Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce

THE DOCTRINE AND DISCIPLINE OF DIVORCE; RESTOR'D TO THE GOOD OF BOTH SEXES.

M Any men, whether it be their fate, or fond opinion, easily persuade themselves, if GOD would but be pleased a while to withdraw his just punishments from us, and to restrain what power either the devil, or any earthly enemy hath to work us woe, that then man's nature would find immediate rest and releasement from all evils. But verily they who think so, if they be such as have a mind large • nough to take into their thoughts a general survey of human things, would soon prove themselves in that opinion far deceived. For though it were granted us by divine indulgence to be exempt from all that can be harmful to us from without, yet the perverseness of our folly is so bent, that we should never lin hammering out of our own hearts, as it were out of a flint, the seeds and sparkles of new miseries to ourselves, till all were in a blaze again. And no marvel if out of our own hearts, for they are evil; but even out of those things which God meant us, either for a principal good, or a pure contentment, we are still hatching and contriving upon ourselves matter of continual sorrow and perplexity. What greater good to man then that revealed rule, whereby God vouchsafes to show us how he would be worshipped? 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 only daughter. And was the cause ofttimes 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 unlawful. 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 given them by Moses, hath changed the blessing of matrimony not seldom into a familiar and co-inhabiting mischief; at least into a drooping and disconsolate household captivity, without refuge or redemption. So ungovern'd and so wild a race doth superstition run us from one extreme of abused liberty into the other of unmerciful restraint. For although God in the first ordaining of marriage, taught us to what end he did it, in words expressly implying the apt and cheerful conversation of man with woman, to comfort and refresh him against the evil of solitary life, not mentioning the purpose of generation till afterwards, as being but a secondary end in dignity, though not in necessity; yet now, if any two be but once handed in the Church, and have tasted in any sort of the nuptial bed, let them find themselves never so mistaken 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 days, yet they shall, so they be but found suitably weapon'd to the lest possibility of sensual enjoyment, bemade, spite of antipathy to fadge together, and combine as they may to their unspeakable wearisomeness & despair of all sociable delight in the ordinance which God established to that very end. What a calamity is this, and as the Wiseman, if he were alive, would sigh out in his own phrase, what a sore evil is this under the Sun! All which we can refer justly to no other author then the Canon Law and her adherents, not consulting with charity, the interpreter and guide of our faith, but resting in the mere element of the Text; doubtless by the policy of the devil 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 license might abound. It was for many ages that marriage lay in disgrace with most of the ancient Doctors, as a work of the flesh, almost a defilement, wholly denied to Priests, and the second time dissuaded to all, as he that reads Tertullian or Jerome may see at large. Afterwards it was thought so Sacramental, that no adultery could dissolve it; yet there remains a burden on it as heavy as the other two were disgraceful or superstitious, and of as much iniquirie, crossing a Law not only writ'n by Moses, but character'd in us by nature, of more antiquity and deeper ground then marriage it self; which Law is to force nothing against the faultles proprieties of nature: yet that this may be colourably done, our Savior's 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 preached only to the conscience, is by canonical tyranny snatched into the compulsive censure of a judicial Court; where Laws are imposed even against the venerable & secret power of natures impression, to love what ever cause be found to loath. Which is a heinous barbarism both against the honor of marriage, the dignity of man and his soul, the goodness of Christianity, and all the human respects of civility. Notwithstanding that some the wisest and gravest among the Christian Emperors, who had about them, to consult with, those of the fathers then living, who for their learning & holiness of life are still with us in great renown, have made their statutes & edicts concerning this debate, far more easy 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 persuasion to the equity of those imperial decrees, in his notes upon the Evangelists, much allaying the outward roughness of the Text, which hath for the most part been too immoderately expounded; and excites the diligence of others to inquire further into this question, as containing many points which have not yet been explained. By which, and by mine own apprehension of what public duty each man owes, I conceive myself exhorted among the rest to communicate such thoughts as I have, and offer them now in this general labor 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 shall be so happy as with success to ease & set free the minds of ingenuous and apprehensive men from this needless thralldom, he that can prove it lawful and just to claim the performance of a fit and matchable conversation, no less essential to the prime scope of marriage then the gift of bodily conjunction, or else to have an equal plea of divorce as well as for that corporal deficiency; he that can but lend us the clue that winds out this labyrinth of servitude to such a reasonable and expedient liberty as this, deserves to be reck▪n'd among the public benefactors of civil and human life; above the inventors of wine and oil; for this is a far dearer, far nobler, and more desirable cherishing to man's life, unworthily exposed to sadness and mistake, which he shall vindicate, Not that license and levity and unconsented breach of faith should herein be countenancit, but that some conscionable, and tender pity might be had of those who have unwarily in a thing they never practiz'd before, made themselves the bondmen of a luckles and helpless matrimony. In which Argument he whose courage can serve him to give the first onset, must look for two several oppositions: the one from those who having sworn themselves to long custom and the letter of the Text, will not out of the road: the other from those whose gross and vulgar apprehensions conceit but low of matrimonial purposes, and in the work of male and female think they have all. Nevertheless, it shall be here sought by due ways to be made appear, that those words of God in the institution, promising a meet help against lonelines; and those words of Christ, That his yoke is easy and his burden light, were not spoken in vain; for if the knot of marriage may in no case be dissolved but for adultery, all the burd'ns and services of the Law are not so intolerable. This only is desired of them who are minded to judge hardly of thus maintaining, that they would be still and hear all out, nor think it equal to answer deliberate reason with sudden heat and noise; remembering this, that many truths now of reverend esteem and credit, had their birth and beginning once from singular and private thoughts; while the most of men were otherwise possessed; and had the fate at first to be generally exploded and exclaim'd on by many violent opposers; yet I may err perhaps in soothing myself that this present truth revived, will deserve to be not ungently received on all hands; in that it undertakes the cure of an inveterate disease crept into the best part of human society: and to do this with no smarting corrosive, but with a smooth and pleasing lesson, which received hath the virtue to soften and dispel rooted and knotty sorrows; and without enchantment or spel used hath regard at once both to serious pity, and upright honesty; that tends to the redeeming and restoring of none but such as are the object of compassion; having in an ill hour hamper'd themselves to the utter dispatch of all their most beloved comforts & repose for this lives term. But if we shall obstinately dislike this new overture of unexpected ease and recovery, what remains but to deplore the frowardness of our hopeless condition, which neither can endure the estate we are in, nor admit of remedy either sharp or sweet. Sharp we ourselves distaste; and sweet, under whose hands we are, is scrupl'd and suspected as too lushious. In such a posture Christ found the Jews, who were neither won with the austerity of John the Baptist, and thought it too much license to follow freely the charming pipe of him who sounded and proclaimed liberty and relief to all distresses: yet Truth in some age or other will find her witness, and shall be justified at last by her own children.

To remove therefore if it be possible, this great and sad oppression which through the strictness of a literal interpreting hath invaded and disturbed the dearest and most peaceable estate of household society, to the over-burdning, if not the over-whelming of many Christians better worth then to be so deserted of the Churches considerate care, this position shall be laid down; first proving, then answering what may be objected either from Scripture or light of reason.

That indisposition, unfitness, or contrariety of mind, arising from a cause in nature unchangeable, hindering and ever likely to hinder the main benefits of conjugal society, which are solace and peace, is a greater reason of divorce then natural frigidity, especially if there be no children, and that there be mutual consent.

For all sense and reason and equity reclaimes that any Law or Cov'nant how solemn or strait soever, either between God and man, or man and man, though of God's joining, should bind against a prime and principal scope of its own institution, and of both or either party cov'nanting: neither can it be of force to engage a blameless creature to his own perpetual sorrow, mistaken for his expected solace, without suffering charity to step in and do a confessed good work of parting those whom nothing holds together, but this of God's joining, falsely supposed against the express end of his own ordinance. And what his chief end was of creating woman to be joined with man, his own instituting words declare, and are infallible to inform us what is marriage, and what is no marriage; unless we can think them set there to no purpose: It is not good, saith he, that man should be alone; I will make him a help meet for him. From which words so plain, less cannot be concluded, nor is by any learned Interpreter, then that in God's intention a meet and happy conversation is the chiefest and the noblest end of marriage; for we find here no expression so necessarily implying carnal knowledge, as this prevention of lonelinesse to the mind and spirit of man. And indeed it is a greater blessing from God, more worthy so excellent a creatrue as man is, and a higher end to honor and sanctify the league of marriage, whenas the solace and satisfaction of the mind is regarded and provided for before the sensitive pleasing of the body. And with all generous persons married thus it is, that where the mind and person pleases aptly, there some unaccomplishment of the bodies delight may be better born with, then when the mind hangs off in an unclosing disproportion, though the body be as it ought; for there all corporal delight will soon become unsavory and contemptible. And the solitariness of man, which God had namely and principally orderd to prevent by marriage, hath no remedy, but lies under a worse condition then the loneliest single life; for in single life the absence and remotenes of a helper might inure him to expect his own comforts out of himself, or to seek with hope; but here the continual sight of his deluded thoughts without cure, must needs be to him, if especially his complexion incline him to melancholy, a daily trouble and pain of loss in some degree like that which Reprobates feel. Lest therefore so noble a creature as man should be shut up incurably under a worse evil by an easy mistake in that ordinance which God gave him to remedy a less evil, reaping to himself sorrow while he went to rid away solitariness, it cannot avoid to be concluded, that if the woman be naturally so of disposition, as will not help to remove, but help to increase that same God-forbid'n lonelines which will in time draw on with it a general discomfort and dejection of mind, not beseeming either Christian profession or moral conversation, unprofitable and dangerous to the Common-wealth, when the household estate, out of which must flourish forth the vigor and spirit of all public enterprises, is so ill contented and procured at home, and cannot be supported; such a marriage can be no marriage whereto the most honest end is wanting: and the agrieved person shall do more manly, to be extraordinary and singular in claiming the due right whereof he is frustrated, then to piece up his lost contentment by visiting the Stews, or stepping to his neighbors bed, which is the common shift in this mis-fortune, or else by suffering his useful life to wast away and be lost under a secret affliction of an unconscionable size to human strength. How vain therefore is it, and how preposterous in the Canon Law to have made such careful provision against the impediment of carnal performance, and to have had no care about the unconversing inability of mind, so defective to the purest and most sacred end of matrimony: and that the vessel of voluptuous enjoyment must be made good to him that has taken it upon trust without any caution, when as the mind from whence must flow the acts of peace and love, a far more precious mixture then the quintessence of an excrement, though it be found never so deficient and unable to perform the best duty of marriage in a cheerful and agreeable conversation, shall be thought good enough, how ever flat & melancholious it be, and must serve though to the eternal disturbance and languishing of him that complains him. Yet wisdom and charity waighing God's own institution, would think that the pining of a sad spirit wedded to lonelines should deserve to be free'd, as well as the impatience of a sensual desire so providently relieved. It is read to us in the Liturgy, that we must not marry to satisfy the fleshly appetite, like brute beasts that have no understanding: but the Canon so runs, as if it dreamt of no other matter then such an appetite to be satisfied; for if it happen that nature hath stopped or extinguished the veins of sensuality, that marriage is annul'd. But though all the faculties of the understanding and conversing part after trial appear to be so ill and so aversly met through natures unalterable working, as that neither peace, nor any sociable contentment can follow, tis as nothing, the contract shall stand as firm as ever, betide what will. What is this but secretly to instruct us, that however many grave reasons are pretended to the married life, yet that nothing indeed is thought worth regard therein, but the prescribed satisfaction of an irrational heat; which cannot be but ignominious to the state of marriage, dishonorable to the undervalu'd soul of man, and even to Christian doctrine itself. While it seems more moved at the disappointing of an impetuous nerve, then at the ingenuous grievance of a mind unreasonably yoakt; and to place more of marriage in the channel of concupiscence, then in the pure influence of peace and love, whereof the souls lawful contentment is the only fountain.

But some are ready to object, that the disposition ought seriously to be considered before. But let them know again, that for all the wariness can be used, it may yet befall a discreet man to be mistaken in his choice: the soberest and best governed men are lest practiz'd in these affairs; and who knows not that the bashful mutenes of a virgin may ofttimes hide all the unlivelines & natural sloth which is really unfit for conversation; nor is there that freedom of access granted or presumed, as may suffice to a perfect discerning till too late: and where any indisposition is suspected, what more usual then the persuasion of friends, that acquaintance, as it increases, will amend all. And lastly, it is not strange though many who have spent their youth chastely, are in some things not so quick-sighted, while they hast too eagerly to light the nuptial torch; nor is it therefore that for a modest error a man should forfeit so great a happiness, and no charitable means to release him. Since they who have lived most loosely by reason of their bold accustoming, prove most successful in their matches, because their wild affections unsettling at will, have been as so many divorces to teach them experience. When as the sober man honoring the appearance of modesty, and hoping well of every social virtue under that veil, may easily chance to meet, if not with a body impenetrable, yet often with a mind to all other due conversation inaccessible, and to all the more estimable and superior purposes of matrimony useless and almost liveles: and what a solace, what a fit help such a consort would be through the whole life of a man, is less pain to conjecture then to have experience.

And that we may further see what a violent and cruel thing it is to force the continuing of those together, whom God and nature in the gentlest end of marriage never join'd, divers evils and extremities that follow upon such a compulsion shall here be set in view. Of evils the first and greatest is that hereby a most absurd and rash imputation is fixed upon God and his holy Laws, of conniving and dispensing with open & common adultery among his chosen people; a thing which the rankest politician would think it shame and disworship, that his Laws should countenance; how and in what manner this comes to pass, I shall reserve, till the course of method brings on the unfolding of many Scriptures. Next the Law and Gospel are hereby made liable to more then one contradiction, which I refer also thither. Lastly, the supreme dictate of charity is hereby many ways neglected and violated. Which I shall forthwith address to prove. First we know S ^t Paul saith, It is better to marry then to burn. Marriage therefore was given as a remedy of that trouble: but what might this burning mean? Certainly not the mere motion of carnal lust, not the mere goad of a sensitive desire; God does not principally take care for such cattle. What is it then but that desire which God put into Adam in Paradise before he knew the sin of incontinence; that desire which God saw it was not good that man should be left alone to burn in; the desire and longing to put off an unkindly solitariness by uniting another body, but not without a fit soul to his in the cheerful society of wedlock. Which if it were so needful before the fall, when man was much more perfect in himself, how much more is it needful now against all the sorrows and casualties of this life to have an intimate and speaking help, a ready and reviving associate in marriage: whereof who misses by chancing on a mute and spiritles mate, remains more alone then before, and in a burning less to be contained then that which is fleshly and more to be considered; as being more deeply rooted even in the faultles innocence of nature. As for that other burning, which is but as it were the venom of a lusty and overabounding concoction, strict life and labor with the abatement of a full diet may keep that low and obedient enough: but this pure and more inbred desire of joining to itself in conjugal fellowship a fit conversing soul (which desire is properly called love) is stronger then death, as the Spouse of Christ thought, many waters cannot quench it, neither can the floods drown it. This is that rational burning that marriage is to remedy, not to be allayed with fasting, nor with any penance to be subdued, which how can he asswage who by mis-hap hath met the unmeetest and most unsuitable mind? Who hath the power to struggle with an intelligible flame, not in Paradise to be resisted, become now more ardent, by being failed of what in reason it looked for; and even then most unquencht, when the importunity of a provender burning is well enough appeased; and yet the soul hath obtained nothing of what it justly desires. Certainly such a one forbid'n to divorce, is in effect forbid'n to marry, and compel'd to greater difficulties then in a single life; for if there be not a more human burning which marriage must satisfy, or else may be dissolved, then that of copulation, marriage cannot be honorable for the mere reducing and terminating of lust between two; seeing many beasts in voluntary and chosen couples live together as unadulterously, and are as truly married in that respect. But all ingenuous men will see that the dignity & blessing of marriage is placit rather in the mutual enjoyment of that which the wanting soul needfully seeks, then of that which the plenteous body would jollily give away. Hence it is that Plato in his festival discourse brings in Socrates relating what he feigned to have learnt from the Prophetess Diotima, how Love was the Son of Penury, begot of Plenty in the garden of Jupiter. Which divinely sorts with that which in effect Moses tells us; that Love was the Son of Lonelines, begot in Paradise by that sociable & helpful aptitude which God implanted between man and woman toward each other. The same also is that burnining mentioned by S ^t . Paul, whereof marriage ought to be the remedy; the flesh hath other natural and easy curbs which are in the power of any temperate man When therefore this original and sinles Penury or Lonelines of the soul cannot lay itself down by the side of such a meet & acceptable union as God ordained in marriage, at least in some proportion, it cannot conceive and bring forth Love, but remains utterly unmaried under a formal wedlock, and still burns in the proper meaning of S ^t . Paul. Then enters Hate, not that Hate that sins, but that which only is natural dissatisfaction and the turning aside from a mistaken object: if that mistake have done injury, it fails not to dismiss with recompense, for to retain still, and not be able to love, is to heap more injury. Thence that wise and pious Law of dismission, Deut. 24. 1. took beginning; of which anon: He therefore who lacking of his due in the most native and human end of marriage, thinks it better to part then to live sadly and injuriously to that cherfull covenant (for not to be beloved & yet retained, is the greatest injury to a gentle spirit) he I say who therefore seeks to part, is one who highly honors the married life, and would not stain it: and the reasons which now move him to divorce, are equal to the best of those that could first warrant him to marry; for, as was plainly shewn, both the hate which now diverts him and the lonelines which leads him still powerfully to seek a fit help, hath not the least grain of a sin in it, if he be worthy to understand himself.

Thirdly, Yet it is next to be feared, if he must be still bound without reason by a deaf rigor, that when he perceives the just expectance of his mind defeated, he will begin even against Law to cast about where he may find his satisfaction more complete, unless he be a thing heroically virtuous, and that are not the common lump of men for whom chiefly the Laws ought to be made, though not to then sins yet to their unsirming weaknesses, it being above their strength to endure the lonely estate, which while they shunned, they are fallen into. And yet there follows upon this a worse temptation; for if he be such as hath spent his youth unblamably, and laid up his chiefest earthly comforts in the enjoyment of a contented marriage, nor did neglect that furderance which was to be obtained herein by constant prayers, when he shall find himself bound fast to an uncomplying discord of nature, or, as it oft happens, to an image of earth and fleam, with whom he looked to be the copartner of a sweet and gladsome society, and sees withal that his bondage is now inevitable, though he be almost the strongest Christian, he will be ready to dispair in virtue, and mutin against divine providence: and this doubtless is the reason of those lapses and that melancholy despair which we see in many wedded persons, though they understand it not, or pretend other causes, because they know no remedy, and is of extreme danger; therefore when human frailty surcharg'd, is at such a loss, charity ought to venture much, and use bold physic, lest an over-tost faith endanger to shipwreck.

Fourthly Marriage is a covenant the very being whereof consists, not in a forced cohabitation, and counterfeit performance of duties, but in unfeigned love and peace. Thence saith Solomon in Ecclesiastes, Live joyfully with the wife whom thou lovest, all thy days, for that is thy portion How then, where we find it impossible to rejoice or to love, can we obey this precept? how miserably do we defraud ourselves of that comfortable portion which God gives us, by striving vainly to glue an error together which God and nature will not join, adding but more vexation and violence to that blissful society by oue importunate superstition, that will not hark'n to S ^t . Paul, 1 Cor. 7. who speaking of marriage and divorce, determines plain enough in general that God therein hath called us to peace: and not to bondage. Yea God himself commands in his Law more then once, and by his Prophet Malachi, as Calvin and the best translations read, that he who hates let him divorce; that is, he who cannot love, or delight. I cannot therefore be so diffident, as not securely to conclude, that he who can receive nothing of the most important helps in marriage, being thereby disinabl'd to return that duty which is his, with a clear and hearty countnance; and thus continues to grieve whom he would not, and is no less grieved, that man ought even for loves sake and peace to move divorce upon good and liberal conditions to the divorcit. And it is a less breach of wedlock to part with wise and quiet consent betimes, then still to soil and profane that mystery of joy and union with a polluting sadness and perpetual distemper; for it is not the outward continuing of marriage that keeps whole that covenant, but whosoever does most according to peace and love, whether in marriage, or in divorce, he it is that breaks marriage lest; it being so often written, that Love only is the fulfilling of every Commandment.

Fifthly, As those Priests of old were not to be long in sorrow, or if they were, they could not rightly execute their function; so every true Christian in a higher order of Priesthood is a person dedicate to joy and peace, offering himself a lively sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving, & there is no Christian duty that is not to be seasoned and set off with cherfulnes; which in a thousand outward and intermitting crosses may yet be done well, as in this vale of tears, but in such a bosom affliction as this, which grinds the very foundations of his inmost nature, when he shall be forced to love against a possibility, and to use dissimulation against his soul in the perpetual and ceaseless duties of a husband, doubtless his whole duty of serving God must needs be blurred and tainted with a sad unpreparedness and dejection of spirit, wherein God has no delight. Who sees not therefore how much more Christianly it would be to break by divorce that which is more broken by undue and forcible keeping, rather then to cover the Altar of the Lord with continual tears, so that he regardeth not the offering anymore, rather then that the whole worship of a Christian man's life should languish and fade away beneath the weight of an immeasurable grief and discouragement. And because some think the children'n of a second matrimony succeeding a divorce would not be a holy seed, why should we not think them more holy then the offspring of a former ill-twisted wedlock, begott'n only out of a bestial necessity without any true love or contentment, or joy to their parents, so that in some sense we may call them the childern of wrath and anguish, which will as little conduce to their sanctifying, as if they had been bastards; for nothing more then disturbance of mind suspends us from approaching to God. Such a disturbance especially as both assaults our faith and trust in God's providence, and ends, if there be not a miracle of virtue on either side, not only in bitterness and wrath, the canker of devotion, but in a desperate and vicious carelessness; when he sees himself without fault of his trained by a deceitful bait into a snare of misery, betrai'd by an alluring ordinance, and then made the thrall of heaviness & discomfort by an undivorcing Law of God, as he erroneously thinks, but of man's iniquity, as the truth is; for that God prefers the free and cherfull worship of a Christian, before the grievous and exacted observance of an unhappy marriage, besides that the general maxims of Religion assure us, will be more manifest by drawing a parallel argument from the ground of divorcing an Idolatresse, which was, left she should alienate his heart from the true worship of God: and what difference is there whether she pervert him to superstition by enticing sorcery, or disinable him in the whole service of God through the disturbance of her unhelpful and unfit society, and so drive him at last through murmuring and despair to thoughts of Atheism: neither doth it lessen the cause of separating, in that the one willingly allures him from the faith, the other perhaps unwillingly drives him; for in the account of God it comes all to one that the wife looses him a servant; and therefore by all the united force of the Decalogue she ought to be disbanded, unless we must set marriage above God and charity, which is a doctrine of devils no less then forbidding to marry.

And here by the way to illustrate the whole question of divorce, ere this treatise end, I shall not be loath to spend a few lines in hope to give a full resolv of that which is yet so much controverted, whether an Idolatrous heretic ought to be divorcit. To the resolving whereof we must first know that the Jews were commanded to divorce an unbelieving Gentile for two causes: first, because all other Nations especially the Canaanites were to them unclean. Secondly, to avoid seducement. That other Nations were to the Jews impure, even to the separating of marriage, will appear out of Exod. 34. 16. Deut. 7. 3. 6. compared with Ezra 9. 2. also chap. 10. 10, 11. Nehem. 13. 30. This was the ground of that doubt raised among the Corinthians by some of the Circumcision; Whether an unbeliever wer not still to be counted an unclean thing, so as that they ought to divorce from such a person. This doubt of theirs S ^t . Paul removes by an Evangelical reason, having respect to that vision of S ^t . Peter, wherein the distinction of clean and unclean being abolished, all living creatures were sanctified to a pure and Christian use, and mankind especially, now invited by a general call to the covenant of grace. Therefore saith S ^t . Paul, The unbelieving wife is sanctified by the husband; that is, made pure and lawful to his use; so that he need not put her away for fear lest her unbelief should defile him; but that if he found her love still towards him, he might rather hope to win her. The second reason of that divorce was to avoid seducement, as is proved by comparing those places of the Law, to that which Ezra and Nehemiah did by divine warrant in compelling the Jews to forgo their wives. And this reason is moral and perpetual in the rule of Christian faith without evasion. Therefore saith the Apostle 2 Cor. 6. Mis-yoke not together with Infidels, which is interpreted of marriage in the first place. And although the former legal pollution be now don off, yet there is a spiritual contagion in Idolatry as much to be shunned; and though seducement were not to be feared, yet where there is no hope of converting, there always ought to be a certain religious aversation and abhorring, which can no way sort with marriage. Therefore saith S ^t . Paul, What fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? what communion hath light with darkness? what concord hath Christ with Belial? what part hath he that believeth with an Infidel? And in the next verse but one, he moralizes and makes us liable to that command of Isaiah Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate saith the Lord, touch not the unclean thing, and I will receive ye. And this command thus Gospelliz'd to us, hath the same force with that whereon Ezra grounded the pious necessity of divorcing.

Upon these principles I answer, that a right believer ought to divorce an idolatrous heretic unless upon better hopes: however that it is in the believers choice to divorce or not.

The former part will be manifest thus; first, an apostate idolater whether husband or wife seducing was to die by the decree of God, Deut. 13. 6. 9. that marriage therefore God himself dis-joins; for others born idolaters the moral reason of their dangerous keeping and the incommunicable antagony that is between Christ and Belial, will be sufficient to enforce the commandment of those two inspired reformers, Ezra and Nehemiah, to put an Idolater away as well under the Gospel.

The latter part, that although there be no seducement feared, yet if there be no hope given, the divorce is lawful, will appear by this, that idolatrous marriage is still hateful to God, therefore still it may be divorcit by the pattern of that warrant that Ezra had; and by the same everlasting reasō: neither can any man give an account wherefor, if those whom God joins, no man may separate, it should not follow, that, whom he ioyns not, but hates to join, those man ought to separate: but saith the Lawyer, that which ought not have been don, once don avails. I answer, this is but a crochet of the law, but that brought against it, is plain Scripture. As for what Christ spake concerning divorce, tis confessed by all knowing men, he meant only between them of the same faith. But what shall we say then to S ^t . Paul, who seems to bid us not divorce an Infidel willing to stay? We may safely say thus; that wrong collections have been hitherto made out of those words by modern Divines. His drift, as was heard before, is plain: not to command our stay in marriage with an Infidel, that had been a flat renouncing of the religious and moral law; but to inform the Corinthians that the body of an unbeliever was not defiling, if his desire to live in Christian wedlock showed any likelihood that his heart was opening to the faith: and therefore advices to forbear departure so long, till nothing have been neglected to set forward a conversion: this I say he advises, and that with certain cautions; not commands: If we can take up so much credit for him, as to get him believed upon his own word; for what is this else but his counsel in a thing indifferent, to the rest speak I, not the Lord; for though it be true that the Lord never spake it, yet from S ^t . Paul's mouth we should have took it as a command, had not himself forewarned us, and disclaimed; which, notwithstanding if we shall still avouch to be a command, he palpably denying it, this is not to expound S ^t . Paul, but to out face him. Neither doth it follow, but that the Apostle may interpose his judgment in a case of Christian liberty without the guilt of adding to God's word. How do we know marriage or single life to be of choice, but by such like words as these, I speak this by permission, not of commandment, I have no command of the Lord, yet I give my judgment. Why shall not the like words have leave to signify a freedom in this our present question, though Beza deny. Neither is the Scripture hereby less inspired because S ^t . Paul confesses to have writ'n therein what he had not of command; for we grant that the Spirit of God led him thus to express himself to Christian prudence in a matter which God thought best to leave uncommanded. Beza therefore must be warily read when he taxes S ^t . Austin of Blasphemy, for holding that S ^t . Paul spake here as of a thing indifferent: but if it must be a command, I shall yet the more evince it to be a command that we should herein be left free: and that out of the Greek word used in the 12. v. which instructs us plainly there must be a joint assent and good liking on both sides; he that will not deprave the Text, must thus render it; If a brother have an unbelieving wife, and she join in consent to dwell with him (which cannot utter less to us then a mutual agreement) let him not put her away for the mere surmise of Judaical uncleanness: and the reason follows, for the body of an Infidel is not polluted, neither to benevolence, nor to procreation. Moreover, this note of mutual complacency forbids all offer of seducement; which to a person of zeal cannot be attempted without great offense, if therefore seducement be feared, this place hinders not divorce. Another caution was put in this supposed command, of not bringing the believer into bondage hereby, which doubtless might prove extreme, if Christian liberty and conscience were left to the humor of a pagan staying at pleasure to play with, or to vex and wound with a thousand scandals and burdens above strength to bear: if therefore the conceived hope of gaining a soul come to nothing, then charity commands that the believer be not wearied out with endless waiting under many grievances sore to his spirit; but that respect be had rather to the present suffering of a true Christian, then the uncertain winning of an obdur'd heretic; for this also must appertain to the precept, Let every man wherein he is called therein abide with God, v. 24. that is, so walking in his inferior calling of marriage, as not by dangerous subjection to that ordinance, to hinder and disturb the higher calling of his christianity. Last, whether this be a command or an advice, we must look that it be so understood as not to contradict the least point of moral religion that God hath formerly commanded, otherwise what do we, but set the moral Law and the Gospel at civil war together: and who then shall be able to serve those two masters?

Now whether Idolatry or adultery be the greatest violation of marriage, if any demand, let him thus consider, that among Christian Writers touching matrimony, there be three chief ends thereof agreed on; Godly society, next civil, and thirdly, that of the marriage-bed. Of these the first in name to be the highest and most excellent, no baptized man can deny; nor that Idolatry smites directly against this prime end, nor that such as the violated end is, such is the violation: but he who affirms adultery to be the highest breach, affirms the bed to be the highest of marriage, which is in truth a gross and borish opinion, how common soever; as far from the countnance of Scripture, as from the light of all clean philosophy, or civil nature. And out of question the cherfull help that may be in marriage toward sanctity of life, is the purest and so the noblest end of that contract: but if the particular of each person be considered, then of those three ends which God appointed, that to him is greatest which is most necessary: and marriage is then most broken to him, when he utterly wants the fruition of that which he most sought therein, whether it were religious, civil, 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 itself, which the Code and canon are only ser sible of. Thus much of this controversy. I now return to the former argument. And having shewn, that disproportion, contrariety, or numbness of mind may justly be divorcit, by proving already that the prohibition thereof opposes the express end of God's institution, suffers not marriage to satisfy that intellectual 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 marriage would easily chaste'n. Next that it drives many to transgress the conjugal bed, while the soul wanders after that satisfaction which it had hope to find at home, but hath misit. Or else it sits repining even to Atheism; finding itself hardly dealt with, but misdeeming the cause to be in God's Law, which is in man's unrighteous ignorance. I have showed also how it unties the inward knot of marriage, which is peace & love (if that can be unti'd which was never knit) while it aims to keep fast the outward formality; how it lets perish the Christian man, to compel impossibly the married man.

The sixth place declares this prohibition to be as respectles of human nature, and therefore is not of God. He teaches that an unlawful marriage may be lawfully divorcit. And that those who having thoroughly discerned each others disposition which ofttimes cannot be till after matrimony, shall then find a powerful reluctance and recoil of nature on either side blasting all the content of their mutual society, that such persons are not lawfully married (to use the Apostles words) Say I these things as a man, or saith not the Law also the same? for it is writ'n, Deut. 22. Thou shalt not sow thy vineyard with divers seeds, lest thou defile both. Thou shalt not plow with an Ox and an Ass together, and the like. I follow the pattern of S ^t . Paul's 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 writ'n. Yea the Apostle himself in the forecited 2 Cor. 6. 14. alludes from that place of Deut. to forbid mis-yoking marriage; as by the Greek word is evident, though he instance but in one example of mis-matching with an Infidel: 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 sow the furrow of man's 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 mind infuse itself into all the faculties and acts of the body, to render them invalid, unkindly, and even unholy against the fundamental law book of nature; which Moses never thwarts, but reverences: therefore he commands us to force nothing against sympathy or natural order, no not upon the most abject creatures; to show that such an indignity cannot be offered to man without an impious crime. And when he forbids all unmatchable and unmingling natures to consort, doubtless by all due consequence, if they chance through misadventure to be miscoupl'd, he bids them part asunder, as persons whom God never join'd.

Seventhly, The Canon Law and Divines consent, that if either party be found contriving against the others life, they may be severed by divorce; for a sin against the life of marriage is greater then a sin against the bed: the one destroys, the other but defiles: The same may be said touching those persons who being of a pensive nature and cours of life, have sum'd up all their solace in that free and lightsome conversation which God & man intends in marriage: whereof when they see themselves deprived by meeting an unsociable consort, they ofttimes resent one another's mistake so deeply, that long it is not ere grief end one of them. When therefore this danger is foreseen that the life is in peril by living together, what matter is it whether helpless greef, or willful practice be the cause? This is certain that the preservation of life is more worth then the compulsory keeping of marriage; and it is no less 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 disheartening of his life. And what is life without the vigor and spiritfull exercise of life? how can it be useful either to private or public employment? shall it be therefore quite dejected, though never so valuable, and left to molder away in heaviness for the superstitious and impossible performance of an ill driven bargain? nothing more inviolable then vows made to God, yet we read in Numbers, that if a wife had made such a vow, the mere 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 mistaken wife, to the saving of his welfare, his life, yea his faith and virtue from the hazard of over-strong temptations; for if man be Lord of the Sabbath, to the curing of a Fevor, can he be less then Lord of marriage in such important causes as these?

Eighthly, It is most sure that some even 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; unless nothing be requisite thereto but a mere instrumental body; which to affirm, is to that unanimous Covenant 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 married life, and the gifts of a single life; what unfitness of mind, what wearisomeness, what scruples and doubts to an incredible offense and displeasure are like to follow between, may be soon imagined: whom thus to shut up and immure in an unequal and mischosen match, is not a cours that Christian wisdom and tenderness ought to use. As for the custom that some parents and guardians have of forcing marriages, it will be better to say nothing of such a savage inhumanity, but only this, that the Law which gives not all freedom of divorce to any creature endu'd with reason so assasinated, is next in cruelty.

Ninthly, I suppose it will be allowed us that marriage is a human society, and that all human society must proceed from the mind rather then the body, else it would be but a kind of animal or beastish meeting; if the mind therefore cannot have that due company by marriage, that it may reasonably and humanly desire, that marriage can be no human society, but a certain formality, or gilding over of little better then a brutish congresse, and so in very wisdom and pureness to be dissolved.

But marriage is more then human, the covenant of God, Pro. 2. 17. therefore man cannot dissolve it. I answer, if it be more then human so much the more it argues the chief society thereof to be in the soul rather then in the body, and the greatest breach thereof to be unfitness of mind rather then defect of body; for the body can have left affinity in a covenant 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 whereof God hath far more and oftener 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 covenant more contracted with God, & less in man's power then the vow which hath once past his lips? yet if it be found rash, if offensive, if unfruitful either to God's glory or the good of man, our doctrine forces not error and unwillingness irksomly to keep it, but counsels wisdom and better thoughts boldly to break it; therefore to enjoin the indissoluble keeping of a marriage found unfit against the good of man both soul and body, as hath been evidencit, is to make an Idol, of marriage, 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, Whereas they cite out of the Proverbs, that it is the covenant of God, and therefore more then human, that consequence is manifestly false; for so the covenant which Zedeckiah made with the infidel King of Babel is called the covenant of God, Ezech. 17. 19. which would be strange to hear counted more then a human covenant. So every covenant between man and man, bound by oath, may be called the covenant of God, because God therein is attested. So of marriage he is the author and the witness; 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 fitness one for the other, was the motive which led them both at first to think without other revelation that God had join'd them together: So when it shall be found by their apparent unfitness, that their continuing to be man and wife is against the glory of God and their mutual happiness, it may assure them that God never join'd them; who hath revel'd his gracious will not to set the ordinance above the man for whom it was ordained: not to canonize marriage either as a tyrannesse or a goddess over the enfranchiz'd life and soul of man; for wherein can God delight, wherein be worshipped, wherein be glorified by the forcible continuing of an improper and ill-yoking couple; He that loved not to see the disparity of several cattle at the plow, cannot be pleased with any vast unmeetnes in marriage. Where can be the peace and love which must invite God to such a house, may it not be feared that the not divorcing of such a helpless disagreement, will be the divorcing of God finally from such a place? But it is a trial of our patience they say: I grant it: but which of Job's 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 charity? They dare not affirm that marriage is either a Sacrament, or a mystery, though all those sacred things give place to man, and yet they invest it with such an awful sanctity, and give it such adamantine chains to bind with, as if it were to be worshipped like some Indian deity, when it can confer no blessing upon us, but works more and more to our misery. To such teachers the saying of S ^t . Peter at the Council of Jerusalem will do well to be applied: Why tempt ye God to put a yoke upon the necks of Christian men, which neither the Jews, God's 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 fanatic 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 chiefly, from the restraint of some lawful liberty, which ought to be given men, and is denied them. As by Physic we learn in menstruous bodies, where natures current hath been stopped, 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, do not give themselves much the more to whoredom 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 punished, and marriage 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 skillful men in Theology, & the reason of things: and lastly to examine whether some undue and ill grounded strictness upon the blameless 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 broken, 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 scan and sift things with more then a literal wisdom of enquiry; for if these reasons be duly ponder'd, and that the Gospel is more jealous of laying on excessive burdens then ever the Law was, lest the soul 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 itself never alters, may cause dislike of conversing even between the most sanctified, which continually grating in harsh tune together may breed some jar and discord, and that end in rancor and strife, a thing so opposite both to marriage and to Christianity, it would perhaps be less 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 urged, 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 willfully 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 denied, that all places of Scripture wherein just reason of doubt arises from the letter, are to be expounded by considering upon what occasion everything is set down: and by comparing other Texts. The occasion which inducit our Savior to speak of divorce, was either to convince the extravagance of the Pharisees 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 literal terms of so many words, many instances will teach us: Wherein we may plainly discover how Christ meant not to be taken word for word, but like a wise Physician, administering one excess against another to reduce us to a perfect mean: Where the Pharisees were strict, there Christ seems remiss; where they were too remiss, he saw it needful to seem most severe: in one place he censures an unchaste look to be adultery already committed: another time he passes over actual adultery with less reproof then for an unchaste look; not so heavily condemning secret weakness, as open malice: So here he may be justly thought to have given this rigid sentence against divorce, not to cut off all remedy from a good man who finds himself cōsuming away in a disconsolate and uninjoy'd matrimony, but to lay a brid • e upon the bold abuses of those over-weening Rabbies; which he could not more effectually do, 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 natural 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 else in the political Law of more special relation to the Jews, might cease to us, yet that of those precepts concerning divorce, not one of them was repealed by the doctrine of Christ; for if these our Savior's 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 repealed & 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 convinced both of injustice & impurity, as having authorized & maintained legal adultery by statute. Moses also cannot scape to be guilty of unequal 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 political Edicts, though not approved, are yet allowed to the scum of the people and the necessity of the times; these excuses have but a weak pulse: for first we read, not that the scoundrel people, but the choicest, the wisest, the holiest of that nation have frequently used these laws, or such as these. Secondly, Be it yielded that in matters not very bad or impure, a human law-giver may slacken something 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 judgments, be found to have allowed smoothly without any certain reprehension, that which Christ afterward declares to be adultery, how can we free this Law from the horrible endightment of being both impure, unjust, and fallacious. Neither will it serv to say this was permitted for the hardness of thir hearts, in that sense, as it is usually explained, for the Law were then but a corrupt and erroneous School-master, teaching us to dash against a vital maxim of religion, by doing foul evil in hope of some uncertain good. We cannot therefore with safety thus confine the free simplicity of our Savior's meaning to that which merely 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 express 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 therefore 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 weakness and hardness as unfit, and as unteachable to be harshly dealt with as ever. I but, say they, there is a greater portion of spirit pour'd upon the Gospel which requires perfecter obedience. But that consequence is deceavable; for it is the Law that is the exacter of our obedience even under the Gospel; how can it then exact concerning divorce, that which it never exacted before? The Gospel is a covenant reveling grace, not commanding a new morality, but assuring justification by faith only, contented if we endeavor to square our moral duty by those wise and equal Mosaic rules, which were as perfect as strict and as unpardonable to the Jews, as to us; otherwise the law were unjust, giving grace of pardon without the Gospel, or if it give allowance without pardon, it would be dissolute and deceitful; saying in general, do this and live; and yet deceiving and damning with obscure and hollow permissions. We find also by experience that the Spirit of God in the Gospel hath been always more effectual in the illumination of our minds to the gift of faith, then in the moving of our wills to any excellence of virtue, either above the Jews 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 suffered for the hardness of thir hearts he suffered not by that enacted dispensation, far be it, but by a mere 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 whereby they must live in privileged adultery, however it go for the received opinion, I shall ever dissuade myself from so much hardihood as to believe: Certainly this is not the manner of God, whose pure eyes cannot behold, much less his perfect Laws dispence with such impurity; and if we consider well, we shall find that all dispensations are either to avoid worse inconveniences, or to support infirm consciences for a time; but that a dispensatiō should be as long lived as a Law to tolerate adultery for hardness 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 thoroughly, cannot but admire, how this hath been digested all this while. What may we do 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. established 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 married a wife, if it come to pass he cannot love her by reason of some displeasing natural quality or unfitness 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 helpless disagreement or dislike either of mind or body, whereby he could not cherfully perform the duty of a husband without the perpetual dissembling of offense 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 dismiss her whom he could not tolerably, and so not conscionably retain. And this Law the Spirit of God by the mouth of Solomon, 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 undergo. Now that many licentious and hard hearted men took hold of this Law to cloak thir bad purposes, is nothing strange to believe. And these were they, not for whom Moses made the Law, God forbid, but whose hardness 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 lawful privilege of remedy: Christ therefore having to answer these tempting Pharisees, 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 forced to suffer by their abuse of his Law. Which is yet more plain if we mark that our Savior in the fi • th of Matth. cites not the Law of Moses, but the Pharisaical tradition falsely grounded upon that law. And in those other places, Chap. 19. & Mark. 10. the Pharisees cite the Law, but conceal the wise and human reason there expressed; which our Savior corrects not in them whose pride deserved not his instruction, only returns them what is proper to them; Moses for the hardness of your hearts suffered 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 covered ill purposes under that Law; for it was seasonable that they should hear their own unbounded license rebukit, but not seasonable for them to hear a good man's requisite liberty explained. And to amaze them the more, because the Pharisees thought it no hard matter to fulfill the Law, he draws them up to that inseparable institution which God ordained 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 Pharisees to dazzle them and not to bind us. For this is a solid rule that every command given with a reason, binds our obedience no otherwise then that reason holds. Of this sort was that command in Eden; Therefore shall a man cleave to his wife, and they shall be one flesh: which we see is no absolute command, but with an inference, Therefore: the reason then must be first considered, 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 itself; for why then should he for his wife leave his father and mother, with whom he is far 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 inseparable injunction depends merely upon flesh & bones. Therefore we must look higher, since Christ himself recalls us to the beginning, and we shall find that the primitive reason of never divorcing, was that sacred and not vain promise of God to remedy man's 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 been in some care and deep thought, because there was not yet found a help meet for man. And can we so slightly depress the all-wise purpose of a deliberating God, as i • his consultatiō had produc' • no other good for man, but to join him with an accidental companion of propagation▪ which his sudden word had already made for every beast? nay a far less good to man it will be found, if she must at all aventures be fastened upon him individually. And therefore even plain sense and equity, and, which is above them both, the all-interpreting voice of Charity herself cries loud that this primitive reason, this consulted promise of God to make a meet help, is the only 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 asked in good earnest, this clause of being a meet help would show itself so necessary, and so essential in that demonstrative argument, that it might be logically concluded, therefore she who naturally & perpetually is no meet help, can be no wife; which clearly takes away the difficulty of dismissing such a one. Hence is manifest, that so much of the first institution as our Savior mentions, for he mentions not all, was but to quell and put to nonplus the tempting Pharisees; 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 clog a rational creature to his endless sorrow unrelinquishably. What if they had thus answered, 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 we shall soon understand it ought to be, if thou recite the whole reason of the Law. doubtless our Savior 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 we may lawfully do about divorce.

But if it be thought that the Disciples offended at the rigor of Christ's answer▪ cou • d yet obtain no mitigation of the former sentence pronouncit to the Pharisees, it may be fully answered, that our Savior continues the same reply to his Disciples, as men leavened with the same customary license, which the Pharisees maintained; and displeased at the removing of a traditional abuse whereto they had so long not unwillingly been used: it was no time then to contend with then flow and prejudicial belief, in a thing wherein an ordinary measure of light in Scripture, with some attention might afterwards inform them well enough. After these considerations to take a law out of Paradise given 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 needful & safe allowances wherewith Moses himself interprets it to the fallen condition of man, argues nothing in us but rashness and contempt of those means that God left us in his pure and chaste 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, we shall strive to obey 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 wherein we are not able to judge either of their strength, or their sufferance. Whom neither one vice nor other by natural addiction, but only marriage ruins, which doubtless is not the fault of that ordinance, for God gave it as a blessing, nor always of man's mis-choosing; it being an error above wisdom to prevent, as examples of wisest men so mistaken manifest: it is the fault therefore of a pervers opinion that will have it continued in despite of nature and reason, when indeed it was never truly joined. All those expositers upon the fifth of Mat. confess the Law of Moses to be the Law of the Lord, wherein no addition or diminution hath place, yet coming to the point of divorce, as if they feared not to be called lest in the kingdom of heaven, 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 Malachi. 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 mentioned to build a Law upon without either punishment or so much as forbidding, they pretend it is implicitly reproved in these words, Deut. 24. 4. after she is defiled; but who sees not that this defilement is only in respect of returning to her former husband after an intermixt marriage; else why was not the defiling condition first forbidden, which would have saved the labor 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 heinous fault as this through all the Law should be only wiped with an implicit and oblique touch (which yet is falsely supposed) & that his peculiar people should be let wallow in adulterous marriages almost two thousand years for want of a direct Law to prohibit them; tis rather to be confidently assumed 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, even when greatest cause is given us to expect it should be directly forbid'n. But it was not approved, so much the worse that it was allowed, as if sin had over masterd the law of God, to conform her steady and strait rule to sins crookedness, which is impossible. Besides, what needed a positive grant of that which was not approved? it restrained no liberty to him that could but use a little fraud, it had been better silencit, unless it were approved in some case or other. Can we conceive without vile thoughts, that the majesty and holiness of God could endure so many ages to gratify 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 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 mentioned there, should be an obliging command to us, is very disputable, and perhaps it might be denied to be a command without further dispute: however, it commands not absolutely, as hath been cleared, but only with reference to that precedent promise of God, which is the very ground of his institution; if that appear not in some tolerable sort, how can we 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 ministry of Christ came not to deal with. And who put it in man's 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 promised expressly 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 licentious Gloss which traducit the Law; that therefore which he cited, that he abrogated, and not only abrogated but disallow'd and flatly condemned, which could not be the Law of Moses; for that had been foully to the rebuke of his great servant. To abrogate a Law made with God's allowance, had been 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 Pharisees, even upō him who made the Law. But yet if that be judicial which belongs to a civil Court, this Law is less judicial then nine of the ten Commandments; for antiquaries affirm that divorces proceeded among the Jews without knowledge of the Magistrate, only with hands and seals 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 man's own arbitrement to be determined 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 usurped into his Court-leet, and bescribbl'd with a thousand trifling impertinencies, which yet have filed the life of man with serious trouble and calamity. Yet grant it were of old a judicial Law, it need not be the less moral for that, being conversant, as it is, about virtue or vice. And our Savior disputes not here the judicature, for that was not his office, but the morality of divorce, whether it be adultery or no; if therefore he touch the law of Moses at all, he touches the moral part thereof; which is absurd to imagine that the covenant 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 thereof disallow'd to us.

Others are so ridiculous as to allege that this license of divorcing was given them because they were so accustomed 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 unlawful, serves for nothing but to increase hardness 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 we make ourselves 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 used. And if we can think so of Moses, as that the Jewish obstinacy could compel him to write such impure permissions against the rule of God & his own judgment, doubtless it was his part to have protested publicly what straits he was driven to, and to have declared his conscience when he gave any Law against his mind; 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 Jews 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 marriage, with an interdict of ever divorcing such a union; but where nature is discovered to have never join'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 Malachi, which is to be our rule. And Perkins upon this chap. of Mat. deals plainly that our Savior here confutes not Moses Law, but the false glosses that depraved the Law; which being true, Perkins must needs grant, that something 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 therefore is the true scope of our Savior's will, that he who looks upon the Law concerning divorce, should look also back upon the first institution, that he may endeavor what is perfectest: and he that looks upon the institution should not refuse as sinful and unlawful 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 wonderful, that in all those decrees concerning marriage, God should never once mention the prime institution to dissuade them from divorcing; and that he should forbid smaller sins as opposite to the hardness of their hearts, and let this adulterous matter of divorce pass ever unreprov'd. This is also to be marvel'd at, that seeing Christ did not condemn whatever it was that Moses suffered, and that thereupon the Christian Magistrate permits usury and open stews, & here with us adultery to be so slightly punished, which was punished by death to these hard-hearted Jews, why we should strain thus at the matter of divorce, which may stand so much with charity to permit, and make no scruple to allow usury, esteemed to be so much against charity. But this it is to embroile ourselves against the righteous and all wise judgments and statutes of God; which are not variable and contrarious, as we 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 majestic law of God, bearing in her hand the wages of life and death, harbor such a repugnance within herself, as to require an unexempted and impartial obedience to all her decrees, either from us or from our Mediator, and yet debase herself to faulter so many ages with circumcised adulteries, by unclean and slubbe • ing permissions.

Yet Beza's opinion is that a politick law, but what politick law I know not, unless 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 arm of moral law, which can no more be separate from Justice then Justice from virtue: 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 uncleanness, the first good consequence of such a relaxe will be the justifying of papal stews, join'd with a toleration of epidemick whoredom. Justice must revolt from the end of her authority, and become the patron of that whereof she was created the punisher. The example of usury, which is commonly alleg'd makes against the allegation which it brings, as I touched 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 discusit by men of eminent learning and judgment. There must be therefore some other example found out to show us wherein civil policy may with warrant from God settle wickedness by law, & make that lawful which is lawless. Although I doubt not but upon deeper consideration, that which is true in Physic, will be found as true in polity: that as of bad pulses those that beat most in order, are much worse 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 privilege 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 restrain 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 says, not for men, but to release afflicted wives, certainly it is not only a dispensation, but a most merciful Law: and why it should not yet be in force, being wholly as needful, I know not what can be in cause but senseless cruelty. Esteeming therefore to have asserted thus an injured law of Moses from the unwarranted and guilty name of a dispensation, to be again a most equal and requisite law, we 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 do 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 taken 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 charity, 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 recompencit the diligence was used, by enlightening us further to find out wherefor Christ took off the Pharisees from alleging the law, and refer'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 prophetic office; but knowing how fallaciously they had cited, and concealed the particular and natural reason of the law, that they might justify any froward reason of their own, he lets go that sophistry unconvincit, for that had been to teach them else; which his purpose was not. And since they had taken a liberty which the law gave not, he amuses & repells their tempting pride with a perfection of paradise, which the law required not; not thereby to oblige our performance to that whereto the law never enjoin'd the fallen 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 helpful, and as comfortable as God promised it should be, at least in some degree, otherwise it is not equal or proportionable to the strength of man, that he should be reducit into such indissoluble bonds to his assured misery, if all the other conditions of that covenant be manifestly altered.

Next he saith, they must be one flesh, which, when all conjecturing is don, will be found to import no more but only to make legitimate and good the carnal act, which else might seem to have something of pollution in it: And infers 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 mind; nay instead of being one flesh, they will be rather two carcasses chained unnaturally together; or as it may happ'n, a living soul bound to a dead corps, a punishment too like that inflicted by the tyrant Mezentius; so little worthy to be received as that remedy of lonelines which God meant us. Since we know it is not the joining of 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, unless 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 join'd. A plain solutiō of this great controversy, if men would but use their eyes; for when is it that God may be said to join, when the parties and their friends consent? No surely; for that may concur to leudest ends, or is it when Church-rites are finished? Neither; for the efficacy of those depends upon the presupposed fitness of either party. Perhaps after carnal knowledge? lest of all: for that may join persons whom neither law nor nature dares join; tis left, that only then, when the minds are fitly disposed, and enabl'd to maintain a cherfull conversation, to the solace and love of each other, according as God intended and promised in the very first foundation of matrimony, I will make him a help meet for him; for surely what God intended and promised, that only can be thought to be of his joining, and not the contrary. So likewise the Apostle witnesseth 1 Cor. 7. 15. that in marriage God hath called us to peace. And doubtless in what respect he hath called us to marriage, in that also he hath join'd us. The rest whom either disproportion or deadness of spirit, or something distasteful & avers in the immutable bent of nature renders uncōjugal, error may have join'd; but God never join'd against the meaning of his own ordinance. And if he joined them not, then is there no power above their own consent to hinder them from unjoyning; when they cannot reap the soberest ends of being together in any tolerable sort. Neither can it be said properly that such twain were ever divorcit, but only parted from each other, as two persons unconjunctive, and unmariable together. But if, whom God hath made a fit help, frowardness or private injuries have made unfit, that being the secret of marriage God can better judge then man, neither is man indeed fit or able to decide this matter; however it be, undoubtedly a peaceful divorce is a less evil and less in scandal then a hateful hard hearted and destructive continuance of marriage in the judgment of Moses, and of Christ, that justifies him in choosing the less 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 we should admit the common Expositors.

Having thus unfoulded those ambiguous reasons, wherewith Christ, as his wont was, gave to the Pharisees that came to sound him, such an answer as they deserved, it will not be uneasy to explain the sentence itself that now follows, Whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery. First therefore I will set down what is observed 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 named 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 express one kind of fact, whereby 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 shows that even 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 marriage was not ordained only for copulation, but for mutual help and comfort of life; and if we mark diligently the nature of our Savior's commands, we shall find that both their beginning and their end consists in charity: whose will is that we should so be good to others, as that we be not cruel to ourselves. And hence it appears why Mark and Luke and S ^t . Paul to the Cor. mentioning this precept of Christ, add no exception; because exceptions that arise from natural equity are included silently under general terms: it would be considered therefore whether the same equity may not have place in other cases less frequent. Thus far he. From hence, is what I add: 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 we now are: had it been the law of nature, either the Jews, or some other wise and civil Nation would have presit it: or let it be so; yet that law Deut. 24. 1. whereby a man hath leave to part, whenas for just and natural cause discovered he cannot love, is a law ancienter, and deeper ingrav'n in blameless nature then the other: therefore the inspired Law-giver Moses took care that this should be specify'd and allowed: the other he let vanish in silence, not once repeated in the volume of his law, even as the reason of it vanished with Paradise. Secondly, this can be no new command, for the Gospel enjoins no new morality, save only the infinite enlargement of charity, which in this respect is called the new Commandment by S ^t . John; 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 therefore which compel 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 proved. It being thus clear, that the words of Christ can be no kind of command, as they are vulgarly taken, we 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; thereby forbidding any other cause wherein amendment or reconciliation might have place. This law the Pharisees depraving, extended to any slight contentious cause whatsoever. Christ therefore 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 license) and checking their supercilious drift, declares that no accidental, temporary, or reconciliable offense, except fornication, can justify a divorce: he touches not here those natural and perpetual hindrances of society, which are not to be removed: for such, as they are aptest to cause an unchangeable offense, so are they not capable of reconcilement, because not of amendment. Thus is Moses law here solidly confirmed; and those causes which he permitted, not a jot gainsaid. And that this is the true meaning of this place, I prove also by no less an Author then S ^t . Paul himself, 1 Cor. 7. 10, 11. upon which text Interpreters agree, that the Apostle only repeats the precept of Christ: where while he speaks of the wives reconcilement to her husband, he puts it out of controversy, that our Savior meant only matters of strife and reconcilement; of which sort he would not that any difference should be the occasion of divorce, except fornication.

But because we know that Christ never gave a judicial law, and that the word fornication is variously significant in Scripture, it will be much right don to our Savior's words, to consider diligently, whether it be meant here, that nothing but actual fornicatiō, proved by witness, can warrant a divorce; for so our Canon Law judges. Nevertheless, as I find that Grotius on this place hath observed, the Christian Emperors, Theodosius the second, and Justinian, men of high wisdom and reputed piety, decree'd it to be a divorsive fornication, if the wife attempted either against the knowledge, or obstinately against the will of her husband, such things as gave open suspicion of adulterizing; as the willful haunting of feasts, and invitations with men not of her near kindred, the lying forth of her house without probable cause, the frequenting of Theaters against her husbands mind, her endeavor to prevent, or destroy conception. Hence that of Jerome, Where fornication is suspected, the wife may lawfully be divorcit; not that every motion of a jealous mind should be regarded, but that it should not be exacted to prove all things by the visibility of Law witnessing, or else to hood-wink the mind: for the Law is not able to judge of these things but by the rule of equity, and by permitting a wise man to walk the middle-way of a prudent circumspection, neither wretchedly jealous, nor stupidly and tamely patient. To this purpose hath Grotius in his notes. He shows also that fornicatiō is taken in Scripture for such a continual headstrong behavior, as tends to plain contempt of the husband: and proves it out of Judges 19. 2. where the Levites wife is said to have played the whoor against him; which Josephus and the Septuagint, with the Chaldean, interpret only of stubbornness and rebellion against her husband: and to this I add that Kimchi and the two other Rabbies who gloss the text, are in the same opinion. Ben Gersom reasons that had it been whoordom, a Jew and Levite would have disdained to fetch her again. And this I shall cōtribute, that had it been whoordom she would have chosen any other place to run to, then to her fathers house, it being so infamous for an hebrew woman to play the harlot, and so opprobrious to the parents. Fornication then in this place of the Judges, is understood for stubborn disobedience against the husband, and not for adultery. A sin of that sudden activity, as to be already committed, when no more is don, but only looked unchastly: which yet I should be loath to judge worthy a divorce, though in our Savior's language it be called adultery. Nevertheless, when palpable and frequent signs are given, the law of God Num. 5. so far gave way to the jealousy of a man, as that the woman set before the Sanctuary with her head uncover'd, was adju • 'd by the Priest to swear whether she were falls or no; and constrained to drink that bitter water with an undoubted curse of rottenness, and tympany to follow, unless she were innocent. And the jealous man had not been guiltless before God, as seems by the last ver. if having such a suspicion in his head he should neglect this trial, which, if to this day it be not to be used, or be thought as uncertain of effect, as our antiquated law of Ordalium, yet all equity will judge that many adulterous demeanors which are of lewd suspicion and example, may be held sufficient to incur a divorce; though the act itself hath not been proved. And seeing the generosity of our Nation is so, as to account no reproach more abominable, then to be nicknam'd the husband of an adulteress, that our law should not be as ample as the law of God to vindicate a man from that ignoble sufferance, is our barbarous unskillfulness, not considering that the law should be exasperated according to our estimation of the injury. And if it must be suffered till the act be visibly proved, Solomon himself whose judgment will be granted to surpass the acutenes of any Canonist, confesses Prov. 30. 19, 20. that for the act of adultery, it is as difficult to be found as the track of an Eagle in the air, or the way of a ship in the Sea: so that a man may be put to unmanly indignities, ere it be found out. This therefore may be enough to inform us that divorsive adultery is not limited by our Savior to the utmost act, and that to be attested always by eye-witness: but may be extended also to divers obvious actions, which either plainly lead to adultery, or give such presumption whereby sensible men may suspect the deed to be already don. And this the rather may be thought, in that our Savior chose to use the word fornication, which word is found to signify other matrimonial transgressions of main breach to that Covenant besides actual adultery. Thus at length we see both by this and by other places, that there is scarce any one saying in the Gospel, but must be read with limitations and distinctions, to be rightly understood; for Christ gives no full comments or continued discourses, but scatters the heavnly grain of his doctrine like pearl here and there, which requires a skillful and laborious gatherer; who must compare the words he finds, with other precepts, with the end of every ordinance, and with the general analogy of Evangelic doctrine: otherwise many particular sayings would be but strange repugnant riddles; & the Church would offend in granting divorce for frigidity, which is not here excepted with adultery, but by them added. And this was it undoubtedly which gave reason to S ^t . Paul of his own authority, as he professes, and without command from the Lord, to enlarge the seeming construction of those places in the Gospel, by adding a case wherein a person deserted which is something less then divorcit, may lawfully marry again. And having declared his opinion in one case, he leaves a further liberty for Christian prudence to determine in cases of like importance; using words so plain as are not to be shifted off, that a brother or a sister is not under bondage in such cases; adding also, that God hath called us to peace in marriage. Now if it be plain that a Christian may be brought into unworthy bondage, and his religious peace not only interrupted now and then, but perpetually and finally hinderd in wedlock by mis-yoking with a diversity of nature as well as of religion, the reasons of S ^t Paul cannot be made special to that one case of infidelity, but are of equal moment to a divorce wherever Christian liberty and peace are without fault equally obstructed. That the ordinance which God gave to our comfort, may not be pinn'd upon us to our undeserved thralldom; to be coopit up as it were in mockery of wedlock, to a perpētual betrothed lonelines and discontent, if nothing worse ensue. There being naught else of marriage left between such, but a displeasing and forced remedy against the sting of a brute desire; which fleshly accustoming without the souls union and commixture of intellectual delight, as it is rather a soiling then a fulfilling of marriage-rites, so is it enough to imbase the mettle of a generous spirit, and sinks him to a low and vulgar pitch of endeavor in all his actions, or, which is worse, leaves him in a despairing plight of abject and hard'n'd thoughts: which condition, rather then a good man should fall into, a man useful in the service of God and mankind, Christ himself hath taught us to dispence with the most sacred ordinances of his worship; even for a bodily healing to dispence with that holy & speculative rest of Sabbath; much more then with the erroneous observance of an illknottedmariage for the sustaining of an overcharg'd faith and perseverance.

And though bad causes would take license by this pretext, if that cannot be remedied, upon their conscience be it, who shall so do. This was that hardness of heart, & abuse of a good law which Moses was content to suffer rather then good men should not have it at all to use needfully. And he who to run after one lost sheep left ninety nine of his own flock at random in the Wildernes, would little perplex his thought for the obduring of nine hunder'd and ninety such as will daily take worse liberties whether they have permission or not. To conclude, as without charity God hath given no commandment to men, so without it, neither can men rightly believe any commandment givn. For every act of true faith, as well that whereby we believe the law, as that whereby we endeavor the law is wrought in us by charity: according to that in the divine hymn of S ^t . Paul, 1 Cor. 13. Charity believeth all things: not as if she were so credulous, which is the exposition hitherto current, for that were a trivial praise, but to teach us that charity is the high governesse of our belief, and that we cannot safely assent to any precept writ'n in the Bible, but as charity commends it to us. Which agrees with that of the same Apostle to the Ephes. 4. 14, 15. where he tells us that the way to get a sure undoubted knowledge of things, is to hold that for truth, which accords most with charity. Whose unerring guidance and conduct having followed as a loadstarre with all diligence and fidelity in this question, I trust, through the help of that illuminating Spirit which hath favored me, to have don no every days work: in asserting after many ages the words of Christ with other Scriptures of great concernment from burdensome & remorsles obscurity, tangl'd with manifold repugnances, to their native luster and consent between each other: hereby also dissolving tedious and Gordian difficulties, which have hitherto molested the Church of God, and are now decided not with the sword of Alexander, but with the immaculate hands of charity, to the unspeakable good of Christendom And let the extrem literalist sit down now & revolve whether this in all necessity be not the due result of our Savior's words; or if he persist to be otherwise opinion'd, let him well advise, lest thinking to gripe fast the Gospel, he be found instead with the canon law in his fist: whose boisterous edicts tyrannizing the blessed ordinance of marriage into the quality of a most unnatural and unchristianly yoke, have given the flesh this advantage to hate it, & turn aside, ofttimes unwillingly, to all dissolute uncleanness, even till punishment itself is weary and overcome by the incredible frequency of trading lust, and uncontroull'd adulteries. Yet men whose Creed is custom, I doubt not but will be still endeavoring to hide the sloth of thir own timorous capacities with this pretext, that for all this tis better to endure with patience and silence this affliction which God hath sent And I agree tis true; if this be exhorted and not enjoin'd; but withal, it will be wisely don to be as sure as may be, that what man's iniquity hath laid on, be not imputed to God's sending; least under the color of an affected patience we detain ourselves at the gulfs mouth of many hideous temptations, not to be withstood without proper gifts, which as Perkins well notes, God gives not ordinarily, no not to most earnest prayers. Therefore we pray, Lead us not into temptation. a vain prayer, if having led ourselves thither, we love to stay in that perilous condition. God sends remedies, as well as evils; under which he who lies and groans, that may lawfully acquit himself, is accessory to his own ruin: nor will it excuse him, though he suffer, through a sluggish fearfulnes to search thoroughly what is lawful, for fear of disquieting the secure falsity of an old opinion. Who doubts not but that it may be piously said to him who would dismiss frigidity, bear your trial, take it as if God would have you live this life of continence: if he exhort this, I hear him as an Angel, though he speak without warrant: but if he would compel me, I know him for Satan. To him who divorces an adulteress, Piety might say; Pardon her; you may show much mercy, you may win a soul: yet the law both of God & man leaves it freely to him. For God loves not to plow out the heart of our endeavors with over-hard and sad tasks. God delights not to make a drudge of virtue, whose actions must be all elective and unconstrain'd. Forcit vertu is as a bolt overshot, it goes neither forward nor backward, & does no good as it stands. Seeing therefore that neither Scripture nor reason hath laid this unjust austerity upon divorce, we may resolv that nothing else hath wrought it, but that letter-bound servility of the Canon Doctors, supposing marriage to be a Sacrament, and out of the art they have to lay unnecessary burdens upon all men, to make a fair show in the fleshly observance of matrimony, though peace & love with all other conjugal respects fare never so ill. And indeed the Papists who are the strictest forbidders of divorce, are the easiest libertines to admit of grossest uncleanness; as if they had a design by making wedlock a supportles yoke, to violate it most, under color of preserving it most inviolable, and with all delighting, as their mystery is, to make men the day-laborers of their own affliction; as if there were such a scarcity of miseries from abroad, that we should be made to melt our choicest home-blessings, and coin them into crosses, for want whereby to hold commerce with patience. If any therefore who shall hap to read this discourse, hath been through misadventure ill engaged in this contracted evil here complained 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 heaven, or tax the ways of God and his divine Truth; for they are equal, easy, and not burdensome; nor do they ever cross the just and reasonable desires of men, nor involve this our portion of mortal life, into a necessity of sadness and malcontent, by Laws commanding over the unreducible antipathies of nature sooner or later found: but allow us to remedy and shake off those evils into which human error hath led us through the midst of our best intentions; and to support our incident extremities by that authentic precept of sovran charity; whose grand Commission is to do 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 pierce with our free thoughts into the full latitude of nature and religion, abandon our selves to serv under the tyranny of usurped 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, we never leave subtilizing and casuisting till we 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 falls alarm, we do not know which way to set a foot forward with manly confidence and Christian resolution, through the confused ringing in our ears, of panic 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 judicial Court to toss 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 perceiving the great revenu and high authority it would give them, even 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 domestic 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 pass 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 guiltless instinct of nature, is not within the province of any law to reach, & were indeed an uncommodious rudeness, not a just power. For if natures resistles sway in love or hate be once compel'd, it grows careless of itself, vicious, useles to friend, unserviceable and spiritles to the Common-wealth. W ^ch 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 8 ^th might put away his Q. Anne of Cleve, whom he could not like, after he had been wedded half a year; unless it were that contrary to the Proverb, they made a necessity of that which might have been a vertu in them to do. For even the freedom and eminence of man's creation gives him to be a Law in this matter to himself, being the head of the other sex which was made for him: whom therefore though he ought not to injure, yet neither should he be forced to retain in society to his own overthrow, nor to hear any judge therein above himself. It being also an unseemly affront to the sequester'd & veiled modesty of that sex, to have her unpleasingnes and other concealements bandied up and down, and aggravated in open Court by those hir'd masters of tongue-fence. Such uncomely exigencies it befell no less a Majesty then Henry th 8 ^th to be reducit to; who finding just reason in his conscience to forgo his brothers wife, after many indignities of being deluded, and made a boy of by those his two cardinal Judges, was constrained at last for want of other prooff, that she had been carnally known by Prince Arthur, even to uncover the nakedness of that virtuous Lady, & to recite openly the obscene evidence of his brothers chāberlain. Yet it pleased God to make him see all the tyranny of Rome, by discovering this which they exercised 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. It is true, an adultres cannot be shamed enough by any public proceeding; but that woman whose honor is not appeachit, is less injured by a silent dismission, being otherwise not illiberally dealth with, then to endure a clamouring debate of utterles things, in a business of that civil secrecy and difficult discerning, as not to be over-much questioned by nearest friends. Which drew that answer from the greatest and worthiest Roman of his time Paulus Emilius, being 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 ye know where it wrings me? much less by the unfamiliar cognizance of a fee'd gamester can such a private difference be examined, neither ought it.

Lastly, All law is for some good that may be frequently attained without the admixture of a worse 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, we know that cannot thrive under a loathed and forced 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 divorcit, which in truth it can be none, as a mere separation; for if she consent, wherein has the law to right her? or consent not, then is it either just and so deserved, or if unjust, such in all likelihood was the divorcer, and to part from an unjust man is a happiness, & no injury to be lamented. But suppose it be an injury, the Law is not able to amend it, unless she think it other then a miserable redress to return back from whence she was expel'd, or but entreated to be gone, or else to live apart still married without marriage, a married widow. Last, if it be to chaste'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 punished by prohibiting the divorce, but that the innocent must equally partake? So that we 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 master of family? Wherefore not? Since God there put it, and the presumptuous Canon thence bereft it. This only must be provided, that the ancient manner be observed in presence of the Minister, and other grave selected Elders; who after they shall have admonished and pressed upon him the words of our Savior, & 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 do, and thinks himself, & this his case not contained in that prohibition of divorce which Christ pronouncit, the matter not being 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 weight of the whole Law to boot, flat against the liberty and essence of the Gospel, and yet nothing available either to the sanctity of marriage, 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 Jews that from Moses till after the captivity not one of the Profets thought it worth rebuking; for that of Malachi well looked into, will appear to be, not against divorcing, but rather against keeping strange Concubines, to the vexation of their Hebrew wives. If therefore we Christians may be thought as good and tractable as the Jews were, and certainly the prohibiters of divorce presume us to be better, then less confusion is to be feared for this among us then was among them. If we be worse, or but as bad, which lamentable examples confirm we are, then have we more, or at least as much need of this permitted law, as they to whom God expressly gave it under a harsher covenant. Let not therefore the frailty of man go on thus inventing needless troubles to itself to groan under the falls imagination of a strictness never imposed from above, enjoining that for duty which is an impossible and vain supererogating. Be not righteous overmuch, is the counsel of Ecclesiastes; why shoulàst thou destroy thyself? Let us not be thus over-curious to strain at atoms, and yet to stop every vent and cranny of permissive liberty: lest nature wanting those needful pores, and breathing places which God hath not debar'd our weakness, either suddenly break out into some wide rupture of open vice, and frantic heresy, or else inwardly fester with repining and blasphemous thoughts, under an unreasonable and fruitless 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 honor of God and his great Lawgiver, by suffering him to give his own laws according to the condition of man's nature best known to him, without the unsufferable imputation of dispensing 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 helpless Christians they shall raise srom the depth of sadness and distress, utterly unfitted, as they are, to serv God or man: many they shall reclaim from obscure and giddy sects, many regain from dissolute and brutish license, many from desperate hardness, 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. Marriage 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 goodness to break that covenant seemingly & keep it really, then by compulsion of la w to keep it seemingly, and by compulsion of blameless nature to break it really, at least if it were ever truly join'd. The vigor of discipline they may then turn with better success upon the prostitute looseness of the times, when men finding in themselves the infirmities of former ages, shall not be constrained above the gift of God in them to unprofitable and impossible observances never required 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, whereof the bare sound cannot consist sometimes with humanity, much less with charity, I would ever answer by putting them in remembrance of a command above all commands, which they seem to have forgot, and who spake it; in comparison whereof this which they so exalt, is but a petty and subordinate precept. Let them go therefore with whom I am loath to couple them, yet they will needs run into the same blindness with the Pharisees, let them go therefore and consider well what this lesson means, I will have mercy and not sacrifice; for on that saying all the Law and Profets 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.