bee counted a little purer then the prerogative of a legal and public ribaldry granted to that holy seed So that from hence wee shall hope to finde the way still more open to the reconciling of those places which treat this matter in the Gospel And thether now without interruption the cours of method brings us TETRACHORDON MATT. 5. 31 32. 31 It hath beene said whosoever shall put away his wife let him give her a writing of divorcement 32 But I say unto you that whosoever shall put away his wife c. MATT. 19. 3 4. c. 3 And the Pharises also came unto him tempting him c. IT hath beene said What hitherto hath beene spoke upon the law of God touching Matrimony or divorce hee who will deny to have bin argu'd according to reason and all equity of Scripture I cannot edifie how or by what rule of proportion that mans vertue calculates what his elements are not what his analytics Confidently to those who have read good bookes and to those whose reason is not an illiterate booke to themselves I appeale whether they would not confesse all this to bee the commentary of truth and justice were it not for these recited words of our Saviour And if they take not backe that which they thus grant nothing sooner might perswade them that Christ heer teaches no new precept and nothing sooner might direct them to finde his meaning then to compare and measure it by the rules of nature and eternall righteousnes which no writt'n law extinguishes and the Gospel least of all For what can be more opposite and disparaging to the cov'nant of love of freedom of our manhood in grace then to bee made the yoaking pedagogue of new severities the scribe of syllables and rigid letters not only greevous to the best of men but different and strange from the light of reason in them save only as they are fain to stretch distort their apprehensions for feare of displeasing the verbal straightnesse of a text which our owne servil feare gives us not the leisure to understand aright If the law of Christ shall be writt'n in our hearts as was promis'd to the Gospel Jer. 31 how can this in the vulgar and superficiall sense be a law of Christ so farre from beeing writt'n in our hearts that it injures and dissallowes not onely the free dictates of nature and morall law but of charity also and religion in our hearts Our Saviours doctrine is that the end and the fulfilling of every command is charity no faith without it no truth without it no worship no workes pleasing to God but as they partake of charity He himselfe sets us an example breaking the solemnest and the strictest ordinance of religious rest and justify'd the breaking not to cure a dying man but such whose cure might without danger have beene deserr'd And wherefore needes must the sick mans bed be carried home on that day by his appointment and why were the Disciples who could not forbeare on that day to pluck the corne so industriously desended but to shew us that if he preferr'd the slightest occasions of mans good before the observing of highest and severest ordinances hee gave us much more easie leave to breake the intolerable yoake of a never well joyn'd wedlocke for the removing of our heaviest afflictions Therefore it is that the most of evangelick precepts are given us in proverbiall formes to drive us from the letter though we love ever to be sticking there For no other cause did Christ assure us that whatsoever things wee binde or slacken on earth are so in heaven but to signifie that the christian arbitrement of charity is supreme decider of all controversie and supreme resolver of all Scripture not as the Pope determines for his owne tyrany but as the Church ought to determine for its owne true liberty Hence Eusebius not far from beginning his History compares the state of Christians to that of Noah and the Patriarkes before the Law And this indeede was the reason why Apostolick tradition in the antient Church was counted nigh equall to the writt'n word though it carried them at length awry for want of considering that tradition was not left to bee impos'd as law but to be a patterne of that Christian prudence and liberty which holy men by right assum'd of old which truth was so evident that it found entrance even into the Councell of Trent when the point of tradition came to be discusst And Marinaro a learned Carmelite for approaching too neere the true cause that gave esteeme to tradition that is to say the difference betweene the Old and New Testament the one punctually prescribing writt'n Law the other guiding by the inward spirit was reprehended by Cardinall Poole as one that had spoken more worthy a German Collequie then a generall councell I omit many instances many proofes and arguments of this kind which alone would compile a just volume and shall content me heer to have shew'n breifly that the great and almost only commandment of the Gospel is to command nothing against the good of man and much more no civil command against his civil good If we understand not this we are but crackt cimbals we do but tinckle we know nothing we doe nothing all the sweat of our toilsomest obedience will but mock us And what wee suffer superstitiously returnes us no thankes Thus med'cining our eyes wee neede not doubt to see more into the meaning of these our Saviours words then many who have gone before us It hath beene said whosoever shall put away his wife Our Saviour was by the doctors of his time suspected of intending to dissolve the law In this chapter he wipes off this aspersion upon his accusers and shewes how they were the law brea kers In every common wealth when it decayes corruption makes two maine steps first when men cease to doe according to the inward and uncompell'd actions of vertue caring only to live by the outward constraint of law and turne the Simplicity of reall good into the craft of seeming so by law To this

hypocritical honesty was Rome declin'd in that age wherein Horace liv'd and discover'd it to Quintius Whom doe we count a good man whom but he Who keepes the lawes and statutes of the Senate Who judges in great suits and controversies Whose witnesse and opinion winnes the cause But his owne house and the whole neighbourhood Sees his foule inside through his whited skin The next declining is when law becomes now too straight for the secular manners and those too loose for the cincture of law This brings in false and crooked interpretations to ecke out law and invents the suttle encroachment of obscure traditions hard to be disprov'd To both these descents the Pharises themselves were fall'n Our Saviour therefore shews them both where they broke the law in not marking the divine intent thereof but onely the letter and where they deprav'd the letter also with sophisticall expositions This law of divorse they had deprav'd both waies First by teaching that to give a bill of divorse was all the duty which that law requir'd what ever the cause were Next by running to divorse for any triviall accidentall cause whenas the law evidently stayes in the grave causes of naturall and immutable dislike It hath been said saith he Christ doth not put any contempt or disesteeme upon the law struct but if he discerne his willingnesse and candor made use of to intrapp him will suddainly draw in himselfe and laying aside the facil vein of perspicuity will know his time to utter clouds and riddles If he be not lesse wise then that noted Fish when as he should bee not unwiser then the Serpent Our Saviour at no time exprest any great desire to teach the obstinate and unteachable Pharises but when they came to tempt him then least of all As now about the liberty of divorce so another time about the punishment of adultery they came to sound him and what satisfaction got they from his answer either to themselves or to us that might direct a law under the Gospel new from that of Moses unlesse we draw his absolution of adultery into an edict So about the tribute who is there can picke out a full solution what and when we must give to Caesar by the answer which he gave the Pharises If we must give to Caesar that which is Caesars and all be Caesars which hath his image wee must either new stamp our Coine or we may goe new stamp our Foreheads with the superscription of slaves in stead of freemen Besides it is a generall precept not only of Christ but of all other Sages not to instruct the unworthy and the conceited who love tradition more then truth but to perplex and stumble them purposely with contriv'd obscurities No wonder then if they who would determine of divorce by this place have ever found it difficult and unfatisfying through all the ages of the Church as Austine himselfe and other great writers confesse Lastly it is manifest to be the principal scope of our Saviour both here and in the 5. of Mat. to convince the Pharises of what they being evill did licentiously not to explaine what others being good and blamelesse men might be permitted to doe in case of extremity Neither was it seasonable to talke of honest and conscientious liberty among them who had abused legall and civil liberty to uncivil licence We doe not say to a servant what we say to a sonne nor was it expedient to preach freedome to those who had transgrest in wantonnesse When we rebuke a Prodigal we admonish him of thrift not of magnificence or bounty And to school a proud man we labour to make him humble not magnanimous So Christ to retort these arrogant inquisitors their own tooke the course to lay their hautinesse under a severity which they deserv'd not to acquaint them or to make them judges either of the just mans right and privilege or of the afflicted mans necessity And if wee may have leave to conjecture there is a likelyhood offer'd us by Tertullian in his 4. against Marcion whereby it may seeme very probable that the Pharises had a private drifr of malice against our Saviours life in proposing this question and our Saviour had a peculiar aim in the rigor of his answer both to let them know the freedome of his spirit and the sharpenesse of his discerning This I must now shew saith Tertullian Whence our Lord deduc'd this sentence and which way he directed it whereby it will more fully appeare that he intended not to dissolve Moses And there upon tells us that the vehemence of this our Saviours speech was cheifly darted against Herod and Herodias The story is out of Josephus Herod had beene a long time married to the daughter of Aretas King of Petra til hapning on his jorney towards Rome to be entertain'd at his brother Philips house he cast his eye unlawfully and unguestlike upon Herodias there the wife of Philip but daughter to Aristobulus their common brother and durst make words of marrying her his Neece from his brothers bed She assented upon agreement he should expell his former wife All was accomplisht and by the Baptist rebuk't with the losse of his head Though doubtlesse that staid not the various discourses of men upon the fact which while the Herodian flatterers and not a few perhaps among the Pharises endevout'd to defend by wresting the law it might be a meanes to bring the question of divorce into a hot agitation among the people how farre Moses gave allowance The Pharises therefore knowing our Saviour to be a friend of Iohn the Baptist and no doubt but having heard much of his Sermon in the Mount wherein he spake rigidly against the licence of divorce they put him this question both in hope to find him a contradicter of Moses and a condemner of Herod so to insnare him within compasse of the same accusation which had ended his friend and our Saviour so orders his answer as that they might perceive Herod and his Adultresse only not nam'd so lively it concern'd them both what he spake No wonder then if the sentence of our Saviour sounded stricter then his custome was which his conscious attempters doubtlesse apprehended sooner then his other auditors Thus much we gaine from hence to informe us that what Christ intends to speake here of divorce will be rather the forbidding of of what we may not doe herein passionately and abusively as Herod and Herodias did then the discussing of what herein we may doe reasonably and necessarily Is it lawfull for a man to put away his wife It might be render'd more exactly from the Greeke to loosen or to set free which though it seeme to have a milder fignification then the two Hebrew words commonly us'd for divorce yet Interpreters have noted that the Greeke also is read in the Septuagint for an act which is not without constraint As when Achish drove from his presence David counterfeting madnesse Psal 34. the Greeke word