1


THE

Doctrine and Discipline of 
Divorce;

Restored to the good of both Sexes, 
from the Bon-
dage of Canon Law, and other 
Mistakes, to
the true Meaning of Scripture in 
the Law and
Gospel compar'd.

Wherein also are set down the bad 
Consequences of abo-
lishing or condemning of Sin, that 
which the Law of 
GOD allows, and CHRIST abolish'd not.

Now the second time Revis'd, and much 
Augmented, in two Books:
To the Parlament of England, with the 
Assembly.

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Matth. 13. 52.  Every Scribe instructed in the 
Kingdom of Heaven, is like the Master of a House 
which bringeth out of his Treasury things new and 
old

Prov. 18. 13.  He that answereth a matter before he 
heareth it, it is folly and shame unto him.
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To the Parlament of ENGLAND, with the Assembly.

If it were seriously ask'd, and it would be no 
untimely Question, Renowned Parlament, Select 
Assembly, who of all Teachers and Masters that have 
ever taught, hath drawn the most Disciples after 
him, both in Religion and in Manners? it might be not 
untruly answer'd, Custom.  Though Virtue be 
commended for the most perswasive in her Theory, 
and Conscience in the plain demonstration of the 
Spirit finds most evincing; yet whether it be the 
secret of Divine Will, or the original Blindness we are 
born in, so it happens for the most part, that Custom 
still is silently receiv'd for the best instructor.  
Except it be, because the method is so glib and easy, 
in some manner like to that Vision of Ezekiel, rowling 
up her sudden book of implicite Knowledge, for him 
that will, to take and swallow down at pleasure; which 
proving but of bad nourishment in the concoction, as 
it was heedless in the devouring, puffs up 
unhealthily a certain big face of pretended learning, 
mistaken among credulous men for the wholesome 
habit of soundness and good constitution, but is 
indeed no other than that swoln visage of counterfeit 
knowledge and literature, which not only in private 
mars our Education, but also in public is the common 
Climber into every chair, where either Religion is 
preach'd, or Law reported, filling each estate of Life 
and Profession with abject and servile principles, 
depressing the high and heaven-born spirit of man, 
far beneath the condition wherin either God created 
him, or Sin hath sunk him.  To pursue the Allegory, 
Custom being but a meer face, as Echo is a meer 
voice, rests not in her unaccomplishment, until by 
secret inclination she accorporate her self with 
Error, who being a blind and serpentine body 
without a head, willingly accepts what he wants, and 
supplies what her Incompleatness went seeking.  
Hence it is, that Error supports Custom, Custom 
countenances Error: and these two between them 
would persecute and chase away all truth and solid 
wisdom out of human Life, were it not that God, 
rather than Man, once in many Ages, calls together 
the prudent and religious Counsels of men, deputed 
to repress the incroachments, and to work off the 
inveterate blots and obscurities wrought upon our 
minds by the subtle insinuating of Error and Custom; 
who with the numerous and vulgar train of their 
Followers, make it their chief design to envy and cry 
down the industry of free reasoning, under the 
terms of humour and innovation; as if the Womb of 
teeming Truth were to be clos'd up, if she presume to 
bring forth aught that sorts not with their unchew'd 
notions and suppositions.  Against which notorious 
injury, and abuse of man's free soul, to testify and 
oppose the utmost that study and true labour can 
attain, heretofore the incitement of men reputed 
grave, hath led me among others; and now the duty 
and the right of an instructed Christian calls me 
thro' the chance of good or evil report, to be the sole 
Advocate of a discountenanc'd truth; a high 
enterprise, Lords and Commons, a high enterprise 
and a hard, and such as every 7th Son of a 7th Son 
does not venture on.  Nor have I amidst the clamour 
of so much envy and impertinence, whither to 
appeal, but to the concourse of so much Piety and 
Wisdom here assembled.  Bringing in my hands an 
ancient and most necessary, most charitable, and yet 
most injur'd Statute of Moses; not repeal'd ever by 
him who only had the Authority, but thrown aside 
with much inconsiderate Neglect, under the Rubbish 
of Canonical Ignorance, as once the whole Law was by 
some such like conveyance in Josiah's time.  And he 
who shall endeavour the amendment of any old 
neglected Grievance in Church or State, or in the 
daily course of Life, if he be gifted with abilities of 
mind that may raise him to so high an undertaking, I 
grant he hath already much wherof not to repent 
him; yet let me arreed him, not to be the foreman of 
any misjudg'd Opinion, unless his Resolutions be 
firmly seated in a square and constant mind, not 
conscious to it self of any deserved blame, and 
regardless of ungrounded suspicions.  For this let 
him be sure he shall be boarded presently by the 
ruder sort, but not by discreet and well-nurtur'd 
men, with a thousand idle Descants and Surmises.  
Who when they cannot confute the least joint or 
sinew of any passage in the Book; yet God forbid that 
truth should be truth, because they have a 
boisterous conceit of some pretences in the Writer.  
But were they not more busy and inquisitive than 
the Apostle commends, they would hear him at least, 
rejoicing so the truth be preach'd, whether of envy 
or other pretence whatsoever: for Truth is as 
impossible to be soil'd by any outward touch, as the 
Sunbeam; though this ill hap wait on her Nativity, 
that she never comes into the World, but like a 
Bastard, to the ignominy of him that brought her 
forth; till Time, the Midwife rather than the Mother 
of Truth, have washt and salted the Infant, declar'd 
her legitimate, and church'd the Father of his young 
Minerva, from the needless causes of his Purgation.  
Your selves can best witness this, worthy Patriots, 
and better will, no doubt, hereafter: for who among 
ye of the foremost that have travail'd in her behalf 
to the good of Church or State, hath not been often 
traduc'd to be the Agent of his own by-ends, under 
pretext of Reformation?  So much the more I shall 
not be unjust to hope, that however Infamy or Envy 
may work in other men to do her fretful Will against 
this Discourse, yet that the experience, of your own 
uprightness mis-interpreted, will put ye in mind to 
give it free Audience and generous Construction.  
What though the blood of Belial, the draffe of men, to 
whom no Liberty is pleasing, but unbridled and 
vagabond Lust without pale or partition, will laugh 
broad perhaps, to see so great a strength of 
Scripture mustering up in favour, as they suppose, 
of their Debaucheries; they will know better when 
they shall hence learn, that honest Liberty is the 
greatest foe to dishonest Licence.  And what though 
others, out of a waterish and queasy Conscience, 
because ever crazy and never yet found, will rail and 
fancy to themselves, that Injury and Licence is the 
best of this Book?  Did not the Distempter of their 
own Stomachs affect them with a dizzy Megrim, they 
would soon tie up their Tongues, and discern 
themselves, like that Assyrian Blasphemer, all this 
while reproaching not Man, but the Almighty, the 
Holy-One of Israel, whom they do not deny to have 
belawgiv'n his own sacred People with this very 
allowance, which they now call Injury and Licence, 
and dare cry shame on, and will do yet a while, till 
they get a little cordial Sobriety to settle their 
qualming Zeal.  But this Question concerns not us 
perhaps: indeed man's disposition, though prone to 
search after vain Curiosities, yet when points of 
difficulty are to be discust, appertaining to the 
removal of unreasonable wrong and burden from the 
perplext life of our Brother, it is incredible how cold, 
how dull, and far from all fellow-feeling we are, 
without the spur of self-concernment.  Yet if the 
Widom, the Justice, the Purity of God be to be clear'd 
from foulest Imputations, which are not yet avoided; 
if Charity be not to be degraded and trodden down 
under a civil Ordinance; if Matrimony be not to be 
advanc'd like that exalted Perdition written of to the 
Thessalonians, above all that is called God, or 
Goodness, nay against them both; then I dare affirm 
there will be found in the Contents of this Book, that 
which may concern us all.  You it concerns chiefly, 
Worthies in Parlament, on whom, as on our 
Deliverers, all our Grievances and Cares, by the 
merit of your eminence and fortitude, are devolv'd.  
Me it concerns next, having with much labour and 
faithful diligence first found out, or at least with a 
fearless and communicative candor first publish'd to 
the manifest good of Christendom, that which calling 
to witness every thing mortal and immortal, I 
believe unfeignedly to be true.  Let not other men 
think their Conscience bound to search continually 
after truth, to pray for enlight'ning from above, to 
publish what they think they have so obtain'd, and 
debar me fom conceiving my self ty'd by the same 
duties.  Ye have now, doubtless, by the favour and 
appointment of God, ye have now in your hands a 
great and populous Nation to reform; from what 
corruption, what blindness in Religion, ye know well; 
in what a degenerate and fallen Spirit from the 
apprehension of native Liberty, and true Manliness, I 
am sure ye find; with what unbounded licence 
rushing to Whoredoms and Adulteries, needs not 
long enquiry: insomuch that the Fears which men 
have of too strict a Discipline, perhaps exceed the 
Hopes that can be in other, of ever introducing it 
with any great success.  What if I should tell ye now 
of Dispensations and Indulgences, to give a little the 
reins, to let them play and nibble with the bait a 
while; a People as hard of heart as that Egyptian 
Colony that went to Canaan.  This is the common 
Doctrine that adulterous and injurious Divorces were 
not conniv'd only, but with eye open allow'd of old 
for hardness of heart.  But that Opinion, I trust, by 
then this following Argument hath been well read, 
will be left for one of the Mysteries of an indulgent 
Antichrist, to farm out Incest by, and those his other 
tributary Pollutions.  What middle way can be taken, 
then, may some interrupt, if we must neither turn to 
the right, nor to the left, and that the People hate to 
be reform'd?  Mark then, Judges and Law-givers, and 
ye whose Office it is to be our Teachers, for I will 
utter now a Doctrine, if ever any other, though 
neglected or not understood, yet of great and 
powerful importance to the governing of Mankind.  
He who wisely would restrain the reasonable Soul of 
Man within due bounds, must first himself know 
perfectly, how far the Territory and Dominion 
extends of just and honest Liberty.  As little must he 
offer to bind that which God hath loosen'd, as to 
loosen that which he hath bound.  The ignorance and 
mistake of this high point, hath heapt up one huge 
half of all the misery that hath been since Adam.  In 
the Gospel we shall read a supercilious crew of 
Masters, whose Holiness, or rather whose evil eye, 
grieving that God should be so facil to Man, was to set 
straiter limits to Obedience than God had set, to 
enslave the dignity of Man, to put a garison upon his 
neck of empty and over-dignify'd Precepts: And we 
shall read our Savoiur never more griev'd and 
troubl'd, than to meet with such a peevish Madness 
among men against their own freedom.  How can we 
expect him to be less offended with us, when much of 
the same folly shall be found yet remaining where it 
least ought, to the perishing of thousands?  The 
greatest burden in the world is Superstition, not 
only of Ceremonies in the Church, but of imaginary 
and scarecrow Sins at home.  What greater 
weakening, what more subtle stratagem against our 
Christian Warfare, when besides the gross body of 
real Transgressions to incounter, we shall be 
terrify'd by a vain and shadowy menacing of faults 
that are not: When things indifferent shall be set to 
over-front us under the Banners of Sin, what 
wonder if we be routed, and by this art of our 
Adversary, fall into the subjection of worst and 
deadliest Offences?  The Superstition of the Papist is, 
touch not, taste not, when God bids both; and ours is, 
part not, separate not, when God and Charity both 
permits and commands.  Let all your things be done 
with charity, saith St. Paul; and his Mother saith, She 
is the fulfilling of the Law.  Yet now a civil, an 
indifferent, a sometime disswaded Law of Marriage, 
must be forc'd upon us to fulfil, not only without 
Charity, but against her.  No place in Heaven or 
Earth, except Hell, where Charity may not enter: yet 
Marriage, the Ordinance of our Solace and 
Contentment, the Remedy of our Loneliness, will not 
admit now either of Charity or Mercy, to come in and 
mediate, or pacify the fierceness of this gentle 
Ordinance, the unremedied Loneliness of this 
Remedy.  Advise ye well, supreme Senate, if Charity 
be thus excluded and expulst, how ye will defend the 
untainted Honour of your own Actions and 
Proceedings.  He who marries, intends as little to 
conspire his own ruin, as he that swears Allegiance: 
and as a whole People is in proportion to an ill 
Government, so is one Man to an ill Marriage.  If 
they, against any Authority, Covenant, or Statute, 
may by the sovereign Edict of Charity, save not only 
their Lives, but honest Liberties from unworthy 
Bondage, as well may he against any private 
Covenant, which he never enter'd to his mischief, 
redeem himself from unsupportable Disturbances to 
honest Peace, and just Contentment: And much the 
rather, for that to resist the highest Magistrate 
though tyrannizing, God never gave us express 
allowance, only he gave us Reason, Charity, Nature, 
and good Example to bear us out; but in this 
Oeconomical misfortune thus to demean our selves, 
besides the Warrant of those four great Directors, 
which doth as justly belong hither, we have an 
express Law of God, and such a Law, as wherof our 
Saviour with a solemn Threat forbid the abrogating.  
For no effect of Tyranny can sit more heavy on the 
Common-wealth, than this houshold unhappiness on 
the Family.  And farewel all hope of true Reformation 
in the State, while such an evil as this lies 
undiscern'd or unregarded in the house.  On the 
redress wherof depends not only the spiritful and 
orderly life of our grown men, but the willing and 
careful education of our Children.  Let this therfore 
be new examin'd, this tenure and freehold of 
mankind, this native and domestic Charter given us 
by a greater Lord than that Saxon King the 
Confessor.  Let the Statutes of God be turn'd over, be 
scann'd anew, and considered not altogether by the 
narrow intellectuals of Quotationists and common 
Places, but (as was the ancient right of Councils) by 
men of what liberal profession soever, of eminent 
spirit and breeding, join'd with a diffuse and various 
knowledge of divine and human things; able to 
ballance and define good and evil, right and wrong, 
throughout every state of life; able to shew us the 
ways of the Lord strait and faithful as they are, not 
full of cranks and contradictions, and pit-falling 
dispenses, but with divine insight and benignity 
measured out to the proportion of each mind and 
spirit, each temper and disposition created so 
different each from other, and yet by the skill of wise 
conducting, all to become uniform in virtue.  To 
expedite these knots, were worthy a learned and 
memorable Synod; while our enemies expect to see 
the expectation of the Church tir'd out with 
dependencies and independencies how they will 
compound, and in what Calends.  Doubt not, worthy 
Senators, to vindicate the sacred Honour and 
Judgment of Moses your predecessor, from the 
shallow commenting of Scholastics and Canonists.  
Doubt not after him to reach out your steady hands 
to the mis-inform'd and wearied life of man; to 
restore this his lost heritage, into the houshold state; 
wherwith be sure that peace and love, the best 
subsistance of a Christian family, will return home 
from whence they are now banisht; places of 
prostitution will be less haunted, the neighbour's bed 
less attempted, the yoke of prudent and manly 
discipline will be generally submitted to; sober and 
well-order'd living will soon spring up in the 
Commonwealth.  Ye have an Author great beyond 
exception, Moses; and one yet greater, he who hedg'd 
in from abolishing every smallest jot and tittle of 
precious equity contain'd in that Law, with a more 
accurate and lasting Masoreth, than either the 
Synagogue of Ezra or the Galilžan School at Tiberias 
hath left us.  Whatever else ye can enact, will scarce 
concern a third part of the British name: but the 
benefit and good of this your magnanimous example, 
will easily spread far beyond the banks of Tweed and 
the Norman Isles.  It would not be the first, or second 
time, since our ancient Druids, by whom the Island 
was the Cathedral of philosophy to France, left off 
their Pagan Rites, that England hath had this honour 
vouchsaft from Heaven, to give out Reformation to 
the world.  Who was it but our English Constantine 
that baptiz'd the Roman Empire?  Who but the 
Northumbrian Willibrode, and Winifride of Devon, 
with their followers, were the first Apostles of 
Germany?  Who but Alcuin and Wicklef our 
Countrymen open'd the eyes of Europe, the one in 
Arts, the other in Religion?  Let not England forget 
her precedence of teaching Nations how to live.
	Know Worthies, know and exercise the privilege 
of your honour'd country.  A greater title I here 
bring ye, than is either in the power or in the policy 
of Rome to give her Monarchs; this glorious Act will 
stile ye the defenders of Charity.  Nor is this yet the 
highest inscription that will adorn so religious and so 
holy a defence as this, behold here the pure and 
sacred Law of God, and his yet purer and more 
sacred Name offering themselves to you first, of all 
Christian Reformers, to be acquitted from the long-
suffer'd ungodly attribute of patronizing Adultery.  
Defer not to wipe off instantly these imputative 
blurrs and stains cast by rude fancies upon the 
throne and beauty it self of inviolable Holiness; lest 
some other people more devout and wise than we 
bereave us this offer'd immortal glory, our wonted 
prerogative, of being the first assssertors in every 
great vindication.  For me, as far as my part leads 
me, I have already my greatest gain, assurance, and 
inward satisfaction to have done in this nothing 
unworthy of an honest life, and studies will employ'd.  
With what event among the wise and right 
understanding handful of men, I am secure.  But how 
among the drove of Custom and Prejudice this will be 
relisht by such whose capacity since their youth run 
ahead into the easy creek of a System or a Medulla, 
sails there at will under the blown Physiognomy of 
their unlabour'd rudiments; for them, what their 
taste will be, I have also surety sufficient, from the 
entire league that hath been ever between formal 
ignorance and grave obstinacy.  Yet when I 
remember the little that our Saviour could prevail 
about this doctrine of Charity against the crabbed 
Textuists of his time, I make no wonder, but rest 
confident that whoso prefers either Matrimony or 
other Ordinance before the good of man and the plain 
exigence of Charity, let him profess Papist or 
Protestant or what he will, he is no better than a 
Pharisee, and understands not the Gospel: whom as a 
misinterpreter of Christ I openly protest against; and 
provoke him to the trial of this truth before all the 
world: and let him bethink him withal how he will 
soder up the shifting flaws of his ungirt permissions, 
his venial and unvenial dispenses, wherewith the 
Law of God pardoning and unpardoning hath been 
shamefully branded for want of heed in glossing, to 
have eluded and baffled out all Faith and Chastity 
from the Marriage-bed of that holy Seed, with politic 
and judicial Adulteries.  I seek not to seduce the 
simple and illiterate; my errand is to find out the 
choicest and the learnedest, who have this high gift 
of wisdom to answer solidly, or to be convinc'd.  I 
crave it from the piety, the learning, and the 
prudence which is hous'd in this place.  It might 
perhaps more fitly have been written in another 
tongue: and I had done so, but that the esteem I 
have of my Country's judgment, and the love I bear 
to my native language to serve it first with what I 
endeavour, made me speak it thus, ere I assay the 
verdict of outlandish Readers.  And perhaps also 
here I might have ended nameless, but that the 
address of these lines chiefly to the Parlament of 
England might have seem'd ingrateful not to 
acknowledge by whose religious Care, unwearied 
Watchfulness, couragious and heroic Resolutions, I 
enjoy the peace and studious leisure to remain,

The Honourer and Attendant of their 
Noble Worth and Virtues.
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The Doctrine and Discipline of 
DIVORCE;
restor'd to the good of both 
Sexes.

BOOK  I.

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The PREFACE.

That Man is the occasion of his own Miseries, in most 
of those Evils which he imputes to God's inflicting.  
The absurdity of our Canonists in their Decrees 
about Divorce.  The Christian Imperial Laws framed 
with more Equity.  The Opinion of Hugo Grotius and 
Paulus Fagius: And the Purpose in general of this 
Discourse.

MANY men, whether it be their fate, or fond opinion, 
easily perswade themselves, if God would but be 
pleas'd a while to withdraw his just punishments 
from us, and to restrain what power either the Devil 
or any earthly enemy hath to work us woe, that then 
man's Nature would find immediate rest and 
releasement from all Evils.  But verily they who 
think so, if they be such as have a mind large enough 
to take into their thoughts a general survey of 
human things, would soon prove themselves in that 
Opinion far deceiv'd.  For though it were granted us 
by divine Indulgence to be exempt from all that can 
be harmful to us from without, yet the perverseness 
of our Folly is so bent, that we should never lin 
hammering out of our own hearts, as it were out of a 
flint, the seeds and sparkles of new Misery to our 
selves, till all were in a blaze again.  And no marvel if 
out of our own hearts, for they are evil; but even out 
of those things which God meant us, either for a 
principal Good, or a pure Contentment, we are still 
hatching and contriving upon our selves matter of 
continued sorrow and perplexity.  What greater good 
to man than that revealed Rule, wherby God 
vouchsafes to shew us how he would be worshipt?  
And yet that not rightly understood, became the 
cause that once a famous man in Israel could not but 
oblige his Conscience to be the Sacrificer; or if not, 
the Jaylor of his innocent and only Daughter: And 
was the cause oftimes that Armies of valiant men 
have given up their Throats to a heathenish enemy 
on the Sabbath-day; fondly thinking their defensive 
resistance to be as then a work unlawful.  What thing 
more instituted to the solace and delight of man than 
Marriage? and yet the misinterpreting of some 
Scripture directed mainly against the abusers of the 
Law for Divorce given by Moses, hath chang'd the 
blessing of Matrimony not seldom into a familiar and 
co-inhabiting mischief; at least into a drooping and 
disconsolate houshold Captivity, without refuge or 
redemption.  So ungovern'd and so wild a race doth 
Superstition run us, from one extreme of abused 
Liberty into the other of unmerciful Restraint.  For 
although God in the first ordaining of Marriage, 
taught us to what end he did it, in words expresly 
implying the apt and chearful Conversation of Man 
with Woman, to comfort and refresh him against the 
evil of solitary life, not mentioning the purpose of 
Generation till afterwards, as being but a secondary 
end in dignity, tho' not in necessity; yet now, if any 
two be but once handed in the Church, and have 
tasted in any sort the nuptial Bed, let them find 
themselves never so mistaken in their dispositions 
through any Error, Concealment, or Misadventure, 
that through their different Tempers, Thoughts, and 
Constitutions, they can neither be to one another a 
remedy against Loneliness, nor live in any Union or 
Contentment all their days, yet they shall, so they be 
but found suitably weapon'd to the least possibility of 
sensual Enjoyment, be made, spight of Antipathy, to 
fadge together, and combine as they may to their 
unspeakable wearisomeness, and despair of all 
sociable delight in the Ordinance which God 
establish'd to that very end.  What a calamity is this, 
and as the Wise-man, if he were alive, would sigh out 
in his own Phrase, what a sore evil is this under the 
Sun!  All which we can refer justly to no other 
Author than the Canon Law and her Adherents, not 
consulting with Charity, the Interpreter and Guide of 
our Faith, but resting in the meer element of the 
Text; doubtless by the policy of the Devil to make that 
gracious Ordinance become unsupportable, that what 
with men not daring to venture upon Wedloc, and 
what with men wearied out of it, all inordinate 
Licence might abound.  It was for many Ages that 
Marriage lay in disgrace with most of the ancient 
Doctors, as a work of the flesh, almost a defilement, 
wholly deny'd to Priests, and the second time 
disswaded to all, as he that reads Tertullian or Jerom 
may see at large.  Afterwards it was thought so 
Sacramental, that no Adultery or Desertion could 
dissolve it; and this is the sense of our Canon Courts 
in England to this day, but in no other reformed 
Church else: yet there remains in them also a 
burden on it as heavy as the other two were 
disgraceful or superstitious, and of as much iniquity, 
crossing a Law not only written by Moses, but 
character'd in us by nature, of more antiquity and 
deeper ground than Marriage it self; which Law is to 
force nothing against the faultless proprieties of 
Nature: yet that this may be colourably done, our 
Saviour's Words touching Divorce, are as it were 
congeal'd into a stony rigor, inconsistent both with 
his Doctrine and his Office; and that which he 
preach'd only to the Conscience, is by Canonical 
Tyranny snatch'd into the compulsive Censure of a 
Judicial Court, where Laws are impos'd even against 
the venerable and secret power of Nature's 
impression, to love, whatever cause be found to 
loath.  Which is a heinous barbarism both against the 
honour of Marriage, the dignity of Man and his Soul, 
the goodness of Christianity, and all the human 
respects of civility.  Notwithstanding that some the 
wisest and gravest among the Christian Emperors, 
who had about them, to consult with, those of the 
Fathers then living; who for their Learning and 
Holiness of Life, are still with us in great renown, 
have made their statutes and edicts concerning this 
Debate far more easy and relenting in many 
necessary cases, wherin the Canon is inflexible.  And 
Hugo Grotius, a man of these times, one of the best 
learned, seems not obscurely to adhere in his 
perswasion of the equity of those Imperial Decrees, 
in his notes upon the Evangelists; much allaying the 
outward roughness of the Text, which hath for the 
most part bin too immoderately expounded; and 
excites the diligence of others to inquire further into 
this question, as concerning many points that have 
not yet been explain'd.  Which ever likely to remain 
intricate and hopeless upon the suppositions 
commonly stuck to, the authority of Paulus Fagius, 
one so learned and so eminent in England  once, if it 
might perswade, would strait acquaint us with a 
solution of these differences, no less prudent than 
compendious.  He in his Comment of the Pentateuch, 
doubted not to maintain that Divorces might be as 
lawfully permitted by the Magistrate to Christians, as 
they were to the Jews.  But because he is but brief, 
and these things of great consequence not to be kept 
obscure, I shall conceive it nothing above my duty, 
either for the difficulty or the censure that may pass 
theron, to communicate such thoughts as I also have 
had, and do offer them now in this general labour of 
Reformation to the candid view both of Church and 
Magistrate, especially because I see it the hope of 
good men, that those irregular and unspiritual 
Courts have spun their utmost date in this Land, and 
some better course must now be constituted.  This 
therfore shall be the task and period of this discourse 
to prove, first, that other reasons of Divorce, besides 
Adultery, were by the Law of Moses, and are yet to 
be allow'd by the Christian Magistrate as a piece of 
Justice, and that the words of Christ are not hereby 
contraried.  Next, that to prohibit absolutely any 
Divorce whatsoever, except those which Moses 
excepted, is against the reason of Law, as in due place 
I shall shew out of Fagius with many additions.  He 
therfore who by adventuring, shall be so happy as 
with success to light the way of such an expedient 
Liberty and Truth as this, shall restore the much-
wrong'd and over-sorrow'd state of Matrimony, not 
only to those merciful and life-giving remedies of 
Moses, but as much as may be, to that serene and 
blissful condition it was in at the beginning, and shall 
deserve of all apprehensive men, (considering the 
troubles and distempers which for want of this 
insight have been so oft in Kingdoms, in States and 
Families) shall deserve to be reckon'd among the 
public Benefactors of civil and human life, above the 
Inventors of Wine and Oil; for this is a far dearer, far 
nobler, and more desirable cherishing to man's life, 
unworthily exposed to Sadness and Mistake, which he 
shall vindicate.  Not that licence, and levity, and 
unconsented breach of Faith should herein be 
countenanc'd, but that some conscionable and tender 
pity might be had of those who have unwarily, in a 
thing they never practis'd before, made themselves 
the Bondmen of a luckless and helpless Matrimony.  
In which Argument, he whose courage can serve him 
to give the first onset, must look for two several 
oppositions; the one from those who having sworn 
themselves to long Custom, and the letter of the Text, 
will not out of the road: the other from those whose 
gross and vulgar Apprehensions conceit but low of 
matrimonial purposes, and in the work of Male and 
Female think they have all.  Nevertheless, it shall be 
here sought by due ways to be made appear, that 
those Words of God in the Institution, promising a 
meet help against Loneliness, and those Words of 
Christ, That his yoke is easy, and his burden light, 
were not spoken in vain; for if the knot of Marriage 
may in no case be dissolv'd but for Adultery, all the 
burdens and services of the Law are not so 
intolerable.  This only is desir'd of them who are 
minded to judge hardly of thus maintaining, that 
they would be still, and hear all out, nor think it 
equal to answer deliberate reason with sudden heat 
and noise; remembring this, that many Truths now 
of reverend esteem and credit, had their birth and 
beginning once from singular and private thoughts, 
while the most of men were otherwise possest, and 
had the fate at first to be generally exploded and 
exclaim'd on by many violent opposers: yet I may 
err perhaps in soothing my self, that this present 
truth reviv'd, will deserve on all hands to be not 
sinisterly receiv'd, in that it undertakes the cure of 
an inveterate disease crept into the best part of 
human Society; and to do this with no smarting 
corrosive, but with a smooth and pleasing lesson, 
which receiv'd, hath the virtue to soften and dispel 
rooted and knotty sorrows, and without 
inchantment, if that be fear'd, or spell us'd, hath 
regard at once both to serious pity and upright 
honesty; that tends to the redeeming and restoring 
of none but such as are the object of compassion, 
having in an ill hour hamper'd themselves, to the 
utter dispatch of all their most beloved Comforts and 
Repose for this life's term.  But if we shall obstinately 
dislike this new overture of unexpected Ease and 
Recovery, what remains but to deplore the 
frowardness of our hopeless condition, which neither 
can indure the estate we are in, nor admit of remedy 
either sharp or sweet.  Sharp we our selves distaste; 
and sweet, under whose hands we are, is scrupl'd 
and suspected as too luscious.  In such a posture 
Christ found the Jews, who were neither won with 
the Austerity of John the Baptist, and thought it too 
much licence to follow freely the charming pipe of 
him who sounded and proclaim'd Liberty and Relief 
to all Distresses: yet Truth in some Age or other will 
find her witness, and shall be justify'd at last by her 
own children.


CHAP.  I.

The Position prov'd by the Law of Moses.  
That Law expounded and asserted to a 
moral and charitable use, first by 
Paulus Fagius, next with other 
Additions.

To remove therfore, if it be possible, this great and 
sad Oppression which thro' the strictness of a literal 
interpreting had invaded and disturb'd the dearest 
and most peaceable estate of houshold Society, to the 
over-burthening, if not the over-whelming of many 
Christians better worth than to be so deserted of the 
Church's considerate care, this Position shall be laid 
down, first proving, then answering what may be 
objected either from Scripture or Light of Reason.
	That indisposition, unfitness, or contrariety of 
mind, arising from a cause in natrue unchangeable, 
hindering, and ever likely to hinder the main 
benefits of conjugal Society, which are Solace and 
Peace, is a greater reason of Divorce than natural 
Frigidity, especially if there be no Children, and that 
there be mutual consent.
	This I gather from the Law in Deut. 24. 1.  When 
a man hath taken a wife and married her, and it 
come to pass that she find no favour in his eyes, 
because he hath found some uncleanness in her, let 
him write her a bill of Divorcement, and give it in her 
hand, and send her out of his house, &c.  This Law, if 
the Words of Christ may be admitted into our belief, 
shall never while the World stands, for him be 
abrogated.  First therfore I here set down what 
learned Fagius hath observ'd on this Law; The Law of 
God, said he, permitted Divorce for the help of 
human weakness.  For every one that of necessity 
separates, cannot live single.  That Christ deny'd 
Divorce to his own, hinders not; for what is that to 
the unregenerate, who hath not attain'd such 
Perfection?  Let not the remedy be despis'd which 
was given to weakness.  And when Christ saith, who 
marries the Divorc'd commits adultery, it is to be 
understood if he had any plot in the Divorce.  The 
rest I reserve until it be disputed, how the 
Magistrate is to do herein.  From hence we may may 
plainly discern a two-fold Consideration of this Law, 
first the End of the Law-giver, and the proper Act of 
the Law, to command or to allow someting just and 
honest, or indifferent.  Secondly, his sufferance from 
some accidental result of evil by this allowance, 
which the Law cannot remedy.  For if this Law have 
no other End or Act but only the allowance of Sin, 
though never to so good Intention, that Law is no 
Law, but Sin muffl'd in the robe of Law, or Law 
disguis'd in the loose garment of Sin.  Both which are 
two foul Hypotheses, to save the Phžnomenon of our 
Saviour's answer to the Parisees about this matter.  
And I trust anon by the help of an infallible guide to 
perfect such Prutenic Tables as shall mend the 
Astronomy of our wide Expositors.
	The cause of Divorce mention'd in the Law, is 
translated some uncleanness, but in the Hebrew it 
sounds nakedness of ought, or any real nakedness: 
which by all the learned Interpreters is referr'd to 
the Mind as well as the Body.  And what greater 
nakedness or unfitness of mind than that which 
hinders ever the solace and peaceful society of the 
married couple; and what hinders that more than 
the unfitness and defectiveness of an unconjugal 
Mind?  The cause therfore of Divorce exprest in the 
Position cannot but agree with that describ'd in the 
best and equallest sense of Moses's Law.  Which being 
a matter of pure Charity, is plainly moral, and more 
now in force than ever, therfore surely lawful.  For if 
under the Law such was God's gracious Indulgence, 
as not to suffer the Ordinance of his goodness and 
favour through any error to be fear'd and 
stigmatiz'd upon his Servants to their misery and 
thraldom; much less will he suffer it now under the 
Covenant of Grace, by abrogating his former grant of 
remedy and relief.  But the first institution will be 
objected to have ordain'd Marriage unseparable.  To 
that a little patience until this first part have amply 
discours'd the grave and pious Reasons of this 
divorcive Law; and then I doubt not but with one 
gentle stroaking to wipe away ten thousand Tears out 
of the life of Man.  Yet thus much I shall now insist 
on, that whatever the Institution were, it could not 
be so enormous, nor so rebellious against both 
Nature and Reason, as to exalt itself above the End 
and Person for whom it was instituted.


CHAP.  II.

The first Reason of this Law grounded on 
the prime Reason of Matrimony.  That 
no Covenant whatsoever obliges against 
the main End both of it self, and of the 
Parties covenanting.

For all Sense and Equity reclaims that any Law or 
Covenant, how solemn or strait soever, either 
between God and Man, or Man and Man, though of 
God's joining, should bind against a prime and 
principal scope of its own institution, and of both or 
either Party covenanting: neither can it be of force 
to ingage a blameless Creature to his own perpetual 
Sorrow, mistaken for his expected solace, without 
suffering Charity to step in and do a confest good 
work of parting those, whom nothing holds together 
but this of God's joining, falsly suppos'd against the 
express end of his own Ordinance.  And what this 
chief end was of creating Women to be join'd with 
Man, his own instituting words declare, and are 
infallible to inform us what is Marriage, and what is 
no Marriage; unless we can think them set there to 
no purpose: It is not good, saith he, that man should 
be alone, I will make him a help-meet for him.   From 
which words so plain, less cannot be concluded, nor is 
by any learned Interpreter, than that in God's 
intention a meet and happy Conversation is the 
chiefest and the noblest end of Marriage: for we find 
here no Expression so necessarily implying carnal 
Knowledge, as this prevention of Loneliness to the 
mind and spirit of Man.  To this, Fagius, Calvin, 
Pareus, Rivetus, as willingly and largely assent as 
can be wisht.  And indeed it is a greater blessing 
from God, more worthy so excellent a Creature as 
Man is, and a higher end to honour and sanctify the 
league of Marriage, whenas the solace and 
satisfaction of the Mind is regarded and provided for 
before the sensitive pleasing of the Body.  And with 
all generous persons married thus it is, that where 
the Mind and Person pleases aptly, there some 
unaccomplishment of the Body's delight may be 
better born with, than when the Mind hangs off in an 
unclosing disporportion, though the Body be as it 
ought; for there all corporal delight will soon become 
unsavoury and contemptible.  And the solitariness of 
Man, which God had namely and principally order'd 
to prevent by Marriage, hath no remedy, but lies 
under a worse condition than the loneliest single life; 
for in single life the absence and remoteness of a 
Helper might inure him to expect his own comforts 
out of himself, or to seek with hope: but here the 
continual sight of his deluded thoughts without cure, 
must needs be to him, if especially his complexion 
incline him to Melancholy, a daily trouble and pain of 
loss, in some degree like that which Reprobates feel.  
Lest therfore so noble a creature as Man should be 
shut up incurably under a worse evil by an easy 
mistake in that Ordinance which God gave him to 
remedy a less evil, reaping to himself Sorrow while 
he went to rid away Solitariness, it cannot avoid to 
be concluded, that if the Woman be naturally so of 
disposition, as will not help to remove, but help to 
increase that same God-forbidden loneliness, which 
will in time draw on with it a general discomfort and 
dejection of mind, not beseeming either Christian 
profession, or Moral conversation, unprofitable and 
dangerous to the Commonwealth, when the houshold 
estate, out of which must flourish forth the vigor and 
spirit of all public enterprizes, is so ill contented and 
procur'd at home, and cannot be supported: such a 
Marriage can be no Marriage, whereto the most 
honest End  is wanting; and the aggrieved person 
shall do more manly, to be extraordinary and 
singular in claiming the due right whereof he is 
frustrated, than to piece up his lost contentment by 
visiting the Stews, or stepping to his neighbour's 
Bed; which is the common shift in this misfortune: or 
else by suffering his useful life to waste away, and be 
lost under a secret Affliction of an unconscionable 
size to human strength.  Against all which Evils, the 
Mercy of this Mosaic Law was graciously exhibited.


CHAP.  III.
The Ignorance and Iniquity of Canon Law, 
providing for the right of the Body in 
Marriage, but nothing for the wrongs 
and grievances of the Mind.  An 
Objection, That the Mind should be 
better lookt to before Contract, 
answered.

How vain therfore is it, and how preposterous in the 
Canon Law, to have made such careful provision 
against the impediment of carnal performance, and 
to have had no care about the unconversing inability 
of Mind, so defective to the purest and most sacred 
end of Matrimony; and that the Vessel of voluptuous 
enjoyment must be made good to him that has taken 
it upon trust, without any caution; whenas the Mind, 
from whence must flow the acts of Peace and Love, a 
far more precious mixture than the quintessence of 
an excrement, though it be found never so deficient 
and unable to perform the best duty of Marriage in a 
chearful and agreeable Conversation, shall be 
thought good enough, however flat and 
melancholious it be, and must serve, though to the 
eternal disturbance and languishing of him that 
complains?  Yet Wisdom and Charity weighing God's 
own Institution, would think that the pining of a sad 
Spirit wedded to Loneliness, should deserve to be 
freed, as well as the Impatience of a sensual Desire so 
providently reliev'd.  'Tis read to us in the Liturgy, 
that we must not marry to satisfy the fleshly 
appetite, like brute beasts, that have no 
understanding: but the Canon so runs, as if it dreamt 
of no other matter than such an appetite to be 
satisfy'd; for if it happen that Nature hath stopt or 
extinguisht the veins of Sensuality, that Marriage is 
annull'd.  But though all the Faculties of the 
understanding and conversing part after trial appear 
to be so ill and so aversely met through Nature's 
unalterable working, as that neither Peace, nor any 
sociable Contentment can follow, 'tis as nothing, the 
Contract shall stand as firm as ever, betide what will.  
What is this but secretly to instruct us, that however 
many grave Reasons are pretended to the married 
life, yet that nothing indeed is thought worth regard 
therin, but the prescrib'd satisfaction of an irrational 
Heat?  Which cannot be but ignominious to the state 
of Marriage, dishonourable to the undervalu'd Soul 
of Man, and even to Christian Doctrine it self: while it 
seems more mov'd at the disappointing of an 
impetuous Nerve, than at the ingenuous grievance of 
a Mind unreasonably yoakt; and to place more of 
Marriage in the Channel of Concupiscence, than in 
the pure influence of Peace and Love, wherof the 
Soul's lawful Contentment is the one only fountain.
	But some are ready to object, That the 
Disposition ought seriously to be considered before.  
But let them know again, that for all the wariness can 
be us'd, it may yet befal a discreet man to be 
mistaken in his Choice, and we have plenty of 
Examples.  The soberest and best-govern'd men are 
least practis'd in these Affairs; and who knows not 
that the bashful muteness of a Virgin may oft-times 
hide all the unliveliness and natural sloth which is 
really unfit for Conversation; nor is there that 
freedom of access granted or presum'd, as may 
suffice to a perfect discerning till too late: and where 
any Indisposition is suspected, what more usual than 
the perswasion of Friends, that Acquaintance as it 
increases, will amend all?  And lastly, it is not 
strange though many who have spent their Youth 
chastely, are in some things not so quick-sighted, 
while they haste so eagerly to light the nuptial 
Torch; nor is it therfore that for a modest Error a 
man should forfeit so great a happiness, and no 
charitable means to release him: Since they who 
have liv'd most loosely by reason of their bold 
accustoming, prove most successful in their Matches, 
because their wild Affections unsettling at will, have 
been as so many Divorces to teach them experience.  
Whenas the sober Man honouring the appearance of 
Modesty, and hoping well of every social virtue 
under that vail, may easily chance to meet, if not 
with a Body impenetrable, yet often with a Mind to 
all other due Conversation inaccessible, and to all the 
more estimable and superiour purposes of 
Matrimony useless and almost liveless: and what a 
solace, what a fit help such a Consort would be 
through the whole life of a Man, is less pain to 
conjecture than to have experience.


CHAP.  IV.

The second Reason of this Law, because 
without it, Marriage as it happens oft 
is not a remedy of that which it 
promises, as any rational creature 
would expect.  That Marriage, if we 
pattern from the beginning, as our 
Saviour bids, was not properly the 
remedy of Lust, but the fulfilling of 
conjugal Love and Helpfulness.

And that we may futher see what a violent cruel 
thing it is to force the continuing of those together, 
whom God and Nature in the gentlest end of Marriage 
never join'd, divers evils and extremities that follow 
upon such a compulsion, shall here be set in view.  Of 
evils, the first and greatest is, that hereby a most 
absurd and rash imputation is fixt upon God and his 
Laws, of conniving and dispensing with open and 
common Adultery among his chosen people; a thing 
which the rankest politician would think it shame and 
disworship that his Laws should countenance: how 
and in what manner that comes to pass, I shall 
reserve till the course of method brings on the 
unfolding of many Scriptures.  Next, the Law and 
Gospel are hereby made liable to more than one 
contradiction, which I refer also thither.  Lastly, the 
supreme dictate of Charity is hereby many ways 
neglected and violated; which I shall forthwith 
address to prove.  First, we know St. Paul saith, It is 
better to marry than to burn.  Marriage therfore was 
given as a remedy of that trouble; but what might 
this burning mean?  Certainly not the meer motion 
of carnal lust, not the meer goad of a sensitive 
desire, God does not principally take care for such 
Cattle.  What is it then but that desire which God put 
into Adam in Paradise before he knew the sin of 
Incontinence; that desire which God saw it was not 
good that Man should be left alone to burn in, the 
desire and longing to put off an unkindly solitariness 
by uniting another body, but not without a fit soul, 
to his in the chearful society of Wedloc?  Which if it 
were so needful before the fall, when Man was much 
more perfect in himself, how much more is it needful 
now against all the sorrows and casualties of this life, 
to have an intimate and speaking help, a ready and 
reviving associate in marriage? wherof who misses, 
by chancing on a mute and spiritless mate, remains 
more alone than before, and in a burning less to be 
contain'd than that which is fleshly; and more to be 
consider'd, as being more deeply rooted even in the 
faultless innocence of nature.  As for that other 
burning, which is but as it were the venom of a lusty 
and over-abounding concoction, strict life and 
labour, with the abatement of a full diet, may keep 
that low and obedient enough: but this pure and 
more inbred desire of joining to it self in conjugal 
fellowship a fit conversing soul (which desire is 
properly called love) is stronger than death, as the 
spouse of Christ thought; many waters cannot 
quench it, neither can the floods drown it.  This is 
that rational burning that Marriage is to remedy, not 
to be allay'd with fasting, nor with any penance to be 
subdu'd; which how can he asswage who by mis-hap 
hath met the most unmeet and unsuitable mind?  
Who hath the power to struggle with an intelligible 
flame, not in Paradise to be resisted, become now 
more ardent by being fail'd of what in reason it lookt 
for; and even then most unquencht, when the 
importunity of a provender-burning is well enough 
appeas'd; and yet the soul hath obtained nothing of 
what it justly desires.  Certainly such a one 
forbidden to divorce, is in effect forbidden to marry, 
and compell'd to greater difficulties than in a single 
life: for if there be not a more humane burning 
which Marriage must satisfy, or else may be 
dissolv'd, than that of copulation, Marriage cannot be 
honourable for the meet reducing and terminating 
lust between two: seeing many beasts in voluntary 
and chosen couples, live together as unadulterously, 
and are as truly married in that respect.  But all 
ingenuous Men will see that the dignity and blessing 
of Marriage is plac'd rather in the mutual enjoyment 
of that which the wanting soul needfully seeks, than 
of that which the plenteous body would joyfully give 
away.  Hence it is that Plato in his Festival discourse 
brings in Socrates relating what he feign'd to have 
learnt from the Prophetess Diotima, how Love was 
the son of Penury, begot of Plenty in the Garden of 
Jupiter.  Which divinely sorts with that which in 
effect Moses tells us, that Love was the son of 
Loneliness, begot in Paradise by that sociable and 
helpful aptitude which God implanted between Man 
and Woman toward each other.  The same also is that 
burning mentioned by St. Paul, wherof Marriage 
ought to be the remedy; the Flesh hath other mutual 
and easy curbs which are in the power of any 
temperate Man.  When therfore this original and 
sinless Penury or Loneliness of the soul cannot lay it 
self down by the side of such a meet and acceptable 
union as God ordain'd in Marriage, at least in some 
proportion, it cannot conceive and bring forth Love, 
but remains utterly unmarried under a formal 
Wedloc, and still burns in the proper meaning of St. 
Paul.  Then enters Hate, not that Hate that sins, but 
that which only is natural dissatisfaction, and the 
turning aside from a mistaken object; if that mistake 
have done injury, it fails not to dismiss with 
recompence; for to retain still, and not be able to 
love, is to heap up more injury.  Thence this wise and 
pious Law of Dismission now defended took beginning: 
He therfore who lacking of his due in the most native 
and humane end of Marriage, thinks it better to part 
than to live sadly and injuriously to that cheerful 
Covenant (for not to be belov'd, and yet retain'd, is 
the greatest injury to a gentle spirit) he I say, who 
therfore seeks to part, is one who highly honours the 
married life, and would not stain it: and the reasons 
which now move him to divorce, are  equal to the 
best of those that could first warrant him to marry; 
for, as was plainly shewn, both the hate which now 
diverts him and the loneliness which leads him still 
powerfully to seek a fit help, hath not the least grain 
of a sin in it, if he be worthy to understand himself.


CHAP.  V.

The third Reason of this Law, because 
without it, he who has happen'd where 
he find nothing but remediless 
Offences and Discontents, is in more 
and greater Temptations than ever 
before.

Thirdly, Yet it is next to be fear'd, if he must be still 
bound without reason by a deaf rigor, that when he 
perceives the just expectance of his mind defeated, 
he will begin even against Law to cast about where he 
may find his satisfaction more compleat, unless he be 
a thing heroically virtuous, and that are not the 
common lump of Men, for whom chiefly the Laws 
ought to be made; though not to their sins, yet to 
their unsinning weaknesses, it being above their 
strength to endure the lonely estate, which while 
they shunn'd, they are fallen into.  And yet there 
follows upon this a worse temptation; for if he be 
such as hath spent his youth unblameably, and laid 
up his chiefest earthly comforts in the enjoyments of 
a contented Marriage, nor did neglect that 
furtherance which was to be obtain'd therein by 
constant prayers, when he shall find himself bound 
fast to an uncomplying discord of nature, or, as it oft 
happens, to an Image of Earth and Fleam, with whom 
he lookt to be the Copartner of a sweet and gladsom 
society, and sees withal that his bondage is now 
inevitable; though he be almost the strongest 
Christian, he will be ready to despair in virtue, and 
mutiny against Divine Providence; and this doubtless 
is the reason of those lapses and that melancholly 
despair which we see in many wedded persons, tho' 
they understand it not, or pretend other causes, 
because they know no remedy, and is of extreme 
danger: therfore when human frailty surcharg'd, is 
at such a loss, charity ought to venture much, and 
use bold Physick, lest an over-tost faith indanger to 
shipwrack.


CHAP.  VI.

The fourth Reason of this Law, that God 
regards Love and Peace in the Family, 
more than a compulsive performance of 
Marriage, which is more broke by a 
grievous Continuance, than by a needful 
Divorce.

Fourthly, marriage is a Covenant, the very being 
wherof consists not in a forc'd cohabitation, and 
counterfeit performances of duties, but in unfeigned 
love and peace: And of Matrimonial love, no doubt 
but that was chiefly meant, which by the ancient 
Sages was thus parabl'd; That Love, if he be not twin-
born, yet hath a brother wondrous like him, call'd 
Anteros; whom while he seeks all about, his chance is 
to meet with many false and feigning desires that 
wander singly up and down in his likeness: By them 
in their borrow'd garb, Love though not wholly blind, 
as Poets wrong him, yet having but one eye, as being 
born an Archer aiming, and that eye not the quickest 
in this dark Region here below, which is not Love's 
proper Sphere, partly out of the simplicity and 
credulity which is native to him, often deceiv'd, 
imbraces and consorts him with these obvious and 
suborned Striplings, as if they were his Mother's own 
Sons; for so he thinks them, while they subtilly keep 
themselves most on his blind side.  But after a while, 
as his manner is, when soaring up into the high 
Tower of his Apogžum, above the shadow of the 
Earth, he darts out the direct rays of his then most 
piercing eye-sight upon the impostures, and trim 
disguizes that were us'd with him, and discerns that 
this is not his genuine brother, as he imagin'd.  He 
has no longer the power to hold fellowship with such 
a personated Mate; for strait his arrows lose their 
golden heads, and shed their purple feathers, his 
silken Braids untwine, and slip their knots, and that 
original and fiery virtue given him by Fate all on a 
sudden goes out, and leaves him undeified and 
despoil'd of all his force, till finding Anteros at last, 
he kindles and repairs the almost faded ammunition 
of his Deity by the reflection of a coequal and 
homogeneal fire.  Thus mine Author sung it to me; 
and by the leave of those who would be counted the 
only grave ones, this is no meer amatorious novel 
(though to be wise and skilful in these matters, Men 
heretofore of greatest name in virtue, have 
esteemed it one of the highest Arcs that human 
Contemplation circling upwards, can make from the 
globy Sea wheron he stands:) but this is a deep and 
serious verity, shewing us that Love in Marriage 
cannot live nor subsist unless it be mutual; and 
where Love cannot be, there can be left of Wedloc 
nothing but the empty husk of an outside 
Matrimony, as undelightful and unpleasing to God, as 
any other kind of hypocrisy.  So far is his Command 
from tying Men to the observance of Duties which 
there is no help for, but they must be dissembled.  If 
Solomon's advice be not over-frolic, Live joyfully, 
saith he, with the Wife whom thou lovest, all thy 
days, for that is thy portion.  How then, where we 
find it impossible to rejoice or to love, can we obey 
this Precept?  How miserably do we defraud our 
selves of that confortable portion wich God gives us, 
by striving vainly to glue an error together, which 
God and Nature will not join, adding but more 
vexation and violence to that blissful society by our 
importunate superstition, that will not hearken to St. 
Paul, 1 Cor. 7. who speaking of Marriage and Divorce, 
determines plain enough in general, that God therin 
hath call'd us to peace, and not to bondage.  Yea, God 
himself commands in his Law more than once, and by 
his Prophet Malachy, as Calvin and the best 
Translations read, that he who hates, let him divorce, 
that is, he who cannot love.  Hence is it that the 
Rabbins, and Maimonides  famous among the rest in a 
Book of his set forth by Buxtorsius, tells us, that 
Divorce was permitted by Moses to preserve peace in 
Marriage, and quiet in the Family.  Surely the Jews 
had their saving Peace about them as well as we, yet 
care was taken that this wholesome provision for 
houshold Peace should also be allow'd them; and 
must this be deny'd to Christians?  O perverseness! 
that the Law should be made more provident of 
peace-making than the Gospel! that the Gospel 
should be put to beg a most necessary help of Mercy 
from the Law, but must not have it; and that to grind 
in the Mill of an undelighted and servile copulation, 
must be the only forc'd work of a Christian Marriage 
oft-times with such a yoke-fellow, from whom both 
Love and Peace, both Nature and Religion mourns to 
be separated.  I cannot therfore be so diffident, as 
not securely to conclude, that he who can receive 
nothing of the most important helps in Marriage, 
being thereby disinabled to return that duty which 
is his, with a clear and hearty countenance; and thus 
continues to grieve whom he would not, and is no 
less griev'd, that Man ought even for Love's sake and 
Peace to move Divorce upon good and liberal 
conditions to the divorc'd.  And it is a less breach of 
Wedloc to part with wise and quiet consent betimes, 
than still to foil and prophane that mystery of joy 
and union with a polluting sadness and perpetual 
distemper; for it is not the outward continuing of 
Marriage that keeps whole that Covenant, but 
whatsoever does most according to Peace and Love, 
whether in Marriage or in Divorce, he it is that 
breaks Marriage least; it being so often written, that 
Love only is the fulfilling of every Commandment.


CHAP.  VII.

The fifth Reason, that nothing more 
hinders and disturbs the whole Life of 
a Christian, than a Matrimony found to 
be uncurably unfit, and doth the same 
in effect that an Idolatrous Match.

Fifthly, As those Priests of old were not to be long in 
sorrow, or if they were, they could not rightly 
execute their function; so every true Christian in a 
higher order of Priesthood is a person dedicate to joy 
and peace, offering himself a lively sacrifice of praise 
and thanksgiving, and there is no Christian duty that 
is not to be season'd and set off with chearishness; 
which in a thousand outward and intermitting 
crosses may yet be done well, as in this vale of tears: 
but in such a bosom-affliction as this, crushing the 
very foundation of his inmost nature, when he shall 
be forc'd to love against a possibility, and to use a 
dissimulation against his soul in the perpetual and 
ceaseless duties of a Husband, doubtless his whole 
duty of serving God must needs be blurr'd and 
tainted with a sad unpreparedness and dejection of 
spirit, wherein God has no delight.  Who sees not 
therfore how much more Christianity it would be to 
break by divorce that which is more broken by 
undue and forcible keeping, rather than to cover the 
Altar of the Lord with continual tears, so that he 
regardeth not the offering any more; rather than 
that the whole Worship of a Christian man's life 
should languish and fade away beneath the weight of 
an immeasurable grief and discouragement?  And 
because some think the Children of a second 
Matrimony succeeding a Divorce, would not be a holy 
Seed, it hinder'd not the Jews from being so; and why 
should we not think them more holy than the off-
spring of a former ill-twisted Wedloc, begotten only 
out of a bestial necessity, without any true love or 
contentment, or joy to their Parents?  So that in 
some sense we may call them the Children of wrath 
and anguish, which will as little conduce to their 
sanctifying, as if they had been Bastards: for nothing 
more than disturbance of mind suspends us from 
approaching to God, such a disturbance especially, as 
both assaults our faith and trust in God's providence, 
and ends, if there be not a miracle of virtue on either 
side, not only in bitterness and wrath, the Canker of 
Devotion, but in a desperate and vicious 
carelessness, when he sees himself without fault of 
his, train'd by a deceitful bait into a snare of misery, 
betray'd by an alluring Ordinance, and then made 
the thrall of heaviness and discomfort by an 
undivorcing Law of God, as he erroneously thinks, 
but of Man's iniquity, as the truth is: for that God 
prefers the free and chearful Worship of a Christian, 
before the grievous and exacted observance of an 
unhappy Marriage, besides that the general maxims 
of Religion assure us, will be more manifest by 
drawing a parallel Argument from the ground of 
divorcing an Idolatress, which was, lest he should 
alienate his heart from the true worship of God: and 
what difference is there whether she pervert him to 
superstition by her inticing Sorcery, or disinable him 
in the whole service of God through the disturbance 
of her unhelpful and unfit society, and so drive him 
at last, through murmuring and despair, to thoughts 
of Atheism?  Neither doth it lessen the cause of 
separating, in that the one willingly allures him from 
the Faith, the other perhaps unwillingly drives him; 
for in the account of God it comes all to one, that the 
Wife looses him a servant; and therefore by all the 
united force of the Decalogue she ought to be 
disbanded, unless we must set Marriage above God 
and Charity, which is the Doctrine of Devils, no less 
than forbidding to marry.


CHAP.  VIII.

That an Idolatrous Heretic ought to be 
divorc'd after a convenient space given 
to hope of Conversion.  That place of  I 
Cor. 7. restor'd from a two-fold 
erroneous Exposition; and that the 
common Expositors flatly contradict 
the Moral Law.

And here by the way, to illustrate the whole 
question of Divorce, ere this Treatise end, I shall not 
be loth to spend a few lines in hope to give a full 
resolve of that which is yet so much controverted, 
whether an Idolatrous Heretic ought be divorc'd.  To 
the resolving wherof we must first know, that the 
Jews were commanded to divorce an unbelieving 
Gentile for two causes: First, because all other 
Nations, especially the Canaanites, were to them 
unclean.  Secondly, to avoid seducement.  That other 
Nations were to the Jews impure, even to the 
separating of Marriage, will appear out of Exod. 34. 
16. Deut. 7. 3, 6. compar'd with Ezra 9. 2. also Chap. 
10. 10, 11. Nehem. 13. 30.  This was the ground of 
that doubt rais'd among the Corinthians by some of 
the Circumcision; Whether an Unbeliever were not 
still to be counted an unclean thing, so as that they 
ought to divorce from such a person.  This doubt of 
theirs S. Paul removes by an Evangelical reason, 
having respect to that Vision of S. Peter, wherin the 
distinction of clean and unclean being abolisht, all 
living Creatures were sanctified to a pure and 
Christian use, and mankind especially, now invited 
by a general call to the Covenant of Grace.  Therfore 
saith S. Paul, The unbelieving Wife is sanctified by 
the Husband; that is, made pure and lawful to his 
use, so that he need not put her away for fear lest 
her unbelief should defile him; but that if he found 
her love still towards him, he might rather hope to 
win her.  The second reason of that Divorce was to 
avoid seducement, as is proved by comparing those 
two places of the Law, to that which Ezra and 
Nehemiah did by Divine Warrant in compelling the 
Jews to forgo their Wives.  And this reason is moral 
and perpetual in the rule of Christian Faith without 
evasion; therfore saith the Apostle, 2 Cor. 6.  Mis-
yoke not together with Infidels, which is interpreted 
of Marriage in the first place.  And although the 
former legal pollution be now done off, yet there is a 
spiritual contagion in Idolatry as much to be shun'd; 
and though seducement were not to be fear'd, yet 
where there is no hope of converting, there always 
ought to be a certain religious aversation and 
abhorring, which can no way sort with Marriage: 
Therfore saith S. Paul, What fellowship hath 
righteousness with unrighteousness? what 
communion hath light with darkness? what concord 
hath Christ with Belial? what part hath he that 
believeth with an Infidel?  And the next verse but 
one he moralizes, and makes us liable to that 
command of Isaiah; Wherfore come out from among 
them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord; touch not 
the unclean thing, and I will receive ye.  And this 
Command thus gospelliz'd to us, hath the same force 
with that wheron Ezra grounded the pious necessity 
of divorcing.  Neither had he other commission for 
what he did, than such a general command in Deut. 
as this, nay not so direct; for he is bid there not to 
marry, but not bid to divorce, and yet we see with 
what a zeal and confidence he was the Author of a 
general Divorce between the faithful and unfaithful 
seed.  The Gospel is more plainly on his side, 
according to three of the Evangelists, than the words 
of the Law; for where the case of Divorce is handled 
with such a severity, as was fittest to aggravate the 
fault of unbounded licence, yet still in the same 
Chapter, when it comes into question afterwards, 
whether any civil respect, or natural relation which 
is dearest, may be our plea to divide, or hinder or 
but delay our duty to Religion, we hear it 
determin'd, that Father, and Mother, and Wife also, is 
not only to be hated, but forsaken, if we mean to put 
off by saying we must forsake them only by not 
consenting or not complying with them, for that 
were to be done, and roundly too, though being of 
the same faith, they should but seek out of a fleshly 
tenderness to weaken our Christian fortitude with 
worldly perswasions, or but to unsettle our 
constancy with timorous and softning suggestions; as 
we may read with what a vehemence Job, the 
patientest of Men, rejected the desperate counsels of 
his Wife; and Moses, the meekest, being throughly 
offended with the prophane speeches of Zippora, sent 
her back to her father.  But if they shall perpetually 
at our elbow seduce us from the true Worship of God, 
or defile and daily scandalize our Conscience by their 
hopeless continuance in misbelief, then even in the 
due progress of Reason, and that ever-equal 
proportion which Justice proceeds by, it cannot be 
imagin'd that this cited place commands less than a 
total and final separation from such an Adherent, at 
least that no force should be used to keep them 
together; while we remember that God commanded 
Abraham to send away his irreligious Wife and her 
Son for the offences which they gave in a pious 
family.  And it may be guest that David for the like 
cause dispos'd of Michal in such a sort, as little 
differ'd from a dismission.  Therfore against 
reiterated scandals and seducements, which  never 
cease, much more can no other remedy or 
retirement be found but absolute departure.  For 
what kind of matrimony can that remain to be, what 
one duty between such can be perform'd as it should 
be from the heart, when their thoughts and spirits 
fly asunder as far as Heaven from Hell, especially if 
the time that hope should send forth her expected 
blossoms be past in vain?  It will easily be true, that 
a Father or a Brother may be hated zealously, and 
lov'd civilly or naturally; for those duties may be 
perfomed at a distance, and do admit of any long 
absence: but how the peace and perpetual 
cohabitation of Marriage can be kept, how that 
benevolent and intimate communion of Body can be 
held with one that must be hated with a most 
operative hatred, must be forsaken andyet 
continually dwelt with and accompanied, he who can 
distinguish, hath the gift of an affection very oddly 
divided and contriv'd; while others both just and 
wise, and Solomon among the rest, if they may not 
hate and forsake as Moses enjoins, and the Gospel 
imports, will find it impossible not to love otherwise 
than will sort with the love of God, whose jealousy 
brooks no corrival.  And whether is more likely, that 
Christ bidding to forsake Wife for Religion, meant it 
by divorce as Moses meant it, whose Law grounded 
on moral Reason, was both his office and his essence 
to maintain; or that he should bring a new Morality 
into Religion, not only new, but contrary to an 
unchangeable Command, and dangerously derogating 
from our love and worship of God?  As if when Moses 
had bid Divorce absolutely, and Christ had said, hate 
and forsake, and his Apostle had said, no 
communication with Christ and Belial; yet that Christ 
after all this could be understood to say, Divorce not, 
no not for Religion, seduce, or seduce not.  What 
mighty and invisible Remora is this in Matrimony 
able to demur and to contemn all the divorcive 
engines in Heaven or Earth!  Both which may now 
pass away, if this be true, for more than many jots 
or tittles, a whole moral Law is abolisht.  But if we 
dare believe it is not, than in the method of Religion, 
and to save the honour and dignity of our Faith, we 
are to retreat and gather up our selves from the 
observance of an inferior and civil Ordinance, to the 
strict maintaining of a general and religious 
Command, which is written, Thou shalt make no 
Covenant with them, Deut. 7. 2, 3. and that Covenant 
which cannot be lawfully made, we have directions 
and examples lawfully to dissolve.  Also 2 Chron. 19. 
2. Shouldst thou love them that hate the Lord?  No 
doubtless: for there is a certain scale of Duties, there 
is a certain Hierarchy of upper and lower commands, 
which for want of studying in right order, all the 
world is in confusion.
	Upon these principles I answer, that a right 
believer ought to divorce an idolatrous Heretic, 
unless upon better hopes: however, that it is in the 
Believer's choice to divorce or not.
	The former part will be manifest thus; first, that 
an apostate Idolater, whether Husband or Wife 
seducing, was to die by the decree of God, Deut. 13. 6, 
9. that Marriage therfore God himself disjoins: for 
others born Idolaters, the moral reason of their 
dangerous keeping, and the incommunicable 
antagony that is between Christ and Belial, will be 
sufficient to enforce the Commandment of those two 
inspir'd Reformers Ezra and Nehemiah, to put an 
Idolater away as well under the Gospel.
	The latter part, that altho' there be no 
seducement fear'd, yet if there be no hope given, the 
Divorce is lawful, will appear by this, that idolatrous 
Marriage is still hateful to God, therfore still it may 
be divorc'd by the pattern of that Warrant that Ezra 
had, and by the same everlasting Reason: Neither 
can any man give an account wherfore, if those 
whom God joins no man can separate, it should not 
follow, that whom he joins not, but hates to join, 
those men ought to separate.  But saith the Lawyer, 
That which ought not to have been done, once done 
avails.  I answer, this is but a Crotchet of the Law, 
but that brought against it is plain Scripture.  As for 
what Christ spake concerning divorce, 'tis confest by 
all knowing men, he meant only between them of the 
same faith.  But what shall we say then to S. Paul, 
who seems to bid us not divorce an Infidel willing to 
stay?  We may safely say thus, that wrong 
Collections have been hitherto made out of those 
words by modern Divines.  His drift, as was heard 
before, is plain; not to command our stay in marriage 
with an Infidel that had been a flat renouncing of the 
religious and moral law; but to inform the 
Corinthians that the Body of an unbeliever was not 
defiling, if his desire to live in Christian Wedloc 
shew'd any likelihood that this heart was opening to 
the faith; and therfore advises to forbear departure 
so long till nothing have been neglected to set 
forward a conversion: this I say he advises, and that 
with certain cautions not commands, if we can take 
up so much credit for him, as to get him believ'd 
upon his own word: for what is this else but his 
counsel in a thing indifferent, to the rest speak I, not 
the Lord?  for tho' it be true that the Lord never 
spake it, yet from S. Paul's mouth we should have 
took it as a command, had not himself forewarn'd us, 
and disclaim'd, which notwithstanding if we shall still 
avouch to be a command, he palpably denying, it, 
this is not to expound S. Paul, but to outface him.  
Neither doth it follow, that the Apostle may interpose 
his judgment in a case of Christian liberty, without 
the guilt of adding to God's word.  How do we know 
Marriage or single Life to be of choice, but by such 
like words as these, I speak this by permission, not of 
commandment; I have no command of the Lord, yet I 
give my judgment?  Why shall not the like words 
have leave to signify a freedom in this our present 
question, though Beza deny?  Neither is the 
Scripture hereby less inspir'd, because S. Paul 
confesses to have written therin what he had not of 
command; for we grant that the Spirit of God led him 
thus to express himself to Christian prudence, in a 
matter which God thought best to leave 
uncommanded.  Beza therfore must be warily read, 
when he taxes S. Austin of Blasphemy, for holding 
that  S. Paul  spake here as of a thing indifferent.  But 
if it must be a command, I shall yet the more evince 
it to be a command that we should herein be left free, 
and that out of the Greek word used in the 12. v. 
which instructs us plainly, there must be a joint 
assent and good liking on both sides; he that will not 
deprave the Text must thus render it; If a brother 
have an unbelieving Wife, and she join in consent to 
dwell with him (which cannot utter less to us than a 
mutual agreement) let him not put her away for the 
meer surmize of Judaical uncleanness: and the 
reason follows, for the body of an Infidel is not 
polluted, neither to benevolence, nor to procreation.  
Moreover, this note of mutual complacency forbids 
all offer of seducement, which to a Person of zeal 
cannot be attempted without great offence: if 
therfore seducement be fear'd, this place hinders not 
Divorce.  Another caution was put in this supposed 
command, of not bringing the believer into bondage 
hereby, which doubtless might prove extreme, if 
Christian liberty and conscience were left to the 
humor of a Pagan staying at pleasure to play with, 
and to vex and wound with a thousand scandals and 
burdens, above strength to bear: If therfore the 
conceived hope of gaining a soul come to nothing, 
then Charity commands that the believer be not 
weared out with endless waiting under many 
grievances sore to his spirit, but that respect be had 
rather to the present suffering of a true Christian, 
than the uncertain winning of an obdur'd Heretic.  
The council we have from S. Paul to hope, cannot 
countermand the moral and evangelic charge we 
have from God to fear seducement, to separate from 
the misbeliever the unclean, the obdurate.  The 
Apostle wisheth us to hope, but does not send us a 
wool-gathering after vain hope; he saith, How 
knowest thou, O Man, whether thou shalt save thy 
Wife? that is, till he try all due means, and set some 
reasonable time to himself, after which he may give 
over wishing an Ethiope, if he will hear the advice of 
the Gospel; Cast not Pearls before Swine, saith Christ 
himself.  Let him be to thee as a Heathen.  Shake the 
dust off thy feet.  If this be not enough, hate and 
forsake, what relation soever.  And this also that 
follows must appertain to the Precept, Let every man 
wherein he is called, therein abide with God, v. 24. 
that is, so walking in his inferior calling Marriage, as 
by some dangerous subjection to that Ordinance, to 
hinder and disturb the higher calling of his 
Christianity.  Last, and never too oft remembred, 
whether this be a Command, or an Advice, we must 
look that it be so understood as not to contradict the 
least point of moral Religion that God hath formerly 
commanded, otherwise what do we but set the moral 
Law and the Gospel at civil War together? and who 
then shall be able to serve these two Masters?


CHAP.  IX.

That Adultery is not the greatest breach 
of Matrimony; that  there may be other 
Violations as great.

Now whether Idolatry or Adultery be the greatest 
violation of Marriage, if any demand, let him thus 
consider, that among Christian Writers touching 
Matrimony, there be three chief ends therof agreed 
on; godly society, next civil, and thirdly, that of the 
marriage-bed.  Of these the first in name to be the 
highest and most excellent, no baptized Man can 
deny, nor that Idolatry smites directly against this 
prime End; nor that such as the violanted End is, 
such is the Violation:but he who affirms Adultery to 
be the highest breach, affirms the Bed to be the 
highest of Marriage, which is in truth a gross and 
boorish Opinion, now common soever; as far from the 
countenance of Scripture, as from the light of all 
clean Philosophy, or civil Nature.  And out of 
question the chearful help that may be in marriage 
toward sanctity of life, is the purest, and so the 
noblest end of that contract: but if the particular of 
each person be consider'd, then of those three ends 
which God appointed, that to him is greatest which is 
most necessary; and Marriage is then most broken to 
him, when he utterly wants the fruition of that 
which he most sought therin, whether it were 
religious, civil or corporal society.  Of which wants to 
do him right by Divorce only for the last and 
meanest, is a perverse injury, and the pretended 
reason of it as frigid as Frigidity itself, which the 
Code and Canon are only sensible of.  Thus much of 
this controversy.  I now return to the former 
argument.  And having shewn that disproportion, 
contrariety or numbness of mind may justly be 
divorc'd, by proving already the prohibition therof 
opposes the express end of God's institution, suffers 
not Marriage to satisfy that intellectual and innocent 
desire which God himself kindled in Man to be the 
bond of Wedloc, but only to remedy a sublunary and 
bestial burning, which frugal Diet, without Marriage, 
would easily chasten.  Next, that it drives many to 
transgress the Conjugal Bed, while the soul wanders 
after that satisfaction which it had hope to find at 
home, but hath mist; or else it sits repining, even to 
Atheism, finding itself hardly dealt with, but 
misdeeming the cause to be in God's Law, which is in 
man's righteous ignorance.  I have shewn also how it 
unties the inward knot of Marriage, which is Peace 
and Love (if that can be unty'd which was never 
knit) while it aims to keep fast the outward formality; 
how it lets perish the Christian Man, to compel 
impossibly the married Man.


CHAP.  X.


The sixth Reason of this Law; that to 
prohibit Divorce sought
for natural cases, is against Nature.

The sixth place declares this prohibition to be as 
respectless of human Nature, as it is of Religion, and 
therfore is not of God.  He teaches, that an unlawful 
Marriage may be lawfully divorc'd: And that those 
who having throughly discern'd each other's 
disposition, which oft-times cannot be till after 
Matrimony, shall then find a powerful reluctance and 
recoil of nature on either side, blasting all the 
content of their mutual society, that such Persons 
are not lawfully married, (to use the Apostle's 
Words) Say I these things as a Man, or saith not the 
Law also the same? for it is written, Deut. 22. Thou 
shalt not sow thy Vineyard with different seeds, lest 
thou defile both.  Thou shalt not plow with an Ox and 
an Ass together; and the like.  I follow the pattern of 
S. Paul's reasoning; Doth God care for Asses and 
Oxen, how ill they yoke together, or is it not said 
altogether for our sakes? for our sakes no doubt this 
is written.  Yea the Apostle himself, in the forecited 2 
Cor. 6. 14. alludes from that place of Deut. to forbid 
him yoking Marriage, as by the Greek word is 
evident; though he instance but in one Example of 
mismatching with an Infidel, yet next to that, what 
can be a fouler incongruity, a greater violence to the 
reverend secret of Nature, than to force a mixture of 
Minds that cannot unite, and to sow the sorrow of 
Man's Nativity with seed of two incoherent and 
incombining dispositions: which act being kindly and 
voluntary, as it ought, the Apostle in the Language 
he wrote called Eunoia, and the Latins, Benevolence, 
intimating the original therof to be in the 
understanding, and the will; if not, surely there is 
nothing which might more properly be called a 
malevolence rather, and is the most injurious and 
unnatural Tribute that can be extorted from a 
Person endu'd with reason, to be made pay out the 
best substance of his body, and of his soul too, as 
some think, when either for just and powerful causes 
he cannot like, or from unequal causes finds not 
recompence.  And that there is a hidden efficacy of 
love and hatred in Man as well as in other kinds, not 
moral, but natural, which though not always in the 
choice, yet in the success of Marriage will ever be 
most predominant, besides daily experience, the 
Author of Ecclesiasticus, whose wisdom hath set him 
next the Bible, acknowledges, 13. 16. A Man, saith he, 
will cleave to his like.  But what might be the cause, 
whether each one's allotted Genius or proper Star, or 
whether the supernal influence of Schemes and 
angular Aspects, or this elemental Crasis here below, 
whether all these jointly or singly meeting friendly, 
or unfriendly in either party, I dare not, with the 
men I am like to clash, appear so much a Philosopher 
as to conjecture.  The antient Proverb in Homer less 
abstruse entitles this work of leading each like 
person to his like, peculiarly to God himself: which is 
plain enough also by his naming of a meet or like help 
in the first Espousal instituted; and that every 
Woman is meet for every Man, none so absurd as to 
affirm.  Seeing then there is a two-fold Seminary, or 
Stock in nature, from whence are deriv'd the issues 
of love and hatred, distinctly flowing through the 
whole mass of created things, and that God's doing 
ever is to bring the due likenesses and harmonies of 
his works together, except when out of two 
contraries met to their own destruction, he moulds a 
third existence; and that it is error, or some evil 
Angel which either blindly or maliciously hath drawn 
together, in two persons ill imbarkt in Wedloc the 
sleeping discords and enmities of Nature lull'd on 
purpose with some false bait, that they may wake to 
agony and strife, later than prevention could have 
wisht, if from the bent of just and honest intentions 
beginning what was begun and so continuing, all that 
is equal, all that is fair and possible hath been try'd, 
and no accommodation likely to succeed; what folly is 
it still to stand combating and battering against 
invincible causes and affects, with evil upon evil, till 
either the best of our days be lingered out, or ended 
with some speeding sorrow.  The wise Ecclesiasticus 
advises rather, 37. 27. My son prove thy soul in thy 
life, see what is evil for it, and give not that unto it.  
Reason he had to say so; for if the noisomness or 
disfigurement of body can soon destroy the 
sympathy of Mind to Wedloc duties, much more will 
the annoyance and trouble of mind infuse itself into 
all the faculties and acts of the body, to render them 
invalid, unkindly, and even unholy against the 
fundamental Law-book of Nature, which Moses never 
thwarts, but reverences: therfore he commands us 
to force nothing against sympathy or natural order,  
no not upon the most abject Creatures; to shew that 
such an indignity cannot be offered to Man without 
any impious Crime.  And certainly those divine 
meditating words of finding out a meet and like help 
to Man, have in them a consideration of more than 
the indefinite likeness of Womanhood; nor are they 
to be made waste-paper on, for the dulness of 
Canon-Divinity, no, nor those other Allegoric 
Precepts of Beneficence fetch out of the Closet of 
Nature, to teach us goodness and compassion in not 
compelling together unmatchable Societies; or if they 
meet through mischance, by all consequence to 
disjoin them, as God and Nature signifies, and lectues 
to us not only by those recited Decrees, but even by 
the first and last of all his visible works; when by his 
divorcing Command the World first rose out of Chaos, 
nor can be renewed again out of confusion, but by 
the separating of unmeet Consorts.


CHAP.  XI.

The seventh Reason, That sometimes 
continuance in Marriage may be 
evidently the shortning or endangering 
of Life to either party; both Law and 
Divinity concluding, that Life is to be 
preferr'd before Marriage, the intended 
solace of Life.

Seventhly, The Canon-Law and Divines consent, that 
if either party be found contriving against another's 
life, they may be sever'd by Divorce: for a sin gainst 
the life of Marriage, is greater than a sin against the 
Bed; the one destroys, the other defiles.  The same 
may be said touching those persons who being of a 
pensive nature and course of life, have sum'd up all 
their solace in that free and lightsome conversation 
which God and Man intends in Marriage; wherof when 
they see themselves depriv'd by meeting an 
unsociable consort, they oft-times resent one 
another's mistake so deeply, that long it is not ere 
grief end one of them.  When therfore this danger is 
foreseen, that the Life is in peril by living together, 
what matter is it whether helpless grief or wilful 
practice be the cause?  This is certain, that the 
preservation of life is more worth than the 
compulsory keeping of Marriage; and it is no less 
than cruelty to force a Man to remain in that state at 
the solace of his life, which he and his friends know 
will be either the undoing or the disheartning of his 
life.  And what is life withour vigour and spiritual 
exercise of life? how can it be useful either to private 
or public imployment?  Shall it therfore be quite 
dejected, tho' never so valuble, and left to moulder 
away in heaviness, for the superstitious and 
impossible performance of an ill-driven bargain?  
Nothing more inviolable than vows made to God; yet 
we read in Numbers, that if a Wife had made such a 
vow, the meer will and authority of her Husband 
might break it: how much more then may he break 
the error of his own bonds with an unfit and 
mistaken Wife to the saving of his welfare, his life, 
yea his faith and virtue, from the hazard of over-
strong temptations?  For if man be Lord of the 
Sabbath, to the curing of a Fever, can he be less than 
Lord of Marriage in such important causes as these?


CHAP.  XII.

The eighth Reason, It is probable or 
rather certain, that every one who 
happens to marry, hath not the calling; 
and therfore upon unfitness found and 
consider'd, force ought not to be us'd.

Eighthly, It is most sure that some even of those who 
are not plainly defective in body, yet are destitute of 
all other marriageable gifts, and consequently have 
not the calling to marry, unless nothing be requisite 
therto but a meer instrumental body; which to 
affirm, is to that unanimous Covenant a reproach: 
yet it is as sure that many such, not of their own 
desire, but by the perswasion of friends, or not 
knowing themselves, do often enter into Wedloc; 
where finding the difference at length between the 
duties of a married life, and the gifts of a single life, 
what unfitness of mind, what wearisomness, what 
scruples and doubts to an incredible offence, and 
displeasure are like to follow between, may be soon 
imagin'd; whom thus to shut up, and immure, and 
shut up together, the one with a mischosen Mate, the 
other in a mistaken Calling, is not a course that 
Christian wisdom and tenderness ought to use.  As 
for the custom that some Parents and Guardians 
have of forcing Marriages, it will be better to say 
nothing of such a savage inhumanity, but only thus, 
that the Law which gives not all freedom of Divorce 
to any creature endued with reason, so assassinated, 
is next in cruelty. 


CHAP.  XIII.

The ninth Reason; Because Marriage is 
not a meer carnal Coition, but a human 
Society: where that cannot reasonably 
be had, there can be no true Matrimony.  
Marriage compar'd with all other 
Covenants and Vows warrantably 
broken for the good of Man.  Marriage 
the Papists Sacrament, and unfit 
Marriage the Protestants Idol.

Ninthly, I suppose it will be allow'd us that Marriage 
is a human Society, and that all human society must 
proceed from the mind rather than the body, else it 
would be but a kind of animal or beastish meeting; if 
the mind therfore cannot have that due company by 
marriage that it may reasonably and humanly 
desire, that Marriage can be no human society, but a 
certain formality; or gilding over of little better than 
a brutish congress, and so in very wisdom and 
pureness to be dissolv'd.
	But Marriage is more than human, the Covenant 
of God, Prov. 2. 17. therfore Man cannot dissolve it.  I 
answer, if it be more than human, so much the more 
it argues the chief society therof to be in the soul 
rather than in the body, and the greatest breach 
therof to be unfitness of mind rather than defect of 
body: for the body can have least affinity in a 
Covenant more than human, so that the reason of 
dissolving holds good the rather.  Again, I answer, 
that the Sabbath is a higher Institution, a Command 
of the first Table, for the breach wherof God hath far 
more and oftener testify'd his anger, than for 
Divorces, which from Moses to Malachy he never took 
displeasure at, nor then neither if we mark the Text; 
and yet as oft as the good of Man is concern'd, he not 
only permits, but commands to break the Sabbath.  
What covenant more contracted with God, and less in 
man's power, than the Vow which hath once past his 
lips? yet if it be found rash, if offensive, if unfruitful 
either to God's glory or the good of Man, our Doctrine 
forces not error and unwillingness irksomly to keep 
it, but counsels Wisdom and better Thoughts boldly 
to break it; therfore to enjoin the indissoluble 
keeping of a Marriage found unfit against the good of 
Man both soul and body, as hath been evidenc'd, is to 
make an Idol of Marriage, to advance it above the 
Worship of God and the good of Man, to make it a 
transcendent Command above both the second and 
first Table, which is a most prodigious Doctrine.
	Next, whereas they cite out of the Proverbs, that 
it is the Covenant of God, and therfore more than 
human, that Consequence is manifestly false: for so 
the Covenant which Zedekiah made with the Infidel 
King of Babel, is call'd the Covenant of God, Ezek. 17. 
19. which would be strange to hear counted more 
than a human covenant.  So every Covenant between 
Man and Man, bound by Oath, may be call'd the 
Covenant of God, because God therin is attested.  So 
of Marriage he is the author and the witness; yet 
hence will not follow any divine astriction more than 
what is subordinate to the glory of God, and the main 
good of either party: for as the glory of God and their 
esteemed fitness one for the other, was the motive 
which led them both at first to think without other 
revelation that God had join'd them together; so 
when it shall be found by their apparent unfitness, 
that their continuing to be Man and Wife is against 
the glory of God and their mutual happiness, it may 
assure them that God never join'd them, who hath 
reveal'd his gracious Will not to set the Ordinance 
above the Man for whom it was ordain'd; not to 
canonize Marriage either as a Tyranness or a Goddess 
over the enfranchis'd life and soul of Man: For 
wherin can God delight, wherin be worship'd, wherin 
be glorified by the forcible continuing of an improper 
and ill-yoking couple?  He that loved not to see the 
disparity of several cattle at the Plow, cannot be 
pleased with vast unmeetness in Marriage.  Where 
can be the peace and love which must invite God to 
such a house?  May it not be fear'd that the not 
divorcing of such a helpless disagreement, will be the 
divorcing of God finally from such a place?  But it is a 
trial of our patience, they say: I grant it; but which 
of Job's afflictions were sent him with that Law, that 
he might not use means to remove any of them if he 
could?  and what if it subvert our patience and our 
faith too?  Who shall answer for the perishing of all 
those souls, perishing by stubborn expositions of 
particular and inferior precepts against the general 
and supreme rule of Charity?  They dare not affirm 
that Marriage is either a Sacrament or a Mystery, 
though all those sacred things give place to Man; and 
yet they invest it with  such an awful sanctity, and 
give such adamantine chains to bind with, as if it 
were to be worship'd like some Indian Deity, when it 
can confer no blessing upon us, but works more and 
more to our misery.  To such teachers the saying of 
S. Peter at the Council of Jerusalem will do well to be 
applied: Why tempt ye God to put a yoke upon the 
necks of Christian men, which neither the Jews, God's 
antient people, nor we are able to bear; and nothing 
but unwary expounding hath brought upon us?


CHAP.  XIV.

Considerations concerning Familism, 
Antinomianism; and why it may be 
thought that such Opinions may 
proceed from the undue restraint of 
some just liberty, than which no 
greater cause to contemn Discipline.

To these Considerations this also may be added as no 
improbable conjecture, seeing that sort of men who 
follow Anabaptism, Familism, Antinomianism, and 
other fanatic dreams (if we understand them not 
amiss) be such most commonly as are by nature 
addicted to Religion, of Life also not debaucht, and 
that their Opinions having full swinge, do end in 
satisfaction of the flesh, it may be come with reason 
into the thoughts of a wise man, whether all this 
proceed not partly, if not chiefly, from the restraint 
of some lawful liberty which ought to be given Men, 
and is deny'd them.  As by physic we learn in 
menstruous bodies, where Nature's current hath 
been stopt, that the suffocation and upward forcing 
of some lower part, affects the head and inward 
sense with dotage and idle fancies.  And on the other 
hand, whether the rest of vulgar men not so 
religiously professing, do not give themselves much 
the more to Whoredom and Adulteries, loving the 
corrupt and venial Discipline of Clergy-Courts, but 
hating to hear of perfect Reformation; whenas they 
foresee that then Fornication shall be austerely 
censur'd, Adultery punish'd, and Marriage the 
appointed refuge of nature, tho' it hap to be never so 
incongruous and displeasing, must yet of force be 
worn out, when it can be to no other purpose but of 
strife and hatred, a thing odious to God.  This may be 
worth the study of skilful Men in Theology, and the 
reason of things.  And lastly, to examine whether 
some undue and ill-grounded strictness upon the 
blameless Nature of Man, be not the cause in those 
places where already Reformation is, that the 
Discipline of the Church, so often, and so unavoidbly 
broken, is brought into contempt and derision.  And 
if it be thus, let those who are still bent to hold this 
obstinate Literality, so prepare themselves, as to 
share in the account for all these transgressions, 
when it shall be demanded at the last day, by one 
who will scan and shift things with more than a 
literal wisdom of equity: for if these reasons be duly 
ponder'd, and that the Gospel is more jealous of 
laying on excessive burdens than ever the Law was, 
lest the soul of a Christian, which is inestimable, 
should be over-tempted and cast away; considering 
also that many properties of Nature, which the 
power of Regeneration itself never alters, may cause 
dislike of conversing, even between the most 
sanctified; which continually grating in harsh tune 
together, may breed some jar and discord, and that 
end in rancor and strife, a thing so opposite both to 
Marriage and to Christianity, it would perhaps be less 
scandal to divorce a natural disparity, than to link 
violently together an unchristian dissension, 
committing two insnared Souls inevitably to kindle 
one another, not with the fire of love, but with a 
hatred irreconcilable;  who, were they dissever'd, 
would be straight friends in any other relation.  But 
if an alphabetical servility must be still urged, it may 
so fall out, that the true Church may unwittingly use 
as much cruelty in forbidding to divorce, as the 
Church of Antichrist doth wilfully in forbidding to 
marry.




BOOK  II.


CHAP.  I.

The Ordinance of Sabbath and Marriage 
compared.  Hyperbole no unfrequent 
figure in the Gospel.  Excess cur'd by 
contrary excess.  Christ neither did 
nor could abrogate the Law of Divorce, 
but only reprieve the abuse therof.

Hitherto the Position undertaken hath been delcar'd, 
and prov'd by a Law of God, that Law proved to be 
moral, and unabolishable, for many reasons equal, 
honest, charitable, just, annext thereto.  It follows 
now, that those places of Scripture which have a 
seeming to revoke the prudence of Moses, or rather 
that merciful Decree of God, be forthwith  explain'd 
and reconcil'd.  For what are all these reasonings 
worth, will some reply, whenas the words of Christ 
are plainly against all Divorce, except in case of 
Fornication?  To whom he whose mind were to 
answer no more but this, except also in case of 
Charity, might safely appeal to the more plain words 
of Christ in defence of so excepting.  Thou shalt do no 
manner of Work, saith the Commandment of the 
Sabbath.  Yes, saith Christ, Works of Charity.  And 
shall we be more severe in paraphrasing the 
considerate and tender Gospel, than he was in 
expounding the rigid and peremptory Law?  What 
was ever in all appearance less made for Man, and 
more for God alone, than the Sabbath? yet when the 
good of man comes into the Scales, we hear that voice 
of infinite goodness and benignity, that Sabbath was 
made for Man, not Man for Sabbath.  What thing ever 
was  more made for Man alone and less for God than 
Marriage?  And shall we load it with a cruel and 
senseless bondage utterly against both the good of 
Man, and the glory of God?  Let whoso will now listen, 
I want neither Pall nor Mitre, I stay neither for 
Ordination nor Induction; but in the firm faith of a 
knowing Christian, which is the best and truest 
endowment of the Keys, I pronounce, the Man who 
shall bind so cruelly a good and gracious Ordinance of 
God, hath not in that the spirit of Christ.  Yet that 
every text of Scripture seeming opposite may be 
attended with a due exposition, this other part 
ensues, and makes account to find no slender 
arguments for this assertion, out of those very 
Scriptures, which are commonly urged against it.
	First therfore let us remember, as a thing not to 
be deny'd, that all places of Scripture wherin just 
reason of doubt arises from the latter, are to be 
expounded by considering upon what occasion every 
thing is set down, and by comparing other Texts.  The 
occasion which induc'd our Saviour to speak of 
Divorce, was either to convince the extravagance of 
the Pharisees in that point, or to give a sharp and 
vehement answer to a tempting question.  And in 
such cases that we are not to repose all upon the 
literal terms of so many words, many instances will 
teach us: Wherin we may plainly discover how Christ 
meant not to be taken word for word, but like a wise 
physician, administring one excess against another, 
to reduce us to a permiss; where they were too 
remiss, he saw it needful to seem most severe: in one 
place he censures an unchaste look to be adultery 
already committed; another time he passes over 
actual adultery with less reproof than for an 
unchaste look; not so heavily condemning secret 
weakness, as open malice: so here he may be justly 
thought to have given this rigid sentence against 
Divorce, not to cut off all remedy from a good man 
who finds himself consuming away in a disconsolate 
and uninjoin'd Matrimony, but to lay a bridle upon 
the bold abuses of those over-weening Rabbies; 
which he could not more effectually do, than by a 
countersway of restraint curbing their wild 
exorbitance almost into the other extreme; as when 
we bow things the contrary way, to make them come 
to their natural straitness.  And that this was the 
only Intention of Christ is most evident, if we attend 
but to his own words and protestation made in the 
same Sermon, not many verses before he treats of 
Divorcing, that he came not to abrogate from the Law 
one jot or tittle, and denounce against them that 
shall so teach.
	But S. Luke the verse immediately before-going 
that of Divorce, inserts the same caveat, as if the 
latter could not be understood without the former; 
and as a witness to produce against this our wilful 
mistake of abrogating, which must needs confirm us 
that whatever else in the political Law of more special 
relation to the Jews might cease to us; yet that of 
those Precepts concerning Divorce, not one of them 
was repeal'd by the Doctrine of Christ, unless we 
have vow'd not to believe his own cautious and 
immediate profession: for if these our Saviour's 
words inveigh against all Divorce, and condemn it as 
Adultery, except it be for Adultery, and be not 
rather understood against the abuse of those 
Divorces permitted in the Law, then is that Law of 
Moses, Deut. 24. 1. not only repeal'd and wholly 
annul'd against the promise of Christ, and his known 
profession not to meddle in matters judicial; but that 
which is more strange, the very substance and 
purpose of that Law is contradicted and convinc'd 
both of injustice and impurity, as having authoriz'd 
and maintain'd legal Adultery by statute.  Moses also 
cannot scape to be guilty of unequal and unwise 
decrees, punishing one act of secret Adultery by 
death, and permitting a whole Life of open Adultery 
by Law.  And albeit Lawyers write that some political 
Edicts, tho' not approv'd, are yet allow'd to the scum 
of the people and the necessity of the times; these 
excuses have but a weak pulse: For first, we read, not 
that the scoundrel People, but the choicest, the 
wisest, the holiest of that Nation have frequently 
us'd these Laws, or such as these, in the best and 
holiest times.  Secondly, be it yielded, that in matters 
not very bad or impure, a human Lawgiver may 
slacken something of that which is exactly good, to 
the disposition of the people and the times: but if the 
perfect, the pure, the righteous Law of God, for so 
are all his statutes and his judgments, be found to 
have allow'd smoothly, without any certain 
reprehension, that which Christ afterward declares 
to be Adultery, how can we free this Law from the 
horrible inditement of being both impure, unjust, 
and fallacious?


CHAP.  II.

How Divorce was permitted for hardness 
of heart, cannot be understood by the 
common Exposition.  That the Law 
cannot permit, much less enact a 
permission of sin.

Neither will it serve to say this was permitted for the 
hardness of their hearts, in that sense as it is usually 
explain'd; for the Law were then but a corrupt and 
erroneous School-master, teaching us to dash 
against a vital Maxim of Religion, by doing foul evil in 
hope of some certain good.
	This only Text is not to be matcht again 
throughout the whole Scripture, wherby God in his 
perfect Law should seem to have granted to the hard 
hearts of his holy People under his own hand a civil 
immunity and free charter to live and die in a long 
successive Adultery, under a covenant of works, till 
the Messiah, and then that indulgent permission to 
be strictly deny'd by a covenant of grace; besides the 
incoherence of such a doctrine, cannot, must not be 
thus interpreted, to the raising of a Paradox never 
known till then only hanging by the twin'd thread of 
one doubtful Scripture, against so many other rules 
and leading principles of religion, of justice, and 
purity of life.  For what could be granted more either 
to the fear, or to the lust of any Tyrant or Politician, 
than this authority of Moses thus expounded; which 
opens him a way at will to damm up justice, and not 
only to admit of any Romish or Austrian  dispenses, 
but to enact a statute of that which he dares not 
seem to approve, even to legitimate vice, to make sin 
it self, the ever alien and vassal sin, a free Citizen of 
the Commonwealth, pretending only these, or these 
plausible reasons?  And well he might, all the while 
that Moses shall be alledged to have done as much 
without shewing any reason at all.  Yet this could not 
enter into the heart of David, Psal. 94. 20. how any 
such authority as endeavours to fashion wickedness 
by a Law, should derive itself from God.  And Isaiah 
lays woe upon them that decree unrighteous 
decrees, chap. 10. 1.  Now which of these two is the 
better Law-giver, and which deserves most a woe, he 
that gives out an edict singly unjust, or he that 
confirms to generations a fixt and unmolested 
impunity of that which is not only held to be unjust, 
but also unclean, and both in a high degree, not only 
as they themselves affirm, an injurious expulsion of 
one Wife, but also an unclean freedom by more than 
a patent to wed another adulterously?  How can we 
therfore with safety thus dangerously confine the 
free simplicity of our Saviour's meaning to that 
which merely amounts from so many Letters, 
whenas it can consist neither with his former and 
cautionary Words, nor with other more pure and 
holy Principles, nor finally with the scope of Charity, 
commanding by his express commission in a higher 
strain.  But all rather of necessity must be 
understood as only against the abuse of that wise 
and ingenuous liberty which Moses gave, and to 
terrify a roving Conscience from sinning under that 
pretext.


CHAP.  III.

That to allow Sin by Law, is against the 
nature of Law, the end of the Law-giver, 
and the good of the People.  Impossible 
therfore in the Law of God.  That it 
makes God the Author of Sin more than 
any thing objected by the Jesuits or 
Arminians against Predestination.

But let us further examine upon what Consideration 
a Law of Licence could be thus given to a holy People 
for the hardness of Heart.  I suppose all will answer, 
that for some good end or other.  But here the 
contrary shall be proved.  First, that many ill effects, 
but no good end of such a sufferance can be shewn; 
next, that a thing unlawful can for no good end 
whatever be either done or allow'd by a positive Law.  
If there were any good end aim'd at, that end was 
then good either as to the Law or to the Lawgiver 
licencing; or as to the person licenc'd.  That it could 
not be the end of the Law, whether Moral or Judicial, 
to license a Sin, I prove easily out of Rom. 5. 20. The 
Law enter'd, that the offence might abound, that is, 
that Sin might be made abundantly manifest to be 
heinous and displeasing to God, that so his offer'd 
Grace might be the more esteem'd.  Now if the Law, 
instead of aggravating and terrifying Sin, shall give 
out Licence, it foils it self, and turns recreant from 
its own end: it forestalls the pure Grace of Christ, 
which is through Righteousness, with impure 
indulgences, which are through Sin.  And instead of 
discovering Sin, for by the Law is the knowledge 
therof, saith S. Paul, and that by certain and true 
light for Men to walk in safety, it holds out false and 
dazling fires to stumble Men; or like those miseable 
flies to run into with delight and be burnt: for how 
many Souls might easily think that to be lawful 
which the Law and Magistrate allow'd them?  Again, 
we read 1 Tim. 1. 5. The end of the Commandment is 
charity out of a pure heart, and of a good Conscience, 
and of Faith unfeigned.  But never could that be 
Charity to allow a People what they could not use 
with a pure Heart, but with Conscience and Faith 
both deceiv'd, or else despis'd.  The more particular 
end of the Judicial Law is set forth to us clearly Rom. 
13.  That God hath given to that Law a Sword not in 
vain, but to be a terror to evil works, a revenge to 
execute wrath upon him that doth evil.  If this 
terrible Commission should but forbear to punish 
wickedness, were it other to be accounted than 
partial and unjust? but if it begin to write indulgence 
to vulgar uncleanness, can it do more to corrupt and 
shame the end of its own being?  Lastly, if the Law 
allow Sin, it enters into a kind of Covenant with Sin; 
and if it do, there is not a greater Sinner in the 
World than the Law itself.  The Law, to use an 
Allegory something different from that in Philo 
Judžus concerning Amalek, though haply more 
significant, the Law is the Israelite, and hath this 
absolute charge given it, Deut. 25. To blot out the 
memory of Sin, the Amalekite, from under heaven, 
not to forget it.  Again, the Law is the Israelite, and 
hath this express repeated command to make no 
Covenant with Sin, the Canaanite, but to expel him, 
lest he prove a snare.  And to say truth, it were too 
rigid and reasonless to proclaim such an enmity 
between Man and Man, were it not the type of a 
greater enmity between Law and Sin.  I speak even 
now, as if Sin were condemn'd in a perpetual 
villenage never to be free by Law, never to be 
manumitted: but sure Sin can have no tenure by Law 
past all atonement: both diagonial Contraries, as 
much allowing one another, as Day and Night 
together in one Hemisphere.  Or if it be possible, that 
Sin with his darkness may come to composition, it 
cannot be without a foul eclipse and twilight to the 
Law, whose brightness ought to surpass the Noon.  
Thus we see how this unclean permittance defeats 
the sacred and glorious end both of the Moral and 
Judicial Law.
	As little good can the Lawgiver propose to equity 
by such a lavish remissness as this; if to remedy 
hardness of heart Paržus and other Divines confess, 
it more increases by this Liberty, than is lessen'd: 
and how is it probable that their hearts were more 
hard in this, that it should be yielded to, than in any 
other Crime?  Their hearts were set upon Usury, and 
are to this day, no Nation more; yet that which was 
the endamaging only of their Estates was narrowly 
forbid; this which is thought the extreme injury and 
dishonour of their Wives and Daughters, with the 
defilement also of themselves, is bounteously allow'd.  
Their hearts were as hard under their best Kings to 
offer in high places, tho' to the true God; yet that but 
a small thing, is strictly forewarn'd; this accounted a 
high offence against one of the greatest moral Duties, 
is calmly permitted and establish'd.  How can it be 
evaded but that the heavy censure of Christ should 
fall worse upon this Lawgiver of theirs, than upon all 
the Scribes and Pharisees?  For they did but omit 
Judgment and Mercy to trifle in Mind and Cummin, 
yet all according Law; but this their Law-giver, 
altogether as punctual in such niceties, goes 
marching on to Adulteries, through the violence of 
Divorce by Law against Law.  If it were such a cursed 
act of Pilate a subordinate Judge to Cžsar, over-
sway'd by those hard hearts with much ado to suffer 
one transgression of Law but once, what is it then 
with less ado to publish a Law by trransgression for 
many Ages?  Did God for this come down and cover 
the Mount of Sinai with his Glory, uttering in 
Thunder those his sacred Ordinances out of the 
bottomless Treasures of his Wisdom and infinite 
Pureness, to patch up an ulcerous and rotten 
Commonwealth with strict and stern Injunctions, to 
wash the skin and garments for every unclean touch, 
and such easy permission given to pollute the soul 
with Adulteries by public authority, without disgrace 
or question?  No, it had been better that man had 
never known Law or Matrimony, than that such foul 
iniquity should be fasten'd upon the Holy-one of 
Israel, the Judge of all the Earth, and such a piece of 
folly as Belzebub would not commit, to divide against 
himself, and prevent his own ends; or if he to 
compass more mischief, might yield perhaps to feign 
some good deed, yet that God should enact a Licence 
of certain evil for uncertain good against his own 
glory and pureness, is abominable to conceive.  And 
as it is destructive to the end of Law, and 
balsphemous to the honour of the Law-giver 
licensing, so it is as pernicious to the person licenced.  
If a private friend admonish not, the Scripture saith, 
he hates his Brother, and lets him perish; but if he 
sooth him and allow him in his faults, the Proverbs 
teach us he spreads a net for his Neighbour's feet, 
and worketh ruin.  If the Magistrate or Prince forget 
to administer due Justice, and restrain not Sin; Eli 
himself could say, it made the Lord's People to 
transgress.  But if he countenance them against Law 
by his own example, what havoc it makes both in 
religion and Virtue among the People, may be guest 
by the anger it brought upon Hophni and Phineas not 
to be appeas'd with sacrifice nor offering for ever.  If 
the Law be silent to declare Sin, the People must 
needs generally go astray, for the Apostle himself 
saith, he had not known lust but by the Law: and 
surely such a Nation seems not to be under the 
illuminating guidance of God's Law, but under the 
horrible doom rather of such as despise the Gospel; 
he that is filthy, let him be filthy still.  But where the 
Law itself gives a warrant for Sin, I know not what 
condition of misery to imagine miserable enough for 
such a People, unelss that portion of the wicked, or 
rather of the damned, on whom God threatens in 11 
Psalm, to rain snares: but that questionless cannot 
be by any Law, which the Apostle saith is a ministry 
ordain'd of God for our good, and not so many ways 
and in so high a degree to our destruction, as we 
have now been graduating.  And this is all the good 
can come to the Person licenced in his hardness of 
heart.
	I am next to mention that,which because it is a 
ground in Divinity, Rom. 3. will save the labour of 
demonstrating, unless her given Axioms be more 
doubted than in other Arts (altho' it be no less firm 
in the precepts of Philosophy) that a thing unlawful 
can for no good whatsoever be done, much less 
allow'd by a positive Law.  And this is the matter why 
Interpreters upon that passage in Hosea will not 
consent it to be a true story, that the Prophet took a 
Harlot to wife, because God being a pure Spirit, could 
not command a thing repugnant to his own nature, 
no not for so good an end as to exhibit more to the 
life a wholesome and perhaps a converting parable to 
many an Israelite.  Yet that he commanded the 
allowance of adulterous and injurious Divorces for 
hardness of heart, a reason obscure and in a wrong 
sense, they can very favourily persuade themselves; 
so tenacious is the leven of an old conceit.  But they 
shift it, he permitted only.  Yet silence in the Law is 
consent, and consent is accessory; why then is not 
the Law being silent, or not active against a crime, 
accessory to its own conviction, it self judging?  For 
tho' we should grant, that it approves not, yet it 
wills; and the Lawyers Maxim is, that the will 
compell'd is yet the will.  And tho' Aristotle in his 
Ethics call this a mixt Action, yet he concludes it to 
be voluntary and inexcusable, if it be evil.  How 
justly then might human Law and Philosophy rise up 
against the righteousness of Moses, if this be true 
which our vulgar Divinity fathers upon him, yea 
upon God himself, not silently and only negatively to 
permit, but in his Law to divulge a written and 
general privilege to commit and persist in unlawful 
Divorces with a high hand, with security and no ill 
fame: for this is more than permitting contriving, 
this is maintaining: this is warranting, this 
protecting, yea this is doing evil, and such an evil as 
that reprobate Law-giver did, whose lasting infamy 
is ingraven upon him like a surname, he who made 
Israel to sin.  This is the lowest pitch contrary to God 
that public fraud and injustice can descend.
	If it be affirm'd, that God, as being Lord, may do 
what he will; yet we must know that God hath not 
two Wills, but one Will, much less two contrary.  If he 
once will'd Adultery should be sinful, and to be 
punisht with death, all his Omnipotence will not allow 
him to will the allowance that his holiest People might 
as it were by his own Antimonie, or counter-statute, 
live unreprov'd in the same fact as he himself 
esteem'd it, according to our common explainers.  The 
hidden ways of his Providence we adore and search 
not, but the Law is his revealed Will, his compleat, his 
evident and certain Will; herein he appears to us as 
it were in human shape, enters into Covenant with 
us, swears to keep it, binds himself like a just Law-
giver to his own Prescriptions, gives himself to be 
understood by Men, judges and is judg'd, measures 
and is commensurate to right reason; cannot require 
less of us in one cantle of his Law than in another, his 
legal Justice cannot be so fickle and so variable, 
sometimes like a devouring fire, and by and by 
connivent in the Embers, or, if I may so say, oscitant 
and supine.  The vigor of his Law could no more 
remit, than the hallowed fire on him Altar could be 
let go out.  The Lamps that burnt before him might 
need snuffing, but the Light of his Law never.  Of this 
also more beneath, is discussing a Solution of 
Rivetus.
	The Jesuits, and that Sect among us which is 
nam'd of Arminius, are wont to charge us of making 
God the Author of Sin, in two degrees especially, not 
to speak of his permissions: 1. Because we hold that 
he hath decreed some to Damnation, and 
consequently to Sin, say they; next, because those 
means which are of saving knowledge to others, he 
makes to them an occasion of greater Sin.  Yet 
considering the perfection wherin Man was created, 
and might have stood, no Decree necessitating his 
Free-will, but subsequent, tho' not in time, yet in 
order to Causes, which were in his own power, they 
might methinks be persuaded to absolve both God 
and us.  Whenas the doctrine of Plato and 
Chrysippus, with their Followers, the Academics and 
the Stoics, who knew not what a consummate and 
most adorned Pandora was bestow'd upon Adam to 
be the Nurse and Guide of his arbitrary happiness 
and perseverance, I mean his native innocence and 
perfection, which might have kept him from being 
our true Epimetheus; and though they taught of 
Virtue and Vice to be both the gift of divine Destiny,  
they could yet give reasons not invalid, to justify the 
Councils of God and Fate from the insulsity of mortal 
tongues: That Man's own free-will self-corrupted, is 
the adequate and sufficient cause of his Disobedience 
besides Fate; as Homer also wanted not to express, 
both in his Iliad and Odyssee.  And Manilius the Poet, 
although in his fourth Book he tells of some created 
both to Sin and Punishment; yet without 
murmuring, and with an industroius chearfulness he 
acquits the Deity.  They were not ignorant in their 
Heathen Lore, that it is most God-like to punish those 
who of his Creatures became his enemies with the 
greatest punishments; and they could attain also to 
think that the greatest, when God himself throws a 
man farthest from him; which then they held he did, 
when he blinded, hardned, and stirr'd  up his 
Offenders, to finish and pile up their desperate work 
since they had undertaken it.  To banish for ever into 
a local Hell, whether in the Air or in the Center, or in 
that uttermost and bottomless gulph of Chaos, 
deeper from holy Bliss than the World's Diameter 
multiply'd; they thought not a punishing so proper 
and proportionate for God to inflict, as to punish Sin 
with Sin.  Thus were the common sort of Gentiles 
wont to think, without any wry thoughts cast upon 
divine Governance.  And therfore Cicero, not in his 
Tuscan or Campanian retirements among the learned 
Wits of that Age, but even in the Senate to a mixt 
Auditory (though he were sparing otherwise to 
broach his Philosophy among Statists and Lawyers) 
yet as to this point both in his Oration against Piso, 
and in that which is about the Answers of the Sooth-
sayers against Clodius, he declares it publicly as no 
paradox to common Ears, That God cannot punish 
Man more, nor make him more miserable, than still 
by making him more sinful.  Thus we see how in this 
Controversy the Justice of God stood upright even 
among heathen Disputers.  But if any one be truly, 
and not pretendedly zealous for God's honour, here I 
call him forth before Men and Angels, to use his best 
and most advised skill, lest God more unavoidably 
than ever yet, and in the guiltiest manner, be made 
the Author of Sin: if he shall not only deliver over 
and incite his enemies by rebuke to Sin as a 
punishment, but shall by patent under his own 
broad-seal allow his friends whom he would sanctify 
and save, whom he would unite to himself, and not 
disjoin, whom he would correct by wholesome 
chastening, and not punish as he doth the damned 
by lewd sinning, if he shall allow these in his Law the 
perfect rule of his own purest Will, and our most 
edify'd Conscience, the perpetrating of an odious and 
manifold Sin without the least contesting.  'Tis 
wonder'd how there can be in God a secret and 
reveal'd Will; and yet what wonder, if there be in 
Man two answerable Causes.  But here there must be 
two revealed Wills grappling in a fraternal war with 
one another without any reasonable cause 
apprehended.  This cannot be less than to ingraft Sin 
into the substance of the Law, which Law is to 
provoke Sin by crossing and forbidding, not by 
complying with it.  Nay this is, which I tremble in 
uttering, to incarnate Sin into the unpunishing and 
well-pleas'd Will of God.  To avoid these dreadful 
consequences that tread upon the heels of those 
allowances to sin, will be a task of far more difficulty 
than to appease those minds which perhaps out of a 
vigilant and wary Conscience except against 
Predestination.  Thus finally we may conclude, that a 
Law wholly giving licence cannot upon any good 
consideration be given to a holy People, for hardness 
of heart in the vulgar sense.


CHAP.  IV.

That if Divorce be no Command, no more 
is Marriage.  That Divorce could be no 
Dispensation if it were sinful.  The 
Solution of Rivetus, That God dispensed 
by some unknown way, ought not to 
satisfy a Christian Mind.

Others think to evade the matter by not granting 
any Law of Divorce, but only a Dispensation, which is 
contrary to the words of Christ, who himself calls it a 
Law, Mark 10. 5. or if we speak of a command in the 
strictest Definition, then Marriage itself is no more a 
Command than Divorce, but only a free Permission to 
him who cannot contain.  But as to dispensation I 
affirm, the same as before of the Law, that it can 
never be given to the allowance of Sin: God cannot 
give it neither in respect of himself, nor in respect of 
man; not in respect of himself, being a most pure 
Essence, the just avenger of Sin; neither can he make 
that cease to be a Sin, which is in itself unjust and 
impure, as all Divorces they say were, which were 
not for Adultery.  Not in respect of Man, for then it 
must be either to his good or to his evil.  Not to his 
good; for how can that be imagined any good to a 
Sinner, whom nothing but rebuke and due correction 
can save, to hear the determinate Oracle of Divine 
Law louder than any reproof dispensing and 
providing for the impunity, and convenience of Sin; 
to make that doubtful, or rather lawful, which the 
end of the Law was to make most evidently hateful?  
Nor to the evil of man can a Dispense be given; for if 
the Law were ordain'd unto life, Rom. 7. 10. how can 
the same God publish Dispenses against that Law, 
which must needs be unto death?  Absurd and 
monstrous would that Dispense be, if any Judge or 
Law should give it a man to cut his own throat, or to 
damn himself.  Dispense therfore presupposes full 
Pardon, or else it is not a Dispense, but a most 
baneful and bloody snare.  And why should God 
enter Covenant with a People to be holy, as the 
Command is holy, and just, and good, Rom. 7. 12. and 
yet suffer an impure and treacherous Dispense to 
mislead and betray them under the vizard of Law to 
a legitimate Practice of uncleanness?  God is no 
Covenant-breaker; he cannot do this.
	Rivetus, a diligent and learned Writer, having 
well weighed what hath been written by those 
Founders of Dispense, and finding the small 
Agreement among them, would fain work himself 
aloof these Rocks and Quick-sands, and thinks it best 
to conclnde that God certainly did dispense, but by 
some way to us unknown, and so to leave it.  But to 
this I oppose, that a Christian by no means ought 
rest himself in such an ignorance; wherby so may 
Absurdities will strait reflect both against the Purity, 
Justice, and wisdom of God, the end also both of Law 
and Gospel, and the comparison of them both 
together.  God indeed in some ways of his Providence 
is high and secret, past finding out: but in the 
delivery and execution of his Law, especially in the 
managing of a duty so daily and so familiar as this is 
wherof we reason, hath plain enough revealed 
himself, and requires the observance therof not 
otherwise, than to the Law of nature and equity 
imprinted in us seems correspondent.  And he hath 
taught us to love and to extol his Laws, not only as 
they are his, but as they are just and good to every 
wise and sober understanding.  Therfore Abraham, 
even to the face of God himself, seems'd to doubt of 
divine Justice, if it should swerve from the 
irradiation wherwith it had enlightned the mind of 
man, and bound it self to observe its own rule; Wilt 
thou destroy the righteous with the wicked? that be 
far from thee; shall not the Judge of the earth do 
right?  Therby declaring, that God hath created 
righteousness in right it self, against which he 
cannot do.  So David, Psalm. 119.  The testimonies 
which thou hast commanded are righteous and very 
faithful; thy word is very pure, therfore thy servant 
loveth it.  Not only then for the Author's sake, but 
for its own purity.  He is faithful, saith S. Paul, he 
cannot deny himself; that is, he cannot deny his own 
Promises, cannot but be true to his own Rules.  How 
should we imitate him else, to be perfect as he is 
perfect?  If at pleasure he can dispense with golden 
Poetic Ages of such pleasing licence, as in the fabled 
Reign of old Saturn, and this perhaps before the Law 
might have some covert, but under such an 
undispensing Covenant as Moses made with them, 
and not to tell us why and wherfore, indulgence 
cannot give quiet to the breast of an intelligent man?  
We must be resolved how the Law can be pure and 
perspicuous , and yet throw a polluted skirt over 
these Eleusinian Mysteries, that no man can utter 
what they mean: worse in this than the worst 
Obscenities of Heathen Superstition; for their 
filthiness was hid, but  the mystic reason therof, 
known to their Sages.  But this Jewish imputed 
filthiness was daily and open, but the reason of it is 
not known to our Divines.  We know of no design the 
Gospel can have to impose new righteousness upon 
works, but to remit the old by faith without works, if 
we mean justifying works:  We know no mystery our 
Saviour could have to lay new Bonds upon Marriage 
in the Covenant of Grace which himself had loosen'd 
to the severity of Law.  So that Rivetus may pardon 
us, if we cannot be contented with his non-solution, 
to remain in such a peck of uncertainties and doubts, 
so dangerous and ghastly to the fundamentals of our 
faith.


CHAP.  V.

What a Dispensation is.

Therfore to get some better satisfaction, we must 
proceed to inquire as diligently as we can what a 
Dispensation is, which I find to be either properly so 
called, or improperly.  Improperly so call'd, is rather 
a particular and exceptive Law, absolving and 
disobliging from a more general command for some 
just and reasonable cause.  As Numb. 9. they who 
were unclean, or in a Journey, had leave to keep the 
Passover in the second Month, but otherwise ever in 
the first.  As for that in Leviticus of marrying the 
brother's wife, it was a penal statute rather than a 
dispense; and commands nothing injurious or in it 
self unclean, only prefers a special reason of charity 
before an institutive Decency, and perhaps is meant 
for life-time only, as is exprest beneath in the 
prohibition of taking two sisters.  What other Edict of 
Moses, carrying but the semblance of a Law in any 
other kind, may bear the name of a Dispense, I have 
not readily to instance.  But a Dispensation most 
properly is some particular accident rarely 
happening, and therfore not specified in the Law, but 
left to the decision of Charity, even under the 
bondage of Jewish Rites, much more under the 
liberty of the Gospel.  Thus did David enter into the 
house of God, and did eat the Shrewbread, he and his 
followers, which was ceremonially unlawful.  Of such 
dispenses as these it was that Verdune the French 
Divine so gravely disputed in the Council of Trent 
against Friar Adrian, who held that the Pope might 
dispense with any thing.  It is a fond persuasion, 
saith Verdune, that dispensing is a favour; nay, it is 
as good distributive justice as what is most, and the 
Priest sins if he gives it not, for it is nothing else but 
a right interpretation of Law.  Thus far that I can 
learn touching this matter wholesomly decreed.  But 
that God, who is the giver of every good and perfect 
gift, Jam. 1. should give out a rule and directory to 
sin by, should enact a Dispensation as long-liv'd as a 
Law, wherby to live in privileg'd Adultery for 
hardness of heart; and yet this obdurate disease 
cannot be conceived how it was the more amended 
by this unclean remedy, is the most deadly and 
Scorpion-like gift that the enemy of mankind could 
have given to any miserable sinner, and is rather 
such a Dispense as that was which the Serpent gave 
to our first parents.  God gave Quails in his wrath, 
and Kings in his wrath, yet neither of these things 
evil in themselves; but that he whose eyes cannot 
behold impurity, should in the book of his holy 
Covenant, his most unpassionate Law, give licence 
and statute for uncontrolled Adultery, altho' it go for 
the receiv'd Opinion, I shall ever dissuade my soul 
from such a Creed, such an indulgence as the shop of 
Antichrist never forg'd a baser.


CHAP.  VI.

That the Jew had no more right to this 
supposed Dispense than the Christian 
hath, and rather not so much.

But if we must needs dispense, let us for a while so 
far dispense with Truth, as to grant that sin may be 
dispens'd; yet there will be copious reason found to 
prove that the Jew had no more right to such a 
suppos'd indulgence than the Christian, whether we 
look at the clear knowledge wherin he liv'd, or the 
strict performance of works wherto he was bound.  
Besides Visions and Prophecies, they had the Law of 
God, which in the Psalms and Proverbs is chiefly 
prais'd for sureness and certainty, both easy and 
perfect to the enlightning of the simple.  How could it 
be so obscure then, or they so sottishly blind in this 
plain, moral, and houshold duty?  They had the same 
precepts about Marriage; Christ added nothing to 
their clearness, for that had argued them imperfect; 
he opens not the Law, but removes the Pharisaic 
mists rais'd between the Law and the Peoples Eyes: 
the only  sentence which he adds, What God hath 
join'd let no man put asunder, is as obscure as any 
clause fetch'd out of Genesis, and hath increased a 
yet undecided Controversy of clandestine Marriages.  
If we examine over all his Sayings, we shall find him 
not so much interpreting the Law with his words, as 
referring his own words to be interpreted by the 
Law, and oftener obscures his mind in short, and 
vehement, and compact sentences, to blind and 
puzzle them the more who would not understand the 
Law.  The Jews therfore were as little to be dispens'd 
with for lack of moral knowledge as we.
	Next, none I think will deny, but that they were 
as much bound to perform the Law as any Christian.  
That severe and rigorous knife not sparing the 
tender foreskin of any male infant, to carve upon his 
flesh the mark of that strict and pure Covenant 
wherinto he entered, might give us to understand 
enough against the fancy of dispensing.  S. Paul 
testifies, that every circumcis'd Man is a debtor to 
the whole Law, Gal. 5. or else circumcision is in vain, 
Rom, 2. 25.  How vain then, and how preposterous 
must it needs be to exact a circumcision of the flesh 
from an infant unto an outward sign of purity, and to 
dispense an uncircumcision in the Soul of a grown 
man to an inward and real impurity?  How vain again 
was that Law to impose tedious expiations for every 
slight sin of ignorance and error, and to privilege 
without penance or disturbance an odious crime 
whether of ignorance or obstinacy?  How unjust also 
inflicting death and extirpation for the mark of 
circumstantial pureness omitted, and proclaiming all 
honest and liberal indemnity to the act of a 
substantial impureness committed, making void the 
Covenant that was made against it?  Thus if we 
consider the tenor of the Law, to be circumcis'd and 
to perform all, not pardoning so much as the scapes 
of error and ignorance, and compare this with the 
condition of the Gospel, Believe and be baptized, I 
suppose it cannot be long ere we grant that the Jew 
was bound as strictly to the performance of every 
duty, as was possible, and therfore could not be 
dispens'd with more than the Christian, perhaps not 
so much.


CHAP.  VII.

That the Gospel is apter to dispense than 
the Law.  Paržus answered,

If then the Law will afford no reason why the Jew 
should be more gently dealt with than the Christian, 
then surely the Gospel can afford as little why the 
Christian should be less gently dealt with than the 
Jew.  The Gospel indeed exhorts to highest perfection, 
but bears with weakest infirmity more than the Law.  
Hence those indulgences, All cannot receive this 
saying, Every man hath his proper gift, with express 
charges not to lay on yokes which our fathers could 
not bear.  The nature of man still is as weak, and yet 
as hard; and that weakness and hardness as unfit 
and as unteachable to be harshly used as ever.  Ay 
but, saith Paržus, there is a greater portion of spirit 
poured upon the Gospel, which requires from us 
perfecter obedience.  I answer, this does not prove 
that the Law therfore might give allowance to sin 
more than the Gospel; and if it were not sin, we know 
it the work of the Spirit to mortify our corrupt 
desires and evil concupiscence; but not to root up 
our natural affections and disaffections, moving to 
and fro even in wisest Men upon just and necessary 
reasons, which were the true ground of that Mosaic 
Dispense, and is the utmost extent of our pleading.  
What is more or less perfect we dispute not, but what 
is sin or no sin.  And in that I still affirm the Law 
required as perfect obedience as the Gospel; besides, 
that the prime end of the Gospel is not so much to 
exact our obedience, as to reveal Grace, and the 
satisfaction of our disobedience.  What is now exacted 
from us, it is the accusing Law that does it, even yet 
under the Gospel; but cannot be more extreme to us 
now than to the Jews of old; for the Law ever was of 
Works, and the Gospel ever was of Grace.
	Either then the Law by harmless and needless 
Dispenses, which the Gospel is now made to deny, 
must have anticipated and exceeded the Grace of the 
Gospel, or else must be found to have given politic 
and superficial Graces without real pardon, saying in 
general, Do this and live, and yet deceiving and 
damning under-hand with unsound and hollow 
permissions, which is utterly abhorring from the end 
of all Law, as hath been shewed.  But if those 
indulgences were safe and sinless, out of tenderness 
and compassion, as indeed they were, and yet shall 
be abrogated by the Gospel, then the Law, whose end 
is by rigor to magnify Grace, shall itself give Grace, 
and pluck a fair plume from the Gospel, instead of 
hastening us thither, alluring us from it.  And 
wheras the tenor of the Law was a servant to amplify 
and illustrate the mildness of Grace; now the 
unmildness of Evangelic Grace shall turn servant, to 
declare the Grace and Mildness of the rigorous Law.  
The Law was harsh to extol the Grace of the Gospel, 
and now the Gospel by a new affected strictness of 
her own shall extenuate the Grace which herself 
offers.  For by exacting a duty which the Law 
dispens'd, if we perform it, then is Grace diminish'd, 
by how much performance advances, unless the 
Apostle argue wrong: if we perform it not, and perish 
for not performing, then are the conditions of Grace 
harder than those of Rigor.  If through Faith and 
Repentance we perish not, yet Grace still remains the 
less, by requiring that which Rigor did not require, 
or at least not so strictly.  Thus much therfore to 
Paržus, that if the Gospel require perfecter 
Obedience than the Law as a Duty, it exalts the Law, 
and debases itself, which is dishonourable to the 
work of our redemption.  Seeing therfore that all the 
causes of any allowance that the Jews  might have, 
remain as well to the Christians; this is a certain 
rule, that so long as the causes remain, the allowance 
ought.  And having thus at length inquired the truth 
concerning Law and Dispense, their ends, their uses, 
their limits, and in what manner both Jew and 
Christian  stand liable to the one or capable of the 
other, we may safely conclude, that to affirm the 
giving of any Law or lawlike Dispense to sin for 
hardness of heart, is a doctrine of that extravagance 
from the sage principles of Piety, that whoso 
considers throughly, cannot but admire how this 
hath been digested all this while.


CHAP.  VIII.

The true sense how Moses suffered 
Divorce for hardness of Heart.

What may we do then to salve this seeming 
inconsistence?  I must not dissemble that I am 
confident it can be done no other way than this:
	Moses, Deut. 24. 1. establish'd a grave and 
prudent Law, full of moral equity, full of due 
consideration towards Nature, that cannot be 
resisted, a Law consenting with the Laws of wisest 
Men and civilest Nations; that when a man hath 
married a Wife, if it come to pass that he cannot love 
her by reason of some displeasing natural quality or 
unfitness in her, let him write her a Bill of Divorce.  
The intent of which Law undoubtedly was this, that if 
any good and peaceable Man should discover some 
helpless disagreement or dislike either of mind or 
body, wherby he could not chearfully perform the 
duty of a Husband without the perpetual dissembling 
of offence and disturbance to his spirit; rather than 
to live uncomfortably and unhappily both to himself 
and to his Wife, rather than to continue undertaking 
a duty which he could not possibly discharge, he 
might dismiss her whom he could not tolerably and 
so not conscionably retain.  And this Law the Spirit of 
God by the Mouth of Solomon, Prov. 30. 21, 23. 
testifies to be a good and a necessary Law, by 
granting it that a hated Woman (for so the Hebrew 
word signifies, rather than odious, though it come all 
to one) that a hated Woman, when she is married, is 
a thing that the earth cannot bear.  What follows 
then but that the charitable Law must remedy what 
Nature cannot undergo?  Now that many licentious 
and hard-hearted Men took hold of this Law to cloke 
their bad purposes, is nothing strange to believe.  
And these were they, not for whom Moses made the 
Law, God forbid, but whose hardness of heart taking 
ill advantage by this Law, he held it better to suffer 
as by accident, where it could not be detected, rather 
than good Men should lose their just and lawful 
privilege of remedy: Christ therfore having to 
answer these tempting Pharisees, according as his 
custom was, not meaning to inform their proud 
ignorance what Moses did in the true intent of the 
Law, which they had ill cited, suppressing the true 
cause for which Moses gave it, and extending it to 
every slight matter, tells them their own, what 
Moses was forc'd to suffer by their abuse of his Law.  
Which is yet more plain if we mark that our Saviour 
in Mat. 5. cites not the Law of Moses, but the 
pharisaical tradition falsly grounded upon that Law.  
And in those other places, chap. 19. and Mark 10. the 
Pharisees cite the Law, but conceal the wise and 
human reason there exprest; which our Saviour 
corrects not in them, whose pride deserv'd not his 
instruction, only returns them what is proper to 
them; Moses for the hardness of your heart suffered 
you, that is such as you, to put away your wives; and 
to you he wrote this precept for this cause, which (to 
you) must be read with an impression, and 
understood limitedly of such as cover'd ill purposes 
under that Law: for it was seasonable that they 
should hear their own unbounded licence rebuk'd, 
but not seasonable for them to hear a good Man's 
requisite liberty explain'd.  But us he hath taught 
better, if we have ears to hear.  He himself 
acknowledg'd it to be a Law, Mark 10. and being a Law 
of God, it must have an undoubted end of charity, 
which may be us'd with a pure Heart, a good 
Conscience, and Faith unfeigned, as was heard: it 
cannot allow sin, but is purposely to resist sin, as by 
the same chapter to Timothy appears.  There we 
learn also, that the Law is good, if a man use it 
lawfully.  Out of doubt then there must be a certain 
good in this Law, which Moses willingly allow'd, and 
there might be an unlawful use made therof by 
hypocrites; and that was it which was unwillingly 
suffer'd, foreseeing it in general, but not able to 
discern it in particulars.  Christ therfore mentions 
not here what Moses and the Law intended, for good 
Men might know that by many other rules: and the 
scornful Pharisees were not fit to be told, until they 
could imploy that knowledge they had less abusively.  
Only he acquaints them with what Moses by them 
was put to suffer.


CHAP.  IX.

The words of the Institution how to be 
understood; and of our Saviour's Answer 
to his Disciples.

And to entertain a little their overweening 
arrogance as best befitted, and to amaze them yet 
futher, because they thought it no hard matter to 
fulfil the Law, he draws them up to that unseparable 
institution which God ordain'd in the beginning 
before the fall, when Man and Woman were both 
perfect, and could have no cause to separate: just as 
in the same Chapter he stands not to contend with 
the arrogant young Man, who boasted his observance 
of the whole Law, whether he had indeed kept it or 
not, but skrews him up higher to a task of that 
perfection, which no man is bound to imitate.  And in 
like manner that pattern of the first institution he 
set before the opinionative Pharisees, to dazle them, 
and not to bind us.  For this is a solid rule, that every 
command given with reason, binds our obedience no 
otherwise than that reason holds.  Of this sort was 
that command in Eden; Therfore shall a Man cleave to 
his Wife, and they shall be one flesh; which we see is 
no absolute command, but with an inference, 
Therfore: the reason then must be first consider'd, 
that our obedience be not misobedience.  The first is, 
for it is not single, because the Wife is to the Husband 
flesh of his flesh, as in the verse going before.  But 
this reason cannot be sufficient of itself: for why 
then should he for his wife leave his Father and 
Mother, with whom he is far more flesh of flesh, and 
bone of bone, as being made of their substance?  And 
besides, it can be but a sorry, and ignoble society of 
life, whose inseparable injunction depends meerly 
upon flesh and bones.  Therfore we must look higher, 
since Christ himself recals us to the beginning, and 
we shall find that the primitive reason of never 
divorcing, was that sacred and not vain promise of 
God to remedy man's Loneliness by making him a 
meet help for him, tho' not now in perfection, as at 
first; yet still in proportion as things now are.  And 
this is repeated verse 20. when all other creatures 
were fitly associated and brought to Adam, as if the 
divine power had been in some care and deep 
thought, because there was not yet found an help-
meet for Man.  And can we so slightly depress the all-
wise purpose of a deliberating God, as if his 
consultation had produced no other good for Man but 
to join him with an accidental companion of 
propagation, which his sudden word had already 
made for every beast? nay a far less good to Man it 
will be found, if she must at all adventures be 
fastned upon him individually.  And therfore even 
plain sense and equity, and, which is above them 
both, the all-interpreting voice of Charity herself 
cries loud that this primitive reason, this consulted 
promise of God to make a meet help, is the only cause 
that gives authority to this command of not 
divorcing, to be a command.  And it might be further 
added, that if the true definition of a Wife were ask'd 
in good earnest, this clause of being a meet help 
would shew itself so necessary, and so essential in 
that demonstrative argument, that it might be 
logically concluded: therfore she who naturally and 
perpetually is no meet help, can be no Wife; which 
clearly takes away the difficulty of dismissing of such 
a one.  If this be not thought enough, I answer yet 
further, that Marriage, unless it mean a fit and 
tolerable Marriage, is not inseparable neither by 
nature nor institution.  Not by nature, for then those 
Mosaic Divorces had been against nature, if separable 
and inseparable be contraries, as who doubts they 
be? and what is against nature is against Law, if 
soundest Philosophy abuse us not: by this reckoning 
Moses should be most unmosaic, that is most illegal, 
not to say most unnatural.  Nor is it inseparable by 
the first institution: for then no second institution of 
the same Law for so many causes could dissolve it; it 
being most unworthy a human, (as Plato's judgment 
is in the fourth book of his Laws) much more a divine 
Lawgiver to write two several Decrees upon the same 
thing.  But what could Plato have deemed if one of 
these were good, and the other evil to be done?  
Lastly, suppose it be inseparable by institution, yet 
in competition with higher things, as Religion and 
Charity in mainest matters, and when the chief end 
is frustrate for which it was ordined, as hath been 
shewn, if still it must remain inseparable, it holds a 
strange and lawless propriety from all other works of 
God under Heaven.  From these many considerations, 
we may safely gather, that so much of the first 
institution as our Saviour mentions, for he mentions 
not all, was but to quell and put to nonplus the 
tempting Pharisees, and to lay open their ignorance 
and shallow understanding of the Scriptures.  For, 
saith he, Have ye not read that he which made them 
at the beginning, made them male and female, and 
said, for this cause shall a man cleave to his wife? 
which these blind usurpers of Moses' Chair could not 
gainsay: as if this single respect of male and female 
were sufficient against a thousand inconveniences 
and mischiefs, to clog a rational creature to his 
endless sorrow unrelinquishably, under the guileful 
superscription of his intended solace and comfort.  
What if they had thus answer'd?  Master, if thou 
mean to make Wedloc as inseparable as from the 
beginning, let it be made a fit society, as God meant 
it, which we shall soon understand it ought to be, if 
thou recite the whole reason of the Law.  Doubtless 
our Saviour had applauded their just answer.  For 
then they had expounded his command of Paradise, 
even as Moses himself expounds it by his Laws of 
Divorce, that is, with due and wise regard to the 
Premises and Reasons of the first command; 
according to which, without unclean and temporizing 
Permissions, he instructs us in this imperfect state 
what we may lawfully do about Divorce.
	But if it be thought that the Disciples, offended 
at the rigor of Christ's answer, could yet obtain no 
mitigation of the former sentence pronounc'd to the 
Pharisees, it may be fully answer'd, that our Saviour 
continues the same reply to his Disciples, as men 
leavened with the same customary licence which the 
Pharisees maintain'd, and displeased at the removing 
of a traditional abuse, wherto they had so long not 
unwillingly been used: it was no time then to contend 
with their slow and prejudicial belief, in a thing 
wherein an ordinary measure of light in Scripture, 
with some attention, might afterwards inform them 
well enough.  And yet ere Christ had finished this 
argument, they might have pick'd out of his own 
concluding words an answer more to their minds, 
and in effect the same with that which hath been all 
this while intreating audience: All men, saith he, 
cannot receive this saying, save they to whom it is 
given; he that is able to receive it, let him receive it.  
What saying is this which is left to a man's choice to 
receive, or not receive?  What but the married life?  
Was our Saviour so mild and so favourable to the 
weakness of a single Man, and is he turn'd on the 
sudden so rigorous and inexorable, to the distressses 
and extremities of an ill-wedded Man?  Did he so 
graciously give leave to change the better single life 
for the worse married life?  Did he open so to us this 
hazardous and accidental door of marriage, to shut 
upon us like the gate of death, without retracting or 
returning, without permitting to change the worst, 
most insupportable, most unchristian mischance of 
Marriage for all the mischiefs and sorrows that can 
ensue, being an Ordinance which was especially given 
as a Cordial and exhilarating Cup of solace, the better 
to bear out other crosses and afflictions?  
Questionless this was a hard-heartedness of 
divorcing, worse than that in the Jews, which they 
say extorted the allowance from Moses, and is utterly 
dissonant from all the Doctrine of our Saviour.  After 
these considerations therfore, to take a Law out of 
Paradise given in time of original perfection, and to 
take it barely without those just and equal 
inferences and reasons which mainly establish it, nor 
so much as admitting those needful and safe 
allowances wherewith Moses  himself interprets it to 
the fallen condition of Man argues nothing in us but 
rashness and contempt of those means that God left 
us in his pure and chaste Law, without which it will 
not be possible for us to perform the strict imposition 
of this command: or if we strive beyond our 
strength, we shall strive to obey it otherwise than 
God commands it.  And lamented Experience daily 
teaches the bitter and vain fruits of this our 
presemption, forcing Men in a thing wherin we are 
not able to judge either of their strength or of their 
sufferance.  Whom neither one vice nor other by 
natural addiction, but only Marriage ruins, which 
doubtless is not the fault of that Ordinance, for God 
gave it as a blessing, nor always of man's mischusing, 
it being an error above wisdom to prevent, as 
examples of wisest Men so mistaken manifest: It is the 
fault therfore of a perverse Opinion that will have it 
continued in despite of Nature and Reason, when 
indeed it was never truly join'd.  All those Expositors 
upon the first of Matthew confess the Law of Moses  
to be the Law of the Lord, wherin no addition or 
diminution hath place; yet coming to the point of 
Divorce, as if they fear'd not to be call'd least in the 
Kingdom of Heaven, any slight evasion will content 
them, to reconcile those contradictions which they 
make between Christ and Moses, between Christ and 
Christ.


CHAP.  X.

The vain Shift of those who make the Law 
of Divorce to be only the Premises of a 
succeeding Law.

Some will have it no Law, but the granted Premises of 
another Law following, contrary to the words of 
Christ, Mark 10. 5. and all  other Translations of 
gravest Authority, who render it in form of a Law, 
agreeable to Mal. 2. 16. as it is most anciently and 
modernly expounded.  Besides, the Bill of Divorce, 
and the particular occasion therin mention'd, 
declared it to be orderly and legal.  And what avails 
this to make the matter more righteous, if such an 
adulterous condition shall be mention'd to build a 
Law upon without either punishment or so much a 
forbidding?  They pretend it is implicitly reprov'd in 
these words, Deut. 24. 4. after she is defiled; but who 
sees not that this defilement is not only in respect of 
returning to her former Husband after an intermixt 
Marriage? else why was not the defiling condition 
first forbidden, which would have saved the labour 
of this After-Law?  Nor is it seemly or piously 
attributed to the Justice of God and his known hatred 
of Sin, that such a heinous fault as this through all 
the Law should be only whip'd with an implicit and 
oblique touch, (which yet is falsly suppos'd) and that 
his peculiar People should be let wallow in adulterous 
Marriages almost two thousand years, for want of a 
direct Law to prohibit them: 'tis rather to be 
confidently assum'd that this was granted to 
apparent necessities, as being of unquestionable 
right and reason in the Law of nature, is that it still 
passes without inhibition, even when the greatest 
cause is given to us to expect it should be directly 
forbidden.


CHAP.  XI.

The other Shift of saying Divorce was 
permitted by Law, but not approv'd.  
More of the Institution.

But it was not approv'd.  So much the worse that it 
was allow'd; as if Sin had overmaster'd the Word of 
God, to conform her steddy and strait rule to Sin's 
crookedness, which is impossible.  Besides, what 
needed a positive grant of that which was not 
approv'd?  It restrain'd no liberty to him that could 
but use a little fraud, it had been better silenced 
unless it were approved in some case or other.  But 
still it was not approv'd.  Miserable Excusers!  He who 
doth evil that good may come therby, approves not 
what he doth; and yet the grand Rule forbids him, 
and counts his damnation just if he do it.  The 
Sorceress Medea did not approve her own evil 
doings, yet look'd not to be excused for that: and it is 
the constant Opinion of Plato in Protagoras, and 
other of his Dialogues agreeing with that Proverbial 
Sencence among the Greeks, that No man is wicked 
willingly.  Which also the Peripatetics do rather 
distingush than deny.  What great thank then if any 
man, reputed wise and constant, will neither do, nor 
permit others under his charge to do that which he 
approves not, especially in matter of Sin?  But for a 
Judge, but for a Magistrate, the Shepherd of his 
People, to surrender up his approbation against Law 
and his own Judgment, to the obstinacy of his herd, 
what more Un-judge-like, more Un-magistrate-like, 
and in War more Un-commander-like?  Twice in a 
short time it was the undoing of the Roman State, 
first when Pompey, next when Marcus Brutus, had 
not magnanimity enough but to make so poor a 
resignation of what they approv'd, to what the 
boisterous Tribunes and Soldiers bawl'd for.  Twice it 
was the saving of two the greatest Commonwealths in 
the World, of Athens by Themistocles at the Sea fight 
of Salamis; of Rome by Fabius Maximus in the Punic 
War, for that these two matchless Generals had the 
fortitude at home against the rashness and the 
clamours of their own Captians and Confederates, to 
withstand the doing or permitting of what they could 
not approve in their duty of their great command.  
Thus far of civil Prudence.  But when we speak of Sin, 
let us look again upon the old reverend Eli; who in his 
heavy Punishment found no difference between the 
doing and permitting of what he did not approve.  If 
hardness of heart in the people may be an excuse, 
why then is Pilate branded through all memory?  He 
approv'd not what he did, he openly protested, he 
wash'd his hands, and labour'd not a little ere he 
would yield to the hard hearts of a whole People, 
both Princes and Plebeans, importuning and 
tumulting even to the fear of a revolt.  Yet is there 
any will undertake his cause?  If therforePilate for 
suffering but one act of cruelty against Law, though 
with much unwillingness testify'd, at the violent 
demand of a whole Nation, shall stand so black upon 
record to all posterity; alas for Moses! what shall we 
say for him, while we are taught to believe he 
suffer'd not one act only both of cruelty and 
uncleanness in one Divorce, but made it a plain and 
lasting Law against Law, wherby ten thousand acts 
accounted both cruel and unclean, might be daily 
committed, and this without the least suit or petition 
of the People that we can read of.
	And can we conceive without vile thoughts, that 
the Majesty and Holiness of God could endure so 
many Ages to gratify a stubborn people in the 
practice of a foul polluting Sin? and could he expect 
they should abstain, he not signifying his mind in a 
plain command, at such time especially when he was 
framing their Laws and them to all possible 
perfection?  But they were to look back to the first 
institution; nay rather why was not that individual 
institution brought out of Paradise, as was that of the 
Sabbath, and repeated in the body of the Law, that 
men might have understood it to be a command? for 
that any sentence that bears the resemblance of a 
precept, set there so out of place in another World, at 
such a distance from the whole Law, and not once  
mentioned there, should be an obliging command to 
us, is very disputable, and perhaps it might be 
deny'd to be a command without further dispute: 
however, it commands not absolutely, as hath the 
very ground of his institution; if that appear not in 
some tolerable sort, how can we affirm such a 
matrimony to be the same which God instituted?  In 
such an accident it will best behoove our soberness 
to follow rather what moral Sinai prescribes equal to 
our strength, than fondly to think within our 
strength of all that lost Paradise relates.


CHAP.  XII.

The third Shift of them who esteem it a 
meer Judicial Law.  Prov'd again to be a 
Law of moral Equity.

Another while it shall suffice them, that it was not a 
moral but a judicial Law, and so was abrogated: nay 
rather abrogated because judicial; which Law the 
Ministry of Christ came not to deal with.  And who 
put it in Man's power to exempt, where Christ speaks 
in general of not abrogating the least jot or tittle, and 
in special not that of Divorce, because it follows 
among those Laws which he promis'd expresly not to 
abrogate, but to vindicate from abusive Traditions? 
which is most evidently to be seen in the 16th of 
Luke, where this caution of not abrogating is inserted 
immediately, and not otherwise than purposely, 
when no other point of the Law is touch'd but that of 
Divorce.  And if we mark the 31st  verse of Mat. 5. he 
there cites not the Law of Moses, but the licentious 
Gloss which traduc'd the Law; that therfore which he 
cited, that he abrogated, and not only abrogated, but 
disallow'd and flatly condemned, which could not be 
the Law of Moses, for that had been foully to the 
rebuke of his great Servant.  To abrogate a Law made 
with God's allowance, had been to tell us only that 
such a Law was now to cease: but to refute it with an 
ignominious note of civilizing Adultery, casts the 
reproof which was meant only to the Pharisees, even 
upon him who made theLaw. But yet if that be 
judicial which belongs to a Civil Court, this Law is less 
judicial than nine of the ten Commandments: for 
Antiquaries affirm, that Divorces proceeded among 
the Jews without knowledge of the Magistrate, only 
with Hands and Seals under the testimony of some 
Rabbi's to be then present.  Perkins in a Treatise of 
Conscience, grants, that what in the judicial Law is of 
common equity, binds also the Christian: and how to 
judge of this, prescribes two ways; If wise Nations 
have enacted the same Decree: Or if it maintain the 
good of Family, Church, or Commonwealth.  This 
therfore is a pure moral Ďconomical Law, too hastily 
imputed of tolerating Sin; being rather so clear in 
nature and reason, that it was left to a man's own 
arbitrement or be determined between God and his 
own conscience; not only among the Jews, but in 
every wise Nation; the restraint wherof, who is not 
too thick-sighted, may see how hurtful and 
distractive it is to the House, the Church, and 
Commonwealth.  And that power which Christ never 
took from the Master of a Family, but rectified only to 
a right and wary use at home; that power the 
undiscerning Canonist hath improperly usurpt in his 
Court-leet, and bescribbled with a thousand trifling 
impertinencies, which yet have fill'd the life of man 
with serious trouble and calamity.  Yet grant it were 
of old a judicial Law, it need not be the less moral for 
that, being conversant as it is about Virtue or Vice.  
And our Saviour disputes not here the Judicature, 
for that was not his Office, but the morality of 
Divorce, whether it be Adultery or no; if therfore he 
touch the Law of Moses at all, he touches the moral 
part therof, which is absurd to imagine, that the 
covenant of Grace should reform the exact and 
perfect Law of Works, eternal and immutable; or if he 
touch not the Law at all, then is not the Allowance 
therof disallow'd to us.


CHAP.  XIII.

The ridiculous Opinion that Divorce was 
permitted from the  Custom in Žgypt.  
That Moses gave not this Law 
unwillingly.  Perkins confesses this 
Law was not abrogated.

Others are so ridiculous as to alledge that this 
Licence of divorcing was given them because they 
were so accustom'd in Žgypt.  As if an ill Custom 
were to be kept to all posterity; for the Dispensation 
is both universal and of time unlimited, and so 
indeed no Dispensation at all: for the over-dated 
Dispensation of a thing unlawful, serves for nothing 
but to increase hardness of heart, and makes men 
but wax more incorrigible, which were a great 
reproach to be said of any Law or Allowance that God 
should give us.  In these Opinions it would be more 
Religion to advise well, lest we make our selves juster 
than God, by censuring rashly that for Sin which his 
unspotted Law without rebuke allows, and his People 
without being conscious of displeasing him have 
used, and if we can think so of Moses, as that the 
Jewish obstinacy could compel him to write such 
impure permissions against the Word of God and his 
own Judgment, doubtless it was his part to have 
protected publicly what straits he was driven to, and 
to have declar'd his Conscience, when he gave any 
Law against his mind: for the Law is the Touch-stone 
of Sin and of Conscience, and must not be intermix'd 
with corrupt Indulgences; for then it loses the 
greatest praise it has of being certain, and infallible, 
not leading into error as all the Jews were led by this 
Connivance of Moses, if it were a connivance.  But 
still they fly back to the primitive Institution, and 
would have us re-enter Paradise against the Sword 
that guards it. Whom I again thus reply to, that the 
place in Genesis contains the description of a fit and 
perfect Marriage, with an interdict of ever divorcing 
such a Union; but where nature is discover'd to have 
never joined indeed, but vehemently seeks to part, it 
cannot be there conceived that God forbids it, nay, 
he commands it both in the Law and in the Prophet 
Malachy, which is to be our rule.  And Perkins upon 
this Chapter of Matthew deals plainly, that our 
Saviour here confutes not Moses' Law, but the false 
Glosses that deprav'd the Law; which being true, 
Perkins must need grant, that something then is left 
to that Law concerning Divorce, should also look back 
upon the Institution, that he may endeavour what is 
perfectest: and he that looks upon the Institution 
shall not refuse as sinful and unlawful those 
allowances which God affords him in his following 
Law, lest he make himself purer than his Maker, and 
presuming above strength, slip into temptations 
irrecoverably.  For this is wonderful, that in all those 
Decrees concerning Marriage, God  should never once 
mention the prime Institution to dissuade them from 
divorcing, and that he should forbid smaller Sins as 
opposite to the hardness of their hearts, and let this 
adulterous matter of Divorce pass ever unreproved.
	This is also to be marvelled, that seeing Christ 
did not condemn whatever it was that Moses 
suffered, and that therupon the Christian Magistrate 
permits Usury and open Stews, and here with us 
Adultery to be so slightly punished, which was 
punished by death to these hard-hearted Jews, why 
we should strain thus at the matter of Divorce, which 
may stand so much with Charity to permit, and make 
no scruple our selves against the righteous and all-
wise Judgments and Statutes of God; which are not 
variable and contrarious, as we would make them, 
one while permitting, and another while forbidding, 
but are most constant and most harmonious each to 
other.  For how can the uncorrupt and majestic Law 
of God, bearing in her hand the wages of life and 
death, harbour such a repugnance within her self, as 
to require an unexempted and impartial Obedience to 
all the Decrees, either from us or from our Mediator, 
and yet debase her self to faulter so many Ages with 
circumcis'd Adulteries by unclean and slubbering 
Permissions?


CHAP.  XIV.

That Beza's Opinion of regulating Sin by 
Apostolic Law 
be cannot sound.

Yet Beza's Opinion is, that a politic Law, (but what 
politic Law, I know not, unless one of Machiavel's) 
may regulate Sin; may bear indeed, I grant, with 
imperfection for a time, as those Canons of the 
Apostles did in Ceremonial things: but as for Sin, the 
essence of it cannot consist with rule; and if the Law 
fail to regulate Sin, and not to take it utterly away, it 
necessarily confirms and estabishes Sin.  To make a 
regularity of Sin by Law, either the Law must 
streighten Sin into no Sin, or Sin must crook the Law  
into no Law.  The Judicial Law can serve to no other 
end than to be the Protector and Champion of 
Religion and honest Civility, as is set down plainly 
Rom. 13 and is but the arm of Moral Law, which can 
no more be separate from Justice, than Justice from 
Virtue.  Their office also, in a different manner, 
steers the same course; the one teaches what is good 
by precept, the other unteaches what is bad by 
punishment.  But if we give way to public 
Dispensations of lewd Uncleanness, the first good 
consequence of such a relax will be the justifying of 
Papal Stews, join'd with a toleration of epidemic 
Whoredom.  Justice must revolt from the end of her 
Authority, and become the Patron of that wherof she 
was created the Punisher.  The example of Usury, 
which is commonly alledged, makes against the 
Allegation which it brings, as I touched before.  
Besides that Usury, so much as is permitted by the 
Magistrate, and demanded by common equity, is 
neither against the word of God, nor the rule of 
Charity, as hath been often discuss'd by men of 
eminent Learning and Judgment.  There must be 
therfore some other example found out to shew us 
wherein civil Policy may with warrant from God 
settle Wickedness by Law, and make that lawful 
which is lawless.  Although I doubt not but upon 
deeper consideration, that which is true in Physic 
will be found as true in Policy, that as of bad Pulses 
those that beat most in order, are much worse than 
those that keep the most inordinate circuit; so of 
popular Vices those that may be committed legally, 
will be more pernicious than those that are left to 
their own course at peril, not under a stinted 
privilege to sin orderly and regularly, which is an 
implicite contradiction, but under due and fearless 
execution of punishment.
	The political Law, since it cannot regulate Vice, is 
to restrain it by using all means to root it out.  But if 
it suffer the weed to grow up to any pleasureable or 
contented height upon what pretext soever, it 
fastens the root, it prunes and dresses Vice, as if it 
were a good Plant.  Let no man doubt therfore to 
affirm, that it is not so hurtful or dishonourable to a 
Commonwealth, nor so much to the hardening of 
hearts, when those worse faults pretended to be 
feared are committed, by whoso dares under strict 
and executed Penalty, as when those less faults 
tolerated for fear or greater harden their faces, not 
their hearts only, under the protection of public 
Authority.  For what less indignity were this, than as 
if Justice herself, the Queen of Virtues (descending 
from her scepter'd Royalty) instead of conquering 
should compound and treat with Sin, her eternal 
Adversary and Rebel, upon ignoble terms? or as if 
the Judicial Law were like that untrusty Steward in 
the Gospel, and instead of calling in the debts of his 
moral Master, should give out subtile and sly 
Acquittances to keep himself from begging?  Or let us 
person him like some wretched Intinerary Judge, 
who to gratify his Delinquets before him, would let 
them basely break  his head, lest they shoud pull him 
from the Bench, and throw him over the Bar.  Unless 
we had rather think both Moral and Judicial, full of 
malice and deadly purpose, conspir'd to let the 
Debtor Israelite, the Seed of Abraham, run on upon a 
bankrout score, flatter'd with insufficient and 
ensnaring Discharges, that so he might be haled to a 
more cruel forfeit for all the indulgent arrears which 
those Judicial Acquitments had engaged him in.  No 
no, this cannot be, that the Law, whose integrity and 
faithfulness is next to God, should be either the 
shameless broker of our impunities, or the intended 
instrument of our destruction.  The method of holy 
correction, such as became the Commonwealth of 
Israel, is not to bribe sin with sin, to capitulate and 
hire out one crime with another; but with more 
noble and graceful severity than Popilius the Roman 
Legate used with Antiochus, to limit and level out the 
direct way from vice to virtue, with straightest and 
exactest lines on either side, not winding or 
indenting so much as to the right hand of fair 
pretences.  Violences indeed and Insurrection may 
force the Law to suffer what it cannot mend; but to 
write a Decree in allowance of sin, as soon can the 
hand of Justice rot off.  Let this be ever concluded as 
a truth that will outlive the faith of those that seek 
to bear it down.


CHAP.  XV.

That Divorce was not given for Wives 
only, as Beza and Paržus write.  More of 
the Institution.

Lastly, If Divorce were granted, as Beza and others 
say, not for men, but to release afflicted Wives; 
certainly it is not only a Dispensation, but a most 
merciful Law; and why it should not yet be in force, 
being wholly as needful, I know not what can be in 
cause but senseless cruelty.  But yet to say, Divorce 
was granted for relief of Wives rather than of 
Husbands, is but weakly conjectured, and is 
manifestly the extreme shift of a huddled exposition.  
Whenas it could not be found how hardness of heart 
should be lessen'd by liberty of Divorce a fancy was 
devis'd to hide the flaw, by commenting that Divorce 
was permitted only for the help of Wives.  Palpably 
uxorious! who can be ignorant that Woman was 
created for Man, and not Man for Woman, and that a 
Husband may be unjur'd as insufferably in Marriage 
as a Wife?  What an injury is it after Wedloc not to be 
belov'd? what to be slighted? what to be contended 
with in point of house-rule who shall be the head; 
not for any parity of wisdom, for that were 
something reasonable, but out of a female pride?  I 
suffer not, saith S. Paul, the Woman to usurp 
authority over the Man.  If the Apostle could not 
suffer it, into what mould is he mortified that can?  
Solomon saith, That a bad Wife is to her Husband as 
rottenness to his bones, a continual dropping.  Better 
dwell in the corner of  house-top, or in the 
wilderness, than with such a one.  Whoso hideth her, 
hideth the wind, and one of the four mischiefs which 
the earth cannot bear.  If the Spirit of God wrote 
such Aggravations as these, and (as may be guest by 
these similitudes) counsels the Man rather to divorce 
than to live with such a collegue; and yet on the 
other side expresses nothing of the Wife's suffering 
with a bad Husband: Is it not most likely that God in 
his Law had more pity towards Man thus wedlock'd, 
than towards the Woman that was created for 
another?  The same Spirit relates to us the course 
which the Medes and Persians took by occasion of 
Vashti, whose meer denial to come at her Husband's 
sending, lost her the being Queen any longer, and set 
up a wholesome Law, that every man should bear 
rule in his own house.  And the Divine Relater shews 
us not the least sign of disliking what was done; how 
should he, if Moses long before was nothing less 
mindful of the honour and pre-eminence due to 
Man?  So that to say Divorce was granted for Woman 
rather than Man, was but fonfly invented.  Esteeming 
therfore to have asserted thus an injur'd Law of 
Moses, from the unwarranted and guilty name of a 
Dispensation, to be again a most equal and requisite 
Law, we have the Word of Christ himself, that he 
came not to alter the least tittle of it; and signifies no 
small displeasure against him that shall teach to do 
so.  On which relying, I shall not much waver to 
affirm, that those words which are made to intimate 
as if they forbad all Divorce, but for Adultery, (tho' 
Moses have constituted otherwise) those words taken 
circumscriptly, without regard to any precedent Law 
of Moses, or attestation of Christ himself, or without 
care to preserve those his fundamental and 
superiour Laws of Nature and Charity, to which all 
other Ordinances give up their Seals, are as much 
against plain Equity and the Mercy of Religion, as 
those words of Take, eat, this is my Body, elementally 
understood, are against Nature and Sense.
	And surely the restoring of this degraded Law 
hath well recompenc'd the diligence was us'd by 
enlightning us further to find out wherfore Christ 
took off the Pharisees from alledging the Law, and 
refer'd them to the first institution; not condemning, 
altering, or abolishing this precept of divorce, which 
is plainly moral, for that were against his Truth, his 
Promise, and his prophetic Office; but knowing how 
fallaciously they had cited and conceal'd the 
particular and natural reason of the Law that they 
might justify any froward reason of their own, he 
lets go that Sophistry unconvinc'd, for that had been 
to teach them else, which his purpose was not.  And 
since they had taken a liberty which the Law gave 
not, he amuses and repels their tempting pride with 
a perfection of Paradise, which the Law required not; 
not therby to oblige our performance to that wherto 
the Law never enjoin'd the fallen estate of Man: for if 
the first institution must make Wedloc, whatever 
happen, inseparable to us, it must make it also as 
perfect as meetly helpful, and as comfortable as God 
promis'd it should be, at least in some degree; 
otherwise it is not equal or proportionable to the 
strength of Man, that he should be reduced into such 
indissoluble bonds to his assured misery, if all the 
other conditions of that covenant be manifestly 
alter'd.


CHAP.  XVI.

How to be understood that they must be 
one flesh; and how that those whom God 
hath join'd, Man should not sunder.

Next he saith, they must be one flesh; which, when 
all conjecturing is done, will be found to import no 
more but to make legitimate and good the carnal act, 
which else might seem to have somthing of pollution 
in it; and infers thus much over, that the fit union of 
their souls be such as may even incorporate them to 
love and amity: but that can never be where no 
correspondence is of the mind; nay instead of being 
one flesh, they will be rather two carcases chain'd 
unnaturally together; or, as it may happen, a living 
soul bound to a dead corpse, a punishment too like 
that inflicted by the Tyrant Mezentius, so little 
worthy to be received as that remedy of loneliness 
which God meant us.  Since we know it is not the 
joining of another body will remove loneliness, but 
the uniting of another compliable mind; and that it is 
no blessing but a torment, nay a base and brutish 
condition to be one flesh, unless where nature can in 
some measure fix a unity of disposition.  The meaning 
therfore of these words, For this cause shall a Man 
leave his Father and his Mother, and shall cleave to 
his Wife, was first to shew us the dear affection 
which naturally grows in every not unnatural 
Marriage, even to the leaving of Parents, or other 
familiarity whatsoever.  Next, it justifies a man in so 
doing, that nothing is done undutifully to Father or 
Mother.  But he that should be here sternly 
commanded to cleave to his error, a disposition 
which to his he finds will never cement, a quotidian 
of sorrow and discontent in his house; let us be 
excused to pause a little, and bethink us every way 
round ere we lay such a flat Solecism upon the 
gracious, and certainly not inexorable, not rushless 
and flinty Ordinance of Marriage.  For if the meaning 
of these words must be thus block'd up within their 
own letters from all equity and fair deduction, they 
will serve then well indeed their turn, who affirm 
Divorce to have been granted only for Wives; whenas 
we see no word of this Text binds Women, but Men 
only, what it binds.  No marvel then if Salomith 
(Sister to Herod) sent a Writ of Ease to Costobarus 
her Husband, which (as Josephus there attests) was 
lawful only to Men.  No marvel tho' Placidia, the 
Sister of Honorius, threatned the like to Earl 
Constantius for a trivial  cause, as Photius related 
from Olympiodorus.  No marvel any thing, if Letters 
must be turn'd into Palisadoes, to stake out all 
requisite sense from entering to their due 
enlargement.
	Lastly, Christ himself tells who should not be put 
asunder, namely, those whom God hath join'd.  A 
plain solution of this great controversy, if men would 
but use their eyes; for when is it that God may be 
said to join? when the parties and their friends 
consent?  No surely, for that may concur to lewdest 
ends.  Or is it when Church-Rites are finish'd?  
Neither; for the efficacy of those depends upon the 
presupposed fitness of either party.  Perhaps after 
carnal knowledge: Least of all; for that may join 
persons whom neither Law nor Nature dares join.  
'Tis left, that only then when the minds are fitly 
disposed and enabled to maintain a chearful 
conversation, to the solace and love of each other, 
according as God intended and promised in the very 
first foundation of Matrimony, I will make him a 
help-meet for him; for surely what God intended and 
promised, that only can be thought to be his joining, 
and not the contrary.  So likewise the Apostle 
witnesseth, 1 Cor. 7. 15. that in Marriage God hath 
called us to peace.  And doubtless in what respect he 
hath called us to marriage, in that also he hath join'd 
us.  The rest, whom either disproportion or deadness 
of spirit, or something distasteful and averse in the 
immutable bent of Nature renders conjugal, Error 
may have join'd, but God never join'd against the 
meaning of his own Ordinance.  And if he join'd them 
not, then is there no power above their own consent 
to hinder them from unjoining, when they cannot 
reap the soberest ends of being together in any 
tolerable sort.  Neither can it be said properly that 
such twain were ever divorc'd, but only parted from 
each other, as two persons unconjunctive are 
unmarriable together.  But it, whom God hath made a 
fit help, frowardness or private injuries hath made 
unfit, that being the secret of Marriage, God can 
better judge than Man, neither is Man indeed fit or 
able to decide this matter: however it be, 
undoubtedly a peaceful Divorce is a less evil, and less 
in scandal than hateful, hard-hearted, and 
destructive continuance of Marriage in the judgment 
of Moses and of Christ, that justifies him in chusing 
the less evil; which if it were an honest and civil 
prudence in the Law, what is there in the Gospel 
forbidding such a kind of legal wisdom, though we 
should admit the common Expositors?


CHAP.  XV.

The Sentence of Christ concerning 
Divorce how to be expounded.  What 
Grotius hath observ'd.  Other Additions.

Having thus unfolded those ambiguous Reasons, 
wherwith Christ (as his wont was) gave to the 
Pharisees that came to sound him such an answer as 
they deserved, it will not be uneasy to explain the 
Sentence itself that now follows; Whosoever shall put 
away his Wife, except it be for fornication, and shall 
marry another, committeth adultery.  First therfore 
I will set down what is observ'd by Grotius upon this 
point, a Man of general learning.  Next, I produce 
what mine own thoughts gave me before I had seen 
his Annotations.  Origen, saith he, notes that Christ 
nam'd Adultery rather as one example of other like 
cases, than as one only exception; and that is 
frequent not only in human but in divine Laws, to 
express one kind of fact, wherby other causes of like 
nature may have the like plea, as Exod. 21. 18, 19, 
20, 26.  Deut. 19. 5.  And from the Maxims of Civil 
Law he shews, that even in sharpest penal Laws the 
same reason hath the same right; and in gentler 
Laws, that from like causes to like the Law interprets 
rightly.  But it may be objected, saith he, that 
nothing destroys the end of Wedloc so much as 
Adultery.  To which he answers, that Marriage was 
not ordain'd only for copulation, but for mutual help 
and comfort of life: and if we mark diligently the 
nature of our Saviour's commands, we shall find that 
both their beginning and their end consists in 
charity; whose will is that we should so be good to 
others, as that we be not cruel to ourselves: and 
hence it appears why Mark and Luke, and S. Paul to 
the Corinthians, mentioning this precept of Christ, 
add no exception, because exceptions that arise from 
natural equity are included silently under general 
terms: it would be considered therfore whether the 
same equity may not have place in other cases less 
frequent.  Thus far he.  From hence is what I add: 
First, that this saying of Christ, as it is usually 
expounded, can be no Law at all, that a Man for no 
cause should separate but for Adultery, except it be 
a supernatural Law, not binding us as we now are; 
had it been the Law of nature, either the Jews, or 
some other wise and civil nation would have press'd 
it: or let it be so, yet that Law, Deut. 24. 1. wherby a 
Man hath leave to part, whenas for just and natural 
cause discover'd he cannot love, is a Law ancienter 
and deeper engraven in blameless nature than the 
other: therfore the inspired Lawgiver Moses took 
care that this should be specify'd and allow'd; the 
other he let vanish in silence, not once repeated in 
the Volume of his Law, even as the reason of it 
vanish'd with Paradise.  Secondly, this can be no new 
command, for the Gospel enjoins no new morality, 
save only the infinite enlargement of Charity, which 
in this respect is called the New Commandment  by S. 
John, as being the accomplishment of every 
command.  Thirdly, it is no command of perfection 
further than it partakes of Charity, which is the 
bond of perfection.  Those commands therfore which 
compel us to self-cruelty above our strength, so 
hardly will help forward to perfection, that they 
hinder and set backward in all the common 
rudiments of Christianity, as was prov'd.  It being 
thus clear that the words of Christ can be no kind of 
command as they are vulgarly taken, we shall now 
see in what sense they may be a command, and that 
an excellent one, the same with that of Moses, and no 
other.  Moses had granted, that only for a natural 
annoyance, defect, or dislike, whether in body or 
mind, (for so the Hebrew word plainly notes) which a 
man could not force himself to live with, he might 
give a bill of Divorce, therby forbidding any other 
cause wherin amendment or reconciliation might 
have place.  This Law the Pharisees depraving, 
extended to any slight contentious cause whatsoever.  
Christ therfore seeing where they halted, urges the 
negative part of the Law, which is necessarily 
understood (for the determinate permission of Moses 
binds them from further licence) and checking their 
supercilious drift, declares that no accidental, 
temporary, or reconcilable offence (except 
fornication) can justify a Divorce.  He touches not 
here those natural and perpetual hindrances of 
society, whether in body or mind, which are not to 
be remov'd; for such, as they are aptest to cause an 
unchangeable offence, so are they not capable of 
reconcilement, because not of amendment: they do 
not break indeed, but they annihilate the bands of 
Marriage more than Adultery.  For that fault 
committed argues not always a hatred either natural 
or incidental against whom it is committed; neither 
does it infer a disability of all future helpfulness, or 
loyalty, or living agreement, being once past and 
pardon'd, where it can be pardon'd: but that which 
naturally distastes, and finds no favour in the eyes 
of Matrimony, can never be conceal'd, never 
appeas'd, never intermitted, but proves a perpetual 
nullity of love and contentment, a solitude and dead 
vacation of all acceptable conversing.  Moses therfore 
permits Divorce, but in cases only that have no 
hands to join, and more need separating than 
Adultery.  Christ forbids it, but in matters only that 
may accord, and those less than Fornication.  Thus is 
Moses Law here plainly confirm'd, and those causes 
which he permitted not a jot gainsaid.  And that this 
is the true meaning of this place I prove by no less 
an Author than S. Paul himself, 1 Cor. 7. 10, 11. 
upon which Text Interpreters agree, that the Apostle 
only repeats the precept of Christ: where while he 
speaks of the Wife's reconcilement to her Husband, 
he puts it out of controversy, that our Saviour 
meant chiefly matters of strife and reconcilement; of 
which sort he would not that any difference should 
be the occasion of Divorce, except Fornication.  And 
that we may learn better how to value a grave and 
prudent Law of Moses, and how unadvisedly we 
smatter with our lips, when we talk of Christ's 
abolishing any Judicial Law of his great Father, except 
in some circumstances which are Judaical rather 
than Judicial, and need no abolishing, but cease of 
themselves; I say again, that this recited Law of 
Moses contains a cause of Divorce greater beyond 
compare than that for Adultery: and whoso cannot 
so conceive it, errs and wrongs exceedingly a Law of 
deep wisdom for want of well fathoming.  For let him 
mark, no man urges the just divorcing of Adultery as 
it is a sin, but as it is an injury to Marriage; and tho' 
it be but once committed, and that without malice, 
whether through importunity or opportunity, the 
Gospel does not therfore dissuade him who would 
therfore divorce; but that natural hatred, whenever 
it arises, is a greater evil in Marriage than the 
accident of Adultery, a greater defrauding, a greater 
injustice, and yet not blameable, he who understands 
not after all this representing, I doubt his Will like a 
hard Spleen draws faster than his Understanding can 
sanguify.  Nor did that man ever know or feel what it 
is to love truly, nor ever yet comprehended in his 
thoughts what the true intent of Marriage is.  And 
this also will be somewhat above his reach, but yet 
no less a truth for lack of his perspective, that as no 
man apprehends what vice is so well as he who is 
truly virtuous, no man knows Hell like him who 
converses most in Heaven; so there is none that can 
estimate the evil and the affliction of a natural 
hatred in Matrimony, unless he have a soul gentle 
enough and spacious enough to contemplate what is 
true love.
	And the reason why men so disesteem this wise-
judging Law of God, and count hate, or the not 
finding of favour, as it is there term'd, a humorous, a 
dishonest, and slight cause of Divorce, is because 
themselves apprehend so little of what true concord 
means: for if they did, they would be juster in their 
balancing between natural hatred and casual 
adultery; this being but a transient injury, and soon 
amended, I mean as to the party against whom the 
trespass is: but the other being an unspeakable and 
unremitting sorrow and offence, wherof no amends 
can be made, no cure, no ceasing but by Divorce, 
which like a divine touch in one moment heals all, 
and (like the word of God) in one instant hushes 
outrageous tempests into a sudden stillness and 
peaceful calm.  Yet all this so great a good of God's 
own enlarging to us, is by the hard reins of them 
that sit us, wholly diverted and imbezell'd from us.  
Maligners of mankind!  But who hath taught you to 
mangle thus, and make more gashes in the miseries 
of a blameless creature, with the leaden daggers of 
your literal Decrees, to whose ease you cannot add 
the tithe of one small atom, but by letting alone your 
unhelpful Surgery.  As for such as think wandring 
concupiscence to be here newly and more precisely 
forbidden than it was before, if the Apostle can 
convince them, we know that we are to know lust by 
the Law, and not by the new discovery of the Gospel.  
The Law of Moses knew what it permitted, and the 
Gospel knew what it forbid; he that under a peevish 
conceit of debarring concupiscence, shall go about to 
make a Novice of Moses, (not to say a worse thing, for 
reverence sake) and such a one of God himself as is a 
horror to think, to bind the disunions of complaining 
nature, in chains together, and curb them with a 
Canon Bit, 'tis he that commits all the whoredom and 
adultery which himself adjudges, besides the former 
guilt so manifold that lies upon him.  And if none of 
these considerations, with all their weight and 
gravity, can avail to the dispossessing him of his 
precious Literalism, let some one or other entreat 
him but to read on in the same 19th of Matth. till he 
come to that place that says, Some make themselves 
Eunuchs for the Kingdom of Heaven's sake.  And if 
then he please to make use of Origen's Knife, he may 
do well to be his own Carver.


CHAP.  XVIII.

Whether the Words of our Saviour be 
rightly expounded only of actual 
Fornication to be the cause of Divorce.  
The Opinion of Grotius, with other 
Reasons.

But because we know that Christ never gave a 
Judicial Law, and that the word Fornication is 
variously significant in Scripture, it will be much 
right done to our Saviour's words, to consider 
diligently whether it be meant here that nothing but 
actual fornication prov'd by witness can warrant a 
Divorce, for so our Canon Law judges.  Nevertheless, 
as I find that Grotius on this place hath observ'd the 
Christian Emperors, Theodosius the second and 
Justinian, Men of high Wisdom and reputed Piety, 
decreed it to be a divorcive Fornication, if the Wife 
attempted either against the knowledge, or 
obstinately against the will of her Husband, such 
things as gave open suspicion of adulterizing, as the 
wilful haunting of Feasts, and Invitations with men 
not of her near Kindred, the lying forth of her House, 
without propable cause, the frequenting of Theatres 
against her Husband's mind, her endeavour to 
prevent or destroy Conception.  Hence that of Jerom, 
where fornication is suspected, the Wife may lawfully 
be divorced: not that every motion of a jealous mind 
should be regarded, but that it should not be exacted 
to prove all things by the visibility of Law witnessing, 
or else to hoodwink the Mind: for the Law is not able 
to judge of these things but by the rule of Equity, 
and by permitting a wise man to walk the middle way 
of prudent circumspection, neither wretchedly 
jealous, nor stupidly and tamely patient.  To this 
purpose hath Grotius in his notes.  He shews also that 
Fornication is taken in Scripture for such a continual 
headstrong Behaviour, as tends to plain contempt of 
the Husband, and proves it out of Judges 19. 2. 
where the Levite's Wife is said to have plaid the 
whore against him; which Josephus and the 
Septuagint, with the Chaldean, interpret only of 
Stubbornness and Rebellion against her Husband: 
and to this I add, that Kimchi, and the two other 
Rabbies who gloss the Text, are in the same Opinion.  
Ben Gersom reasons, that had it been Whoredom, a 
Jew and a Levite would have disdain'd to fetch her 
again.  And this I shall contribute, that had it been 
Whoredom, she would have chosen any other place 
to run to than to her Father's house, it being so 
infamous for an Hebrew Woman to play the Harlot, 
and so oprobrious to the Parents.  Fornication then 
in this place of the Judges is understood for stubborn 
Disobedience against the Husband, and not for 
Adultery.  A Sin of that sudden activity, as to be 
already committed when no more is done, but only 
look'd unchastly: which yet I should be loth to judge 
worthy a Divorce, though in our Saviour's Language 
it be called Adultery.  Nevertheless when palpable 
and frequent signs are given, the Law of God, Num. 5.  
so far gave way to the Jealousy of a Man, as that the 
Woman, set before the Sanctuary with her head 
uncover'd, was adjur'd by the Priest to swear 
whether she were false or no, and constrain'd to 
drink that bitter water with an undoubted curse of 
rottenness and tympany to follow, unless she were 
innocent.  And the jealous man had not been guiltless 
before God, as seems by the last Verse, if having 
such a suspicion in his head, he should neglect his 
trial; which if to this day it be not to be us'd, or be 
thought as uncertain of effect as our antiquated Law 
of Ordalium, yet all equity will judge that many 
adulterous demeanours, which are of lewd suspicion 
and example, may be held sufficient to incur a 
Divorce, though the Act it self hath not been prov'd.  
And seeing the Generosity of our Nation is so, as to 
account no reproach more abominable than to be 
nick-nam'd the Husband of an Adulteress, that our 
Law should not be as ample as the Law of God, to 
vindicate a Man from that ignoble sufferance, is our 
barbarous unskilfulness, not considering that the 
Law should be exasperated according to our 
estimation of the injury.  And if it must be suffer'd 
till the act be visibly prov'd, Solomon himself, whose 
judgment will be granted to surpass the acuteness of 
any Canonist, confesses, Prov. 30. 19, 20. that for 
the act of Adultery it is as difficult to be found as the 
track of an eagle in the air, or the way of a ship in 
the sea; so that a Man may be put to unmanly 
indignities ere it be found out.  This therfore may be 
enough to inform us, that divorcive Adultery is not 
limited by our Saviour to the utmost act, and that to 
be attested always by eye-witness, but may be 
extended also to divers obvious actions, which either 
plainly lead to Adultery, or give such presumption 
wherby sensible men may suspect the deed to be 
already done.  And this the rather may be thought, 
in that our Saviour chose to use the word 
Fornication, which word is found to signify other 
matrimonial Transgressions of main breach to that 
Covenant besides actual Adultery.  For that Sin 
needed not the riddance of Divorce, but of Death by 
the Law, which was active even till then by the 
example of the Woman taken in Adultery; or if the 
Law had been dormant, our Saviour was more likely 
to have told them of their neglect, than to have let a 
capital crime silently scape into a Divorce; or if it be 
said, his business was not to tell them what was 
criminal in the civil Courts, but what was sinful at 
the Bar of Conscience, how dare they then, having no 
other ground than these our Saviour's words, draw 
that into the trial of Law, which both by Moses and 
our Saviour, say they, only that the jurisdiction of 
Conscience?  But we take from our Saviour, say they, 
only that it was Adultery, and our Law of itself 
applies the Punishment.  But by their leave that so 
argue, the great Lawgiver of all the World, who knew 
best what was Adultery, both to the Jew and to the 
Gentile, appointed no such applying, and never likes 
when mortal men will be vainly presuming to 
outstrip his Justice.


CHAP.  XIX.

Christ's manner of teaching.  S. Paul adds 
to the matter of Divorce without 
command, to shew the matter to be of 
equity, not of rigour.  That the Bondage 
of a Christian may be as much, and his 
Peace as little, in some other Marriages 
besides Idolatrous.  If those arguments 
therfore be good in that one case, why 
not in those other?  Therfore the 
Apostle himself adds  en toiV toidtoiV.

Thus at length we see both by this and other places, 
that there is scarce any one saying in the Gospel but 
must be read with limitations and distinctions to be 
rightly understood; for Christ gives no full 
Comments or continued Discourses, but (as 
Demetrius the Rhetorician phrases it) speaks oft in 
Monosyllables, like a Master scattering the heavenly 
grain of his Doctrine like Pearls here and there, 
which requires a skilful and laborious Gatherer, who 
must compare the words he finds with other 
precepts, with the end of every Ordinance, and with 
the general Analogy of Evangelic Doctrine: otherwise 
many particular Sayings would be but strange 
repugnant Riddles, and the Church would offend in 
granting Divorce for Frigidity, which is not here 
excepted with Adultery, but by them added.  And 
this was it undoubtedly, which gave reason to S. Paul 
of his own Authority, as he professes, and without 
command from the Lord, to enlarge the seeming 
construction of those places in the Gospel, by adding 
a case wherin a person deserted, which is something 
less than divorc'd, may lawfully marry again.  And 
having declar'd his Opinion in one case, he leaves a 
further liberty for Christian prudence to determine 
in cases of like importance, words so plain as not to 
be shifted off, that a brother or a sister is not under 
bondage in such cases; adding also, that God hath 
called us to peace in Marriage.
	Now if it be plain that a Christian may be 
brought into unworthy bondage, and his religious 
peace not only interrupted now and then, but 
perpetually and finally hindred in Wedloc, by mis-
yoking with a diversity of Nature as well as of 
Religion, the reasons of S. Paul cannot be made 
special to that one case of Infidelity, but are of equal 
moment to a Divorce, wherever Christian Liberty 
and Peace are without fault equally obstructed: That 
the Ordinance which God gave to our comfort may 
not be pinned upon us to our undeserved thraldom, 
to be coop'd up as it were in mockery of Wedloc, to a 
perpetual betroth'd Loneliness and Discontent, if 
nothing worse ensue.  There being nought else of 
Marriage left between such, but a displeasing and 
forc'd remedy against the sting of a brute desire: 
which fleshly accustoming without the Soul's union 
and commixture of intellectual delight as it is rather 
a soiling than a fulfilling of Marriage-Rites, so it is 
enough to abase the mettle of a generous spirit, and 
sinks him to a low and vulgar pitch of endeavour in 
all his actions, or (which is worse) leaves him in a 
despairing plight of abject and hardned thoughts: 
which condition rather than a good man should fall 
into, a man useful in the service of God and Mankind, 
Christ himself hath taught us to dispense with the 
most sacred Ordinance of his Worship, even for a 
bodily healing to dispense with that holy and 
speculative Rest of Sabbath, much more then with 
the erroneous observance of an ill-knotted Marriage, 
for the sustaining of an overcharged faith and 
perseverance.


CHAP.  XX.

The meaning of S. Paul, that Charity 
believeth all things.  What is to be said 
to the Licence which is vainly fear'd 
will grow hereby.  What to those who 
never have done prescribing patience 
in this case.  The Papist most severe 
against Divorce, yet most easy to all 
Licence.  Of all the miseries in 
Marriage God is to be cleared, and the 
faults to be laid on Man's unjust Laws.

And tho' bad causes would take licence by this 
pretext, if that cannot be remedied, upon their 
Conscience be it who shall so do.  This was that 
hardness of heart, and abuse of a good Law, which 
Moses was content to suffer, rather than good men 
should not have it at all to use needfully.  And he 
who to run after one lost sheep left ninety nine of his 
own flock at random in the wilderness, would little 
perplex his thoughts for the obduring of nine 
hundred and ninety such as will daily take worse 
liberties, whether they have permission or not.  To 
conclude, as without charity God hath given no 
commandment to men, so without it neither can men 
rightly believe any commandment give.  For every 
act of true Faith, as well that wherby we believe the 
Law, as that wherby we endeavour the Law, is 
wrought in us by Charity, according to that in the 
Divine Hymn of S. Paul, 1 Cor. 13. Charity believeth 
all things; not as if  she were so credulous, which is 
the Exposition hitherto current, for that were a 
trivial Praise, but to teach us that Charity is the high 
Governess of our Belief, and that we cannot safely 
assent to any precept written in the Bible, but as 
Charity commends it to us.  Which agrees with that of 
the same Apostle to the Eph. 4. 14, 15. where he tells 
us, that the way to get a sure undoubted knowledge 
of things, is to hold that for Truth which accords 
most with Charity.  Whose unerring guidance and 
conduct having follow'd as a Load-star, with all 
diligence and fidelity, in this question, I trust 
(through the help of that illuminating Spirit which 
hath favour'd me) to have done no every day's work, 
in asserting after many Ages the words of Christ, 
with other Scriptures of great concernment, from 
burdensome and remorseless obscurity, tangled with 
manifold repugnancies, to their native lustre and 
consent between each other; hereby also dissolving 
tedious and Gordian difficulties, which have hitherto 
molested the Church of God, and are now decided not 
with the Sword of Alexander, but with the 
immaculate hands of Charity, to the unspeakable 
good of Christendom.  And let the extreme Literalist 
sit down now, and revolve whether this in all 
necessity be not the due result of our Saviour's 
words, or if he persist to be  otherwise opinion'd, let 
him well advise, lest thinking to gripe fast the Gospel, 
he be found instead with the Canon Law in his fist: 
whose boisterous Edicts tyrannizing the blessed 
Ordinance of Marriage into the quality of a most 
unnatural and unchristianly yoke, have given the 
flesh this advntage to hate it, and turn aside, oftimes 
unwillingly, to all dissolute uncleanness, even till 
punishment itself is weary of and overcome by the 
incredible frequency of trading Lust and uncontroll'd 
Adulteries.  Yet Men whose Creed is Custom, I doubt 
will be still endeavouring to hide the sloth of their 
own timorous Capacities with this pretext, that for all 
this 'tis better to endure with patience and silence 
this Affliction which God hath sent.  And I agree 'tis 
true, if this be exhorted and not enjoin'd; but withal 
it will be wisely done to be as sure as may be, that 
what man's iniquity hath laid on be not imputed to 
God's sending, lest under the colour of an affected 
patience we detain our selves at the gulph's mouth of 
many hideous temptations, not to be withstood 
without proper gifts, which (as Perkins well notes) 
God gives not ordinarily, no not to most earnest 
Prayers.  Therfore we pray, Lead us not into 
Temptation; a vain Prayer, if having led our selves 
thither, we love to stray in that perilous condition.  
God sends remedies as well as evils, under which he 
who lies and groans, that may lawfully acquit 
himself, is accessory to his own ruin; nor will it 
excuse him tho' he suffer thro' a sluggish fearfulness 
to search throughly what is lawful, for fear of 
disquieting the secure falsity of an old Opinion.  Who 
doubts not but that it may be piously said, to him 
who would dismiss his frigidity, Bear your trial, take 
it as if God would have you live this life of 
continence? if he exhort this, I hear him as an Angel, 
tho' he spake without warrant; but if he would 
compel me, I know him for Satan.  To him who 
divorces an Adulteress, Piety might say, Pardon her; 
you may shew much mercy, you may win a Soul: yet 
the Law both of God and Man leaves it freely to him; 
for God loves not to plow upon the hearts of our 
endeavours with over-hard and sad tasks.  God 
delights not to make a drudge of Virtue, whose 
Actions must be all elective and unconstrained.  
Forc'd Virtue is as a bolt over-shot, it goes neither 
forward nor backward, and does no good as it stands.  
Seeing therfore that neither Scripture nor Reason 
hath laid this unjust austerity upon Divorce, we may 
resolve that nothing else hath wrought it but that 
letter-bound Servility of the Canon Doctors, 
supposing Marriage to be a Sacrament, and out of the 
art they have to lay unnecessary burdens upon all 
Men, to make a fair shew in the fleshly observance of 
Matrimony, though Peace and Love with all other 
conjugal respects fare never so ill.  And indeed the 
Papists, who were the strictest forbidders of Divorce, 
are the easiest Libertines to admit of grosser 
uncleanness; as if they had a design by making 
Wedloc a supportless yoke, to violate it most, under 
colour of preserving it most inviolable; and withal 
delighting (as their mystery is) to make men the 
day-labourers of their own afflictions, as if there 
were such a scarcity of miseries from abroad, that we 
should be made to melt our choicest home Blessings, 
and coin them into Crosses, for want wherby to hold 
commerce with patience.  If any therfore who shall 
hap to read this Discourse, hath been through 
misadventure ill engaged in this contracted evil here 
complain'd of, and finds the fits and workings of a 
high impatience frequently upon him, of all those 
wild words which men in misery think to ease 
themselves by uttering, let him not open his lips 
against the Providence of Heaven, or tax the ways of 
God and his divine Truth; for they are equal, easy, 
and not burdensome; nor do they ever cross the just 
and reasonable desires of men, nor involve this our 
portion of mortal life into a necessity of sadness and 
malecontent, by Laws commanding over the 
unreducible Antipathies of Nature, sooner or later 
found, but allow us to remedy and shake off those 
evils into which human error hath led us through 
the midst of our best intentions, and to support our 
incident extremities by that authentic precept of 
Sovereign Charity, whose grand Commission is to do 
and to dispose over all the Ordinances of God to Man, 
that love and truth may advance each other to ever-
lasting.  While we, literally superstitious through 
customary faintness of heat, not venturing to pierce 
with our free thoughts into the full latitude of Nature 
and Religion, abandon ourselves to serve under the 
tyranny of usurp'd Opinions, suffering those 
Ordinances which were allotted to our solace and 
reviving, to trample over us, and hale us into a 
multitude of sorrows, which God never meant us.  
And where he sets us in a fair allowance of way, with 
honest liberty and prudence to our guard, we never 
leave subtilizing and casuisting till we have straitned 
and pared that liberal path into a Razor's edge to 
walk on, between a precipice of unnecessary mischief 
on either side; and starting at every false Alarm, we 
do not know which way to set a foot forward with 
manly Confidence and Christian Resolution, thro' the 
confused ringing in our ears of panic scruples and 
amazements.


CHAP.  XXI.

That the Matter of Divorce is not to be 
try'd by Law, but by Conscience, as 
many other Sins are.  The Magistrate 
can only see that the  condition of 
Divorce be just and equal.  The Opinion 
of Fagius, and the Reasons of this 
Assertion.

Another act of Papal Encroachment it was, to pluck 
the power and arbitrement of Divorce from the 
Master of the Family, onto whose hands God and the 
Law of all Nations had put it, and Christ so left it, 
preaching only to the Conscience, and not 
authorizing a Judicial Court to toss about and divulge 
the uncaccountable and secret reason of disaffection 
between Man and Wife, as a thing most improperly 
answerable to any such kind of trial.  But the Popes 
of Rome, perceiving the great Revenue and high 
Authority it would give them even over Princes, to 
have the judging and deciding of such a main 
consequence in the life of man as was Divorce, 
wrought so upon the Superstition of those Ages, as to 
divest them of that right which God from the 
beginning had entrusted to the Husband: by which 
means they subjected that ancient and naturally 
domestic Prerogative to an external and unbefitting 
Judicature.  For although differences in Divorce about 
Dowries, Jointures, and the like, besides the 
punishing of Adultery, ought not to pass without 
referring, if need be, to the Magistrate; yet that the 
absolute and final hindring of Divorce cannot belong 
to any civil or earthly power, against the will and 
consent of both parties, or of the Husband alone, 
some reasons will be here urg'd as shall not need to 
decline the touch.  But first I shall recite what hath 
been already yielded by others in favour of this 
Opinion.  Grotius and many more agree, that 
notwithstanding what Christ spake therin to the 
Conscience, the Magistrate is not therby enjoin'd 
aught against the preservation of civil peace, of 
equity, and of convenience.  Among these Fagius is 
most remarkable, and gives the same liberty of 
pronouncing Divorce to the Christian Magistrate as 
the Mosaic had.  For whatever (saith he) Christ spake 
to the regenerate, the Judge hath to deal with the 
vulgar: if therfore any through hardness of heart 
will not be a tolerable Wife to her Husband, it will be 
lawful as well now as of old to pass the bill of Divorce, 
not by private, but by public authority.  Nor doth 
Man separate and remove from perpetual vexation, 
and no small danger, those bodies whose minds are 
already separate; it being his office to procure 
peaceable and convenient living in the 
Commonwealth; and being as certain also, that they 
so necessarily separated cannot all receive a single 
life?  And this I observe, that our Divines do 
generally condemn separation of bed and board, 
without the liberty of second choice: if that therfore 
in some cases be most purely necessary, as who so 
blockish to deny; then is this also as needful.  Thus 
far by others is already well stept, to inform us that 
Divorce is not a matter of Law, but of Charity: if 
there remain a furlong yet to end the question, these 
following reasons may serve to gain it with any 
apprehension not too unlearned or too wayward.  
First because oft-times the causes of seeking Divorce 
reside so deeply in the radical and innocent 
affections of Nature, as is not within the diocese of 
Law to tamper with.  Other relations may aptly 
enough be held together by a civil and virtuous love: 
but the duties of Man and Wife are such as are 
chiefly conversant in that love, which is most ancient 
and meerly natural, whose two prime statutes are to 
join it self to that which is good, and acceptable, and 
friendly; and to turn aside and depart from what is 
disagreeable, displeasing, and unlike: of the two this 
latter is the strongest, and most equal to be 
regarded; for although a Man may often be unjust in 
seeking that which he loves, yet he can never be 
unjust or blameable in retiring from his endless 
trouble and distaste, whenas his tarrying can 
redound to no true content on either side.  Hate is of 
all things the mightiest divider, nay is division it self.  
To couple hatred therfore, though wedloc try all her 
golden links, and borrow to her aid all the iron 
manacles and fetters of Law, it does but seek to twist 
a rope of sand, which was a task they say that pos'd 
the Devil: and that sluggish fiend in hell, Ocnus, 
whom the Poems tell of, brought his idle cordage to 
as good effect, which never serv'd to bind with, but 
to feed the Ass that stood at his elbow.  And that the 
restrictive Law against Divorce attains as little to 
bind any thing truly in a disjointed Marriage, or to 
keep it bound, but serves only to feed the ignorance 
and definitive impertinence of a doltish Canon, were 
no absurd allusion.  To hinder therfore those deep 
and serious regresses of Nature in a reasonable soul, 
parting from that mistaken help which he justly 
seeks in a person created for him, recollecting 
himself from an unmeet help which was never 
meant, and to detain him by compulsion in such an 
unpredestin'd misery as this, is in diameter against 
both Nature and Institution: but to interpose a 
Jurisdictive Power over the inward and irremediable 
disposition of Man, to command love and sympathy, 
to forbid dislike against the guiltless instinct of 
Nature, is not within the Province of any Law to 
reach, and were indeed an uncommodious rudeness, 
not a just power: for that Law may bandy with 
nature, and traverse her sage motions, was an error 
in Callicles the Rhetorician, whom Socrates from high 
principles confutes in Plato's Gorgias.  If therfore 
Divorce may be so natural, and that Law and Nature 
are not to go contrary; then to forbid Divorce 
compulsively, is not only against Nature, but against 
Law.
	Next, it must be remembred that all Law is for 
some good that may be frequently attain'd without 
the admixture of a worse inconvenience; and 
therfore many gross faults, as ingratitude and the 
like, which are too far within the soul to be cur'd by 
constraint of Law, are left only to be wrought on by 
conscience and persuasion.  Which made Aristotle, in 
the 10th of his Ethics to Nicomachus, aim at a kind of 
division of Law into private or perswasive, and public 
or compulsive.  Hence it is that the law forbidding 
Divorce, never attains to any good end of such 
Prohibition, but rather multiplies evil.  For if 
Nature's resistless sway in love or hate be once 
compell'd, it grows careless of it self, vicious, useless 
to friends, unserviceable and spiritless to the 
Commonwealth.  Which Moses rightly foresaw, and all 
wise Lawgivers that ever knew Man, what kind of 
creature he was.  The Parlament also and Clergy of 
England were not ignorant of this, when they 
consented that Harry the 8th might put away his 
Queen Anne of Cleve, whom he could not like after he 
had been wedded half a year; unless it were that, 
contrary to the Proverb, they made a necessity of 
that which might have been a virtue in them to do: 
for even the freedom and eminence of Man's creation 
gives him to be a Law in this matter to himself, being 
the head of the other sex which was made for him; 
whom therfore though he ought not to injure, yet 
neither should he be forc'd to retain in society to his 
own overthrow, nor to hear any Judge therin above 
himself.  It being also an unseemly affront to the 
sequestred and veiled modesty of that Sex, to have 
her unpleasingness and other concealments bandied 
up and down, and aggravated in open Court by those 
hir'd masters of Tongue-fence.  Such uncomely 
exigencies it befel no less a Majesty than Henry the 
VIII. to be reduc'd to, who finding just reason in his 
conscience to forgo his brother's Wife, after many 
indignities of being deluded, and made a boy of by 
those his two Cardinal Judges, was constrain'd at last, 
for want of other proof, that she had been carnally 
known by Prince Arthur, even to uncover the 
nakedness of that virtuous Lady, and to recite openly 
the obscene evidence of his Brother's Chamberlain.  
Yet it pleas'd God to make him see all the Tyranny of 
Rome, by discovering this which they exercis'd over 
Divorce, and to make him the beginner of a 
Reformation to this whole Kingdom, by first asserting 
into his familiary Power the Right of just Divorce.  
'Tis true, an Adulteress cannot be shamed enough by 
any public proceeding; but that Woman whose 
honour is not appeach'd, is less injur'd by a silent 
dismission, being otherswise not illiberally dealt 
with, than to endure a clamouring debate of utterless 
things, in a business of that civil secrecy and difficult 
discerning, as not to be over-much question'd by 
nearest Friends.  Which drew that answer from the 
greatest and worthiest Roman of his time, Paulus 
Emilius, being demanded why he would put away his 
Wife for no visible reason?  This Shoe (said he, and 
held it out on his foot) is a neat shoe, a new shoe, and 
yet none of you know where it wrings me: much less 
by the unfamiliar cognizance of a fee'd Gamester can 
such a private difference be examin'd, neither ought 
it.
	Again, if Law aim at the firm establishment and 
preservation of matrimonial faith, we know that 
cannot thrive under violent means, but is the more 
violated.  It is not when two unfortunately met are 
by the Canon forc'd to draw in that yoke an 
unmerciful day's work of sorrow till death unharness 
'em, that then the Law keeps Marriage most 
unviolated and unbroken; but when the Law takes 
order that Marriage be accountant and responsible to 
perform that society, whether it be religious, civil, or 
corporal, which may be conscionably requir'd and 
claim'd therin, or else to be dissolv'd if it cannot be 
undergone.  This is to make Marriage most 
indissoluble, by making it a just and equal dealer, a 
performer of those due helps which instituted the 
Covenant, being otherwise a most unjust contract, 
and no more to be maintain'd under tuition of Law 
than the vilest fraud, or cheat, or theft that may be 
committed.  But because this is such a secret kind of 
fraud or theft, as cannot be discern'd by Law, but 
only by the Plaintiff himself; therfore to divorce was 
never counted a political or civil offence neither to 
Jew nor Gentile, nor any judicial intentment of 
Christ, further than could be discern'd to transgress 
the allowance of Moses, which was of necessity so 
large, that it doth all one as if it sent back the matter 
undeterminable at Law, and intractable by rough 
dealing to have instructions and admonitions 
bestow'd about it by them whose spiritual office is to 
adjure and to denounce, and so left to the 
Conscience.  The Law can only appoint the just and 
equal conditions of Divorce, and is to look how it is an 
injury to the divorc'd, which in truth it can be none, 
as a meer separation; for if she consent,wherin has 
the Law to right her? or consent not, then is it either 
just, and so deserved; or if unjust, such in all 
likelihood was the Divorcer: and to part from an 
unjust Man is a happiness, and no injury to be 
lamented.  But suppose it be an unjury, the Law is 
not able to amend it, unless she think it other than a 
miserable redress to return back from whence she 
was expell'd, or but intreated to be gone, or else to 
live apart still married without Marriage, a married 
Widow.  Last, if it be to chasten the Divorcer, what 
Law punishes a deed which is not moral but natural, 
a deed which cannot certainly be found to be an 
injury? or how can it be punish'd by prohibiting the 
Divorce, but that the Innocent must equally partake 
both in the shame and in the smart?  So that which 
way soever we look the Law can to no rational 
purpose forbid Divorce, it can only take care that the 
conditions of Divorce be not injurious.  Thus then we 
see the trial of Law how impertinent it is to this 
question of Divorce, how helpless next, and then how 
hurtful.


CHAP.  XXII.

The last Reason why Divorce is not to be 
restrained by Law, it being against the 
Law of Nature and of Nations.  The larger 
proof whereof referred to Mr. Selden's 
Book De Jure Naturali & Gentium.  An 
Objection of Paržus answered.  How it 
ought to be ordered by the Church.  That 
this will not breed any worse 
inconvenience, nor so bad as is now 
suffered.

Therfore the last Reason why it should not be, is the 
example we have, not only from the noblest and 
wisest Commonwealths, guided by the clearest light 
of human knowledge, but also from the divine 
Testimonies of God himself, law-giving in person to a 
sanctified people.  That all this is true, whoso desires 
to know at large with least pains, and expects not 
here over-long rehearsals of that which is by others 
already so judiciously gather'd, let him hasten to be 
acquainted with that noble Volume written by our 
Learned Selden, Of the Law of Nature and of Nations, 
a Work more useful and more worthy to be perus'd 
by whosoever studies to be a great Man in wisdom, 
equity, and justice, than all those Decretals and 
sumless Sums, which the Pontifical Clerks have doted 
on, ever since that unfortunate Mother famously 
sinn'd thrice, and died impenitent of her bringing 
into the World those two misbegotten Infants, and 
for ever Infants, Lombard and Gratian, him the 
compiler of Canon iniquity, t'other the Tubalcain of 
Scholastic Sophistry, whose overspreading 
Barbarism hath not only infus'd their own bastardy 
upon the fruitfullest part of human Learning, not 
only dissipated and dejected the clear light of Nature 
in us, and of Nations, but hath tainted also the 
fountains of Divine Doctrine, and render'd the pure 
and solid Law of God unbeneficial to us by their 
calumnious Dunceries.  Yet this Law which their 
unskilfulness hath made liable to all ignominy, the 
purity and wisdom of this Law shall be the buckler of 
our dispute.  Liberty of Divorce we claim not, we 
think not but from this Law; the dignity, the faith, 
the authority therof is now grown among Christians.  
O astonishment! a labour of no mean difficulty and 
envy to defend.  That it should not be counted a 
faltring dispense, a flattering permission of sin, the 
bill of Adultery, a snare, is the expence of all this 
Apology.  And all that we solicit is, that it may be 
suffered to stand in the place where God set it, 
amidst the Firmament of his holy Laws, to shine, as it 
was wont, upon the weaknesses and errors of Men, 
perishing else in the sincerity of their honest 
purposes: for certain there is no memory of 
Whoredoms and Adulteries left among us now, when 
this warranted freedom of God's own giving is made 
dangerous and discarded for a scrole of licence.  It 
must be your suffrages and votes, O Englishmen, that 
this exploded Decree of God and Moses may scape and 
come off fair, without the censure of a shameful 
abrogating: which, if yonder Sun ride sure, and 
means not to break word with us to-morrow, was 
never yet abrogated by our Saviour.  Give sentence 
if you please, that the frivolous Canon may reverse 
the infallible judgment of Moses and his great 
Director.  Or if it be the reformed Writers whose 
Doctrine perswades this rather, their Reasons I dare 
affirm are all silenc'd, unless it be only this.  Paržus 
on the Corinthians would prove that hardness of 
heart in Divorce is no more now to be permitted, but 
to be amerc'd with Fine and Imprisonment.  I am not 
willing to discover the forgettings of Reverend Men, 
yet here I must: What article or clause of the whole 
new Covenant can Paržus bring to exasperate the 
Judicial Law, upon any infirmity under the Gospel?  
(I say infirmity, for if it were the high hand of sin, 
the Law as little would have endur'd it as the Gospel) 
it would not stretch to the dividing of an Inheritance; 
it refus'd to condemn Adultery, not that these things 
should not be done at Law, but to shew that the 
Gospel hath not the least influence upon Judicial 
Courts, much less to make them sharper and more 
heavy, lest of all to arraign before a temporal Judge 
that which the Law without Summons acquitted.  But 
(saith he) the Law was the time of youth, under 
violent affections; the Gospel in us is mature age, and 
ought to subdue affections.  'True, and so ought the 
Law too, if they be found inordinate, and not meerly 
natural and blameless.  Next I distinguish, that the 
time of the Law is compar'd to Youth and Pupillage in 
respect of the Ceremonial part, which led the Jews as 
children through corporal and garish rudiments, 
until the fulness of time should reveal to them the 
higher lessons of Faith and Redemption.  This is not 
meant of the moral part, therin it soberly concern'd 
them not to be Babies, but to be Men in good earnest: 
the sad and awful Majesty of the Law was not to be 
jested with: to bring a bearded Nonage with 
lascivious Dispensations before that Throne, had 
been a lewd affront, as it is now a gross mistake.  But 
what Discipline is this, Paržus, to nourish violent 
affections in Youth, by cockering and wanton 
Indulgencies, and to chastise them in mature age 
with a boyish rod of correction?  How much more 
coherent is it to Scripture, that the Law as a strict 
Schoolmaster should have punish'd every trespass 
without indulgence so baneful to Youth, and that the 
Gospel should now correct that by admonition and 
reproof only, in free and mature Age, which was 
punish'd with stripes in the childhood and bondage of 
the Law?  What therfore it allow'd then so fairly, 
much less is to be whipp'd now, especially in Penal 
Courts: and if it ought now to trouble the Conscience, 
why did that angry accuser and condemner Law 
reprieve it?  So then, neither from Moses nor from 
Christ hath the Magistrate any authority to proceed 
against it.  But what, shall then the disposal of that 
power return again to the Master of a Family?  
Wherfore not, since God there put it, and the 
presumptuous Canon thence bereft it?  This only 
must be provided, that the ancient manner be 
observ'd in the presence of the Minister and other 
grave selected Elders, who after they shall have 
admonish'd and press'd upon him the words of our 
Saviour, and he shall have protested in the Faith of 
the eternal Gospel, and the hope he has of happy 
Resurrection, that otherwise than thus he cannot do, 
and thinks himself and this his case not contain'd in 
that Prohibition of Divorce which Christ pronounc'd, 
the matter not being of malice, but of nature, and so 
not capable of reconciling; to constrain him further 
were to unchristen him, to unman him, to throw the 
Mountain of Sinai upon him, with the weight of the 
whole Law to boot, flat against the liberty and 
essence of the Gospel, and yet nothing available 
either to the sanctity of Marriage, the good of 
Husband, Wife, or Children, nothing profitable either 
to Church or Commonwealth, but hurtful and 
pernicious in all these respects.  But this will bring in 
confusion: yet these cautious mistrusters might 
consider, that what they thus object lights not upon 
this Book but upon that which I engage against them, 
the Book of God and Moses, with all the wisdom and 
providence which had forecast the worst of confusion 
that could succeed, and yet thought fit of such a 
permission.  But let them be of good cheer, it 
wrought so little disorder among the Jews, that from 
Moses till after the Captivity, not one of the Prophets 
thought it worth the rebuking; for that of Malachy 
well look'd into will appear to be not against 
divorcing, but rather against keeping strange 
Concubines, to the vexation of their Hebrew Wives.  
If therfore we Christians may be thought as good and 
tractable as the Jews were, and certainly the 
Prohibiters of Divorce presume us to be better, then 
less confusion is to be fear'd for this among us than 
was among them.  If we be worse, or but as bad, 
which lamentable examples confirm we are, then 
have we more, or at least as much, need of this 
permitted Law, as they to whom God therfore gave it 
(as they say) under a harsher Covenant.  Let not 
therfore the frailty of man go on thus inventing 
needless troubles to it self, to groan under the false 
imagination of a strictness never impos'd from 
above; enjoining that for duty which is an impossible 
and vain supererogating.  Be not righteous 
overmuch, is the counsel of Ecclesiastes; why 
shouldst thou destroy thy self?  Let us not be thus 
over-curious to strain at atoms, and yet to stop 
every vent and cranny of permissive liberty, lest 
Nature wanting those needful pores and breathing-
places which God hath not debarr'd our weakness, 
either suddenly break out into some wide rupture of 
open Vice and frantic Heresy, or else inwardly fester 
with repining and blasphemous thoughts, under an 
unreasonable and fruitless rigor of unwarranted 
Law.  Against which evils nothing can more beseem 
the Religion of the Church, or the Wisdom of the 
State, than to consider timely and provide.  And in so 
doing let them not doubt but they shall vindicate the 
misreputed Honour of God and his great Lawgiver, by 
suffering him to give his own Laws according to the 
condition of man's nature best known to him, without 
the unsufferable imputation of dispensing legally 
with many ages of ratified Adultery.  They shall 
recover the misattended words of Christ to the 
sincerity of their true sense from manifold 
Contradictions, and shall open them with the key of 
Charity.  Many helpless Christians they shall raise 
from the depth of sadness and distress, utterly 
unfitted as they are to serve God or Man: many they 
shall reclaim from obscure and giddy Sects, many 
regain from dissolute and brutish Licence, many 
from desperate hardness, if ever that were justly 
pleaded.  They shall set free many Daughters of 
Israel, not wanting much of her sad plight whom 
Satan had bound eighteen years.  Man they shall 
restore to his just Dignity and Prerogative in Nature, 
preferring the Soul's free peace before the 
promiscuous draining of a carnal rage.  Marriage 
from a perillous hazard and snare, they shall reduce 
to be a more certain haven and retirement of happy 
Society; when they shall judge according to God and 
Moses, and how not then according to Christ? when 
they shall judge it more wisdom and goodness to 
break that Covenant seemingly, and keep it really, 
than by compulsion of Law to keep it seemingly, and 
by compulsion of blameless Nature to break it really, 
at least if it were ever truly join'd.  The vigor of 
Discipline they may then turn with better success 
upon the prostitute loosenss of the times, when men 
finding in themselves the infirmities of former Ages, 
shall not be constrain'd above the gift of God in them, 
to unprofitable and impossible Observances, never 
required from the civilest, the wisest, the holiest 
Nations, whose other Excellencies in moral virtue 
they never yet could equal.  Last of all, to those 
whose mind is still to maintain textual restrictions, 
wherof the bare sound cannot consist sometimes 
with Humanity, much less with Charity, I would ever 
answer by putting them in remembrance of a 
Command above all Commands, which they seem to 
have forgot, and who spake it; in comparison wherof, 
this which they so exalt is but a petty and 
subordinate Precept.  Let them go therfore with 
whom I am loth to couple them, yet they will needs 
run into the same blindness with the Pharisees; let 
them go therfore and consider well what this lesson 
means, I will have mercy and not sacrifice; for on 
that saying all the Law and Prophets depends, much 
more the Gospel, whose end and excellence is mercy 
and peace.  Or if they cannot learn that, how will 
they hear this? which yet I shall not doubt to leave 
with them as a Conclusion, That God the Son hath put 
all other things under his own feet, but his 
Commandments he hath left all under the feet of 
Charity.
˙