Exposition Upon Marriage or Nullities of Marriage

SO God created man in his own image.] To be informed aright in the whole History of Marriage, that we may know for certain, not by a forced yoke, but by an impartial definition, what Marriage is, and what is not Marriage; it will undoubtedly be lafest, fairest, and most with our obedience, to inquire, as our Savior's direction is, how it was in the beginning. And that we begin so high as man created after God's own Image, there want not earnest causes. For nothing nowadays is more degenerately forgott'n, then the true dignity of man, almost in every respect, but especially in this prime institution of Matrimony, wherein his native pre-eminence ought most to shine. Although if we consider that just and natural privileges men neither can rightly seek, nor dare fully claim, unless they be ally'd to inward goodness, and steadfast knowledge, and that the want of this quells them to a servile sense of their own conscious unworthiness, it may save the wondering why in this age many are so opposite both to human and to Christian liberty, either while they understand not, or envy others that do; contenting, or rather priding themselves in a specious humility and strictness bred out of low ignorance that never yet conceived the freedom of the Gospel; and is therefore by the Apostle to the Colossians rankt with no better company, then Will-worship and the mere show of wisdom. And how injurious herein they are, if not to themselves, yet to their neighbors, and not to them only, but to the all-wise and bounteous grace offered us in our redemption, will orderly appear.

[In the Image of God created he him.] It is enough determined, that this Image of God wherein man was created, is meant Wisdom, Purity, Justice, and rule over all creatures. All which being lost in Adam, was recovered with gain by the merits of Christ. For albeit our first parent had lordship over sea, and land, and air, yet there was a law without him, as a guard set over him. But Christ having cancel'd the hand writing of ordinances which was against us, Coloss. 2. 14. and interpreted the fulfilling of all through charity, hath in that respect set us overlaw, in the free custody of his love, and left us victorious under the guidance of his living Spirit, not under the dead letter; to follow that which most edifies, most aides and furders a religious life, makes us holiest and likest to his immortal Image, not that which makes us most conformable and captive to civil and subordinate precepts; whereof the strictest observance may ofttimes prove the destruction not only of many innocent persons and families, but of whole Nations. Although indeed no ordinance human or from heaven can bind against the good of man; so that to keep them strictly against that end, is all one with to break them. Men of most renowned vertu have sometimes by transgressing, most truly kept the law; and wisest Magistrates have permitted and dispencit it; while they looked not peevishly at the letter, but with a greater spirit at the good of mankind, if always not writ'n in the characters of law, yet engrav'n in the heart of man by a divine impression. This Heathens could see, as the well-read in story can recount of Solon and Epaminondas, whom Cicero in his first book of invention nobly defends. All law, saith he, we ought refer to the common good, and interpret by that, not by the scrowl of letters. No man observes law for laws sake, but for the good of them for whom it was made. The rest might serv well to lecture these times, deluded through belly-doctrines into a devout slavery. The Scripture also affords us David in the show-bread, Hezekiah in the passover sound and safe transgressors of the literal command, which also dispenc'd not seldom with itself; and taught us on what just occasions to do so: until our Savior for whom that great and God-like work was reserved, redeemed us to a state above prescriptions by dissolving the whole law into charity. And have we not the soul to understand this, and must we against this glory of God's transcendent love towards us be still the servants of a literal indightment?

[Created he him.] It might be doubted why he saith, In the Image of God created he him, not them, as well as male and female them; especially since that Image might be common to them both, but male and female could not, however the Jews fable, and please themselves with the accidental concurrence of Plato's wit, as if man at first had been created Hermaphrodite: but then it must have been male and female created he him. So had the Image of God been equally common to them both, it had no doubt been said, In the image of God created he them. But St. Paul ends the controversy by explaining that the woman is not primarily and immediately the image of God, but in reference to the man. The head of the woman, saith he, 1 Cor. 11. is the man: he the image and glory of God, she the glory of the man: he not for her, but she for him. Therefore his precept is, Wives be subject to your husbands as is fit in the Lord, Coloss. 3. 18. In everything, Eph. 5. 24. Nevertheless man is not to hold her as a servant, but receives her into a part of that empire which God proclaims him to, though not equally, yet largely, as his own image and glory: for it is no small glory to him, that a creature so like him, should be made subject to him. Not but that particular exceptions may have place, if she exceed her husband in prudence and dexterity, and he contentedly yield, for then a superior and more natural law comes in, that the wiser should govern the less wise, whether male or female. But that which far more easily and obediently follows from this verse, is that, seeing woman was purposely made for man, and he her head, it cannot stand before the breath of this divine utterance, that man the portraiture of God, joining to himself for his intended good and solace an inferior sex, should so become her thrall, whose willfulness or inability to be a wife frustrates the occasional end of her creation, but that he may acquit himself to freedom by his natural birth-right, and that indelible character of priority which God crowned him with. If it be urged that sin hath lost him this, the answer is not far to seek, that from her the sin first proceeded, which keeps her justly in the same proportion still beneath. She is not to gain by being first in the transgression, that man should further loose to her, because already he hath lost by her means. Oft it happens that in this matter he is without fault; so that his punishment herein is causeless: and God hath the praise in our speeches of him, to sort his punishment in the same kind with the offense. Suppose he erred; it is not the intent of God or man, to hunt an error so to the death with a revenge beyond all measure and proportion. But if we argue thus, this affliction is befallen him for his sin, therefore he must bear it, without seeking the only remedy, first it will be false that all affliction comes for sin, as in the case of Joh, and of the man born blind, Joh. 9. 3, was evident: next by that reason, all miseries coming for sin, we must let them all lie upon us like the vermin of an Indian Catharist, which his fond religion forbids him to molest. Were it a particular punishment inflicted through the anger of God upon a person, or upon a land, no law hinders us in that regard, no law but bids us remove it if we can: much more if it be a dangerous temptation withal, much more yet, if it be certainly a temptation, and not certainly a punishment, though a pain. As for what they say we must bear with patience, to bear with patience, and to seek effectual remedies, implies no contradiction. It may no less be for our disobedience, our unfaithfulnes, and other sins against God, that wives become adulterous to the bed, and questionless we ought to take the affliction as patiently, as Christian prudence would wish; yet hereby is not lost the right of divorcing for adultery. No you say, because our Savior excepted that only. But why, if he were so bent to punish our sins, and try our patience in binding on us a disastrous marriage, why did he except adultery? Certainly to have been bound from divorce in that case also had been as plentiful a punishment to our sins, and not too little work for the patientest. Nay perhaps they will say it was too great a sufferance: And with as slight a reason, for no wise man but would sooner pardon the act of adultery once and again committed by a person worth pity and forgiveness, then to lead a wearisome life of unloving & unquiet conversation with one who neither affects nor is affected, much less with one who exercises all bitterness, and would commit adultery too, but for envy lest the persecuted condition should thereby get the benefit of his freedom. 'It is plain therefore that God enjoins not this supposed strictness of not divorcing either to punish us, or to try our patience.

Moreover, if man be the image of God, which consists in holiness, and woman ought in the same respect to be the image and companion of man, in such wise to beloved, as the Church is beloved of Christ, and if, as God is the head of Christ, and Christ the head of man, so man is the head of woman; I cannot see by this golden dependence of headship and subjection, but that Piety and Religion is the main tie of Christian Matrimony: So as if there be found between the pair a notorious disparity either of wickedness or heresy, the husband by all manner of right is disingag'd from a creature, not made and inflicted on him to the vexation of his righteousness; the wife also, as her subjection is terminated in the Lord, being herself the redeemed of Christ, is not still bound to be the vassal of him, who is the bondslave of Satan: she being now neither the image nor the glory of such a person, nor made for him, nor left in bondage to him; but hath recours to the wing of charity, and protection of the Church; unless there be a hope on either side; yet such a hope must be meant, as may be a rational hope, and not an endless servitude. Of which hereafter.

But usually it is objected, that if it be thus, then there can be no true marriage between misbelievers and irreligious persons? I might answer, let them see to that who are such; the Church hath no commission to judge those without, 1 Cor. 5. But this they will say perhaps, is but penuriously to resolv a doubt. I answer therefore, that where they are both irreligious, the marriage may be yet true enough to them in a civil relation. For there are left some remains of God's image in man, as he is merely man; which reason God gives against the shedding of man's blood, Gen. 9. as being made in God's image, without expression whether he were a good man or a bad, to exempt the slayer from punishment. So that in those marriages where the parties are alike void of Religion, the wife owes a civil homage and subjection, the husband owes a civil loyalty. But where the yoke is mis-yokit, heretic with faithful, godly with ungodly, to the grievance and manifest endangering of a brother or sister, reasons of a higher strain then matrimonial bear sway; unless the Gospel instead of freeing us, debase itself to make us bondmen, and suffer evil to control good.

[Male and female created he them.] This contains another end of matching man and woman, being the right, and lawfulness of the marige bed; though much inferior to the former end of her being his image and helpo in religious society. And who of weakest insight may not see that this creating of them male and female, cannot in any order of reason, or Christianity, be of such moment against the better and higher purposes of their creation, as to enthrall husband or wife to duties or to sufferings, unworthy and unbeseeming the image of God in them? Now when as not only men, but good men do stand upon their right, their estimation, their dignity in all other actions and deportments with warrant enough and good conscience, as having the image of God in them, it will not be difficult to determine what is unworthy and unseemly for a man to do or suffer in wedlock; and the like proportionally may be found for woman: if we love not to stand disputing below the principles of humanity. He that said, Male and female created he them, immediately before that said also in the same verse, In the Image of God created he him, and redoubl'd it, that our thoughts might not be so full of dregs as to urge this poor consideration of male and female, without remembering the noblenes of that former repetition; lest when God sends a wise eye to examine our trivial glosses, they be found extremely to creep upon the ground: especially since they confess that what here concerns marriage is but a brief touch, only preparative to the institution which follows more expressly in the next Chapter: and that Christ so took it, as desiring to be briefest with them who came to tempt him, account shall be given in due place.

This declares another end of Matrimony, the propagation of mankind; and is again repeated to Noah and his sons, Many things might be noted on this place not ordinary, nor unworth the noting; but I undertook not a general Comment. Hence therefore we see the desire of children is honest and pious; if we be not less zealous in our Christianity, then Plato was in his heathenism; who in the sixth of his laws, counts offspring therefore desirable, that we may leave in our stead sons of our sons, continual servants of God: a religious and prudent desire, if people knew as well what were required to breeding as to begetting; which desire perhaps was a cause why the Jews hardly could endure a barren wedlock: and Philo in his book of special laws esteems him only worth pardon that sends not barrenness away. Carvilius the first recorded in Rome to have sought divorce, had it granted him for the barrenness of his wife, upon his oath that he married to the end he might have children; as Dionysius and Gellius are authors. But to dismiss a wife only for barrenness, is hard: and yet in some the desire of children is so great, and so just, yea sometime so necessary, that to condemn such a one to a childless age, the fault apparently not being in him, might seem perhaps more strict then needed. Somtimes inheritances, crowns, and dignities are so interested and annexed in their common peace and good to such or such lineal descent, that it may prove a great moment both in the affairs of men and of religion, to consider thoroughly what might be don herein, notwithstanding the way wardnes of our School Doctors.

THis second Chapter is granted to be a Commentary on the first; and these verses granted to be an exposition of that former verse, Male and female created he them, and yet when this male and female is by the explicit words of God himself here declared to be not meant other then a fit help, and meet society; some who would engross to themselves the whole trade of interpreting, will not suffer the clear text of God to do the office of explaining itself.

[And the Lord God said it is not good.] A man would think that the consideration of who spake, should raise up the attention of our minds to inquire better, and obey the purpose of so great a Speaker: for as we order the business of Marriage, that which he here speaks is all made vain; and in the decision of matrimony, or not matrimony, nothing at all regarded. Our presumption, hath utterly changed the state and condition of this ordinance: God ordained it in love and helpfulnes to be indissoluble, and we in outward act and formality to be a forced bondage; so that being subject to a thousand errors in the best men, if it prove a blessing to any, it is of mere accident, as man's law hath handl'd it, and not of institution.

[It is not good for man to be alone.] Hitherto all things that have been named, were approved of God to be very good: lonelines is the first thing which God's eye named not good: whether it be a thing, or the want of something, I labor not; let it be their tendance, who have the art to be industriously idle. And here alone is meant alone without woman; otherwise Adam had the company of God himself, and Angels to convers with; all creatures to delight him seriously, or to make him sport. God could have created him out of the same mould a thousand friends and brother Adams to have been his consorts, yet for all this till Eve was given him, God reckn'd him to be alone.

[It is not good.] God here presents himself like to a man deliberating; both to show us that the matter is of high consequence, and that he intended to found it according to natural reason, not impulsive command, but that the duty should arise from the reason of it, not the reason be swallowed up in a reasonless duty. Not good, was as much to Adam before his fall, as not pleasing, not expedient; but since the coming of sin into the world, to him who hath not received the continence, it is not only not expedient to be alone, but plainly sinful. And therefore he who willfully abstains from marriage, not being supernaturally gifted, and he who by making the yoke of marriage unjust and intolerable, causes men to abhor it, are both in a diabolical sin, equal to that of Antichrist who forbids to marry. For what difference at all whether he abstain men from marrying, or restrain them in a marriage happening totally discommodious, distasteful, dishonest and pernicious to him without the appearance of his fault? For God does not here precisely say, I make a female to this male, as he did briefly before, but expounding himself here on purpose, he saith, because it is not good for man to be alone, I make him therefore a meet help. God supplies the privation of not good, with the perfect gift of a real and positive good; it is man's pervers cooking who hath turned this bounty of God into a Scorpion, either by weak and shallow constructions, or by proud arrogance and cruelty to them who neither in their purposes nor in their actions have offended against the due honor of wedlock.

Now whereas the Apostle speaking in the Spirit, 1 Cor. 7. pronounces quite contrary to this word of God, It is good for a man not to touch a woman, and God cannot contradict himself, it instructs us that his commands and words, especially such as bear the manifest title of some good to man, are not to be so strictly wrung, as to command without regard to the most natural and miserable necessities of mankind. Therefore the Apostle adds a limitation in the 26 v. of that chap. for the present necessity it is good; which he gives us doubtless as a pattern how to reconcile other places by the general rule of charity.

[For man to be alone.] Som would have the sense heerof to be in respect of procreation only: and Austin contests that manly friendship in all other regards had been a more becoming solace for Adam, then to spend so many secret years in an empty world with one woman. But our Writers deservedly reject this crabbed opinion; and defend that there is a peculiar comfort in the married state besides the genial bed, which no other society affords. No mortal nature can endure either in the actions of Religion, or study of wisdom, without sometime slackening the cords of intense thought and labor: which lest we should think faulty, God himself conceals us not his own recreations before the world was built; I was, saith the eternal wisdom, daily his delight, playing always before him. And to him indeed wisdom is as a high tower of pleasure, but to us a steep hill, and we toiling ever about the bottom: he executes with ease the exploits of his omnipotence, as easy as with us it is to will: but no worthy enterprise can be don by us without continual plodding and wearisomeness to our faint and sensitive abilities. We cannot therefore always be contemplative, or pragmatical abroad, but have need of some delightful intermissions, wherein the enlarged soul may leave off a while her severe schooling; and like a glad youth in wandering vacancy, may keep her hollidaies to joy and harmless pastime: which as she cannot well do without company, so in no company so well as where the different sex in most resembling unlikenes, and most unlike resemblance cannot but please best and be pleased in the aptitude of that variety. Wherof lest we should be too timorous, in the awe that our flat sages would form us and dress us, wisest Solomon among his gravest Proverbs countenances a kind of ravishment and erring fondness in the entertainment of wedded leisures; and in the Song of Songs, which is generally believed, even in the jolliest expressions to figure the spousals of the Church with Christ, sings of a thousand raptures between those two lovely ones far on the hither side of carnal enjoyment. By these instances, and more which might be brought, we may imagine how indulgently God provided against man's lonelines; that he approved it not, as by himself declared not good; that he approved the remedy thereof, as of his own ordaining, consequently good; and as he ordained it, so doubtless proportionably to our fall n estate he gives it; else were his ordinance at least in vain, and we for all his gift still empty handed. Nay such an unbounteous giver we should make him, as in the fables Jupiter was to Ixion, giving him a cloud instead of Juno, giving him a monstrous issue by her, the breed of Centaures a neglected and unlov'd race, the fruits of a delufive marriage, and lastly giving him her with a damnation to that wheel in hell, from a life thrown into the midst of temptations and disorders. But God is no deceitful giver, to bestow that on us for a remedy of lonelines, which if it bring not a sociable mind as well as a conjunctive body, leaves us no less alone then before; and if it bring a mind perpetually avers and disagreeable, betrays us to a worse condition then the most deserted lonelines. God cannot in the justice of his own promise and institution so unexpectedly mock us by forcing that upon us as the remedy of solitude, which wraps us in a misery worse then any wilderness, as the Spirit of God himself judges, Prov. 19. especially knowing that the best and wisest men amidst the sincere and most cordial designs of their heart do daily err in choosing. We may conclude therefore seeing orthodoxal Expositors confess to our hands, that by lonelines is not only meant the want of copulation, and that man is not less alone by turning in a body to him, unless there be within it a mind answerable, that it is a work more worthy the care and consultation of God to provide for the worthiest part of man which is his mind, and not unnaturally to set it beneath the formalities and respects of the body, to make it a servant of its own vassal, I say we may conclude that such a marriage, wherein the mind is so disgracit and vilify'd below the bodies interest, and can have no just or tolerable contentment, is not of God's institution, and therefore no marriage. Nay in concluding this, I say we conclude no more then what the common Expositors themselves give us, both in that which I have recited and much more hereafter. But the truth is, they give us in such a manner, as they who leave their own mature positions like the eggs of an Ostrich in the dust; I do but lay them in the sun; their own pregnancies hatch the truth; and I am taxed of novelties and strange producements, while they, like that inconsiderat bird, know not that these are their own natural breed.

[I will make him a help meet for him.] Heer the heavnly instituter, as if he labor'd, not to be mistaken by the supercilious hypocrisy of those that love to master their brethren, and to make us sure that he gave us not now a servile yoke, but an amiable knot; contents not himself to say, I will make him a wife, but resolving to give us first the meaning before the name of a wife, saith graciously, I will make him a help meet for him. And here again, as before, I do not require more full and fair deductions then the whole consent of our Divines usually raise from this text, that in matrimony there must be first a mutual help to piety, next to civil fellowship of love and amity, then to generation, so to household affairs, lastly the remedy of incontinence. And commonly they reck'n them in such order, as leaves generation and incontinence to be last considered. This I amaze me at, that though all the superior and nobler ends both of marriage and of the married persons he absolutely frustrate, the matrimony stirs not, looses no hold, remains as rooted as the center: but if the body bring but in a complaint of frigidity, by that cold application only, this adamantine Alpe of wedlock has leave to dissolve; which else all the machinations of religious or civil reason at the suit of a distressed mind, either for divine worship or human conversation violated, cannot unfasten. What courts of concupiscence are these, wherein fleshly appetite is heard before right reason, lust before love or devotion? They may be pious Christians together, they may be loving and friendly, they may be helpful to each other in the family, but they cannot couple; that shall divorce them though either party would not. They can neither serv God together, nor one be at peace with the other, nor be good in the family one to other, but live as they were dead, or live as they were deadly enemies in a cage together; tis all one, they can couple, they shall not divorce till death, no though this sentence be their death. What is this, besides tyranny, but to turn nature upside down, to make both religion, and the mind of man wait upon the slavish errands of the body, and not the body to follow either the sanctity, or the sovranty of the mind unspeakably wronged, and with all equity complaining? What is this but to abuse the sacred and misterious bed of marriage to be the compulsive sty of an ungrateful and malignant lust, stir'd up only from a carnal acrimony, withour either love or peace, or regard to any other thing holy or human. This I admire how possibly it should inhabit thus long in the sense of so many disputing Theologians, unless it be the lowest lees of a canonical infection livergrown to their sides; which perhaps will never uncling, without the strong abstersive of some heroic magistrate, whole mind equal to his high office dares lead him both to know and to do without their frivolous case-putting. For certain he shall have God and this institution plainly on his side. And if it be true both in divinity and law, that consent alone, though copulation never follow, makes a marriage, how can they dissolv it for the want of that which made it not, and not dissolv it for that not continuing which made it, and should preserve it in love and reason, and difference it from a brute conjugality.

[Meet for him.] The original here is more expressive then other languages word for word can render it; but all agree effectual conformity of disposition and affection to be hereby signified; which God as it were not satisfied with the naming of a help, goes on describing another self, a secondself, a very self itself. Yet now there is nothing in the life of man through our misconstruction, made more uncertain, more hazardous and full of chance then this divine blessing with such favorable significance here confer'd upon us, which if we do but err in our choice the most unblamable error that can be, err but one minute, one moment after those mighty syllables pronouncit which take upon them to join heavn and hell together unpardnably till death pardon, this divine blessing that looked but now with such a human smile upon us, and spoke such gentle reason, strait vanishes like a fair sky and brings on such a scene of cloud and tempest, as turns all to shipwreck without havn or shore but to a ransomles captivity. And then they tell us it is our sin; but let them be told again, that sin through the mercy of God hath not made such wast upon us, as to make utterly void to our use any temporal benefit, much less any so much a vailing to a peaceful and sanctified life, merely for a most incident error which no wariness can certainly shun. And wherefor servs our happy redemption, and the liberty we have in Christ, but to deliver us from calamirous yokes not to beliv'd under without the endangerment of our souls, and to restore us in some competent measure to a right in every good thing both of this life, and the other. Thus we see how treatably and distinctly God hath here taught us what the prime ends of marriage are, mutual solace and help. That we are now, upon the most irreprehensible mistake in choosing, defeated and defrauded of all this original benignity, was begun first through the snare of Antichristian canons long since obtruded upon the Church of Rome, and not yet scour • d off by reformation, out of a lingting vain-glory that abides among us to make fair shows in formal ordinances, and to enjoin continence & bearing of crosses in such a garb as no Scripture binds us, under the thickest arrows of temptation, where we need not stand. Now we shall see with what acknowledgement and assent Adam received this new associat, which God brought him.

That there was a nearer alliance between Adam and Eve, then could be ever after between man and wife, is visible to any. For no other woman was ever molded out of her husbands rib, but of mere strangers for the most part they come to have that consanguinity which they have by wedlock. And if we look nearly upon the matter, though marriage be most agreeable to holiness, to purity and justice, yet is it not a natural, but a civil and ordained relation. For if it were in nature, no law or crime could disannul it, to make a wife, or husband, otherwise then still a wife or husband, but only death; as nothing but that can make a father no father, or a son no son. But divorce for adultery or desertion, as all our Churches agree but England, not only separats, but nullifies, and extinguishes the relation itself of matrimony, so that they are no more man and wife; otherwise the innocent party could not marry else-where, without the guilt of adultery; next were it merely natural why was it here ordained more then the rest of moral law to man in his original rectitude, in whose breast all that was natural or moral was engrav'n without external constitutions and edicts. Adam therefore in these words does not establish an indissoluble bond of marriage in the carnal ligaments of flesh and bones, for if he did, it would belong only to himself in the literal sense; everyone of us being nearer in flesh of flesh, and bone of bones to our parents then to a wife; they therefore were not to be left for her in that respect. But Adam who had the wisdom given him to know all creatures, and to name them according to their properties, no doubt but had the gift to discern perfectly, that which concerned him much more; and to apprehend at first sight the true fitness of that consort which God provided him. And therefore spake in reference to those words which God pronouncit before; as if he had said, this is she by whose meet help and society I shall no more be alone; this is she who was made my image, even as I the Image of God; not so much in body, as in unity of mind and heart. And he might as easily know what were the words of God, as he knew so readily what had been don with his rib, while he slept so soundly. He might well know, if God took a rib out of his inside, to form of it a double good to him, he would far sooner dis-join it from his outside, to prevent a treble mischief to him: and far sooner cut it quite off from all relation for his undoubted ease, then nail it into his body again, to stick forever there a thorn in his heart. When as nature teaches us to divide any limb from the body to the saving of his fellows, though it be the maiming and deformity of the whole; how much more is it her doctrine to sever by incision, not a true limb so much, though that be lawful, but an adherent, a sore, the gangrene of a limb, to the recovery of a whole man. But if in these words we shall make Adam to erect a new establishment of marriage in the mere flesh, which God so lately had instituted, and founded in the sweet and mild familiarity of love and solace and mutual fitness, what do we but use the mouth of our general parent, the first time it opens, to an arrogant opposition, and correcting of God's wiser ordinance. These words therefore cannot import anything new in marriage, but either that which belongs to Adam only, or to us in reference only to the instituting words of God which made a meet help against lonelines. Adam spake like Adam the words of flesh and bones, the shell and rind of matrimony: but God spake like God, of love and solace and meet help, the soul both of Adams words and of matrimony.

This verse, as our common heed expounds it, is the great knot tier, which hath undon by tying, and by tangling, millions of guiltless consciences: this is that greisly Porter, who having drawn men and wisest men by suttle allurement within the train of an unhappy matrimony, claps the dungeon gate upon them, as irrecoverable as the grave. But if we view him well, and hear him with not too hasty and prejudicant ears, we shall find no such terror in him. For first, it is not here said absolutely without all reason he shall cleave to his wife, be it to his weal or to his destruction as it happens, but he shall do this upon the premises and considerations of that meet help and society before mentioned, Therefore he shall cleave to his wife, no otherwise a wife, then a fit help. He is not bid to leave the dear cohabitation of his father, mother, brothers and sisters, to link himself inseparably with the mere carcas of a Marriage, perhaps an enemy. This joining particle Therefore is in all equity, nay in all necessity of construction to comprehend first and most principally what God spake concerning the inward essence of Marriage in his institution: that we may learn how far to attend what Adam spake of the outward materials thereof in his approbation. For if we shall bind these words of Adam only to a corporal meaning, and that the force of this injunction upon all us his sons to live individually with any woman which hath befallen us in the most mistaken wedlock, shall consist not in those moral and relative causes of Eves creation, but in the mere anatomy of a rib, and that Adams insight concerning wedlock reached no further, we shall make him as very an idiot as the Socinians make him; which would not be reverently don of us. Let us be content to allow our great forefather so much wisdom, as to take the instituting words of God along with him into this sentence, which if they be well minded, will assure us that flesh and ribs are but of a weak and dead efficacy to keep Marriage united where there is no other fitness. The rib of Marriage, to all since Adam, is a relation much rather then a bone; the nerves and sinews thereof are love and meet help, they knit not every couple that maries, and where they knit they seldom break, but where they break, which for the most part is where they never truly join'd, to such at the same instant both flesh and rib cease to be in common; so that here they argue nothing to the continuance of a false or violated Marriage, but must be led back to receive their meaning from those institutive words of God which give them all the life and vigor they have.

[Therefore shall a man leave his father, &c.] What to a man's thinking more plain by this appointment, that the fatherly power should give place to conjugal prerogative? yet it is generally held by reformed writers against the Papist, that though in persons at discretion the Marriage in it selfbe never so fit, though it be fully accomplisht with benediction, board and bed, yet the father not consenting, his main will without dispute shall dissolv all. And this they affirm only from collective reason, not any direct law: for that in Exod. 22. 17. which is most particular, speaks that a father may refuse to marry his daughter to one who hath deflour'd her, not that he may take her away from one who hath soberly married her. Yet because the general honor due to parents is great, they hold he may, and perhaps hold not amiss. But again when the question is of barsh and rugged parents who defer to bestow their childern seasonably, they agree jointly that the Church or Magistrate may bestow them, though without the Fathers consent: and for this they have no express authority in Scripture. So that they may see by thir own handling of this very place, that it is not the stubborn letter must govern us, but the divine and softening breath of charity which turns and winds the dictat of every positive command, and shapes it to the good of mankind. Shall the outward accessory of a Fathers will wanting, rend the fittest and most affectionate marriage in twain, after all nuptial consummations, and shall not the want of love and the privation of all civil and religious concord, which is the inward essence of wedlock, do as much to part those who were never truly wedded? shall a Father have this power to vindicate his own willful honor and authority to the utter breach of a most dearly-united marriage, and shall not a man in his own power have the permission to free his Soul, his life, and all his comfort of life from the disastre of a no-marriage. Shall fatherhood, which is but man, for his own pleasure dissolve matrimony, and shall not matrimony, which is God's Ordinance, for its own honor and better conservation, dissolv itself, when it is wrong, and not fitted to any of the chief ends which it owes us?

[And they shall be one flesh.] These words also infer that there ought to be an individualty in Marriage; but without all question presuppose the joining causes. Not a rule yet that we have met with, so universal in this whole institution, but hath admitted limitations and conditions according to human necessity. The very foundation of Matrimony, though God laid it so deliberately, that it is not good for man to be alone holds not always, if the Apostle can secure us. Soon after we are bid leave Father and Mother, and cleav to a Wife, but must understand the Fathers consent withal, else not. Cleav to a Wife, but let her be a wife, let her be a meet help, a solace, not a nothing, not an adversary, not a defertrice; can any law or command be so unreasonable as to make men cleav to calamity, to ruin, to perdition? In like manner here, They shall be one flesh: but let the causes hold, and be made really good, which only have the possibility to make them one flesh. We know that flesh can neither join, nor keep together two bodies of itself; what is it then must make them one flesh, but likeness, but fitness of mind and disposition, which may breed the Spirit of concord, and union between them? If that be not in the nature of either, and that there has been a remediles mistake, as vain we go about to compel them into one flesh, as if we undertook to weav a garment of dry sand. It were more easy to compel the vegetable and nutritive power of nature to assimilations and mixtures which are not alterable each by other; or force the concoctive stomach to turn that into flesh which is so totally unlike that substance, as not to be wrought on. For as the unity of mind is nearer and greater then the union of bodies, so doubtless, is the dissimilitude greater, and more dividuall, as that which makes between bodies all difference and distinction. Especially when as besides the singular and substantial differences of every Soul, there is an intimate quality of good or evil, through the whole progeny of Adam, which like a radical heat, or mortal chilnes joins them, or disjoyns them irresistibly. In whom therefore either the will, or the faculty is found to have never join'd, or now not to continue so, 'tis not to say, they shall be one flesh, for they cannot be one flesh. God commands not impossibilities; and all the Ecclesiastical glue, that Liturgy, or Laymen can compound, is not able to solder up two such incongruous natures into the one flesh of a true beseeming Marriage. Why did Moses then set down thir uniting into one flesh? And I again ask, why the Gospel so oft repeats the eating of our Savior's flesh, the drinking of his blood? That we are one body with him, the members of his body, flesh of his flesh and bone of his bone. Ephes. 5. Yet lest we should be Capernaitans, as we are told there that the flesh profiteth nothing, so we are told here, if we be not as deaf as adders, that this union of the flesh proceeds from the union of a fit help and solace. We know that there was never a more spiritual mystery then this Gospel taught us under the terms of body and flesh; yet nothing less intended then that we should stick there. What a stupidnes then is it, that in Marriage, which is the nearest resemblance of our union with Christ, we should deject our selves to such a sluggish and underfoot Philosophy, as to esteem the validity of Marriage merely by the flesh; though never so brokn and disjointed from love and peace, which only can give a human qualification to that act of the flesh, and distinguish it from bestial. The Text therefore uses this phrase, that they shall be one flesh, to justify and make legitimat the rites of Marriage bed; which was not unneedfull, if for all this warrant, they were suspected of pollution by some sects of Philosophy, and Religions of old, and latelier among the Papists, and other heretics elder then they. Som think there is a high mystery in those words, from that which Paul saith of them, Ephes. 5. This is a great mystery, but I speak of Christ and the Church: and thence they would conclude marriage to be inseparable. For me I dispute not now whether matrimony be a mystery or no; if it be of Christ and his Church, certainly it is not meant of every ungodly and miswedded marriage, but then only mysterious, when it is a holy, happy, and peaceful match. But when a Saint is join'd with a reprobate, or both alike, wicked with wicked, fool with fool, a he drunkard with a she, when the bed hath been nothing else for twenty years or more, but an old haunt of lust and malice mixed together, no love, no goodness, no loyalty, but counterplotting, and secret wishing one another's dissolution, this is to me the greatest mystery in the world, if such a marriage as this, can be the mystery of ought, unless it be the mystery of iniquity: According to that which Pareus cites out of Chrysostom, that a bad wife is a help for the devil, and the like may be said of a bad husband. Since therefore none but a fit and pious matrimony can signify the union of Christ and his Church, there cannot hence be any hindrance of divorce to that wedlock wherein there can be no good mystery. Rather it might to a Christian Conscience be matter of finding itself so much less satisfied then before, in the continuance of an unhappy yoke, wherein there can be no representation either of Christ, or of his Church.

Thus having inquired the institution how it was in the beginning, both from the 1 Chap. of Gen, where it was only mentioned in part, and from the second, where it was plainly and evidently instituted, and having attended each clause and word necessary, with a diligence not drowsy, we shall now fix with some advantage; and by a short view backward gather up the ground we have gone; and sum up the strength we have, into one argumentative head, with that organic force that logic proffers us. All arts acknowledge that then only we know certainly, when we can define; for definition is that which refines the pure essence of things from the circumstance. If therefore we can attain in this our Controversy to define exactly what marriage is, we shall soon lern, when there is a nullity thereof, and when a divorce.

The part therefore of this Chapter which hath been here treated, doth orderly and readily resolv itself into a definition of marriage, and a consectary from thence. To the definition these words chiefly contribute. It is not good, &c. I will make, &c. Where the consectary begins this connection Therefore informs us, Therefore shall a man, &c. Definition is decreed by Logicians to consist only of causes constituting the essence of a thing, What is not therefore among the causes constituting marriage, must not stay in the definition. Those causes are concluded to be matter, and, as the Artist calls it, Form. But inasmuch as the same thing may be a cause more ways then one, and that in relations and institutions which have no corporal subsistence, but only a respective being, the Form by which the thing is what it is, is oft so slender and undistinguishable, that it would soon confuse, were it not sustained by the efficient and final causes, which concur to make up the form invalid otherwise of itself, it will be needful to take in all the four causes into the definition. First therefore the material cause of matrimony is man and woman; the Author and efficient, God and their consent, the internal Form and soul of this relation, is conjugal love arising from a mutual fitness to the final causes of wedlock, help and society in Religious, Civil and Domestic conversation, which includes as an inferior end the fulfilling of natural desire, and specifical increase; these are the final causes both moving the efficient, and perfeting the form. And although copulation be considered among the ends of marriage, yet the act thereof in a right esteem can no longer be matrimonial, then it is an effect of conjugal love. When love finds itself utterly unmatcht, and justly vanishes, nay rather cannot but vanish, the fleshly act indeed may continue, but not holy, not pure, not beseeming the sacred bond of marriage; being at best but an animal excretion, but more truly worse and more ignoble then that mute kindlyness among the herds and flocks: in that proceeding as it ought from intellective principles, it participates of nothing rational, but that which the field and the fold equals. For in human actions the soul is the agent, the body in a manner passive. If then the body do out of sensitive force, what the soul complies not with, how can man, and not rather something beneath man be thought the doer.

But to proceed in the persute of an accurat definition, it will a veil us something, and whet our thoughts, to examine what fabric heerof others have already reard. Pareus on Gen. defines Marriage to be an indissoluble conjunction of one man and one woman to an individual and intimate conversation, and mutual benevolence, &c. Wherein is to be marked his placing of intimate conversation before bodily benevolence; for bodily is meant, though indeed benevolence rather sounds will then body. Why then shall divorce be granted for want of bodily performance, and not for want of fitness to intimate conversation, when as corporal benevolence cannot in any human fashion be without this? Thus his definition places the ends of Marriage in one order, and esteems them in another. His Tautology also of indissoluble and individual is not to be imitated; especially since neither indissoluble, nor individual hath ought to do in the exact definition, being but a consectary flowing from thence, as appears by plain Scripture, Therefore shall a man leave, &c. For Marriage is not true marriage by being individual, but therefore individual, if it be true Marriage. No argument but causes enter the definition; a Consectary is but the effect of those causes. Besides, that Marriage is indissoluble, is not Catholickly true; we know it dissoluble for Adultery, and for desertion by the verdit of all Reformed Churches. Dr. Ames defines it an individual conjunction of one man and one woman, to communion of body and mutual society of life; But this perverts the order of God, who in the institution places meet help and society of life before communion of body. And vulgar estimation undervalues beyond comparison all society of life and communion of mind beneath the communion of body; granting no divorce, but to the want, or miscommunicating of that. Hemingius, an approved Author, Melanchtons Scholar, and who next to Bucer and Erasmus writes of divorce most like a Divine, thus comprises, Marriage is a conjunction of one man and one woman lawfully consenting, into one flesh, for mutual helps sake, ordained of God. And in his explanation stands punctually upon the conditions of consent, that it be not in any main matter deluded, as being the life of wedlock, and no true marriage without a true consent. Into one flesh he expounds into one mind, as well as one body, and makes it the formal cause: Heerin only missing, while he puts the effect into his definition instead of the cause which the Text affords him. For one flesh is not the formal essence of wedlock, but one end, or one effect of a meet help; The end oft times being the effect and fruit of the form, as Logic teaches: Els many aged and holy matrimonies, and more eminently that of Joseph and Mary, would be no true marriage. And that maxim generally received, would be falls, that consent alone, though copulation never follow, makes the marriage. Therefore to consent lawfully into one flesh, is not the formal cause of Matrimony, but only one of the effects. The Civil Lawyers, and first Justinian or Tribonian defines Matrimony a conjunction of man and woman containing individual accustom of life. Wherein first, individual is not so bad as indissoluble put in by others: And although much cavil might be made in the distinguishing between indivisible, and individual, yet the one taken for possible, the other for actual, neither the one nor the other can belong to the essence of marriage; especially when a Civilian defines, by which Law marriage is actually divorcit for many causes, and with good leave, by mutual consent. Therefore where conjunction is said, they who comment the Institutes, agree that conjunction of mind is by the Law meant, not necessarily conjunction of body. That Law then had good reason attending to its own definition, that divorce should be granted for the breaking of that conjunction which it holds necessary, sooner then for the want of that conjunction which it holds not necessary. And whereas Tuningus a famous Lawyer excuses individual as the purpose of Marriage, not always the success, it suffices not. Purpos is not able to constitute the essence of a thing. Nature herself the universal Mother intends nothing but her own perfection and preservation; yet is not the more indissoluble for that. The Pandects out of Modestinus, though not define, yet well describe Marriage, the conjunction of male and female, the society of all life, the communion of divine and human right: which Bucer also imitates on the fifth to the Ephesians. But it seems rather to comprehend the several ends of Marriage, then to contain the more constituting cause that makes it what it is.

That I therefore among others (for who sings not Hylas) may give as well as take matter to be judged on, it will be looked I should produce another definition then these which have not stood the trial. Thus then I suppose that Marriage by the natural and plain order of God's institution in the Text may be more demonstratively and essentially defined. Marriage is a divine institution joining man and woman in a love fitly disposed to the helps and comforts of domestic life. A divine institution. This contains the prime efficient cause of Marriage; as for consent of Parents and Guardians, it seems rather a concurrence then a cause; for as many, that marry are in thir own power as not; and where they are not thir own, yet are they not subjected beyond reason. Now though efficient causes are not requisite in a definition, yet divine institution hath such influence upon the Form, and is so a conserving cause of it, that without it the Form is not sufficient to distinguish matrimony from other conjunctions of male and female, which are not to be counted marriage. Joyning man and woman in a love, &c. This brings in the parties consent; until which be, the marriage hath no true being. When I say consent, I mean not error, for error is not properly consent: And why should not consent be here understood with equity and good to either part, as in all other friendly covnants, and not be strained and cruelly urged to the mischief and destruction of both? Neither do I mean that singular act of consent which made the contract, for that may remain, and yet the marriage not true nor lawful; and that may cease, and yet the marriage both true and lawful, to their sin that break it. So that either as no efficient at all, or but a transitory, it comes not into the definition. That consent I mean which is a love fitly disposed to mutual help and comfort of life; this is that happy Form of marriage naturally arising from the very heart of divine institution in the Text, in all the former definitions either obscurely, and under mistaken terms expressed, or not at all. This gives marriage all her due, all her benefits, all her being, all her distinct and proper being. This makes a marriage not a bondage, a blessing not a curse, a gift of God not a snare. Unless there be a love, and that love born of fitness, how can it last? unless it last how can the best and sweetest purposes of marriage be attained, and they not attained, which are the chief ends, and with a lawful love constitute the formal cause itself of marriage, how can the essence thereof subsist, how can it be indeed what it goes for? Conclude therefore by all the power of reason, that where this essence of marriage is not, there can be no true marriage; and the parties either one of them, or both are free, and without fault rather by a nullity, then by a divorce may betake them to a second choys; if thir present condition be not tolerable to them. If any shall ask, why domestic in the definition? I answer, that because both in the Scriptures, and in the gravest Poets and Philosophers I find the properties and excellencies of a wife set out only from domestic virtues; if they extend further, it diffuses them into the notion of some more common duty then matrimonial.

Thus far of the definition; the Consectary which flows from thence, and altogether depends theron, is manifestly brought in by this connexive particle Therefore; and branches itself into a double consequence; First individual Society, therefore shall a man leave father and mother: Secondly conjugal benevolence, and they shall be one flesh. Which as was shewn, is not without cause here mentioned, to prevent and to abolish the suspect of pollution in that natural and undefiled act. These consequences therefore cannot either in Religion, Law, or Reason be bound, and posted upon mankind to his sorrow and misery, but receive what force they have from the meetnes of help and solace, which is the formal cause and end of that definition that sustains them. And although it be not for the Majesty of Scripture to humble herself in artificial theorems, and definitions, and Corollaries, like a professor in the Schools, but looks to be analys'd, and interpreted by the logical industry of her Disciples and followers, and to be reducit by them, as oft as need is, into those Sciential rules, which are the implements of instruction, yet Moses, as if foreseeing the miserable work that man's ignorance and pusillanimity would make in this matrimonious business, and endeavoring his utmost to prevent it, condescends in this place to such a methodical and Schoollike way of defining, and consequencing, as in no place of the whole Law more.

Thus we have seen, and if we be not contentious, may know what was Marriage in the beginning, to which in the Gospel we are refer'd; and what from hence to judge of nullity, or divorce, Heer I esteem the work don; in this field the controversy decided; but because other places of Scripture seem to look aversly upon this our decision, although indeed they keep all harmony with it, and because it is a better work to reconcile the seeming diversities of Scripture, then the real dissensions of nearest friends, I shall assay in three following Discourses to perform that Office.

THat which is the only discommodity of speaking in a clear matter, the abundance of argument that presses to be uttered, and the suspense of judgment what to choose, and how in the multitude of reason, to be not tedious, is the greatest difficulty which I expect here to meet with. Yet much hath been said formerly concerning this Law in the Doctrines of divorce; Wherof I shall repeat no more then what is necessary. Two things are here doubted: First, and that but of late, whether this be a Law or no, next what this reason of uncleanness might mean for which the Law is granted; That it is a plain Law no man ever questioned, till Vatablus within these hunder'd years professed Hebrew at Paris, a man of no Religion, as Beza deciphers him. Yet some there be who follow him, not only against the current of all antiquity, both Jewish and Christian, but the evidence of Scripture also, Malachi. 2. 16. Let him who hateth put away saith the Lord God of Israel. Although this place also hath been tamper'd with, as if it were to be thus rendered, The Lord God saith, that he hateth putting away. But this new interpretation rests only in the authority of Junius; for neither Calvin, nor Vatablus himself, nor any other known Divine so interpreted before. And they of best note who have translated the Scripture since, and Diodati for one, follow not his reading. And perhaps they might reject it, if for nothing else, for these two reasons: First, it introduces in a new manner the person of God speaking less Majestic then he is ever wont; When God speaks by his Profet, he ever speaks in the first person; thereby signifying his Majesty and omni-presence. He would have said, I hate putting away, saith the Lord; and not sent word by Malachi in a sudden fallen style, The Lord God saith that he hateth putting away: that were a phrase to shrink the glorious omnipresence of God speaking, into a kind of circumscriptive absence. And were as if a Herald in the Atcheivment of a King, should commit the indecorum to set his helmet sidewaies and close, not full facit and open in the posture of direction and command. We cannot think therefore that this last Profet would thus in a new fashion absent the person of God from his own words as if he came not along with them. For it would also be wide from the proper scope of this place: he that reads attentively will soon perceav, that God blames not here the Jews for putting away thir wives, but for keeping strange Concubines, to the profaning of Judah's holiness, and the vexation of thir Hebrew wives, v. 11. and 14. Judah hath married the daughter of a strange God: And exhorts them rather to put thir wives away whom they hate, as the Law permitted, then to keep them under such affronts. And it is received that this Profet livd in those times of Ezra and Nehemiah (nay by some is thought to be Ezra himself) when the people were forced by these two Worthies to put thir strange wives away. So that what the story of those times, and the plain context of the 11 verse, from whence this rebuke begins, can give us to conjecture of the obscure and curt Ebraisms that follow, this Profet does not forbid putting away, but forbids keeping, and commands putting away according to God's Law, which is the plainest interpreter both of what God will, and what he can best suffer. Thus much evinces that God there commanded divorce by Malachi, and this confirms that he commands it also here by Moses.

I may the less doubt to mention by the way an Author, though counted Apocryphal, yet of no small account for piety and wisdom, the Author of Ecclesiasticus. Which Book begun by the Grand-father of that Jesus who is called the Son of Sirach, might have been writ'n in part, not much after the time when Malachi livd; if we compute by the Reign of Ptolemaeus Euergetes. It professes to explain the Law and the Profets; and yet exhorts us to divorce for incurable causes, and to cut off from the flesh those whom it there describes, Ecclesiastic. 25. 26. Which doubtless that wise and ancient Writer would never have advised, had either Malachi so lately forbid'n it, or the Law by a full precept not left it lawful▪ But I urge not this for want of better prooff; our Savior himself allows divorce to be a command, Mark. 10. 3. 5. Neither do they weak'n this assertion, who say it was only a sufferance, as shall be proved at large in that place of Matthew. But suppose it were not a writ'n Law, they never can deny it was a custom, and so effect nothing. For the same reasons that induce them why it should not be a law, will strair'n them as hard why it should be allowed a custom. All custom is either evil or not evil; if it be evil, this is the very end of Law-giving, to abolish evil customs by wholesome Laws; unless we imagine Moses weaker then every negligent and startling Politician. If it be, as they make this of divorce to be, a custom against nature, against justice, against chastity, how, upon this most impure custom tolerated, could the God of pureness erect a nice and precise Law, that the wife married after divorce could not return to her former husband, as being defiled? What was all this following nicenes worth, built upon the lewd foundation of a wicked thing allowed? In few words then, this custom of divorce either was allowable, or not allowable; if not allowable, how could it be allowed? if it were allowable, all who understand Law will consent, that a tolerated custom hath the force of a Law, and is indeed no other but an unwritt'n Law, as Justinian calls it, and is as prevalent as any writ'n statute. So that thir shift of turning this Law into a custom wheels about, and gives the onset upon thir own flanks; not disproving, but concluding it to be the more firm law, because it was without controversy a granted custom; as clear in the reason of common life, as those given rules whereon Euclides builds his propositions.

Thus being every way a Law of God, who can without blasphemy doubt it to be a just and pure Law. Moses continually disavows the giving them any statute, or judgment, but what he learnt of God; of whom also in his Song he saith, Deut. 32. He is the rock, his work is perfet, all his ways are judgment, a God of truth and without iniquity, just and right is he. And David testifies, the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether. Not partly right and partly wrong, much less wrong altogether, as Divines of nowadays dare censure them. Moses again of that people to whom he gave this Law saith, Deut. 14. Ye are the childern of the Lord your God, the Lord hath chosen thee to be a peculiar people to himself above all the nations upon the earth, that thou shouldst keep all his Commandments; and be high in praise, in name, and in honor, holy to the Lord, Chap. 26. And in the fourth, Behold I have taught you statutes and judgments eevn as the Lord my God commanded me, keep therefore and do them. For this is your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of Nations that shall hear all these Statutes and say, surely this great Nation is a wise and understanding people. For what Nation is there so great, who hath God so nigh to them? and what Nation that hath Statutes and Judgments so righteons as all this Law which I set before you this day? Thus whether we look at the purity and justice of God himself, the jealousy of his honor among other Nations, the holiness and moral perfection which he intended by his Law to teach this people, we cannot possibly think how he could endure to let them slugg & grow inveteratly wicked, under base allowances, & whole adulterous lives by dispensation. They might not eat, they might not touch an unclean thing; to what hypocrisy then were they trained up, if by prescription of the same Law, they might be unjust, they might be adulterous for term of life? forbid to soil thir garments with a coy imaginary pollution, but not forbid, but countnancit and animated by Law to soil thir souls with deepest defilements. What more unlike to God, what more like that God should hate, then that his Law should be so curious to wash vestures; and so careless to leave unwashed, unregarded, so foul a scab of Egypt in thir Souls? what would we more? the Statutes of the Lord are all pure and just: and if all, then this of Divorce.

Because he hath found some uncleanness in her. That we may not esteem this law to be a mere authorizing of license, as the Pharisees took it, Moses adds the reason, for some uncleanness found. Som heertofore have been so ignorant, as to have thought, that this uncleanness means adultery. But Erasmus, who for having writ an excellent Treatise of Divorce, was wrote against by some burly standard Divine, perhaps of Cullen, or of Lovain, who calls himself Phimostomus, shows learnedly out of the Fathers with other Testimonies and Reasons, that uncleanness is not here so understood; defends his former work, though new to that age, and perhaps counted licentious, and fears not to engage all his fame on the Argument. Afterward, when Expositors began to understand the Hebrew Text, which they had not done of many ages before, they translated word for word not uncleanness, but the nakedness of anything; and considering that nakedness is usually refer'd in Scripture to the mind as well as to the body, they constantly expound it any defect, annoyance, or ill quality in nature, which to be join'd with, makes life tedious, and such company worse then solitude. So that here will be no cause to vary from the general consent of exposition, which gives us freely that God permitted divorce, for whatever was unalterably distasteful, whether in body or mind. But with this admonishment, that if the Roman law especially in contracts and dowries left many things to equity with these cautions, exfide bonâ, quod aequius melius erit, ut inter bonos been agier, we will not grudge to think that God intended not license here to every humor, but to such remediles grievances as might move a good, and honest, and faithful man then to divorce, when it can no more be peace or comfort to either of them continuing thus join'd. And although it could not be avoided, bat that men of hard hearts would abuse this liberty, yet doubtless it was intended as all other privileges in Law are, to good men principally, to bad only by accident. So that the sin was not in the permission, nor simply in the action of divorce (for then the permitting also had been sin) but only in the abuse. But that this Law should, as it were, be wrung from God and Moses, only to serve the hard heartednes, and the lust of injurious men, how remote it is from all sense, and law, and honesty, and therefore surely from the meaning of Christ, shall abundantly be manifest in due order.

Now although Moses needed not to add other reason of this law then that one there expressed, yet to these ages wherein Canons, and Scotisms, and Lombard Laws, have dulled, and almost obliterated the lively Sculpture of ancient reason, and humanity, it will be requisite to heap reason upon reason, and all little enough to vindicate the whiteness and the innocence of this divine Law, from the calumny it finds at this day, of being a door to license and confusion. When as indeed there is not a judicial point in all Moses, consisting of more true equity, high wisdom, and God-like pity then this Law; not derogating, but preserving the honor and peace of Marriage, and exactly agreeing with the sense and mind of that institution in Genesis.

For first, if Marriage be but an ordained relation, as it seems not more, it cannot take place above the prime dictates of nature; and if it be of natural right, yet it must yield to that which is more natural, and before it by eldership and precedence in nature. Now it is not natural that Hugh marries Beatrice, or Thomas Rebecca, being only a civil contract, and full of many chances, but that these men seek them meet helps, that only is natural; and that they espouse them such, that only is marriage. But if they find them neither fit helps, nor tolerable society, what thing more natural, more original and first in nature then to depart from that which is irksome, grievous, actively hateful, and injurious eevn to hostility, especially in a conjugal respect, wherein antipathies are invincible, and where the forced abiding of the one, can be no true good, no real comfort to the other. For if he find no contentment from the other, how can he return it from himself, or no acceptance, how can he mutually accept? what more equal, more pious then to untie a civil knot for a natural enmity held by violence from parting, to dissolv an accidental conjunction of this or that man & woman, for the most natural and most necessary disagreement of meet from unmeet, guilty from guiltless, contrary from contrary? It being certain that the mystical and blessed unity of marriage can be no way more unhallow'd and profaned, then by the forcible uniting of such disunions and separations. Which if we see oft times they cannot join or piece up to a common friendship, or to a willing conversation in the same house, how should they possibly agree to the most familiar and united amity of wedlock? Abraham and Lot, though dear friends and brethren in a strange Country, chose rather to part asunder, then to infect thir friendship with the strife of thir servants: Paul and Barnabas join'd together by the Holy Ghost to a Spiritual work, thought it better to separate when once they grew at variance. If these great Saints joined by nature, friendship, religion, high providence, and revelation, could not so govern a casual difference, a sudden passion, but must in wisdom divide from the outward duties of a friendship, or a Collegueship in the same family, or in the same journey, lest it should grow to a worse division, can anything be more absurd and barbarous then that they whom only error, casualty, art or plot hath joined, should be compel'd, not against a sudden passion but against the permanent and radical discords of nature, to the most intimate and incorporating duties of love and embracement, therein only rational and human, as they are free and voluntary; being else an abject and servile yoke, scars not brutish. And that there is in man such a peculiar sway of liking, or disliking in the affairs of matrimony is evidently seen before marriage among those who can be friendly, can respect each other yet to marry each other would not for any persuasion. If then this unfitness and disparity be not till after marriage discovered, through many causes, and colors, and concealements, that may overshadow; undoubtedly it will produce the same effects and perhaps with more vehemence, that such a mistakn pair, would give the world to be unmarried again. And thir condition Solomon to the plain justification of divorce expresses, Prov. 30. 21. 23. Where he rells us of his own accord, that a hated, or a hateful woman, when she is married, is a thing for which the earth is disquieted and cannot bear it; thus giving divine testimony to this divine Law, which bids us nothing more then is the first and most innocent lesson of nature, to turn away peaceably from what afflicts and hazards our destruction; especially when our staying can do no good, and is exposed to all evil.

Secondly, It is unjust that any Ordinance ordained to the good and comfort of man, where that end is missing, without his fault, should be forced upon him to an unsufferable misery and discomfort, if not commonly ruin. All Ordinances are established in thir end; the end of Law is the vertu, is the righteousness of Law. And therefore him we count an ill Expounder who urges Law against the intention thereof. The general end of every Ordinance, of every severest, every divinest, eevn of Sabbath is the good of man, yea his temporal good not excluded. But marriage is one of the benignest ordinances of God to man, whereof both the general and particular end is the peace and contentment of man's mind, as the institution declares. Contentment of body they grant, which if it be defrauded, the plea of frigidity shall divorce: But here lies the fadomles absurdity, that granting this for bodily defect, they will not grant it for any defect of the mind, any violation of religious or civil society. When as, if the argument of Christ be firm against the ruler of the Synagogue, Luk. 13. Thou hypocrite, doth not each of you on the Sabbath day loos'n his Ox or his Ass from the stall, and lead him to watering, and should not I unbind a daughter of Abraham from this bond of Satan? it stands as good here, ye have regard in marriage to the greevance of body, should you not regard more the grievances of the mind, seeing the Soul as much excels the body, as the outward man excels the Ass and more; for that animal is yet a living creature, perfet in itself; but the body without the Soul is a mere senseless trunck. No Ordinance therefore givn particularly to the good both spiritual and temporal of man, can be urged upon him to his mischief, and if they yield this to the unworthier part, the body, whereabout are they in thir principles, that they yield it not to the more worthy, the mind of a good man?

Thirdly, As no Ordinance, so no Covenant, no not between God and man, much less between man and man, being as all are, intended to the good of both parties, can hold to the deluding or making miserable of them both. For equity is understood in every Covenant, eevn between enemies, though the terms be not expressed. If equity therefore made it, extremity may dissolv it. But Marriage, they use to say, is the Covenant of God. Undoubted: and so is any covenant frequently called in Scripture, wherein God is called to witness: the covenant of friendship between David and Jonathan, is called the Covenant of the Lord, 1 Sam. 20. The covenant of Zedekiah with the King of Babel, a Covenant to be doubted whether lawful or no, yet in respect of God invokit thereto, is called the Oath, and the Covenant of God, Ezech. 17. Marriage also is called the Covenant of God, Prov. 2. 17. Why, but as before, because God is the witness thereof, Malachi. 2. 14. So that this denomination adds nothing to the Covenant of Marriage, above any other civil and solemn contract: nor is it more indissoluble for this reason then any other against the end of its own ordination, nor is any vow or Oath to God exacted with such a rigor, where superstition reigns not. For look how much divine the Covenant is, so much the more equal; So much the more to be expected that every article thereof should be fairly made good, no falls dealing, or unperforming should be thrust upon men without redress, if the covenant be so divine. But faith they say must be kept in Covenant, though to our damage. I answer, that only holds true, where the other side performs, which failing, he is no longer bound. Again, this is true, when the keeping of faith can be of any use, or benefit to the other. But in Marriage a league of love and willingness, if faith be not willingly kept, it scars is worth the keeping; nor can be any delight to a generous mind, with whom it is forcibly kept: and the question still supposes the one brought to an impossibility of keeping it as he ought, by the others default, and to keep it formally, not only with a thousand shifts and dissimulations, but with open anguish, perpetual sadness and disturbance, no willingness, no cheerfulness, no contentment, cannot be any good to a mind not basely poor and shallow, with whom the contract of love is so kept. A Covenant therefore brought to that pass, is on the unfaulty side without injury dissolved.

Fourthly, The Law is not to neglect men under greatest sufferances, but to see Covnants of greatest moment faithfullest performed. And what injury comparable to that sustained in a frustrate and falls dealing Marriage, to loose, for another's fault against him, the best portion of his temporal comforts, and of his spiritual too, as it may fall out. It was the Law, that for man's good and quiet, reducit things to propriety, which were at first in common; how much more Law-like were it to assist nature in disappropriating that evil which by continuing proper becomes destructive. But he might have bewar'd. So he might in any other covenant, wherein the Law does not constrain error to so dear a forfeit. And yet in these matters wherein the wisest are apt to err, all the wariness that can be, oft times nothing avails. But the Law can compel the offending party to be more duteous. Yes, if all these kind of offenses were fit in public to be complained on, or being compel'd were any satisfaction to a mate not sottish, or malicious. And these injuries work so vehemently, that if the Law remedy them not, by separating the cause when no way else will pacify, the person not releev'd betakes him either to such disorderly courses, or to such a dull dejection, as renders him either infamous, or useles to the service of God and his Country. Which the Law ought to prevent as a thing pernicious to the Common wealth; and what better prevention then this which Moses used?

Fifthly, The Law is to tender the liberty and the human dignity of them that live under the Law, whether it be the man's right above the woman, or the woman's just appeal against wrong, and servitude. But the duties of marriage contain in them a duty of benevolence, which to do by compulsion against the Soul, where there can be neither peace, nor joy, nor love, but an enthrallment to one who either cannot, or will not be mutual in the godliest and the civilest ends of that society, is the ignoblest, and the lowest slavery that a human shape can be put to. This Law therefore justly and piously provides against such an unmanly task of bondage as this. The civil Law, though it favor'd the setting free of a slave, yet if he proved ungrateful to his Patron, reducit him to a servile condition. If that Law did well to reduce from liberty to bondage for an ingratitude not the greatest, much more became it the Law of God to enact the restorement of a free born man from an unpurpos'd, and unworthy bondage to a rightful liberty for the most unnatural fraud and ingratitude that can be committed against him. And if that Civilian Emperor in his tide of Donations, permit the giver to recall his gift from him who proves unthankful towards him, yea, though he had subscrib'd and signed in the deed of his gift, not to recall it though for this very cause of ingratitude, with much more equity doth Moses permit here the giver to recall no petty gift, but the gift of himself from one who most injuriously & deceitfully uses him against the main ends and conditions of his giving himself, expressed in God's institution.

Sixthly, Although there be nothing in the plain words of this Law, that seems to regard the afflictions of a wife, how great so ever, yet Expositors determine, and doubtless determine rightly, that God was not uncompassionat of them also in the framing of this Law. For should the rescript of Antoninus in the Civil Law give release to servants flying for refuge to the Emperors statue, by giving leave to change thir cruel Masters, and should God who in his Law also is good to injured servants, by granting them thir freedom in divers cases, not consider the wrongs and miseries of a wife which is no servant. Though herein the counter sense of our Divines, to me, I must confess seems admirable; who teach that God gave this as a merciful Law, not for man whom he here names, and to whom by name he gives this power, but for the wife whom he names not, and to whom by name he gives no power at all. For certainly if man beliable to injuries in marriage, as well as woman, and man be the worthier person, it were a preposterous law to respect only the less worthy; her whom God made for marriage, and not him at all for whom marriage was made.

Seventhly, The Law of marriage gives place to the power of Parents: for we hold that consent of Parents not had may break the wedlock, though else accomplisht. It gives place to maisterly power, for the Master might take away from an Hebrew servant the wife which he gave him, Exod. 21. If it be answered that the marriage of servants is no matrimony: tis replied, that this in the ancient Roman Law is true, not in the Mosaic. If it be added, she was a stranger not an Hebrew, therefore easily divorcit, it will be answered that strangers not being Canaanites, and they also being Converts might be lawfully married, as Rahab was. And her conversion is here supposed; for an Hebrew master could not lawfully give a heathen wife to an Hebrew servant. However, the divorcing of an Israelitish woman was as easy by the Law, as the divorcing of a stranger, and almost in the same words permitted, Deut. 24. and Deut. 21. Lastly, it gives place to the right of war, for a captiv woman lawfully married, and afterward not beloved, might be dismissed, only without ransom. Deut. 21. If marriage may be dissolved by so many exterior powers, not superior, as we think, why may not the power of marriage itself for its own peace and honor dissolv itself, where the persons wedded be free persons, why may not a greater and more natural power complaining dissolv marriage? for the ends why matrimony was ordained, are certainly and by all Logic above the Ordinance itself, why may not that dissolv marriage without which that institution hath no force at all? for the prime ends of marriage, are the whole strength and validity thereof, without which matrimony is like an Idol, nothing in the world. But those former allowances were all for hardness of heart. Be that granted, until we come where to understand it better: if the Law suffer thus far the obstinacy of a bad man, is it not more righteous here, to do willingly what is but equal, to remove in season the extremities of a good man?

Eighthly, If a man had deflowr'd a Virgin, or brought an ill name on his wife that she came not a Virgin to him, he was amercit in certain shekels of Silver, and bound never to divorce her all his days, Deut. 22. which shows that the Law gave no liberty to divorce, where the injury was palpable; and that the absolute forbidding to divorce, was in part the punishment of a deflowrer, and a defamer. Yet not so but that the wife questionless might depart when she pleased. Otherwise this cours had not so much righted her, as delivered her up to more spite and cruel usage. This Law therefore doth justly distinguish the privilege of an honest and blameless man in the matter of divorce from the punishment of a notorious offender.

Ninthly, Suppose it might be imputed to a man, that he was too rash in his choice and why took he not better heed, let him now smart, and bear his folly as he may; although the Law of God, that terrible law do not thus upbraid the infirmities and unwilling mistakes of man in his integrity: But suppose these and the like proud aggravations of some stern hypocrite, more merciless in his mercies, then any literal Law in the vigor of severity, must be patiently heard; yet all Law, and God's Law especially grants everywhere to error easy remitments, eevn where the utmost penalty exacted were no undoing. With great reason therefore and mercy doth it here not torment an error, if it be so, with the endurance of a whole life lost to all household comfort and society, a punishment of too vast and huge dimension for an error, and the more unreasonable for that the like objection may be opposed against the plea of divorcing for adultery; he might have looked better before to her breeding under religious Parents: why did he not then more diligently inquire into her manners, into what company she kept? every glance of her eye, every step of her gate would have propheci'd adultery, if the quick sent of these discerners had been took along; they had the divination to have foretold you all this; as they have now the divinity to punish an error inhumanly. As good reason to be content, and forced to be content with your adultress, if these objecters might be the judges of human frailty. But God more mild and good to man, then man to his brother, in all this liberty givn to divorcement, mentions not a word of our past errors and mistakes, if any were, which these men objecting from their own inventions prosecute with all violence and iniquity. For if the one be to look so narrowly what he takes, at the peril of ever keeping, why should not the other be made as wary what is promised, by the peril of loosing? for without those promises the treaty of marriage had not proceeded. Why should his own error bind him, rather then the others fraud acquit him? Let the buyer beware, saith the old Law-beaten termer. Belike then there is no more honesty, nor ingenuity in the bargain of a wedlock, then in the buying of a colt: We must it seems drive it on as craftily with those whose affinity we seek, as if they were a pack of sale men and complotters. But the deceiver deceivs himself in the unprosperous marriage, and therein is sufficiently punished. I answer, that the most of those who deceive, are such as either understand not, or value not the true purposes of marriage; they have the prey they seek, not the punishment: yet say it prove to them some cross, it is not equal that error and fraud should be linked in the same degree of forfeture, but rather that error should be acquitted, and fraud bereaved his morsel: if the mistake were not on both sides, for then on both sides the acquitment will be reasonable, if the bondage be intolerable; which this Law graciously determines, not unmindful of the wife, as was granted willingly to the common Expositors, though beyond the letter of this law, yet not beyond the spirit of charity.

Tenthly, Marriage is a solemn thing, some say a holy, the resemblance of Christ and his Church; and so indeed it is where the persons are truly religious; and we know all Sacred things not performed sincerely as they ought, are no way acceptable to God in thir outward formality. And that wherein it differs from personal duties, if they be not truly don, the fault is in ourselves; but marriage to be a true and pious marriage is not in the single power of any person; the essence whereof, as of all other Covnants is in relation to another, the making and maintaining causes thereof are all mutual, and must be a communion of spiritual and temporal comforts. If then either of them cannot, or obstinately will not be answerable in these duties, so as that the other can have no peaceful living, or enduring the want of what he justly seeks, and sees no hope, then strait from that dwelling love, which is the soul of wedlock, takes his flight, leaving only some cold performances of civil and common respects, but the true bond of marriage, if there were ever any there, is already burst like a rott'n thread. Then follows dissimulation, suspicion, falls colors, falls pretences, and worse then these, disturbance, annoyance, vexation, sorrow, temptation eevn in the faultles person, weary of himself, and of all action public or domestic; then comes disorder, neglect, hatred, and perpetual strife, all these the enemies of holiness and christianity, and everyone of these persisted in, a remediles violation to matrimony. Therefore God who hates all feigning and formality, where there should be all faith and sincerenes, and abhors to see inevitable discord, where there should be greatest concord, when through another's default, faith and concord cannot be, counts it neither just to punish the innocent with the transgressor, nor holy, nor honorable for the sanctity of marriage, that should be the unlon of peace and love, to be made the commitment, and close fight of enmity and hate. And therefore doth in this Law, what best agrees with his goodness, loosning a sacred thing to peace and charity, rather then binding it to hatred and contention; loosning only the outward and formal tie of that which is already inwardly, and really brokn, or else was really never join'd.

Eleventhly, One of the chief matrimonial ends is said to seek a holy seed; but where an unfit marriage administers continual cause of hatred and distemper, there, as was heard before, cannot choose but much unholines abide. Nothing more unhallows a man, more unprepares him to the service of God in any duty, then a habit of wrath and perturbation, arising from the importunity of troublous causes never absent. And where the household stands in this plight, what love can there be to the unfortunat issue, what care of thir breeding, which is of main conducement to thir being holy. God therefore knowing how unhappy it would be for children to be-born in such a family, gives this Law either as a prevention, that being an unhappy pair, they should not add to be unhappy parents, or else as a remedy that if there be childern, while they are fewest, they may follow either parent, as shall be agreed, or judged, from the house of hatred and discord, to a place of more holy and peaceable education.

Twelfthly, All Law is available to some good end, but the final prohibition of divorce a vails to no good end, causing only the endless aggravation of evil, and therefore this permission of divorce was givn to the Jews by the wisdom and fatherly providence of God; who knew that Law cannot command love, without which, matrimony hath no true being, no good, no solace, nothing of God's instituting, nothing but so sordid and so low, as to be disdained of any generous person. Law cannot enable natural inability either of body, or mind, which gives the greevance; it cannot make equal those inequalities, it cannot make fit those unfitnesses: and where there is malice more then defect of nature, it cannot hinder ten thousand injuries, and bitter actions of despite too suttle and too unapparent for Law to deal with. And while it seeks to remedy more outward wrongs, it exposes the injured person to other more inward and more cutting. All these evils unavoidably will redound upon the children, if any be, and the whole family. It degenerates and disorders the best spirits, leaves them to unsettl'd imaginations, and degraded hopes, careless of themselves, their household and their friends, unactive to all public service, dead to the Common-wealth; wherein they are by one mishapp, and no willing trespass of theirs, outlaw'd from all the benefits and comforts of married life and posterity. It conferrs as little to the honor and inviolable keeping of Matrimony, but sooner stirs up temptations, and occasions to secret adulteries, and unchaste roaving. But it maintains public honesty. Public folly rather, who shall judge of public honesty? the Law of God, and of ancientest Christians, and all Civil Nations, or the illegitimat Law of Monks and Canonists, the most malevolent, most unexperiencit, and incompetent judges of Matrimony?

These reasons, and many more that might be alleg'd, afford us plainly to perceav, both what good cause this Law had to do for good men in mischances, and what necessity it had to suffer accidentally the hard heartednes of bad men, which it could not certainly discover, or discovering could not subdue, no nor endeavor to restrain without multiplying sorrow to them, for whom all was endeavor'd. The guiltless therefore were not deprived thir needful redresses, and the hard hearts of others unchastisable in those judicial Courts, were so remitted there, as bound over to the higher Session of Conscience.

Notwithstanding all this, there is a loud exception against this Law of God, nor can the holy Author save his Law from this exception, that it opens a door to all license and confusion. But this is the rudest, I was almost saying the most graceless objection, and with the least reverence to God and Moses, that could be devised: This is to cite God before man's Tribunal, to arrogate a wisdom and holiness above him. Did not God then foresee what event of license or confusion could follow? did not he know how to ponder these abuses with more prevailing respects, in the most eevn balance of his justice and pureness, till these correctors cameup to show him better? The Law is, if it stir up sin any way, to stir it up by forbidding, as one contrary excites another, Rom. 7. but if it once come to provoke sin, by granting license to sin, according to Laws that have no other honest end, but only to permit the fulfilling of obstinate lust, how is God not made the contradicter of himself? No man denies that best things may be abused: but it is a rule resulting from many pregnant experiences, that what doth most harm in the abusing, used rightly doth most good. And such a good to take a way from honest men, for being abused by such as abuse all things, is the greatest abuse of all. That the whole Law is no further useful, then as a man uses it lawfully, St. Paul teaches 1 Tim. 1. And that Christian liberty may be used for an occasion to the flesh, the same Apostle confesses, Galat. 5. yet thinks not of removing it for that, but bids us rather Stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ hath freed us, and not be held again in the yoke of bondage. The very permission which Christ gave to divorce for adultery, may be foully abused, by any whose hardness of heart can either fain adultery, or dares commit, that he may divorce. And for this cause the Pope, and hitherto the Church of England, forbid all divorce from the bond of marriage, though for openest adultery. If then it be righteous to hinder for the fear of abuse, that which God's Law notwithstanding that caution, hath warranted to be don, doth not our righteousness come short of Antichrist, or do we not rather herein conform our selves to his unrighteousness in this undue and unwise fear. For God regards more to releev by this Law the just complaints of good men, then to curb the license of wicked men, to the crushing withal, and the overwhelming of his afflicted servants. He loves more that his Law should look with pity upon the difficulties of his own, then with rigor upon the boundless riots of them who serv another Master, and hindered here by strictness, will break another way to worse enormities. If this Law therefore have many good reasons for which God gave it, and no intention of giving scope to leudnes, but as abuse by accident comes in with every good Law, and every good thing, it cannot be wisdom in us, while we can content us with God's wisdom, nor can be purity, if his purity will suffice us, to except against this Law, as if it foster'd license. But if they affirm this Law had no other end, but to permit obdurate lust, because it would be obdurate, making the Law of God intentionally to proclaim and enact sin lawful, as if the will of God were become sinful, or sin stronger then his direct and Law-giving will, the men would be admonished to look well to it, that while they are so eager to shut the door against license, they do not open a worse door to blasphemy. And yet they shall be here further shewn thir iniquity; what more foul and common sin among us then drnnkennes, and who can be ignorant, that if the importation of Wine, and the use of all strong drink were forbid, it would both clean rid the possibility of committing that odious vice, and men might afterwards live happily and healthfully, without the use of those intoxicating licors. Yet who is there the severest of them all, that ever propounded to loos his Sack, his Ale, toward the certain abolishing of so great a sin, who is there of them, the holiest, that less loves his rich Canary at meals, though it be fetched from places that hazard the Religion of them who fetch it, and though it make his neighbor drunk out of the same Tunne? While they forbid not therefore the use of that liquid Marchandise, which forbid'n would utterly remove a most loathsome sin, and not impair either the health, or the refreshment of mankind, suppli'd many other ways, why do they forbid a Law of God, the forbidding whereof brings into an excessive bondage, oft times the best of men, and betters not the worse? He to remove a National vice, will not pardon his cupps, nor think it concerns him to forbear the quaffing of that outlandish Grape, in his unnecessary fullness, though other men abuse it never so much, nor is he so abstemious as to intercede with the Magistrate that all matter of drunkenness be banished the Commonwealth, and yet for the fear of a less inconvenience unpardnably requires of his brethren, in thir extreme necessity to debar themselves the use of God's permissive Law, though it might be thir saving, and no man's endangering the more. Thus this peremptory strictness we may discern of what sort it is, how unequal, and how unjust.

But it will breed confusion. What confusion it would breed, God himself took the care to prevent in the fourth verse of this Chapter, that the divorcit being married to another, might not return to her former Husband. And Justinians law counsels the same in his Title of Nuptials. And what confusion else can there be in separation, to separate, upon extrem urgency, the Religious from the irreligious, the fit from the unfit, the willing from the willful, the abused from the abuser, such a separation is quite contrary to confusion. But to bind and mixe together holy with Atheist, hevnly with hellish, fitness with unfitness, light with darkness, antipathy with antipathy, the injured with the injurer, and force them into the most inward neernes of a detested union, this doubtless is the most horrid, the most unnatural mixture, the greatest confusion that can be confused?

Thus by this plain and Christian Talmud vindicating the Law of God from irreverent and unwary expositions, I trust, where it shall meet with intelligible perufers, some stay at least of men's thoughts will be obtained, to consider these many prudent and righteous ends of this divorcing permission. That it may have, for the great Authors sake, hereafter some competent allowance to be counted a little purer then the prerogative of a legal and public ribaldry, granted to that holy seed. So that from hence we shall hope to find the way still more open to the reconciling of those places which treat this matter in the Gospel. And thither now without interruption the cours of method brings us.

I T hath been said.] What hitherto hath been spoke upon the law of God touching Matrimony or divorce, he who will deny to have been argu'd according to reason, and all equity of Scripture, I cannot edify how, or by what rule of proportion that man's virtue calculates, what his elements are, not what his analytics. Confidently to those who have read good books, and to those whose reason is not an illiterate book to themselves I appeal, whether they would not confess all this to be the commentary of truth and justice, were it not for these recited words of our Savior. And if they take not back that which they thus grant, nothing sooner might persuade them that Christ here teaches no new precept, and nothing sooner might direct them to find his meaning, then to compare and measure it by the rules of nature and eternal righteousness, which no writ'n law extinguishes, and the Gospel least of all. For what can be more opposite and disparaging to the cov'nant of love, of freedom, & of our manhood in grace, then to be made the yoaking pedagogue of new severities, the scribe of syllables and rigid letters, not only grievous to the best of men, but different and strange from the light of reason in them, save only as they are fain to stretch & distort their apprehensions, for fear of displeasing the verbal straightness of a text, which our own servile fear gives us not the leisure to understand aright. If the law of Christ shall be writ'n in our hearts, as was promised to the Gospel, Jer. 31, how can this in the vulgar and superficial sense be a law of Christ, so far from being writ'n in our hearts, that it injures and dissallowes not only the free dictates of nature and moral law, but of charity also and religion in our hearts. Our Savior's doctrine is, that the end, and the fulfilling of every command is charity; no faith without it, no truth without it, no worship, no works pleasing to God but as they partake of charity. He himself sets us an example, breaking the solemnest and the strictest ordinance of religious rest, and justified the breaking, not to cure a dying man, but such whose cure might without danger have been deserr'd. And wherefore needs must the sick man's bed be carried home on that day by his appointment, and why were the Disciples who could not forbear on that day to pluck the corn, so industriously desended, but to show us that if he prefer'd the slightest occasions of man's good before the observing of highest and severest ordinances, he gave us much more easy leave to break the intolerable yoke of a never well join'd wedlock for the removing of our heaviest afflictions. Therefore it is that the most of evangelick precepts are given us in proverbial forms, to drive us from the letter, though we love ever to be sticking there. For no other cause did Christ assure us that whatsoever things we bind, or slacken on earth are so in heaven, but to signify that the Christian arbitrement of charity is supreme decider of all controversy, and supreme resolver of all Scripture; not as the Pope determines for his own tyranny, but as the Church ought to determine for its own true liberty. Hence Eusebius not far from beginning his History, compares the state of Christians to that of Noah and the Patriarchs before the Law. And this indeed was the reason, why Apostolic tradition in the ancient Church was counted nigh equal to the writ'n word, though it carried them at length awry, for want of considering that tradition was not left to be imposed as law, but to be a pattern of that Christian prudence, and liberty which holy men by right assumed of old, which truth was so evident, that it found entrance even into the Council of Trent, when the point of tradition came to be discusst. And Marinaro a learned Carmelite for approaching too near the true cause that gave esteem to tradition, that is to say, the difference between the Old and New Testament, the one punctually prescribing writ'n Law, the other guiding by the inward spirit, was reprehended by Cardinal Poole as one that had spoken more worthy a German Collequie, then a general council. I omit many instances, many proofs and arguments of this kind, which alone would compile a just volume, and shall content me here to have show'n briefly, that the great and almost only commandment of the Gospel, is to command nothing against the good of man, and much more no civil command, against his civil good. If we understand not this, we are but cracked cimbals, we do but tinckle, we know nothing, we do nothing, all the sweat of our toilsomest obedience will but mock us. And what we suffer superstitiously returns us no thanks. Thus med'cining our eyes we need not doubt to see more into the meaning of these our Savior's words, then many who have gone before us.

[It hath been said, whosoever shall put away his wife.] Our Savior was by the doctors of his time suspected of intending to dissolve the law. In this chapter he wipes off this aspersion upon his accusers, and shows how they were the law brea kers. In every common wealth when it decays, corruption makes two main steps; first when men cease to do according to the inward and uncompell'd actions of virtue, caring only to live by the outward constraint of law, and turn the Simplicity of real good, into the craft of seeming so by law. To this hypocritical honesty was Rome declined in that age, wherein Horace lived and discovered it to Quintius.

The next declining is, when law becomes now too straight for the secular manners, and those too loose for the cincture of law. This brings in false and crooked interpretations to ecke out law, and invents the suttle encroachment of obscure traditions hard to be disprov'd. To both these descents the Pharisees themselves were fallen. Our Savior therefore shows them both where they broke the law in not marking the divine intent thereof, but only the letter, and where they depraved the letter also with sophistical expositions. This law of divorse they had depraved both ways. First, by teaching that to give a bill of divorse was all the duty which that law required, what ever the cause were. Next by running to divorse for any trivial, accidental cause; whenas the law evidently stays in the grave causes of natural and immutable dislike. [It hath been said saith he Christ doth not put any contempt or disesteem upon the law 〈2 pages missing〉 struct, but if he discern his willingness and candor made use of to intrapp him, will suddenly draw in himself, and laying aside the facile vein of perspicuity, will know his time to utter clouds and riddles; If he be not less wise then that noted Fish, when as he should be not unwiser then the Serpent. Our Savior at no time expressed any great desire to teach the obstinate and unteachable Pharisees; but when they came to tempt him, then least of all. As now about the liberty of divorce, so another time about the punishment of adultery they came to sound him, and what satisfaction got they from his answer, either to themselves or to us, that might direct a law under the Gospel, new from that of Moses, unless we draw his absolution of adultery into an edict. So about the tribute, who is there can pick out a full solution, what and when we must give to Caesar, by the answer which he gave the Pharisees? If we must give to Caesar that which is Caesar's, and all be Caesar's, which hath his image, we must either new stamp our Coine, or we may go new stamp our Foreheads with the superscription of slaves instead of freemen. Besides it is a general precept, not only of Christ, but of all other Sages, not to instruct the unworthy and the conceited who love tradition more then truth, but to perplex and stumble them purposely with contrived obscurities. No wonder then if they who would determine of divorce by this place, have ever found it difficult, and unfatisfying through all the ages of the Church, as Augustine himself and other great writers confess. Lastly it is manifest to be the principal scope of our Savior both here, and in the 5. of Mat. to convince the Pharisees of what they being evil did licentiously, not to explain what others being good and blameless men might be permitted to do in case of extremity. Neither was it seasonable to talk of honest and conscientious liberty among them who had abused legal and civil liberty to uncivil license. We do not say to a servant what we say to a son; nor was it expedient to preach freedom to those who had transgressed in wantonness. When we rebuke a Prodigal, we admonish him of thrift, not of magnificence, or bounty. And to school a proud man we labor to make him humble, not magnanimous. So Christ to retort these arrogant inquisitors their own, took the course to lay their hautinesse under a severity which they deserved; not to acquaint them, or to make them judges either of the just man's right and privilege or of the afflicted man's necessity. And if we may have leave to conjecture, there is a likelihood offered us by Tertullian in his 4. against Marcion, whereby it may seem very probable that the Pharisees had a private drifr of malice against our Savior's life in proposing this question; and our Savior had a peculiar aim in the rigor of his answer, both to let them know the freedom of his spirit, and the sharpness of his discerning. This I must now show, saith Tertullian, Whence our Lord deduced this sentence, and which way he directed it, whereby it will more fully appear that he intended not to dissolve Moses. And there upon tells us that the vehemence of this our Savior's speech was chiefly darted against Herod and Herodias. The story is out of Josephus: Herod had been a long time married to the daughter of Aretas King of Petra, til happening on his jorney towards Rome to be entertained at his brother Philip's house, he cast his eye unlawfully and unguestlike upon Herodias there, the wife of Philip, but daughter to Aristobulus their common brother, and durst make words of marrying her his Niece from his brothers bed. She assented upon agreement he should expel his former wife. All was accomplisht, and by the Baptist rebukit with the loss of his head. Though doubtless that staid not the various discourses of men upon the fact, which while the Herodian flatterers, and not a few perhaps among the Pharisees endevout'd to defend by wresting the law, it might be a means to bring the question of divorce into a hot agitation among the people, how far Moses gave allowance. The Pharisees therefore knowing our Savior to be a friend of John the Baptist, and no doubt but having heard much of his Sermon in the Mount, wherein he spake rigidly against the license of divorce, they put him this question both in hope to find him a contradicter of Moses, and a condemner of Herod; so to ensnare him within compass of the same accusation which had ended his friend; and our Savior so orders his answer, as that they might perceive Herod and his Adulteress only not named; so lively it concerned them both what he spake. No wonder then if the sentence of our Savior sounded stricter then his custom was; which his conscious attempters doubtless apprehended sooner then his other auditors. Thus much we gain from hence to inform us, that what Christ intends to speak here of divorce, will be rather the forbidding of of what we may not do herein passionately and abusively, as Herod and Herodias did, then the discussing of what herein we may do reasonably and necessarily.

[Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife] It might be rendered more exactly from the Greek, to loosen or to set free; which though it seem to have a milder fignification then the two Hebrew words commonly used for divorce, yet Interpreters have noted, that the Greek also is read in the Septuagint, for an act which is not without constraint. As when Achish drove from his presence David counterfeting madness. Psal. 34. the Greek word is the same with this here, to put away. And Erasmus quotes Hilary rendering it by an expression, not so soft. Whence may be doubted, whether the Pharisees did not state this question in the strict right of the man, not tarrying for the wives consent. And if our Savior answer directly according to what was asked in the term of putting away, it may be questionable, whether the rigor of his sentence did not forbid only such putting away as is without mutual consent▪ in a violent and and harsh manner, or without any reason, but will, as the Tetrarch did. Which might be the cause that those Christian Emperors feared not in their constitutions to dissolve marriage by mutual consent; In that our Savior seems here, as the case is most likely, not to condemn all divorce but all injury and violence in divorce. But no injury can be done to them who seek it, as the Ethics of Aristotle sufficiently prove. True it is, that an unjust thing may be done to one though willing, and so may justly be forbid'n: But divorce being in it self no unjust or evil thing, but only as it is join'd with injury, or lust, injury it cannot be at law, if consent be, and Aristotle err not. And lust it may as frequently not be, while charity hath the judging of so many private grievances in a misfortun'd Wedlock, which may pard'nably seek a redemption. But whether it be or not, the law cannot discern, or examine lust, so long as it walks from one lawful term to another, from divorce to marriage both in themselves indifferent. For if the law cannot take hold to punish many actions apparently covetous, ambitious, ungrateful, proud, how can it forbid and punish that for lust, which is but only surmis'd so, and can no more be certainly proved in the divorcing now, then before in the marrying. Whence if divorce be no unjust thing, but through lust, a cause not discernible by law, as law is wont to discern in other cases, and can be no injury where consent is, there can be nothing in the equity of law, why divorce by consent may not be lawful: leaving secrecies to conscience, the thing which our Savior here aims to rectify, not to revoke the statutes of Moses. In the mean while the wotd To put away, being in the Gteeke, to loosen or disolve, utterly takes away that vain papistical distinction of divorce from bed, and divorce from bond, evincing plainly that both Christ and the Pharisees mean here that divorce which finally disolves the bond and frees both parties to a second marriage.

[For every cause.] This the Pharisees held, that for every cause they might divorce, for every accidental cause, any quarrel or difference that might happ'n. So both Josephus and Philo, men who lived in the same age, explain; and the Syriac translater, whose antiquity is thought parallel to the Evangelists themselves, reads it conformably upon any occasion or pretence. Divines also generally agree that thus the Pharisees meant. Cameron a late writer much applauded, commenting this place not undiligently, affirms that the Greek preposition 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 translated unusually (For) hath a force in it implying the suddenness of those Pharisaic divorces; and that their question was to this effect, whether for any cause, whatever it chanced to be, straight as it rose, the divorse might be lawful. This he freely gives what ever moved him, and I as freely take, nor can deny his observation to be acute & learned. If therefore we insist upon the word of putting away, that it imports a constraint without consent, as might be insisted, and may enjoy what Cameron bestows on us, that for every cause is to be understood, according as any cause may happen, with a relation to the speediness of those divorces and that Herodian act especially, as is already brought us, the sentence of our Savior will appear nothing so strict a prohibition as hath been long conceived, forbidding only to divorce for casual & temporary causes, that may be soon ended, or soon remedied; & likewise forbidding to divorce rashly, & on thesudden heat, except it be for adultery. If these qualifications may be admitted, as partly we offer them, partly are offered them by some of their own opinion, and that where nothing is repugnant why they should not be admitted, nothing can wrest them from us, the severe sentence of our Savior will straight unbend the seeming frown into that gentleness and compassion which was so abundant in all his actions, his office and his doctrine, from all which otherwise it stands off at no mean distance.

[4. and 5 Made them Male and Female, And said for this cause, &c.] We see it here undeniably, that the law which our Savior cites to prove that divorce was forbid'n, is not an absolute and tyrannical command without reason, as nowadays we make it little better, but is grounded upon some rational cause not difficult to be apprehended, being in a matter which equally concerns the meanest and the plainest sort of persons in a household life. Our next way then will be to inquire if there be not more reasons then one, and if there be, whether this be the best and chiefest. That we shall find by turning to the first institution, to which Christ refers our own reading; He himself having to deal with treacherous affailants, useth brevity, and lighting on the first place in Genesis that mentions anything tending to Marriage in the first chapter, joins it immediately to the 24. verse of the 2 chapter, omitting all the prime words between, which create the institution, and contain the noblest and purest ends of Matrimony, without which attained, that conjunction hath nothing in it above what is common to us with beasts. So likewise beneath in this very chapter, to the young man who came not tempting him, but to learn of him, asking him which commandments he should keep, he neither repeats the first table, nor all the second, nor that in order which he repeats. If here then being tempted, he desire to be the shorter, and the darker in his conference, and omit to cite that from the second of Genesis, which all Divines confess is a commentary to what he cites out of the first, the making them Male and Female; what are we to do, but to search the institution ourselves; and we shall find there his own authority giving other manner of reasons why such firm union is to be in matrimony, without which reasons their being male and female can be no cause of joining them inseparably: for if it be, then no Adultery can sever. Therefore the prohibition of divorce depends not upon this reason here expressed to the Pharisees, but upon the plainer & more eminent causes omitted here and refer'd to the institution; which causes not being found in a particular and casual Matrimony, this sensitive and materious cause alone can no more hinder a divorce against those higher and more human reasons urging it, then it can alone without them to warrant a copulation, but leaves it arbitrary to those who in their chance of marriage find not why divorce is farbidd them, but why it is permitted them; and find both here and in Genesis, that the forbidding is not absolute, but according to the reasons there taught us, not here. And that our Savior taught them no better, but uses the most vulgar, most animal and corporal argument to convince them, is first to show us, that as through their licentious divorces they made no more of marriage then as if to marry, were no more then to be male and female, so he goes no higher in his confutation; deeming them unworthy to be talked with in a higher strain, but to be tied in marriage by the mere material cause thereof, since their own license testify'd that nothing matrimonial was in their thought but to be male and female. Next it might be don to discover the brute ignorance of these carnal Doctors, who taking on them to dispute of marriage and divorce, were put to silence with such a slender opposition as this, and outed from their hold with scarce one quarter of an argument. That we may believe this, his entertainment of the young man soon after may persuade us. Whom, though he came to preach eternal life by faith only, he dismisses with a salvation taught him by works only. On which place Pareus notes. That this man was to be convinced by a false persuasion; and that Christ is wont otherwise to answer hypocrites, otherwise those that are docible. Much rather then may we think that in handling these tempters, he forgot not so to frame his prudent ambiguities and concealements, as was to the troubling of those peremtory disputants most wholesome. When therefore we would know what right there may be, in ill accidents, to divorce, we must repair thither where God professes to teach his servants by the prime institution, and not where we see him intending to dazzle sophisters: We must not read he made them Male and Female, & not understand he made them more intendedly a meet help to remove the evil of being alone. We must take both these together, and then we may infer completely as from the whole cause why a man shall cleave to his wife, and they twain shall be one flesh: but if the full and chief cause why we may not divorce, be wanting here, this place may skirmish with the rabbies while it will, but to the true Christian it prohibits nothing beyond the full reason of it's own prohibiting, which is best known by the institution.

Vers. 6. [Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh.] This is true in the general right of marriage, but not in the chance medley of every particular match. For if they who were once undoubtedly one flesh, yet become twain by adultery, then sure they who were never one flesh rightly, never helps meet for each other according to the plain prescript of God, may with less ado then a volume be concluded still twain. And so long as we account a Magistrate no Magistrate, if there be but a flaw in his election, why should we not much rather count a Matrimony no Matrimony, if it cannot be in any reasonable manner according to the words of God's institution.

[What therefore God hath joined, let no man put asunder.] But hear the Christian prudence lies to consider what God hath join'd; shall we say that God hath join'd error, fraud, unfitness, wrath, contention, perpetual lonelinesse, perpetual discord; what ever lust, or wine, or witchery, threate, or enticement, avarice or ambition hath join'd together, faithful with unfaithful, Christian with antichristian, hate with hate, or hate with love, shall we say this is God's joining?

[Let not man put a sunder.] That is to say, what God hath join'd; for if it be, as how oft we see it may be, not of God's joining, and his law tells us he joins not unmachable things but hates to join them, as an abominable confusion, then the divine law of Moses puts them asunder, his own divine will in the institution puts them asunder, as oft as the reasons be not extant, for which only God ordained their joining. Man only puts asunder when his inordinate desires, his passion, his violence, his injury makes the breach: not when the utter want of that which lawfully was the end of his joining, when wrongs and extremities, and unsupportable grievances compel him to disjoyne: when such as Herod & the pharises divorce beside law, or against law, then only man separates, and to such only this prohibition belongs. In a word, if it be unlawful for man to put asunder that which God hath join'd, let man take heed it be not detestable to join that by compulsion which God hath put asunder.

[Moses because of the hardness of your hearts suffered you.] Henee the divinity now current argues that this judicial Moses is abolished. But suppose it were so, though it hath been proved otherwise, the firmness of such right to divorce as here pleads, is fetched from the prime institution, does not stand or fall with the judicial Jew, but is as moral as what is moralest. Yet as I have shewn positively that this law cannot be abrogated, both by the words of our Savior pronouncing the contrary, and by that unabolishable equity which it convaies to us, so I shall now bring to view those appearances of strength which are levied from this text to maintain the most gross and massy paradox that ever did violence to reason and religion, bred only under the shadow of these words, to all other piety or philosophy strange and insolent, that God by act of law drew out a line of adultery almost two thousand years long: although to detect the prodigy of this surmise, the former book set forth on this argument hath already been copious. I shall not repeat much though I might borrow of mine own, but shall endeavor to add something either yet untouched, or not largely enough explained First it shall be manifest that the common exposition cannot possibly consist with Christian doctrine: next a truer meaning of this our Savior's reply shall be left in the room. The received exposition is, that God though not approving did enact a law to permit adultery by divorcement simply unlawful. And this conceit they feed with fond supposals that have not the least footing in Scripture. As that the Jews learnt this custom of divorce in Egypt, and therefore God would not unteach it them till Christ came, but let it stick as a notorious botch of deformity in the midst of his most perfect and severe law. And yet he saith, Levite. the 18 ^th after the doings of Egypt ye shall not do. Another while they invent a slander (as what thing more bold then teaching Ignorance when he shifts to hide his nakedness) that the Jews were naturally to their wives the cruellest men in the world; would poison, brain, and do I know not what, if they might not divorce. Certain, if it were a fault heavily punished, to bring an evil report upon the land which God gave, what is it to raise a groundless calumny against the people which God made choice of? But that this bold interpretament, how commonly so ever sided with, cannot stand a minute with any competent reverence to God or his law, or his people, nor with any other maxim of religion, or good manners, might be proved through all the heads and Topics of argumentation: but I shall willingly be as concise as possible. First the law, not only the moral, but the judicial given by Moses is just and pure; for such is God who gave it. Hearken O Israel, saith Moses, Dent. 4. unto the statutes and the judgments which I teach you, to do them, that ye may live, &c. ye shall not add unto the word which J command you, neither shall ye diminish ought from it, that ye may keep the commandments of the Lord your God which I command you. And onward in the chapter, Behold I have taught you statutes and judgments, even as the Lord my God commanded me. Keep therefore and do them, for this is your wisdom and your understanding. For what nation hath God so nigh unto them, and what-nation hath statutes and judgments so righteous as all this law which I set before ye this day. Is it imaginable there should be among these a law which God allowed not, a law giving permissions laxative to unmarry a wife and marry a lust, a law to suffer a kind of tribunal adultery? Many other scriptures might be brought to assert the purity of this judicial law, and many I have alleg'd before; this law therefore is pure and just. But if it permit, if it teach, if it defend that which is both unjust and impure, as by the common doctrine it doth, what think we? The three general doctrines of Justinians law, are To live in honesty, To hurt no man, To give everyone his due. Shall the Roman civil law observe these three things, as the only end of law, and shall a statute be found in the civil law of God, enacted simply and totally against all these three precepts of nature and morality?

Secondly, the gifts of God are all perfet, and certainly the law is of all his other gifts one of the perfetest. But if it give that outwardly which it takes away really, & give that seemingly, which, if a man take it, wraps him into sin and damns him, what gift of an enemy can be more dangerous and destroying then this.

Thirdly, Moses everywhere commends his laws, prefers them before all of other nations, and warrants them to be the way of life and safety to all that walk therein, Levite. 18. But if they contain statutes which God approves not, and train men unweeting to commit injustice and adultery, under the shelter of law, if those things be sin, and death sins wages, what is this law but the snare of death?

Fourthly, the statutes and judgments of the Lord, which without exception are often told us to be such, as doing we may live by them, are doubtless to be counted the rule of knowledge and of conscience. For I had not known lust, saith the Apostle, but by the law. But if the law come down from the state of her incorruptible majesty to grant lust his boon, palpably it darkns and confounds both knowledge and conscience; it goes against the common office of all goodness and freindlinesse, wich is at lest to counsel and admonish; it subverts the rules of all sober education; and is it self a most negligent and debaushing tutor.

Fifthly, if the law permit a thing unlawful, it permitts that which else where it hath forbid; so that hereby it contradicts it self, and transgresses it self. But if the law become a transgressor, it stands guilty to it self, and how then shall it save another; it makes a confederacy with sin, how then can it justly condemn a sinner? and thus reducing it self to the stateof neither saving nor condemning, it will not fail to expire solemnly ridiculous.

Sixthly, the Prophets in Scripture declare severely against the decreeing of that which is unjust, Psal. 94. 20. Isaiah the 10 ^th . But it was done, they say, for heardnesse of heart; To which objection the Apostles rule, not to do evil that good may come thereby, gives an invincible repuls; and here especially, where it cannot be shewn how any good came by doing this evil, how rather more evil did not hereon abound; for the giving way to hardness of heart hard'ns the more, and adds more to the number. God to an evil and adulterous generation would not grant a sign; much less would he for their hardness of heart pollute his law with an adulterous permission. Yea but to permit evil is not to do evil. Yes, it is in a most eminent manner to do evil: where else are all our grave and faithful sayings, that he whose office is to forbid and forbids not, bids, exhorts, encourages. Why hath God denounced his anger against parents, masters, friends, magistrates neglectful of forbidding what they ought, if law the common father, master, friend, and perpetual magistrate shall not only not forbid, but enact, exhibit, and uphold with countnance and protection a deed every way dishonest, what ever the pretence be. If it were of those inward vices, which the law cannot by outward constraint remedy, but leaves to conscience and persuasion, it had been guiltless in being silent: but to write a decree of that which can be no way lawful, and might with ease be hindered, makes law by the doom of law it self accessory in the highest degree.

Seventhly, it makes God the direct author of sin, For although he be not made the author of what he silently permitts in his providence, yet in his law, the image of his will, when in plain expression he constitutes and ordains a fact utterly unlawful, what wants he to authorize it, and what wants that to be the author?

Eighthly, to establish by law a thing wholly unlawful and dishonest, is an affirmation was never heard of before in any law, reason, philosophy, or religion, till it was raised by inconsideratglossists from the mistake of this text. And though the Civilians have been contented to chew this opinion, after the canon had subdued them, yet they never could bring example or authority either from divine writ, or human learning, or human practice in any nation, or well-formed republick, but only from the customary abuse of this text. Usually they allege the Epistle of Cicero to Atticus; wherein Cato is blamed for giving sentence to the scum of Romulus, as if he were in Plato's common wealth. Cato would have called some great one into judgment for bribery, Cicero as the time stood, advised against it. Cato, not to endammage the public treasury, would not grant to the Roman Knights, that the Asian taxes might be farm'd them at a less rate. Cicero wisht it granted. Nothing in all this will be like the establishing of a law to sin: here are no laws made, here only the execution of law is craved might be suspended: between which and our question is a broad difference. And what if human law givers have confessed they could not frame their laws to that perfection which they desired, we hear of no such confession from Moses concerning the laws of God, but rather all praise and high testimony of perfection given them. And although man's nature cannot bear exactest laws, yet still within the confines of good it may and must; so long as less good is far enough from altogether evil. As for what they instance of usury, let them first prove usury to be wholly unlawful, as the law allows it; which learned men as numerous on the other side will deny them. Or if it be altogether unlawful, why is it tolerated more then divorce? he who said divorse not, said also lend hoping for nothing again, Luk. 6. 35. But then they put in, that trade could not stand. And so to serve the commodity of insatiable trading, usury shall be permitted, but divorce, the only means oft times to right the innocent, & outrageously wronged, shall be utterly forbid. This is egregious doctrine, and for which one day charity will much thank them. Beza not finding how to salve this perplexity, and Cameron since him, would secure us; although the latter confesses that to permit a wicked thing by law, is a wickedness from which God abhors; yet to limit sin, and prescribe it a certain measure, is good. First this evasion will not help here; for this law bounded no man; he might put away whatever found not favor in his eyes. And how could it forbid to divorce, whom it could not forbid to dislike, or command to love. If these be the limits of law to restrain sin, who so lame a sinner but may hoppe over them more easily then over those Romulean circumscriptions, not as Remus did with hard succes, but with all indemnity. Such a limiting as this were not worth the mischief that accompanies it. This law therefore not bounding the supposed sin, by permitting enlarges it, gives it enfranchisement. And never greater confusion, then when law and sin move their land marks, mixe their territories, and correspond, have intercourse and traffic together. When law contracts a kindred and hospitality with transgression, becomes the godfather of sin and names it Lawfull; when sin revels and gossips within the arcenal of law, plays, and dandles the artillery of justice that should be bent against her, this is a fair limitation indeed. Besides it is an absurdity to say that law can measure sin, or moderate sin; sin is not in a predicament to be measured and modify'd, but is always an excess. The least sin that is, exceeds the measure of the largest law that can be good; and is as boundless as that vacuity beyond the world. If once it square to the measure of Law, it ceases to be an excess, and consequently ceases to be a sin; or else law conforming it self to the obliquity of sin, betrays it self to be not strait, but crooked, and so immediately no law. And the improper conceit of moderating sin by law will appear, if we can imagine any lawgiver so senseless as to decree that so far a man may steal, and thus far be drunk, that moderately he may cozen, and moderately commit adultery. To the same extent it would be as pithily absurd to publish that a man may moderately divorce, if to do that be entirely naught. But to end this moot, the law of Moses is manifest to fixe no limit therein at all, or such at lest as impeaches the fraudulent abuser no more then if it were not set; only requires the dismissive writing without other caution, leaves that to the inner man, and the bar of conscience. But it stopped other sins. This is as vain as the rest, and dangerously uncertain: the contrary to be feared rather, that one sin admitted courteously by law, opened the gate to another. However evil must not be don for good. And it were a fall to be lamented, an indignity unspeakable, if law should become tributary to sin her slave, and forced to yield up into his hands her awful minister Punishment, should buy out her peace with sin for sin, paying as it were her so many Philistian foreskins to the proud demand of Trangression. But suppose it any way possible to limit sin, to put a girdle about that Chaos, suppose it also good; yet if to permit sin by Law be an abomination in the eyes of God, as Cameron acknowledges, the evil of permitting will eat out the good of limiting. For though sin be not limited, there can but evil come out of evil; but if it be permitted & decreed lawful by divine law, of force then sin must proceed from the infinite Good, which is a dreadful thought. But if the restraining of sin by this permission being good, as this author testifies, be more good then the permission of more sin by the restraint of divorce, and that God waighing both these like two ingots in the perfet scales of his justice and providence found them so, and others coming without authority from God, shall change this counter poise, and judge it better to let fin multiply by setting a judicial restraint upon divorce, which Christ never set, then to limit sin by this permission, as God himself thought best to permit it, it will behoove them to consult betimes whether these their balances be not falls and abominable; and this their limiting that which God loosen'd, and their loosning the sins that he limited, which they confess was good to do: and were it possible to do by law, doubtless it would be most morally good; and they so believing, as we hear they do, and yet abolishing a law so good and moral, the limiter of sin, what are they else but contrary to themselves? for they can never bring us to that time wherein it will not be good to limit sin, and they can never limit it better then so as God prescribed in his law.

Others conceav it a more defensible retirement to say this permission to divorce sinfully for hardness of heart was a dispensation. But surely they either know not, or attend not what a dispensation means. A dispensation is for no long time, is particular to some persons rather then general to a whole people; always hath charity the end, is granted to necessities and infirmities, not to obstinate lust. This permission is another creatnre, hath all those evils and absurdities following the name of a dispensation, as when it was named a law; and is the very antarctic pole against charity, nothing more adverse, ensnaring and ruining those that trust in it, or use it; so lewd and criminous as never durst enter into the head of any Politician, Jew, or Proselyte, till they became the apt Scholars of this canonistic exposition. Ought in it, that can allude in the lest manner to charity, or goodness, belongs with more full right to the chrian under grace and liberty, then to the Jew under law and bondage. To Jewish ignorance it could not be dispenc'd, without a horrid imputation laid upon the law, to dispence foully, instead of teaching fairly; like that dispensation that first polluted Christendom with idolatry, permitting to lay men images instead of books and preaching. Sloth or malice in the law would they have this called? But what ignorance can be pretended for the Jews, who had all the same precepts about marriage, that we now: for Christ refers all to the institution. It was as reasonable for them to know then as for us now, and concerned them alike: for wherein hath the gospel altered the nature of matrimony: All these considerations, or many of them have been further amplify'd in the doctrine of divorce. And what Rivet and Pareus hath objected, or given over as past cure hath been there discusst. Whereby it may be plain enough to men of eyes, that the vulgar exposition of a permittance by law to an entire fin, what ever the color may be, is an opinion both ungodly, unpolitic, unvertuous, and void of all honesty & civil sense. It appertains therefore to every zealous Christian both for the honor of God's law & the vindication of our Savior's words, that such an irreligious depravement no longer may be sooth'd and flattered through custom, but with all diligence and speed solidly refuted, and in the room a better explanation given; which is now our next endeavor.

[Moses suffered you to put away, &c.] Not commanded you, says the common observer, and therefore cared not how soon it were abolished, being but suffered; herein declaring his annotation to be slight & nothing law prudent. For in this place commanded and suffered are interehangeably used in the same sense both by our Savior and the Pharisees. Our Savior who here saith, Moses suffered you, in the 10 ^th of Mark saith, Moses wrote you this command. And the Pharisees who here say, Moses commanded, and would mainly have it a command, in that place of Mark say Moses suffered, which had made against them in their own mouths, if the word of suffering had weakn'd the command. So that suffered and commanded is here taken for the same thing on both sides of the controversy: as Cameron also and others on this place acknowledge. And Lawyers know that all the precepts of law are divided into obligatory and permissive, containing either what we must do, or what we may do; and of this latter sort are as many precepts, as of the former, and all as lawful. Tutelage, an ordainment then which nothing more just, being for the defense of Orfanes, the Justitutes of Justinian, say is given and permitted by the civil law: and to parents it is permitted to choose and appoint by will the guardians of their children. What more equal, and yet the civil law calls this permission. So likewise to manumise, to adopt, to make a will, and to be made an heir is called permission by law. Marriage it self, and this which is already granted, to divorce for adultery, obliges no man, is but a permission by law, is but suffered. By this we may see how weakly it hath been thought that all divorce is utterly unlawful, because the law is said to suffer it: whenas to suffer is but the legal phrase denoting what by law a man may do or not do.

[Because of the hardness of your hearts] Hence they argue that therefore he allowd it not; and therefore it must be abolished. But the contrary to this will sooner follow, that because he suffered it for a cause, therefore in relation to that cause he allowed it. Next, if he in his wisdom, and in the midst of his severity allowed it for hardness of heart, it can be nothing better then arrogance and presumption to take stricter courses against hardness of heart then God ever set an example and that under the Gospel which warrants them to no judicial act of compulsion in this matter, much less to be more severe against hardness of extremity, then God thought good to be against hardness of heart. He suffered it, rather then worse inconveniences; these men wiser as they make themselves, will suffer the worst and hainousest inconveniences to follow, rather then they will suffer what God suffered. Although they can know when they please, that Christ spake only to the conscience, did not judge on the civil bench, but always disavow'd it. What can be more contrary to the ways of God then these their doings. If they be such enemies to hardness of heart, although this groundless rigor proclaims it to be in themselves, they may yet learn, or consider that hardness of heart hath a twofold acception in the Gospel. One, when it is in a good man taken for infirmity, and imperfection, which was in all the Apostles, whose weakness only, not utter want of belief is called hardness of heart, Mark 16. partly for this hardness of heart, the imperfection and decay of man from original righteousness, it was that God suffered not divorce only, but all that which by Civilians is termed the secondary law of nature and of nations. He suffered his own people to wast and spoil and slay by war, to lead captives, to be some masters, some servants, some to be princes, others to be subjects, he suffered propriety to divide all things by several possession trade and commerce, not without usury; in his common wealth some to be undeservedly rich, others to be undeservingly poor. All which till hardness of heart came in, was most unjust; whenas prime Nature made us all equal, made us equal coheirs by common right and dominion over all creatures. In the same manner, and for the same cause he suffered divorce as well as marriage, our imperfet and degenerate condition of necessity requiring this law among the rest, as a remedy against intolerable wrong and servitude above the patience of man to bear. Nor was it given only because our infirmity, or if it must be so called, hardness of heart could not endure all things, but because the hardness of another's heart might not inflict all things upon an innocent person, whom far other ends brought into a league of love and not of bondage and indignity. If therefore we abolish divorce as only suffered for hardness of heart, we may as well abolish the whole law of nations, as only suffered for the same cause; it being shewn us by Saint Paul 1 Cor. 6. that the very seeking of a man's right by law, and at the hands of a worldly magistrate, is not without the hardness of our hearts. For why do ye not rather take wrong, saith he, why suffer ye not rather yourselves to be defrauded? If nothing now must be suffered for hardness of heart, I say the very prosecution of our right by way of civil justice can no more be suffered among Christians, for the hardness of heart wherewith most men persue it. And that would next remove all our judicial laws, and this restraint of divorce also in the number; which would more then half end the controversy. But if it be plain that the whole juridical law and civil power is only suffered under the Gospel, for the hardness of our hearts, then wherefore should not that which Moses suffered, be suffered still by the same reason?

In a second signification hardness of heart is taken for a stubborn resolution to do evil. And that God ever makes any law purposely to such, I deny; for he vouchsafes not to enter gov'nant with them, but as they fortune to be mixed with good men, and pass undiscover'd; much less that he should decree an unlawful thing only to serve their licentiousness. But that God suffers this reprobate hardness of heart I affirm, not only in this law of divorce, but throughout all his best and purest commandments. He commands all to worship in singleness of heart according to all his Ordinances; and yet suffers the wicked man to perform all the rites of religion hypocritically and in the hardness of his heart. He gives us general statutes & privileges in all civil matters, just & good of themselves, yet suffers unworthiest men, to use them & by themt, o prosecute their own right, or any color of right, though for the most part maliciously, covetously, nigorously, revengefully. He allowed by law the discreet father and husband to forbid, if he thought fit, the religious vows of his wife or daughter: Num. 30. and in the same law suffered the hard heartednes of impious and covetous fathers or husbands abusing this law to forbid their wives or daughters in their offerings and devotions of greatest zeal. If then God suffer hardness of heart equally in the best laws as in this of divorce, there can be no reason that for this cause this law should be abolished. But other laws, they object, may be well used, this never. How often shall I answer both from the institution of marriage, and from other general rules in Scripture, that this law of divorce hath many wise and charitable ends besides the being suffered for hardness of heart; which is indeed no end, but an accident happning through the whole law; which gives to good men right, and to bad men who abuse right under false pretences, gives only sufferance. Now although Christ express no other reasons here, but only what was suffered, it nothing follows that this law had no other reason to be permitted but for hardness of heart. The Scripture seldom, or never in one place sets down all the reasons of what it grants or commands, especially when it talks to enemies and tempters. St Paul permitting marriage, 1 Cor. 7, seems to permit even that also for hardness of heart only, lest we should run into fornication; yet no intelligent man thence concludes marriage allowed in the Gospel only to avoid an evil, because no other end is there expressed. Thus Moses of necessity suffered many to put away their wives for hardness of heart; but enacted the law of divorce doubtless for other good causes, not for this only sufferance. He permitted not divorce by law as an evil, for that was impossible to divine law, but permitted by accident the evil of them who divorcit against the laws intention undiscoverably This also may be thought not improbably, that Christ stir'd up in his spirit against these tempting Pharisees, answered them in a certain form of indignation usual among good authors; whereby the question, or the truth is not directly answered, but something which is fitter for them, who ask, to hear. So in the ecclesiastical stories one demanding how God employ'd himself before the world was made, had answer; that he was making hell for curious questioners. Another (and Libanius the Sophist as I remember) asking in derision some Christian, what the Carpenter, meaning our Savior, was doing, now that Julian so prevailed, had it returned him, that the Carpenter was making a coffin for the Apostat. So Christ being demanded maliciously why Moses made the law of divorce, answers them in a vehement scheme, not telling them the cause why he made it, but what was fittest to be told them, that for the hardness of their hearts he suffered them to abuse it. And all beit Mark say not he suffered you, but to you he wrote this precept; Mark may be warrantably expounded by Matthew the larger. And whether he suffered, or gave precept, being all one as was heard, it changes not the trope of indignation, fittest account for such askers. Next for the hardness of your hearts to you he wrote this precept, infers not therefore for this cause only he wrote it, as was parallel'd by other Scriptures. Lastly, It may be worththe observing, that Christ speaking to the Pharisees does not say in general that for hardness of heart he gave this precept, but you he suffered, & to you he gave this precept for your hardness of heart. It cannot be easily thought that Christ here included all the children of Israel under the person of these tempting Pharisees but that he conceals wherefore he gave the better sort of them this law, and expresses by saying emphatically To you how he gave it to the worser, such as the Pharisees best represented, that is to say for the hardness of your hearts: as indeed to wicked men and hardn'd hearts he gives the whole law and the Gospel also, to hard'n them the more. Thus many ways it may orthod oxally be understood how God or Moses suffered such as the demanders were, to divorce for hardness of heart. Whereas the vulgar expositer beset with contradictions and absurdities round, and resolving at any peril to make an exposition of it, as there is nothing more violent and boisterous then a reverend ignorance in fear to be convicted, rushes brutely and impetuously against all the principles both of nature, piety, and moral goodness; and in the fury of his literal expounding overturns them all.

[But from the the beginning it was not so.] Not how from the beginning do they suppose, that men might not divorce at all, not necessarily, not deliberately except for adultery, but that some law, like canon law presently attacht them both before and after the flood, till stricter Moses came, and with law brought license into the world? that were a fancy indeed to smile at. Undoubtedly as to point of judicial law, divorce was more permissive from the beginning before Moses then under Moses. But from the beginning, that is to say, by the institution in Paradise it was not intended that matrimony should dissolve for every trivial cause as you Pharisees accustom. But that it was not thus suffered from the beginning ever since the race of men corrupted, & laws were made, he who will affirm, must have found out other antiquities then are yer known. Besides we must consider now, what can be so as from the beginning, not only what should be so. In the beginning, had men continued perfet, it had been just that all things should have remained, as they began to Adam & Eve. But after that the sons of men grew violent & injurious, it altered the lore of justice, and put the government of things into a new frame. While man and woman were both perfet each to other, there needed no divorce; but when they both degenerated to imperfection, & oft times grew to be an intolerable evil each to other, then law more justly did permit the alienating of that evil which mistake made proper, then it did the appropriating of that good which Nature at first made common. For if the absence of outward good be not so bad as the presence of a close evil, & that propriety, whether by cov'nant or possession, be but the attainment of some outward good, it is more natural & righteous that the law should sever us from an intimate evil, then appropriate any outward good to us from the community of nature. The Gospel indeed tending ever to that which is perfetest, aim'dat the restorement of all things, as they were in the beginning. And therefore all things were in common to those primitive Christians in the Acts, which Ananias & Sapphira dearly felt. That custom also continued more or less till the time of Justin Martyr, as may be read in his 2 ^d Apology, which might be writ after that act of communion perhaps some. 40. years above a hunder'd. But who will be the man shall introduce this kind of common wealth, as christianity now goes? If then marriage must be as in the beginning, the persons that marry must be such as then were, the institution must make good, in some tolerable sort, what it promises toeeither party. If not, it is but madness to drag this one ordinance back to the beginning, and draw down all other to the present necessity, and condition far from the beginning even to the tolerating of extortions and opp ressions. Christ only told us that from the beginning it was not so; that is to say, not so as the Pharisees manu • 'd the business; did not command us that it should be forcibly so again in all points, as at the beginning; or so at least in our intentions and desires, but so in execution, as reason, and present nature can bear. Although we are not to seek, that the institution it self from the first beginning was never but conditional, as all cov'nants are: because thus and thus, therefore so and so; if not thus, then not so. Then moreover was perfetest to fulfill each law in it self; now is perfetest in this estate of things, to ask of charity how much law may be fulfilled: else the fulfilling, oft times is the greatest breaking. If any therefore demand, which is now most perfection, to ease an extremity by divorce, or to enrage and fester it by the grievous observance of a miserable wedlock, I am not destitute to say which is most perfection (although some who believe they think favourably of divorce, esteem it only venial to infirmity) Him I hold more in the way to perfection who forgoes an unfit ungodly & discordant wedlock, to live according to peace & love, & God's institution in a fitter choice, then he who debarrs himself the happy experience of all godly, which is peaceful conversatiō in his family, to live a contentious, and unchritian life not to be avoided, in temptations not to be lived in, only for the falls keeping of a most unreal nullity, a marriage that hath no affinity with God's intention, a daring phantasm, a mere toy of terror awing weak senses, to the lamentable superstition of ruining themselves, the remedy whereof God in his law vouchsafes us. Which not to dare use, he warranting, is not our perfection, is our infirmity, our little faith, our timorous and low conceit of charity: and in them who force us, it is their masking pride and vanity, to seem holier & more circumspect then God. So far is it that we need impute to him infirmity, who thus divorces: since the rule of perfection is not so much that which was don in the beginning, as that which now is nearest to the rule of charity. This is the greatest, the perfetest, the highest commandment.

[And I say unto you] That this restrictive denouncement of Christ contradicts and refutes that permissive precept of Moses, common expositers themselves disclaim: and that it does not traverse from the closet of conscience to the courts of civil or canon law, with any Christian rightly commencit requires not long evincing. If Christ then did not here check permissive Moses, nor did reduce matrimony to the beginning more then all other things, as the reason of man's condition could bear, we would know precisely what it was which he did, and what the end was of his declaring thus austerely against divorce. For this is a confesst oracle in law, that he who looks not at the intention of a precept, the more superstitions he is of the letter, the more he misinterprets. Was it to shame Moses? that had been monstrous: or all those purest ages of Israel, to whom the permission was granted? that were as incredible. Or was it that he who came to abrogate the burden of law, not the equity, should put this yoke upon a blameless person, to league himself in chains with a begirting mischief, not to separate till death? he who taught us that no man puts a piece of new cloth upon an old garment, nor new wine into old bottles, that he should sow this patch of strictness upon the old apparel of our frailty, to make a rent more incurable, when as in all other amendments his doctrine still charges, that regard be had to the garment, and to the vessel, what it can endure; this were an irregular and single piece of rigor, not only sounding disproportion to the whole Gospel, but outstretching the most rigorous nervs of law and rigor it self. No other end therefore can be left imaginable of this excessive restraint, but to bridle those erroneous and licentious postillers the Pharisees; not by telling them what may be done in necessity, but what censure they deserve who divorce abusively, which their Tetrarch had done. And as the offense was in one extreme, so the rebuke, to bring more efficaciously to a rectitude and mediocrity, stands not in the middle way of duty, but in the other extreme. Which art of powerful reclaiming, wisest men have also taught in their ethical precepts and gnomologies; resembling it, as when we bend a crooked wand the contrary way; not that it should stand so bent, but that the overbending might reduce it to a straitness by its own reluctance. And as the Physician cures him who hath taken down poison, not by the middling temper of nourishment, but by the other extreme of antidote, so Christ administers here a sharp & corrosive sentence against a foul and putrid license; not to eat into the flesh, but into the sore. And knowing that our divines through all their comments make no scruple, where they please, to soften the high and vehem ent speeches of our Savior, which they call hyperbolics, why in this one text should they be such crabbed masorites of the Letter, as not to mollify a transcendence of literal rigidity, which they confess to find often elsewhere in his manner of delivery, but must make their exposition here such an obdurate Cyclops, to have but one eye for this text, and that only open to cruelty and enthralment, such as no divine, or human law before ever heard of. No, let the foppish canouist with his fardel of matrimonial cases go and be vendible where men be so unhappy as to cheap'n him; the words of Christ shall be asserted from such elemental notaries, and resolved by the now-only lawgiving mouth of charity; which may be done undoubtedly by understanding them as follows.

[Whosoever shall put away his wife.] That is to say, shall so away as the propounders of this question, the Pharisees were wont to do and covertly defended Herod for so doing; whom to rebuke, our Savior here mainly intends, and not to determine all the cases of divorce, as appears by Saint Paul. Whosoever shall put away, either violently without mutual consent for urgent reasons, or conspiringly by plot of lust, or cunning malice, shall put away for any sudden mood, or contingency of disagreement, which is not daily practice, but may blow soon over, and be reconciled, except it be fornication; whosoever shall put away rashly, as his choler prompts him, without due time of deliberating, and think his conscience discharged only by the bill of divorce given, and the outward law satisfied; whosoever lastly shall put away his wife, that is a wife indeed, & not in name only, such a one who both can and is willing to be a meet help toward the chief ends of marriage both civil, and sanctified, except fornication be the cause, that man, or that pair commit adulcery. Not he who puts away by mutual consent, with all the considerations and respects of humanity and gentleness without malicious or lustful drift. Not he who after sober and cool experience, and long debate within himself puts away whom though he cannot love or suffer as a wife, with that sincere affection that marriage requires, yet loves at lest with that civility and goodness, as not to keep her under a neglected and unwelcome residence, where nothing can be hearty, and not being, it must needs be both unjoyous and injurious to any perceiving person so detained, and more injurious, then to be freely, and upon good terms dismissed. Nor doth he put away adulterously who complains of causes rooted in immutable nature, utter unfitness, utter disconformity, not concileable, because not to be amended without a miracle. Nor he who puts away an unquenshable vexation from his bosom, and flies an evil then which a greater cannot befall human society. Nor he who puts away with the the full suffrage and applause of his conscience, not relying on the writ'n bill of law, but claiming by faith and fullness of persuasion the rights and promises of God's institution, of which he finds himself in a mistaken wedlock defrauded. Doubtless this man hath baile enough to be no adulterer giving divorc: for these causes.

[His Wife.] This word is not to be idle here, a mere word without a sense, much less a fallacious word signifying contrary to what it pretends; but faithfully signifies a wife, that is, a comfortable help and society, as God instituted; does not signify deceitfully under this name, an intolerable adversary, not a helpless, unaffectionate and sullen mass whose very company represents the visible and exactest figure of lonelines it self. Such an associate he who puts away, divorces not a wife, but disjoyns a nullity which God never join'd, if she be neither willing, nor to her proper and requisite duties sufficient, as the words of God institute her. And this also is Bucer's explicat • on of this place.

[Except it be for fornication, or saving for the cause of fornication, as Matt. 5 ^th . This declares what kind of causes our Savior meant; fornication being no natural and perpetual cause, but only accidental and temporary; therefore shows that head of causes from whence it is excepted, to be meant of the same sort. For exceptions are not logically deducit from a divers kind, as to say who so puts away for any natural cause except fornication, the exception would want salt. And if they understand it, who so for any cause what ever, they cast themselves; granting divorce for frigidity a natural cause of their own allowing, though not here expressed, and for desertion without infidelity when as he who marries, as they allow him for a desertion, deserts as well as is deserted, and finally puts away, for another cause besides adultery. It will with all due reason therefore be thus better understood, who so puts away for any accidental and temporary causes, except one of them, which is fornication. Thus this exception finds out the causes from whence it is excepted, to be of the same kind, that is, casual, not continual.

[Saving for the cause of fornication.] The New Testament, though it be said originally writ in Greek, yet hath nothing near so many Atticisms as Hebraisms, & Syriacisms which was the Majesty of God, not filing the tongue of Scripture to a Gentilish Idiom, but in a princely manner offering to them as to Gentiles and Foreigners grace and mercy, though not in foreign words, yet in a foreign style that might induce them to the fountains; and though their calling were high and happy, yet still to acknowledge God's ancient people their betters, and that language the Metropolitan language. He therefore who thinks to Scholiaze upon the Gospel, though Greek, according to his Greek Analogies, and hath not been Auditor to the oriental dialects, shall want in the heat of his Analysis no accommodation to stumble. In this place, as the 5 ^th of Matth, reads it, Saving for the cause of fornication, the Greek, such as it is, sounds it, except for the word, report, speech, or proportion of fornication. In which regard with other inducements, many ancient and learned writers have understood this exception as comprehending any fault equivalent and proportional to fornication But truth is, the Evangelist here Hebraizes, taking word or speech for cause or matter in the common eastern phrase, meaning perhaps no more then if he had said for fornication, as in this 19 ^th chapter. And yet the word is found in the 5 ^th of Exodus also fignifying Proportion; where the Israelites are commanded to do their tasks, The matter of each day in his day. A task we know is a proportion of work not doing the same thing absolutely every day, but so much. Whereby it may be doubtful yet, whether here be not excepted not only fornication itself, but other causes equipollent, and proportional to fornication. Which very word also to understand rightly, we must of necessity have recours again to the Hebrew. For in the Greek and Latin sense by fornication is meant the common prostitution of body for sale. So that they who are so exact for the letter, shall be dealt with by the Lexicon, and the Etymologicon too if they please, and must be bound to forbid divorce for adultery also, until it come to open whoredom and trade, like that for which Claudius divorcit Messalina. Since therefore they take not here the word fornication in the common significance, for an open exercise in the stews, but grant divorce for one single act of privatest adultery, notwithstanding that the word speaks a public and notorious frequency of fact, not without price, we may reason with as good leave, and as little straining to the text, that our Savior on set purpose chose this word Fornication, improperly applied to the lapse of adultery, that we might not think our selves bound from all divorce, except when that fault hath been actually committed. For the language of Scripture signifies by fornication (and others beside St. Austin so expounded it) not only the trespass of body nor perhaps that between married persons, unless in a degree or quality as shameless as the Bordello, but signifies also any notable disobedience, or intractable carriage of the wife to the husband, as Judge. the 192. Whereof at large in the Doctrine of Divorce. l. 2. c. 18 Secondly signifies the apparent alienation of mind not to idolatry, (which may seem to answer the act of adultery) but far on this side, to any point of will worship, though to the true God; sometimes it notes the love of earthly things, or worldly pleasures though in a right believer, sometimes the least suspicion of unwitting idolatry. As Num. 15. 39. willsull disobedience to any the least of God's commandments is called fornication. Psal. 73. 26, 27. A distrust only in God, and withdrawing from that neernes of zeal and confidence which ought to be, is called fornication. We may be sure it could not import thus much less then Idolatry in the borrowed metaphor between God and man, unless it signifi'd as much less then adultery in the ordinary acception between man and wife. Add also that there was no need our Savior should grant divorce for adultery, it being death by law, and law then in force. Which was the cause why Joseph sought to put away his betrothed wife privately, least he should make her an example of capital punishment, as lernedest expounders affirm, Herod being a great zealot of the Mosaic law, and the Pharisees great masters of the text, as the woman taken in adultery doubtless had cause to fear. Or if they can prove it was neglected, which they cannot do, why did our Savior shape his answer to the corruption of that age, and not rather tell them of their neglect? If they say he came not to meddle with their judicatures, much less then was it in his thought to make them new ones, or that divorce should be judicially restrained in a stricter manner by these his words, more then adultery judicially acquitted by those his words to the adultres. His sentence doth no more by law forbid divorce here, then by law it doth absolve adultery there. To them therefore, who have drawn this yoke upon Christians from his words thus wrested, nothing remains but the guilt of a presumption and perverseness which will be hard for them to answer. Thus much that the word fornication is to be understood as the language of Christ understands it, for a constant alienation and disaffection of mind, or for the continual practice of disobedience and crossnes from the duties of love and peace, that is in sum, when to be a tolerable wife is either naturally not in their power, or obstinately not in their will, and this opinion also is St. Austin's, least it should hap to be suspected of novelty. Yet grant the thing here meant were only adultery, the reason of things will afford more to our assertion, then did the reason of words. For why is divorce unlawful but only for adultery? because, say they, that crime only breaks the matrimony. But this, I reply, the institution itself gainsaies: for that which is most contrary to the words and meaning of the institution, that most breaks the matrimony; but a perpetual unmeetnes and unwillingness to all the duties of help, of love and tranquility is most contrary to the words and meaning of the institution; that therefore much more breaks matrimony then the act of adultery though repeated. For this, as it is not felt, nor troubles him who perceaves it not, so being perceav'd, may be soon repented, soon amended, soon, if it can be pardoned, may be redeemed w ^th the more ardent love and duty in her who hath the pardon. But this natural unmeetnes both cannot be unknown long, and ever after cannot be amended, if it be natural, and will not, if it be farregon obstinate. So that wanting ought in the instant to be as great a breach as adultery, it gains it in the perpetuity to be greater. Next adultery does not exclude her other fitness, her other pleasingnes; she may be otherwise both loving and prevalent, as many adultresses be; but in this general unfitness or alienation she can be nothing to him that can please. In adultery nothing is given from the husband, which he misses, or enjoys the less, as it may be suttly given: but this unfitness defrauds him of the whole contentment which is sought in wedlock. And what benefit to him, though nothing be given by the stealth of adultery to another, if that which there is to give, whether it be solace, or society, be not such as may justly content him? and so not only deprives him of what it should give him, but gives him sorrow and affliction, which it did not ow him. Besides is adultery the greatest breach of matrimony in respect of the offense to God, or of the injury to man? if in the former, then other sins may offend God more, and sooner cause him to disunite his servant from being one flesh with such an offender. If in respect of the latter, other injuries are demonstrated therein more heavy to man's nature then the iterated act of adultery. God therefore in his wisdom would not so dispose his remedies, as to provide them for the less injuries, and not allow them for the greater. Thus is won both from the word fornication, & the reason of adultery, that the exception of divorce is not limited to that act, but enlarged to the causes above specify'd.

[And who so marrieth her which is put away doth commit adultery.

By this clause alone, if by nothing else, we may assure us, that Christ intended not to deliver here the whole doctrine of divorce, but only to condemn abuses. Otherwise to marry after desertion, which the Apostle, and the reformed Churches at this day permit, is here forbid, as adultery. Be she never so wrongfully deserted, or put away, as the law then suffered, if thus forsak'n and expulst, she accept the refuge and protection of any honester man who would love her better, and give herself in marriage to him, by what the letter guides us, it shall be present adultery to them both. This is either harsh and cruel, or all the Churches teaching as they do the contrary, are loos and remiss; besides that the Apostle himself stands deeply fin'd in a contradiction against our Savior. What shall we make of this? what rather the common interpreter can make of it, for they be his own markets, let him now try; let him try which way he can wind in his Vertumnian distinctions and evasions, if his canonical gabardine of text and letter do not now sit too close about him, and pinch his activity; which if I err not, hath here hamper'd it self in a springe fit for those who put their confidence in Alphabets. Spanheim a writer of Evangelic doubts comes now and confesses that our Savior's words are to be limited beyond the limitation there expressed and excepted beyond their own exception, as not speaking of what happn'd rarely, but what most commonly. Is it so rare Spanheim, to be deserted, or was it then so rare to put away injuriously, that a person so hatefully expel'd, should to the heaping of more injury be turned like an infectious thing out of all married fruition upon pain of adultery, as not considerable to the brevity of this half sentence? Of what then speaks our Savior? of that collusion, saith he, which was then most frequent among the Jews of changing wives and husbands, through inconstancy and unchaste desires. Colluders yourselves, as violent to this law of God by your unmerciful binding, as the Pharisees by their unbounded loosning! Have thousands of Christian souls perished as to this life, and God knows what hath betided their consciences, for want of this healing explanation, and is it now at last obscurely drawn forth, only to cure a scratch, and leave the main wound spouting? Who so ever putteth away his wife except for fornication committeth adultery; That shall be spoke of all ages, and all men, though never so justly otherwise moved to divorce: in the very next breath, And who so marrieth her which is put away committeth adultery, the men are new and miraculous, they tell you now you are to limit it to that age, when it was in fashion to chop matrimonies; and must be meant of him who puts away with his wives consent through the lightness, and leudnes of them both. But what rule of Logic, or indeed of reason is our commission to understand the Anteeedent one way and the Consequent another; for in that habitude this whole verse may be fider'd: or at least to take the parts of a copulat axiom, both absolutely affirmative, and to say the first is absolutely true, the other not, but must be limited to a certain time and custom; which is no less then to say they are both false. For in this compound axiom, be the parts never so many, if one of them do but falter, & be not equally absolute and general, the rest are all falls. If therefore, that he who marries her which is put away committs adultery, be not generally true, neither is it generally true that he committs adultery who puts away for other cause then fornication. And if the marrying her which is put away must be understood limited, which they cannot but yield it must, with the same limitation must be understood the putting away. Thus doth the common exposition confound it self, and justify this which is here brought; that our Savior as well in the first part of this sentence as in the second, prohibited only such divorses as the Jews then made through malice or through plotted license, not those which are for necessary and just causes; where charity and wisdom disjoyns, that which not God, but Error and Disastre join'd.

And there is yet to this our exposition, a stronger siding friend, then any can be an adversary, unless Saint Paul be doubted, who repeating a command concerning divorce, 1 Cor. 7. which is agreed by writers to be the same with this of our Savior, and appointing that the wife remain unmaried, or be reconciled to her husband, leaves it infallible that our Savior spake chiefly against putting away for casual and choleric disagreements, or any other cause which may with human patience and wisdom be reconciled, not hereby meaning to hale and dash together the irreconcilable aversations of nature, nor to tie up a faultless person like a parricide, as it were into one sack with an enemy, to be his causeless tormenter and executioner the length of a long life. Lastly, let this sentence of Christ be understood how it will, yet that it was never intended for a judicial law, to be enforced by the Magistrate, besides that the office of our Savior had no such purpose in the Gospel, this latter part of the sentence may assure us, And who so marrieth her which is put away committs adultery. Shall the exception for adultery belong to this clause or not? if not, it would be strange, that he who marries a woman really divorcit for adultery, as Christ permitted, should become an adulter by marrying one who is now no other man's wife, himself being also free, who might by this means reclaim her from common whoredom. And if the exception must belong hither, then it follows that he who marries an adulteress divorc'd, commits no adultery; which would soon discover to us what an absurd and senseless piece of injustice this would be, to make a civil statute of, in penal courts: whereby the adulteress put away may marry another safely, and without a crime to him that marries her: but the innocent and wrongfully divorc'd shall not marry again without the guilt of adultery both to her self and to her second husband. This saying of Christ therefore cannot be made a temporal law, were it but for this reason. Nor is it easy to say what coherence there is at all in it from the letter, to any perfet sense not obnoxious to some absurdity, and seems much less agreeable to what ever else of the Gospel is left us written; doubtless by our Savior spok'n in that fierceness and abstruse intricacy, first to amuse his tempters, and admonish in general the abusers of that Mosaic law; next to let Herod know a second knower of his unlawful act, though the Baptist were beheaded; last that his Disciples and all good men might learn to expound him in this place, as in all other his precepts, not by the written letter, but by that unerring paraphrase of Christian love and Charity, which is the sum of all commands, and the perfection.

This verse I add, to leave no objection behind unanswer'd: for some may think, if this our Savior's sentence be so fair, as not commanding ought that patience or nature cannot brook, why then did the Disciples murmur and say, it is not good to marry. I answer that the Disciples had been longer bred up under the Pharisaean doctrine, then under that of Christ, and so no marvel though they yet retained the infection of loving old licentious customs; no marvel though they thought it hard they might not for any offense that thoroughly anger'd them, divorce a wife, as well as put away a servant; since it was but giving her a bill, as they were taught. Secondly, it was no unwonted thing with them not to understand our Savior in matters far easier. So that be it granted their conceit of this text was the same which is now commonly conceived, according to the usual rate of their capacity then, it will not hurt a better interpretation. But why did not Christ seeing their error inform them? for good cause; it was his professed method not to teach them all things at all times, but each thing in due place and season. Christ said Luke 22. that he who had no sword should sell his garment and buy one: the Disciples took it in a manifest wrong sense, yet our Savior did not there inform them better. He told them it was easier for a Camel to go through a needles eye, then a rich man in at heaven gate. They were amazed exceedingly: he explained himself to mean of those who trust in riches, Mark 10. They were amazed then out of measure, for so Mark relates it; as if his explaining had increased their amazement, in such a plain case, and which concerned so nearly their calling to be informed in Good reason therefore, if Christ at that time did not stand amplifying, to the thick prejudice and tradition where in they were, this question of more difficulty, and less concernment to any perhaps of them in particular. Yet did he not omit to sow within them the seeds of a sufficient determining, agen the time that his promised spirit should bring all things to their memory. He had declared in their hearing not long before, how distant he was from abolishing the law it self of divorce; he had refer'd them to the institution; and after all this, gives them a set answer, from which they might collect what was clear enough, that all men cannot receive all sayings, verse 11. If such regard be had to each man's receiving of marriage or single life, what can arise, that the same Christian regard should not be had in most necessary divorce? All which instructed both them and us, that it beseem'd his Disciples to learn the deciding of this question, which hath nothing new in it, first by the institution, then by the general grounds of religion, not by a particular saying here or there, tempered and leveled only to an incident occasion, the riddance of a tempting assault. For what can this be but weak and shallow apprehension, to forsake the standard principles of institution, faith, & charity; then to be blank & various at every occurrence in Scripture, and in a cold Spasm of scruple, to rear peculiar doctrines upon the place; that shall bid the gray authority of most unchangeable and sovran rules to stand by & be contradicted. Thus to this Evangelic precept of famous difficulty, which for these many ages weakly understood, and violently put in practice, hath made a shambles rather then an ordinance of matrimony, I am firm a truer exposition cannot be given. If this or that argument here used, please not everyone, there is no scarcity of arguments, any half of them will suffice, Or should they all fail, as Truth it self can fail as soon, I should content me with the institution alone to wage this controversy, and not distrust to evince. If any need it not, the happier; yet Christians ought to study earnestly what may be another's need. But if, as mortal mischances are, some hap to need it, let them be sure they abuse not, and give God his thanks, who hath revived this remedy, not too late for them, and scowr'd off an inveterat misexposition from the Gospel: a work not to perish by the vain breath or doom of this age. Our next industry shall be, under the same guidance, to try with what fidelity that remaining passage in the Epistles touching this matter, hath been commented.

THis intimates but what our Savior taught before, that divorce is no rashly to be made, but reconcilement to be persuaded and endevo'rd, as oft as the cause can have to do with reconcilement, & is not under the dominion of blameless nature; which may have reason to depart though seldomest and last from charitable love, yet sometimes from friendly, and familiar, and something oftener from conjugal love, which requires not only moral, but natural causes to the making and maintaining; and may be warrantably excused to retire from the deception of what it justly seeks, and the ill requitals which unjustly it finds. For Nature hath her Zodiac also, keeps her great annual circuit over human things as truly as the Sun and Planers in the firmament; hath her anomalies, hath her obliquities in ascensions and declinations, accesses and recesses, as blamelessly as they in heaven. And sitting in her planetary Orb with two rains in each hand, one strait, the other loos, tempers the cours of minds as well as bodies to several conjunctions and oppositions, friendly, or unfriendly aspects, consenting oftest with reason, but never contrary. This in the effect no man of meanest reach but daily sees; and though to everyone it appear not in the cause, yet to a clear capacity, well nurtured with good reading and observation, it cannot but be plain and visible. Other exposition therefore then hath been given to former places that give light to these two summary verses, will not be needful: save only that these precepts are meant to those married who differ not in religion.

[But to the rest speak I, not the Lord; if any brother hath a wife that believeth not, and she be pleased to dwell with him, let him not put her away.

Now follows what is to be done, if the persons wedded be of a different faith. The common belief is, that a Christian is here commanded not to divorce, if the infidel please to stay, though it be but to vex, or to deride, or to seduce the Christian. This doctrine will be the easy work of a refutation. The other opinion is, that a Christian is here conditionally permitted to hold wedlock with a misbeleever only upon hopes limited by Christian prudence, which without much difficulty shall be defended. That this here spoken by Paul, not by the Lord cannot be a command, these reas avouch. First the law of Moses, Exod. 34. 16. Dent. 7. 3. 6. interpreted by Ezra, and Nehemiah two infallible authors, commands to divorce an infidel not for the fear only of a ceremonious defilement, but of an irreligious seducem ent, feared both in respect of the believer himself, and of his children in danger to be perverted by the misbeleeving parent. Nehem. 13. 24. 26 and Peter Martyr thought this a convincing reason. If therefore the legal pollution vanishing have abrogated the ceremony of this law, so that a Christian may be permitted to retain an infidel without uncleanness, yet the moral reason of divorcing stands to eternity, which neither Apostle nor Angel from heaven can countermand. All that they reply to this, is their human warrant, that God will preserve us in our obedience to this command against the danger of seducement. And so undoubtedly he will, if we understand his commands aright; if we turn not this evangelic permission into a legal, and yet illegal command: If we turn not hope into bondage, the charitable and free hope of gaining another, into the forced and servile temptation of loosing ourselves; but more of this beneath. Thus these words of Paul by common doctrine made a command, are made a contradiction to the moral law.

Secondly, not the law only, but the Gospel from the law, and from it self requires even in the same chapter, where divorce between them of one religion is so narrowly forbid, rather then our Christian love should come into danger of backsliding, to forsake all relations how near so ever, and the wife expressly, with promise of a high reward, Mat. 19. And he who hates not father or mother, wife, or children hindering his Christian cours, much more, if they despise or assault it, cannot be a Disciple, Luke 14. How can the Apostle then command us, to love and continue in that matrimony, which our Savior bids us hate, and forsake? They can as soon teach our faculty of respiration to contract and to dilate it self at once, to breath and to fetch breath in the same instant, as teach our minds how to do such contrary acts as these, towards the same object, and as they must he done in the same moment. For either the hatred of her religion, & her hatred to our religion will work powerfully against the love of her society, or the love of that will by degrees flatter out all our zealous hatred and forsaking and soon ensnare us to unchristianly compliances.

Thirdly, In marriage there ought not only to be a civil love, but such a love as Christ loves his Church; but where the religion is contrary without hope of conversion, there can be no love, no faith, no peaceful society, (they of the other opinion confess it) nay there ought not to be, further then in expectation of gaining a soul; when that ceases, we know God hath put enmity between the seed of the woman, and the seed of the Serpent. Neither should we love them that hate the Lord, as the Prophet told Jehoshaphat. 2 Chron. 19. And this Apostle himself in another place, warns us that we be not unequally yokt with Infidels 2 Cor. 6. for that there can be no fellowship, no communion, no concord between such. Outward commerce and civil intercours cannot perhaps be avoided; but true friendship and familiarity there can be none. How vainly therefore, not to say how impiously would the most inward and dear alliance of marriage or continuance in marriage be commanded, where true friendship is confessed impossible. For say they, we are forbid here to marry with an infidel, not bid to divorce. But to rob the words thus of their full sense will not be allowed them: it is not said, enter not into yoke, but be not unequally yokt; which plainly forbids the thing in present act, as well as in purpose; and his manitest conclu • ion is, not only that we should not touch, but that having touched, we should come out from among them, and be separate; with the promise of a blessing thereupon that God will receive us, will be our father, and we his sons and daughters. v. 17. 18. Why we should stay with an Infidel after the expense of all our hopes, can be but for a civil relation; but why we should depart from a seducer, setting afide the misconstruction of this place, is from a religious necessity of departing. The worse cause therefore of staying (if it be any cause at all, for civil government forces it not) must not overtop the religious cause of separating, executed with such an urgent zeal, & such a prostrate humiliation by Ezra and Nehemiah. What God hates to join, certainly he cannot love should continue join'd: it being all one in matter of ill consequence, to marry, or to continue married with an Infidel, save only so long as we wait willingly, and with a safe hope. St. Paul therefore citing here a command of the Lord Almighty, for so he terms it, that we should separate, cannot have bound us with that which he calls his own whether command or counsel that we should not separate.

Which is the fourth reason, for he himself takes care least we should mistake him, [But to the rest speak If not the Lord.] If the Lord spake not, then man spake it and man hath no Lordship to command the conscience: yet modern interpreters will have it a command maugre St. Paul himself, they will make him a Prophet like Caiaphas to speak the word of the Lord not thinking, nay denying to think; though he disavow to have received it from the Lord, his word shall not be taken, though an Apostle, he shall be born down in his own Epistle, by a race of expositers who presume to know from whom he spake, better then he himself. Paul deposes that the Lord speaks not this, they, that the Lord speaks it: can this be less then to brave him with a full facit contradiction? Certainly to such a violence as this, for I cannot call it an expounding, what a man should answer I know not, unless that if it be their pleasure next to put a gag into the Apostles mouth, they are already surnisht with a commodious audacity toward the attempt. Beza would seem to shun the contradictory by telling us that the Lord spake it not in person, as he did the former precept. But how many other doctrines doth St. Paul deliver which the Lord spake not in person, and yet never uses this preamble but in things indifferent? So long as we receive him for a messenger of God, for him to stand sorting sentences what the Lord spake in person, and what he, not the Lord in person, would be but a chill trifling, and his readers might catch an ague the while. But if we shall supply the grammatical Ellipsis regularly, and as we must in the sam tense, all will be then clear, for we cannot supply it thus, to the rest I speak, the Lord spake not, but I speak, the Lord speaks not. If then the Lord neither spake in person nor speaks it now, the Apostle testifying both, it follows duly, that this can be no command. Forsooth the fear is, least this not being a command, would prove an evangelic counsel, & so make way for supererogations. As if the Apostle could not speak his mind in things indifferent, as he doth in four or five several places of this chapter with the like preface of not commanding, but that the doubted inconvenience of supererogating must needs rush in. And how adds it to the word of the Lord, (for this also they object) when as the Apostle by his Christian prudence guides us in the liberty which God hath left us to, without command? could not the spirit of God instruct us by him what was free, as well as what was not? But what need I more, when Cameron an ingenuous writer, and in high esteem, solidly confutes the surmise of a command here, and among other words hath these. That when Paul speaks as an Apostle, he uses this form, The Lord saith, not I v 10. but as a private man he saith, I speak, not the Lord. And thus also all the prime fathers Austin, Jerome, and the rest understood this place.

Fifthly, The very stating of the question declares this to be no command; If any brother hath an unbeleeuing wife, and she be pleased to dwell with him, let him not put her away. For the Greek word 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 does not imply only her being pleased to stay, but his being pleased to let her stay; it must be a consent of them both. Nor can the force of this word be rendered less, without either much negligence or iniquity of him that otherwise translates it. And thus the Greek Church also and their Synods understood it, who best knew what their own language meant, as appears by Matthaeus Monachus an author set forth by Leunclauius and of antiquity perhaps not inferior to Balsamon who writes upon the canons of the Apostles; this Author in his chap. that marriage is not to be made with heretics, thus recites the second canon of the 6. Synod, As to the Corinthians Paul determines, If the believing wife choos to live with the unbelieving husband, or the believing husband with the unbelieving wife. Mark saith he, how the Apostle here condescends, if the believer please to dwell with the unbeliever; so that if he please not, out of doubt the marriage is dissolved. And I am persuaded it was so in the beginning, and thus preached. And thereupon gives an example of one, who though not deserted, yet by the decree of Theodotus the Patriarch divorcit an unbelieving wife. What therefore depends in the plain state of this question on the consent and well liking of them both, must not be a command. Lay next the latter end of the 11. v, to the twelf (for wherefore else is Logic taught us) in a discrete axiom, as it can be no other by the phrase, The Lord saith, let not the husband put away his wife, But I say let him not put away a misbeleeving wife; this sounds as if by the judgment of Paul, a man might put away any wife but the misbeleeving; or else the parts are not discrete, or dissentanie, for both conclude not putting away, and consequently in such a form the proposition is ridiculous. Of necessity therefore the former part of this sentence must be conceav'd, as understood, and silently granted, that although the Lord command to divorce an infidel, yet I, not the Lord command you? No, but give my judgment, that for some evangelic reasons a Christian may be permitted not to divorce her. Thus while we reduce the brevity of St. Paul to a plainer sense, by the needful supply of that which was granted between him and the Corinthians, the very logic of his speech extracts him confessing that the Lord's command lay in a seeming contrariety to this his counsel: and that he meant not to thrust out a command of the Lord by a new one of his own, as one nail drives another, but to release us from the rigor of it, by the right of the Gospel, so far forth as a charitable cause leads us on in the hope of winning another soul without the peril of loosing our own. For this is the glory of the Gospel to teach us that the end of the commandment is charity, 1 Tim. 1. not the drudging out a poor and worthless duty forced from us by the tax, and tail of so many letters. This doctrine therefore can be no command, but it must contradict the moral law, the Gospel, and the Apostle himself both else where, and here also eevn in the act of speaking.

If then it be no command, it must remain to be a permission, and that not absolute, for so it would be still contrary to the law, but with such a caution as breaks not the law, but as the manner of the Gospel is, fulfills it through charity. The law had two reasons, the one was ceremonial, the pollution that all Gentiles were to the Jews; this the vision of Peter had abolished, Acts 10. and clens'd all creatures to the use of a Christian. The Corinthians understood not this, but feared lest dwelling in matrimony with an unbeliever, they were defiled. The Apostle discusses that scruple with an Evangelic reason, showing them that although God heretofore under the law, not intending the conversion of the Gentiles, except some special ones, held them as polluted things to the Jew, yet now purposing to call them in, he hath purify'd them from that legal uncleanness wherein they stood, to use and to be used in a pure manner.

For saith he, The unbelieving husband is sanctified by the wife, and the unbelieving wife, is sanctified by the husband, else were your children unclean; but now they are holy. That is, they are sanctified to you, from that legal impurity which you so fear; and are brought into a near capacity to be holy, if they believe, and to have free access to holy things. In the mean time, as being God's creatures, a Christian hath power to use them according to their proper use; in as much as now, all things to the pure are become pure. In this legal respect therefore ye need not doubt to continue in marriage with an unbeliever. Thus others also expound this place and Cameron especially. This reason warrants us only what we may do without fear of pollution, does not bind us that we must. But the other reason of the law to divorce an infidel was moral, the avoiding of enticement from the true faith. This cannot shrink; but remains in as full force as ever, to save the actual Christian from the snare of a misbeleever. Yet if a Christian full of grace and spiritual gifts finding the misbeleever not frowardly affected, fears not a seducing, but hopes rather a gaining, who sees not that this moral reason is not violated by not divorcing, which the law commanded to do, but better fulfilled by the excellence of the Gospel working through charity. For neither the faithful is seducit, and the unfaithful is either saved, or with all discharge of love, and evangelic duty sought to be saved. But contrariwise if the infirm Christian shall be commanded here against his mind, against his hope, and against his strength, to dwell with all the scandals, the household persecutions, or alluring temptations of an infidel, how is not the Gospel by this made harsher then the law, and more yoaking? Therefore the Apostle ere he deliver this other reason why we need not in all hast put away an infidel, his mind misgiving him least he should seem to be the imposer of a new command, stays not for method, but with an abrupt speed inserts the declaration of their liberty in this matter.

But if the unbelieving depart, let him depart; a brother or a sister is not under bondage in such cases: but God hath called us to peace.

[But if the unbelieving depart.] This cannot be restrained to local departure only; for who knows not that an offencive society is worse then a forsaking. If his purpose of cohabitation be to endanger the life, or the conscience, Beza himself is half persuaded, that this may purchase to the faithful person the same freedom that a desertion may; and so Gerard and others whom he cites. If therefore he depart in affection, if he depart from giving hope of his conversion, if he disturb, or scoff at religion, seduce, or tempt, if he rage, doubtless not the weak only, but the strong may leave him, if not for fear, yet for the dignities sake of religion, which cannot be liable to all base affronts, merely for the worshiping of a civil marriage. I take therefore departing to be as large as the negative of being well pleased: that is, if he be not pleased for the present to live lovingly, quietly, inoffensively, so as may give good hope; which appears well by that which follows.

[A brother or a sister is not under bondage in such cases.] If Saint Paul provide seriously against the bondage of a Christian, it is not the only bondage to live unmaried for a deserting infidel, but to endure his presence intolerably, to bear indignities against his religion in words or deeds, to be wearied with seducements, to have idolatries and superstitions ever before his eyes, to be tormented with impure and profane conversation, this must needs be bondage to a Christian; is this left all unprovided for, without remedy, or freedom granted? undoubtedly no, for, the Apostle leaves it further to be considered with prudence, what bondage a brother or sister is not under, not only in this case, but as he speaks himself plurally, in such cases.

[But God hath called us to peace.] To peace, not to bondage, not to brabbles and contentions with him who is not pleased to live peaceably, as marriage and christianity requires. And where strise arises from a cause hopeless to be allayed, what better way to peace then by separating that which is ill join'd. It is not divorce, that first breaks the peace of family, as some fondly comment on this place, but it is peace already broken, which, when other cures fail can only be restored to the faultles person by a necessary divorce. And Saint Paul here warrants us to seek peace, rather then to remain in bondage. If God hath called us to peace, why should we not follow him, why should we miserably stay in perpetual discord under a servitude not required?

[For what knowest thou O wife, whether thou shalt save thy husband, &c.] St. Paul having thus cleared himself, not to go about the mining of our Christian liberty, not to cast a snare upon us, which to do he so much hated, returns now to the second reason of that law to put away an infidel, for fear of seducement, which he does not here contradict with a command now to venture that; but if neither the infirmity of the Christian, nor the strength of the unbeliever be feared, but hopes appearing that he may be won, he judges it no breaking of that law, though the believer be permitted to forbear divorce, and can abide, without the peril of seducement, to offer the charity of a salvation to wife or husband, which is the fulfilling, not the transgressing of that law; and well worth the undertaking with much hazard and patience. For what knowest thou whether thou shalt save thy wife, that is, till all means convenient and possible with discretion and probability, as human things are, have been used. For Christ himself sends not our hope on pilgrimage to the worlds end; but sets it bounds beyond which we need not wait on a brother, much less on an infidel. If after such a time we may count a professing Christian no better then a heathen, after less time perhaps we may cease to hope of a heathen, that he will turn Christian. Otherwise, to bind us harder then the law, and tell us we are not under bondage, is mere mockery. If till the unbeliever please to part, we may not stir from the house of our bondage, then certain this our liberty is not grounded in the purchas of Christ, but in the pleasure of a miscreant. What knows the loyal husband whether he may not save the adulteress, he is not therefore bound to receive her. What knows the wife but she may reclaim her husband who hath deserted her? yet the reformed Churches do not enjoin her to wait longer then after the contempt of an Ecclesiastical Summons. Beza himself here befriends us with a remarkable speech, what could be firmly constituted in human matters if under pretence of expecting grace from above, it should be never lawful for us to seek our right. And yet in other cases not less reasonable to obtain a most just and needful remedy by divorce he turns the innocent party to a task of prayers beyond the multitude of beads and rosaries, to beg the gift of chastity in recompense of an injurious marriage. But the Apostle is evident enough, we are not under bondage, trusting that he writes to those who are not ignorant what bondage is, to let supercilious determiners cheat them of their freedom. God hath called us to peace, and so doubtless hath left in our hands how to obtain it seasonably; if it be not our own choice to sit ever like novices wretchedly servile.

Thus much the Apostle on this question between Christian and Pagan, to us now of little use; yet supposing it written for our instruction as it may be rightly applied, I doubt not but that the difference between a true believer and a heretic, or any one truly religious either deserted or seeking divorce from any one grossly erroneous or profane may be refer'd hither. For St. Paul seaves us here the solution not of this case only, which little concerns us, but of such like cases, which may occur to us. For where the reasons directly square, who can forbid why the verdit should not be the same? But this the common writers allow us not. And yet from this text which in plain words gives liberty to none unless deserted by an infidel, they collect the same freedom though the desertion be not for religion, which, as I conceive, they need not do; but may without straining reduce it to the cause of fornication. For first they confess that desertion is seldom without a just suspicion of adultery: next it is a breach of marriage in the same kind, and in some sort worse: for adultery though it give to another, yet it bereaves not all; but the deserter wholly denies all right, and makes one flesh twain, which is counted the absolutest breach of matrimony, and causes the other, as much as in him lies, to commit sin, by being so left. Nevertheless those reasons which they bring of establishing by this place the like liberty from any desertion, are fair and solid: and if the thing be lawful, and can be proved so, more ways then one, so much the safer. Their arguments I shall here recite, and that they may not come idle, shall use them to make good the like freedom to divorce for other causes; and that we are no more under bondage to any heinous default against the main ends of matrimony, then to a desertion: First they allege that to Tim. 1. 5. 8. If any provide not for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith, and is worse then an Infidel. But a deserter, say they, can have no care of them who are most his own, therefore the deserted party is not less to be righted against such a one then against an infidel. With the same evidence I argue, that man or wife who hates in wedlock, is perpetually unsociable, unpeacefull, or unduteous, either not being able, or not willing to perform what the main ends of marriage demand in help and solace, cannot be said to care for who should be dearest in the house; therefore is worse then an infidel in both regards, either in undertaking a duty which he cannot perform, to the undeserved and unspeakable injury of the other party so defrauded and betrai'd, or not performing what he hath undertaken, whenas he may or might have, to the perjury of himself more irreligious then heathenism. The blameless person therefore hath as good a plea to sue out his delivery from this bondage, as from the desertion of an infidel. Since most writers cannot but grant that desertion is not only a local absence, but an intolerable society; or if they grant it not, the reasons of Saint Paul grant it, with all as much leave as they grant to enlarge a particular freedom from paganism, into a general freedom from any desertion. Secondly, they reafon from the likeness of either fact, the same loss redounds to the deserted by a Christian, as by an infidel, the same peril of temptation. And I in like manner affirm that if honest and free persons may be allowed to know what is most to their own loss, the same loss and discontent, but worse disquiet with continual misery and temptation resides in the company, or better called the persecution of an unfit, or an unpeaceable consort, then by his desertion. For then the deserted may enjoy himself at least. And he who deserts is more favorable to the party whom his presence afflicts, then that importunat thing which is and will be ever conversant before the eyes a loyal and individual vexation. As for those who still rudely urge it no loss to marriage, no desertion, so long as the flesh is present and offers a benevolence that hates, or is justly hated, I am not of that vulgar and low persuasion, to think such forced embracements as these worth the honor, or the humanity of marriage, but far beneath the soul of a rational and freeborne man. Thirdly they say, it is not the infidelity of the deserter, but the desertion of the infidel from which the Apostle gives this freedom; and I join that the Apostle could as little require our subjection to an unfit and injurious bondage present, as to an infidel absent. To free us from that which is an evil by being distant, and not from that which is an inmate, and in the bosom evil, argues an improvident and careless deliverer. And thus all occasions, which way so ever they turn, are not unofficious to administer something which may conduce to explain, or to defend the assertion of this book touching divorce. I complain of nothing, but that it is indeed too copious to be the matter of a dispute, or a defense, rather to be yielded, as in the best ages, a thing of common reason, not of controversy. What have I left to say? I fear to be more elaborat in such a perspicuity as this; lest I should seem not to teach, but to upbraid the dullness of an age; not to commun with reason in men, but to deplore the loss of reason from among men: this only, and not the want of more to say, is the limit of my discourse.

Although testimony be in Logic an argument rightly called inartificial, & doth not solidly fetch the truth by multiplicity of Authors, nor argue a thing false by the few that hold so, yet seeing most men from their youth so accustom, as not to scan reason, nor clearly to apprehend it, but to trust for that the names and numbers of such, as have got, and many times undeservedly, the reputation among them to know much, and because there is a vulgar also of teachers, who are as blindly by whom they fancy led, as they lead the people, it will not be amiss for them who had rather list themselves under this weaker sort, and follow authorities, to take notice that this opinion which I bring, hath been favor'd, and by some of those affirmed, who in their time were able to carry what they taught, had they urged it, through all Christendom; or to have left it such a credit with all good men, as they who could not boldly use the opinion, would have feared to censure it. But since by his appointment on whom the times and seasons wait, every point of doctrine is not fatal to be thoroughly sifted out in every age, it will be enough for me to find, that the thoughts of wisest heads heertofore, and hearts no less reverencit for devotion have tended this way, and contributed their lot in some good measure towards this which hath been here attained. Others of them and modern especially, have been as full in the assertion, though not so full in the reason; so that either in this regard, or in the former, I shall be manifest in a middle fortune to meet the praise or dispraise of being something first. But I defer not what I undertook to show, that in the Church both primitive and reformed, the words of Christ have been understood to grant divorce for other causes then adultery; and that the word fornication in marriage hath a larger sense then that commonly supposed.

Justin Martyr in his first Apology writ'n within 50. years after St. John died, relates a story which Eusebius transcribes, that a certain matron of Rome, the wife of a vicious husband, her self also formerly vicious, but converted to the faith, and persuading the same to her husband, at lest the amendment of his wicked life, upon his not yielding to her daily entreaties and persuasions in this behalf, procured by law to be divorcit from him. This was neither for adultery, nor desertion, but as the relation says, Esteeming it an ungodly thing to be the consort of bed with him, who against the law of nature and of right sought out voluptuous ways. Suppose he endeavor'd some unnatural abuse, as the Greek admitts that meaning, it cannot yet be called adultery; it therefore could be thought worthy of divorce no otherwise then as equivalent, or worse; and other vices will appear in other respects as much divorsive. Next tis said her friends advised her to stay a while; and what reason gave they? not because they held unlawful what she purposed, but because they thought she might longer yet hope his repentance. She obeyed, till the man going to Alexandria, and from thence reported to grow still more impenitent, not for any adultery or desertion, whereof neither can be gathered, but, saith the Martyr, and speaks it like one approving, lest she should be partaker of his unrighteous and ungodly deeds, remaining in wedlock, the communion of bed and board with such a person, she left him by a lawful divorce. This cannot but give us the judgment of the Church in those pure and next to Apostolic times. For how else could the woman have been permitted, or here not reprehended; and if a wife might then do this without reprooff, a husband certainly might no less, if not more.

Tertullian in the same age writing his 4. book against Marcion witnesses that Christ by his answer to the Pharisees protected the constitution of Moses as his own, and directed the institution of the creator, for I alter not his Carthaginian phrase; he excused rather then destroi'd the constitution of Moses; I say he forbid conditionally, if any one therefore put away that he may marry another: so that if he prohibited conditionally, then not wholly; and what he forbadd not wholly, he permitted otherwise, where the cause ceases for which he prohibited: that is when a man makes it not the cause of his putting away, merely that he may marry again. Christ teaches not contrary to Moses, the justice of divorce hath Christ the asserter: he would not have marriage separate, nor kept with ignominy, permitting then a divorce, and guesses that this vehemence of our Savior's sentence was chiefly bent against Herod, as was cited before. Which leaves it evident how Tertullian interpreted this prohibition of our Savior; for whereas the text is, Whosoever putteth away and marrieth another, wherefor should Tertullian explain it, Whosoever putteth away that he may marry another, but to signify his opinion that our Savior did not forbid divorce from an unworthy yoke, but forbid the malice or the lust of a needles change and chiefly those plotted divorces then in use.

Origen in the next century testifies to have known certain who had the government of Churches in his time, who permitted some to marry, while yet their former husbands lived, and excuses the deed, as don not without cause, though without Scripture, which confirms that cause not to be adultery; for how then was it against Scripture that they married again. And a little beneath, for I cite his 7. homily on Matthew, saith he, To endure faults worse then adultery and fornication, seems a thing unreasonable, and disputes therefore that Christ did not speak by way of precept, but as it were expounding. By which and the like speeches Origen declares his mind far from thinking that our Savior confined all the causes of divorce to actual adultery.

Lactantius of the age that succeeded speaking of this matter in the 6. of his institutions, hath these words. But lest any think he may circumscribe divine precepts, let this be added, that all misinterpreting, and occasion of fraud, or death may be removed, he commits adultery who marries the divorcit wife, and, besides the crime of adultery, divorces a wife that he may marry another. To divorce and marry another, and to divorce that he may marry another, are two different things; and imply that Lactantius thought not this place the forbidding of all necessary divorce, but such only as proceeded from the wanton desire of a future choice, not from the burden of a present affliction.

About this time the Council of Eliberis in Spain decreed the husband excommunicate, If he kept his wife being an adultress; but if he left her, he might after ten years be received into communion, if he retained her any while in his house after the adultery known. The council of Neocaesarea in the year 314. decreed, that if the wife of any Laic were convicted of adultery, that man could not be admitted into the ministry: if after ordination it were committed, he was to divorce her; if not, he could not hold his ministry. The council of Nantes condemned in 7. years penance the husband that would reconcile with an adultress. But how proves this that other causes may divorce? it proves thus; there can be but two causes why these councils enjoin'd so strictly the divorsing of an adultress, either as an offender against God, or against the husband; in the latter respect they could not impose on him to divorce; for every man is the master of his own forgiveness; who shall hinder him to pardon the injuries don against himself? It follows therefore that the divorce of an adultress was commanded by these three councils, as it was a sin against God; and by all consequence they could not but believe that other sins as heinous might with equal justice be the ground of a divorce.

Basil in his 73. rule, as Chamier numbers it, thus determines, that divorce ought not to be, unless for adultery, or the hindrance to a godly life. What doth this but proclaim aloud more causes of divorce then adultery, if by other sins besides this, in wife or husband, the godliness of the better person may be certainly hindered, and endangered.

Epiphanius no less ancient, writing against Heretics, & therefore should himself be orthodoxal above others, acquaints us in his second book Tom. 1, not that his private persuasion was, but that the whole Church in his time generally thought other causes of divorce lawful besides adultery, as comprehended under that name; If, saith he, a divorce happ'n for any cause either fornication, or adultery, or any heinous fault, the word of God blames not either the man or wife marrying again, nor cutts them off from the congregation, or from life, but bears with the infirmity; not that he may keep both wives, but that leaving the former he may be lawfully join'd to the latter, the holy word, and the holy Church of God commiserates this man, especially, if he be otherwise of good conversation, and live according to God's law. This place is clearer then exposition, and needs no comment.

Ambrose on the 16. of Luke, teaches that all wedlock is not God's joining and to the 19. of Pro. That a wife is prepard of the Lord, as the old latin translates it, he answers that the septuagint renders it, a wife is fitted by the Lord, and tempered to a kind of harmony; and where that harmony is there God joins; where it is not, there dissention reigns, which is not from God, for God is love. This he brings to prove the marrying of Christian with Gentile to be no marriage, and consequently divorcit without sin: but he who sees not this argument how plainly it serves to divorce any untunable, or unattonable matrimony, sees little. On the 1 to the Cor, 7, he grants a woman may leave her husband not for only fornication, but for Apostasy, and inverting nature, though not marry again; but the man may: here are causes of divorce assigned other then adultery. And going on he affirms, that the cause of God is greater then the cause of matrimony; that the reverence of wedlock is not due to him who hates the author thereof; that no matrimony is firm without devotion to God; that dishonor don to God acquitts the other being deserted from the bond of matrimony; that the faith of marriage is not to be kept with such. If these contorted sentences be ought worth, it is not the desertion that breaks what is broken, but the impiety; and who then may not for that cause better divorce, then tarry to be deserted? or these grave sayings of St. Ambrose are but knacks.

Jerome on the 19. of Matthew explains, that for the cause of fornication, or the suspicion thereof a man may freely divorce. What can breed that suspicion, but sundry faults leading that way? by Jerome’s consent therefore divorce is free not only for actual adultery, but for any cause that may incline a wise man to the just suspicion thereof.

Austin also must be remember'd among those who hold that this instance offornication gives equal inference to other faults equally hateful, for which to divorce: & therefore in his books to Pollentius he disputes that infidelity, as being a greater sin then adultery, ought so much the rather cause a divorce. And on the Sermon in the Mount, under the name of fornication will have idolatry, or any harmful superstition contained, which are not thought to disturb matrimony so directly as some other obstinacies and dissaffections, more against the daily duties of that cov'nant, & in the eastern tongues not unfrequently called fornication, as hath been show'n. Hence is understood, faith he, that not only for bodily fornication, but for that which draws the mind from God's law, and foully corrupts it, a man may without fault put away his wife, and a wife her husband, because the Lord excepts the cause of fornication, which fornication we are constrained to interpret in a general sense. And in the first book of his retractations chap. 16. he retracts not this his opinion, but commends it to serious consideration; and explains that he counted not there all sin to be fornication, but the more detestable sort of sins. The cause of fornication therefore is not in this discourse newly interpreted to signify other faults infringing the duties of wedlock, besides adultery.

Lastly the council of Agatba in the year 506. can. 25. decreed, that if lay men who divorcit without some great fault, or giving no probable cause, therefore divorcit, that they might marry some unlawful person, or some other man's, if before the provincial Bishops were made acquainted, or judgment past; they presumed this, excommunication was the penalty. Whence it follows, that if the cause of divorce were some great offense, or that they gave probable causes for what they did, and did not therefore divorce that they might presume with some unlawful person, or what was another man's, the censure of Church in those days did not touch them.

Thus having alleg'd enough to show after what manner the primitive Church for above 500. years understood our Savior's words touching divorce, I shall now with a labor less dispersed, and sooner dispatched, bring under view what the civil law of those times constituted about this matter: I say the civil law, which is the honor of every true Civilian to stand for, rather then to count that for law, which the pontificiall Canon hath enthrall'd them to, and instead of interpreting a generous and elegant law, made them the drudges of a blockish Rubric.

Theodosius and Valentinian, pious Emperors both, ordained that as by consent lawful marriages were made, so by consent, but not without the bill of divorce, they might be dissolved; and to dissolve was the more difficult, only in favor of the children. We see the wisdom and piety of that age one of the purest and learnedest since Christ, conceav'd no hindrance in the words of our Savior, but that a divorce mutually consented, might be suffered by the law, especially if there were no children, or if there were, careful provision was made. And further saith that law (supposing there wanted the consent of either) we design the causes of divorce by this most wholesome law; for as we forbid the dissolving of marriage without just cause, so we desire that a husband or a wife distrest by some adverse necessity, should be freed, though by an unhappy, yet a necessary relief. What dramm of wisdom, or religion (for charity is truest religion) could there be in that knowing age, which is not virtually sum'd up in this most just law? As for those other Christian Emperors, from Constantine the first of them, finding the Roman law in this point so answerable to the Mosaic, it might be the likeliest cause why they altered nothing to restraint, but if ought, rather to liberty, for the help, and consideration of the weaker sex, according as the Gospel seems to make the wife more equal to her husband in these conjugal respects then the law of Moses doth. Therefore if a man were absent from his wife four years, and in that space not heard of, though gone to war in the service of the Empire, she might divorce, and mary another by the edict of Constantine to Dalmatius. Co. l. 5. tit. 17. And this was an age of the Church both ancient, and cried up still for the most flourishing in knowledge and pious government since the Apostles. But to return to this law of Theodosius, with this observation by the way, that still as the Church corrupted, as the Clergy grew more ignorant, and yet more usurping on the Magistrate, who also now declined, so still divorce grew more restrained; though certainly if better times permitted the thing that worse times restrained, it would not weakly argue that the permission was better, and the restraint worse. This law therefore of Theodosius wiser in this then the most of his successors though not wiser then God and Moses, reducit the causes of divorce to a certain number which by the judicial law of God, and all recorded humanity were left before to the breast of each husband, provided that the dismiss was not without reasonable conditions to the wife. But this was a restraint not yet come to extremes. For besides adultery and that not only actual, but suspected by many signs there set down, any fault equally punishable with adultery, or equally infamous might be the cause of a divorce. Which informs us how the wisest of those ages understood that place in the Gospel, whereby, not the pilfering of a benevolence was considered as the main and only breach of wedlock, as is now thought, but the breach of love and peace, a more holy union then that of the flesh; and the dignity of an honest person was regarded, not to be held in bondage with one whose ignominy was infectious. To this purpose was constituted Cod. l. 5. tit. 17. and Authent. collat. 4. tit. 1. Novell. 22. where Justinian added three causes more. In the 117. Novell. most of the same causes are allowed, but the liberty of divorcing by consent is repealed: but by whom? by Justinian, not a wiser, not a more religious emperor then either of the former, but noted by judicious writers for his fickle head in making and unmaking laws; and how Procopius a good historian, and a counselor of state then living deciphers him in his other actions, I willingly omit. Nor was the Church then in better case, but had the corruption of a 100. declining year swept on it, when the statute of consent was called in; which as I said, gives us every way more reason to suspect this restraint, more then that liberty: which therefore in the reign of Justin the succeeding Emperor was recalled, Novel. 140. & established with a preface more wise & christianly then for those times, declaring the necessity to restore that Theodosian law, if no other means of reconcilement could be found. And by whom this law was abrogated, or how long after, I do not find; but that those other causes remained in force, as long as the Greek empire subsisted, and were assented by that Church, is to be read in the Canons and edicts compared by Photios the Patriarch, with the avertiments of Balsamon, and Matthaeus Monachus thereon.

But long before those days Leo the son of Basilius, Macedo reigning about the year 886. and for his excellent wisdom surnam'd the Philosopher, constituted that in case of madness the husband might divorce after three years, the wife after 5. Constitut. Leon. 111. 112. this declares how he expounded our Savior, and derived his reasons from the institution, which in his preface with great eloquence are set down; whereof a passage or two may give some proof, though better not divided from the rest. There is not, saith he, a thing more necessary to preserve mankind, then the help given him from his own rib; both God and nature so teaching us: which being so, it was requisite that the providence of law, or if any other care be to the good of man, should teach and ordain those things which are to the help and comfort of married persons, and confirm the end of marriage purposed in the beginning, not those things which afflict and bring perpetual misery to them. Then answers the objection that they are one flesh; if Matrimony had held so as God ordained it, he were wicked that would dissolve it. But if we respect this in matrimony, that it be contracted to the good of both, how shall he, who for some great evil feared, persuades not to marry though contracted, not persuade to unmarry, if after marriage a calamity befall? should we bid beware least any fall into an evil, and leave him helpless who by human error is fallen therein? This were as if we should use remedies to prevent a disease, but let the sick die without remedy. The rest will be worth reading in the author.

And thus we have the judgment first of primitive fathers; next of the imperial law not disallow'd by the universal Church in ages of her best authority; and lastly of the whole Greek Church and civil state, incorporating their Canons and edicts together, that divorce was lawful for other causes equivalent to adultery, contained under the word fornication. So that the exposition of our saviors sentence here alleg'd hath all these ancient and great asserters, is therefore neither new nor licentious, as some now would persuade the commonalty; although it be nearer truth that nothing is more new then those teachers themselves, & nothing more licentious then some known to be, whose hypocrisy yet shames not to take offense at this doctrine for license; when as indeed they fear it would remove license, and leave them but few companions.

But in these western parts of the empire it will appear almost unquestionable that the cited law of Theodosius and Valentinian stood in force until the blindest and corruptest times of Popedom displacit it. For that the volumes of Justinian never came into Italy, or beyond Illiricum, is the opinion of good Antiquaries. And that only manuscript thereof found in Apulia by Lotharius the Saxon, and given to the state of Pisa for their aid at sea against the Normans of Sicily, was received as a rarity not to be matched. And although the Goths, and after them the Lombards and Franks who over-run the most of Europ except this Island (unless we make our Saxons and Normans a limm of them) brought in their own customs, yet that they followed the Roman laws in their contracts and marriages, Agathias the historian is alleg'd. And other testimonies relate that Alaricus & Theodoric their Kings writ their statutes out of this Theodosian Code which hath the recited law of Divorce. Nevertheless while the Monarchs of Christendom were yet barbarous, and but half Christian, the Popes took this advantage of their weak superstition, to raise a corpulent law out of the canons and decretals of audacious priests; and presumed also to set this in the front; That the constitutions of princes are not above the constitutions of clergy, but beneath them. Using this very instance of divorce as the first prop of their tyranny; by a false consequence drawn from a passage of Ambrose upon Luke where he saith, though Mans law grant it, yet God's law probibits it, Whence Gregory the Pope writing to Theoctista infers that Ecclesiastical Courts cannot be dissolved by the Magistrate. A fair conclusion from a double error. First in saying that the divine law prohibited divorce, for what will he make of Moses; next supposing that it did, how will it follow, that what ever Christ for bids in his Evangelic precepts, should be hal'd into a judicial constraint against the pattern of a divine law: Certainly the Gospel came not to enact such compulsions. In the mean while we may note here that the restraint of divorce was one of the first fair seeming pleas which the Pope had, to step into secular authority, and with his Antichristian rigor to abolish the permissive law of Christian princes conforming to a sacred lawgiver. Which if we consider, this papal and unjust restriction of divorce need not be so deer to us, since the plausible restraining of that, was in a manner the first loosning of Antichrist; and as it were the substance of his eldest horn. Nor do we less remarkably ow the first means of his fall here in England to the contemning of that restraint by Henry 8. whose divorce he opposed. Yet was not that rigor executed anciently in spiritual Courts until Alexander the third, who trod upon the neck of Frederic Barbarossa the Emperor, and summond our Henry 2. into Normandy about the death of Becket. He it was, that the worthy author may be known, who first actually repealed the imperial law of divorce, and decreed this tyranous decree, that matrimony for no cause should be disolv'd, though for many causes it might separate; as may be seen decret, Gregor. l. 4. tit. 19. and in other places of the Canonical Tomes. The main good of which invention, wherein it consists who can tell? but that it hath one virtue incomparable, to fill all christendom with whoredoms, and adulteries beyond the art of Balaam's or of devils. Yet neither can these, though so perverse, but acknowledge that the words of Christ under the name of fornication allow putting away for other causes then adultery both from bed and bord, but not from the bond; their only reason is, because marriage they believe to be a Sacrament. But our Divines who would seem long since to have renounced that reason, have so forgot them selves, as yet to hold the absurdity, which but for that reason, unless there be some mystery of Satan in it, perhaps the Papist would not hold. It is true, we grant divorce for actual & proved adultery, and not for less then many tedious and unreparable years of desertion, wherein a man shall loose all his hope of posterity, which great and holy men have bewailed, ere he can be righted; and then perhaps on the confines of his old age, when all is not worth the while. But grant this were seasonably don; what are these two cases to many other, which afflict the state of marriage as bad, and yet find no redress? What hath the soul of man deserved, if it be in the way of salvation, that it should be mortgaged thus, and may not redeem it self according to conscience out of the hands of such ignorant and slothful teachers as these, who are neither able nor mindful to give due tendance to that precious cure which they rashly undertake; nor have in them the noble goodness to consider these distresses and accidents of man's life; but are bent rather to fill their mouths with Tithe and oblation. Yet if they can learn to follow, as well as they can seek to be followed, I shall direct them to a fair number of renowned men, worthy to be their leaders, who will commend to them a doctrine in this point wiser then their own, and if they be not-impatient, it will be the same doctrine which this treatis hath defended.

Wicklef that Englishman honored of God to be the first preacher of a general reformation to all Europe, was not in this thing better taught of God, then to teach among his chiefest recoveries of truth, that divorce is lawful to the Christian for many other causes equal to adultery. This book indeed through the poverty of our Libraries I am forced to cite from Arnisaeus of Halberstad on the right of marriage, who cites it from Corasius of Tolouse c. 4. Cent. Sct. and he from Wicklef. l. 4. Dial. c. 21. So much the sorrier, for that I never looked into author cited by his adversary upon this occasion, but found him more conducible to the question, then his quotation rendered him.

Next Luther, how great a servant of God, in his book of conjugal life quoted by Gerard out of the Dutch, allows divorce for the obstinate denial of conjugal duty; and that a man may send away a proud Vashti, and marry an Esther in her stead. It seems if this example shall not be impertinent, that Luther meant not only the refusal of benevolence, but a stubborn denial of any main conjugal duty; or if he did not, it will be evincit from what he allows. For out of question, with men that are not barbarous, love and peace, and fitness will be yielded as essential to marriage, as corporal benevolence. Though I give my body to be burnt, saith Saint Paul, and have not charity, it profits me nothing. So though the body prostitute it self to whom the mind affords no other love or peace, but constant malice and vexation, can this bodily benevolence deserve to be called a marriage between Christians and rational creatures.

Melanchthon, the third great luminary of reformation in his book concerning marriage grants divorce for cruel usage, and danger of life, urging the authority of that Theodosian law, which he esteems written with the grave deliberation of godly men; and that they who reject this law, and think it disagreeing from the Gospel, understand not the difference of law and Gospel; that the Magistrate ought not only to defend life, but to succor the weak conscience, lest broke with grief and indignation it relinquish prayer, and turn to some unlawful thing What if this heavy plight of despair arise from other discontents in wedlock which may go to the soul of a good man more then the danger of his life, or cruel using, which a man cannot be liable to, suppose it be ungrateful usage, suppose it be perpetual spite and disobedience, suppose a hatred, shall not the Magistrate free him from this disquiet which interrupts his prayers, and disturbs the cours of his service to God and his Country all as much, and brings him such a misery, as that he more desires to leave his life then fears to loose it: Shall not this equally concern the office of civil protection, and much more the charity of a true Church to remedy?

Erasmus who for learning was the wonder of his age, both in his notes on Matthew, and on the first to the Corinthians in a large and eloquent discourse, and in his answer to Phimostonus a Papist, maintains (and no protestant then living contradicted him) that the words of Christ comprehend many other causes of divorce under the name of fornication.

Bucer, whom our famous D ^r Rainolds was wont to prefer before Calvin, in his comment on Matthew, and in his second book of the Kingdom of Christ, treats of divorce at large to the same effect, as is written in the doctrine and discipline of divorce lately published, and the translation is extant: whom lest I should be thought to have wrested to mine own purpose, take something more out of his 49. Chap. which I then for brevity omitted. It will be the duty of pious princes, and all who govern Church, or common wealth, if any, whether husband or wife, shall affirm their want of such who either will, or can tolerably perform the necessary duties of married life, to grant that they may seek them such, and marry them; if they make it appear that such they have not. This book he wrote here in England, where he lived the greatest admired man, and this he dedicated to Edward the sixth.

Fagius rankt among the famous divines of Germany, whom Frederic at that time the Palatine sent for to be the reformer of his Dominion, and whom afterwards England sought to, and obtained of him to come and teach her, differs not in this opinion from Bucer, as his notes on the Chaldey paraphrast well testify.

The whole Church of Strasburgh in her most flourishing time, when Zellius, Hedio, Capito, and other great Divines taught there, and those two renowned magistrates Farrerus and Sturmius governed that common wealth and Academy to the admiration of all Germany, hath thus in the 21. Article. We teach that if according to the word of God, yea or against it, divorces happen, to do according to God's word, Devt. 24. 1. Mat. 19. 1 Cor. 7. and the observation of the primitive Church, and the Christian constitution of pious Caesar's.

Peter Martyr seems in word our easy adversary, but is in deed for us: toward which though it be something when he saith of this opinion, that it is not wicked, and can hardly be refuted, this which follows is much more, I speak not here saith he, Of natural impediments which may so happ'n, that the matrimony can no longer hold: but adding, that he often wondered, how the ancient and most Christian Emperors established those laws of divorce, and neither Ambrose, who had such influence upon the laws of Theodosius, nor any of those holy fathers found fault, nor any of the Churches, why the Magistrates of this day should be so loath to constitute the same. Perhaps, they fear an inundation of divorces, which is not likely, whenas we read not either among the Ebrews, Greeks, or Romans that they were much frequent where they were most permitted. If they judge Christian men worse then Jews or Pagans. they both injure that name, and by this reason will be constrained to grant divorces the rather; because it was permitted as a remedy of evil, for who would remove the medcin, while the disease is yet so rife? This being read both in his common places, & on the first to the Corinthians, with what we shall relate more of him yet ere the end, sets him absolutely on this side. Not to insist that in both these, & other places of his commentaries he grants divorce not only for desertion, but for the seducement and scandalous demeanour of a heretical consort.

Musculus a divine of no obscure fame distinguishes between the religious and the civil determination of divorce; and leaving the civil wholly to the lawyers, pronounces a conscionable divorce for importence not only natural, but accidental, if it be durable. His equity it seems, can enlarge the words of Christ to one cause more then adultery; why may not the reason of another man as wise, enlarge them to another cause.

Gwalther of Zürich a well known judicious commentator in his Homilies on Matthew, allows divorce for Leprosy, or any other cause which renders unfit for wedlock, and calls this rather a nullity of marriage then a divorce, and who, that is not himself a mere body, can restrain all the unfitness of marriage only to a corporal defect.

Hemingius an Author highly esteemed, and his works printed at Geneva, writing of divorce, confesses that learned men vary in this question, some granting three causes thereof, some five, others many more; he himself gives us six, adultery, desertion, inability, error, evil usage, and impiety, using argument that Christ under one special contains the whole kind, & under the name & example of fornication he includes other causes equipollent. This discourse he wrote at the request of many who had the judging of these causes in Denmark and Norway, who by all likely hood followed his advice.

Hunnius a Doctor of Wittenburg, well known both in Divinity & other arts, on the 19. of Matt. affirms that the exception of fornicationexprest by our Savior excludes not other causes equalling adultery, or destructive to the substantials of matrimony; but was opposed to the custom of the Jews who made divorce for every light cause.

Felix Bidenbachius an eminent Divine in the Duchy of Wirtemberg affirms that the obstinate refusal of conjugal due is a lawful cause of divorce, and gives an instance that the consistory of that state sojudg'd.

Gerard cites Harbardus an author not unknown, and Arnisaeus cites Wigandus, both yielding divorce in case of cruel usage; and another author who testifies to have seen in a dukedom of Germany marriages disjoynd for some implacable enmities arising.

Beza one of the strictest against divorce, denies it not for danger of life from a Heretic, or importunat solicitation to do ought against religion: and counts it all one whether the heretic desert, or would stay upon intolerable conditions. But this decision well examined will be found of no solidity. For Beza would be asked why, if God so strictly exact our stay in any kind of wedlock, we had not better stay and hazard a murdering for Religion at the hand of a wife, or husband, as he and others enjoin us to stay and venture it for all other causes but that? and why a man's life is not as well and warrantably saved by divorcing from an orthodox murderer, as a heretical? Again, if desertion be confessed by him to consist not only in the forsaking, but in the unsufferable conditions of staying, a man may as well deduce the lawfulness of divorcing from any intolerable conditions (if his grant be good that we may divorce thereupon from a heretic) as he can deduce it lawful to divorce from any deserter, by finding it lawful to divorce from a deserting infidel. For this is plain, if Saint Paul's permission to divorce an infidel deserter, infer it lawful for any malicious desertion, then doth Beza's definition of a deserter transferr it self with like facility from the cause of religion to the cause of malice, and proves it as good to divorce from him who intolerably stays as from him who purposely departs; and leaves it as lawful to depart from him who urgently requires a wicked thing, though professing the same religion, as from him who urges a heathenish or superstitious compliance in a different faith. For if there be such necessity of our abiding, we ought rather to abide the utmost for religion then for any other cause; seeing both the cause of our stay is pretended our religion to marriage, and the cause of our suffering is supposed our constant marriage to religion. Beza therefore by his own definition of a deserter justifies a divorce from any wicked or intolerable conditions rather in the same religion then in a different.

Aretius a famous Divine of Bern approves many causes of divorce in his Problemes, and adds that the laws and consistories of Swizzerland approve them also. As first, adultery, and that not actual only, but intentional, all eging Matthew the fifth, Whosoever looketh to lust, hath committed adultery already in his heart. Wher by saith he, our Savior shows that the breach of matrimony may be not only by outward act, but by the heart and desire; when that hath once possessed, it renders the conversation intolerable, and commonly the fact follows. Other causes to the number of 9. or 10. consenting in most with the imperial laws, may be read in the author himself, who averrs them to be grave and weighty. All these are men of name in Divinity, and to these if need were, might be added more. Nor have the Civilians been all so blinded by the Canon, as not to avouch the justice of those old permissions touching divorce.

Alciat of Milan, a man of extraordinary wisdom and learning, in the sixth book of his Parerga defends those imperial laws, not repugnant to the Gospel, as the Church then interpreted. For saith he, the ancients understood him separate by man, whom passions and corrupt affections divorcit, not, if the provincial Bishops first heard the matter, and judged, as the council of Agatha declares; and on some part of the Code he names Isidorus Hispalensis the first computer of Canons, to be in the same mind. And in the former place gives his opinion that divorce might be more lawfully permitted then usury.

Corasius recorded by Helvicus among the famous Lawyers hath been already cited of the same judgment.

Wesembechius a much named Civilian in his comment on this law defends it, and afficms that our Savior excluded not other faults equal to adultery; and that the word fornication signifies larger among the Hebrews then with us, comprehending every fault which alienates from him to whom obedience is due, and that the primitive Church interpreted so.

Grotius yet living, and of prime note among learned men retires plainly from the Canon to the ancient civility, yea to the Mosaic law, as being most just and undecevable. On the fifth of Matt. he saith, that Christ made no civil laws, but taught us how to use law: that the law sent not a husband to the Judge about this matter of divorce, but left him to his own conscience; that Christ therefore cannot be thought to send him; that adultery may be judged by a vehement suspicion; that the exception of adultery seems an example of other like offenses; proves it from the manner of speech, the maxims of law, the reason of charity, and common equity.

These authorities without long search I had to produce, all excellent men, some of them such as many ages had brought forth none greater: almost the meanest of them might deserve to obtain credit in a singularity; what might not then all of them join'd in an opinion so consonant to reason? For although some speak of this cause, others of that, why divorce may be, yet all agreeing in the necessary enlargement of that textual straitnes, leave the matter to equity, not to literal bondage, and so the opinion closes. Nor could I have wanted more testimonies, had the cause needed a more solicitous enquiry. But herein the satisfaction of others hath been studied, not the gaining of more assurance to mine own persuasion: although authorities contributing reason withal, be a good confirmation and a welcome. But God, I solemnly attest him, with held from my knowledge the consenting judgment of these men so late, until they could not be my instructors, but only my unexpected witnesses to partial men, that in this work I had not given the worst experiment of an industry join'd with integrity and the free utterance though of an unpopular truth. Which yet to the people of England may, if God so please, prove a memorable informing; certainly a benefit which was intended them long since by men of highest repute for wisdom & piety Bucer & Erasmus. Only this one authority more, whether in place or out of place, I am not to omit; which if any can think a small one, I must be patitient it is no smaller then the whole assembl'd authority of England both Church and State; and in those times which are on record for the purest and sincerest that ever shon yet on the reformation of this Island, the time of Edward the 6 ^th . That worthy Prince having utterly abolished the Canon Law out of his Dominions, as his Father did before him, appointed by full vote of Parliament, a Committy of two and thirty chosen men, Divines and Lawyers, of whom Cranmer the Archbishop, Peter Martyr, and Walter Haddon, (not without the assistance of Sir John Cheeke the Kings Tutor a man at that time counted the learnedest of Englishmen, & for piety not inferior) were the chief, to frame anew some Ecclesiastical Laws, that might be instead of what was abrogated. The work with great diligence was finished, and with as great approbation of that reforming age was received; and had been doubtless, as the learned Preface thereof testifies, established by Act of Parliament, had not the good Kings death so soon ensuing, arrested the further growth of Religion also, from that season to this. Those laws, thus founded on the memorable wisdom and piety of that religious Parliament and Synod, allow divorce and second marriage not only for adultery or desertion, but for any capital cnmity or plot laid against the others life, and likewise for evil and fierce usage? nay the 12. Chap. of that title by plain consequence declares, that lesser contentions, if they be perpetual, may obtain divorce: which is all one really with the position by me held in the former treatise published on this argument, herein only differing that there the cause of perpetual strife was put for example in the unchangeable discord of some natures; but in these laws intended us by the best of our ancestors, the effect of continual strife is determined no unjust plea of divorce, whether the cause be natural or willful. Whereby the wariness and deliberation from which that discourse proceeded, will appear, & that God hath aided us to make no bad conclusion of this point; seeing the opinion which of late hath undergon ill censures among the vulgar, hath now proved to have don no violence to Scripture, unless all these famous Authors alleg'd have done the like; nor hath affirmed ought more then what indeed the most nominated Fathers of the Church both ancient and modern are unexpectedly found affirming, the laws of God's peculiar people, & of primitive Christendom found to have practice'd, reformed Churches and states to have imitated, and especially the most pious Church-times of this Kingdom to have framed and published, and, but for sad hindrances in the sudden change of religion, had enacted by Parliament. Hence forth let them who condemn the assertion of this book for new and licentious, be sorry; lest, while they think to be of the graver sort, and take on them to be teachers, they expose themselves rather to be pledge'd up and down by men who intimatly know them, to the discovery and contempt of their ignorance and presumption.