Selected quad for the lemma: work_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
work_n	covenant_n	law_n	moral_a	4,802	5	10.4234	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A70591	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.	Milton, John, 1608-1674.	1643 (1643)	Wing M2108; ESTC R12932	44,446	52

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

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 shoulàst 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.