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Tetrachordon:

E  X  P  O  S  I  T  I  O  
N  S

UPON

The four chief Places in 
Scripture which treat
of Marriage, or Nullities in 
Marriage.

GEN. I. 27, 28.  compar'd and explain'd by 
Gen. ii. 18,22,24.
DEUT. XXIV. 1, 2.
MATTH. V. 31, 32.  with Matth. xix. from ver. 
3, to 11.
1 Cor. VII. from ver. 10, to 16.
 
Wherein the Doctrine and Discipline of DIVORCE, as 
was late published, is confirm'd by Explanation of 
Scripture, by Testimony of Ancient Fathers, of civil 
Laws in the Primitive Church, of famousest 
reformed Divines; and lastly, by an intended Act of 
the Parlament and Church of England in the last 
year of EDWARD the Sixth.

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-------Skaioisi  kaina  vrosjerwn  soja 
DoxeiV  acreiq,  k  a  sojoV  pejukenai
Twn  d  an  dokantwn  eidenai  ti  poikilon,
Kreisswn  nomisJeiV  en  polei,  luproV  janh.   
Euripid. Medea.
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To the PARLAMENT.

That which I knew to be the part of a good Magistrate, 
aiming at true liberty through the right information 
of religious and civil life, and that which I saw, and 
was partaker of, your Vows and solemn Covenants, 
Parlament of England, your actions also manifestly 
tending to exalt the Truth, and to depress the 
tyranny of Error, and ill Custom, with more 
constancy and prowess than ever yet any, since that 
Parlament which put the first Scepter of this 
Kingdom into his hand whom God and extraordinary 
Virtue made their Monarch, were the causes that 
mov'd me, one else not placing much in the eminence 
of a Dedication, to present your high notice with a 
Discourse, conscious to it self of nothing more than of 
diligence, and firm affection to the public good.  And 
that ye took it so as wise and impartial men, 
obtaining so great power and dignity, are wont to 
accept, in matters both doubtful and important, what 
they think offer'd them well meant, and from a 
rational ability, I had no less than to perswade me.  
And on that perswasion am returned, as to a famous 
and free port, my self also bound by more than a 
maritime Law, to expose as freely what fraughtage I 
conceive to bring of no trifles.  For altough it be 
generally known, how and by whom ye have been 
instigated to a hard censure of that former book 
entitl'd, The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, an 
opinion held by some of the best among reformed 
Writers without scandal or confutement, tho' now 
thought new and dangerous by some of our severe 
Gnostics, whose little reading, and less meditating 
holds ever with hardest obstinacy that which it took 
up with easiest credulity; I do not find yet that 
aught, for the furious incitements which have been 
us'd, hath issu'd by your appointment, that might 
give the least interruption or disrepute either to the 
Author, or to the Book.  Which he who will be better 
advis'd than to call your neglect, or connivance at a 
thing imagin'd so perilous, can attribute it to nothing 
more justly, than to the deep and quiet stream of 
your direct and calm deliberations, that gave not 
way either to the fervent rashness, or the 
immaterial gravity of those who ceas'd not to 
exasperate without cause.  For which uprightness 
and incorrupt refusal of what ye were incens'd to, 
Lords and Commons, (though it were done to justice, 
not to me, and was a peculiar demonstration how far 
your ways are different from the rash vulgar) 
besides those allegiances of Oath and Duty, which are 
my public debt to your public Labours, I have yet a 
store of gratitude laid up, which cannot be 
exhausted; and such thanks perhaps they may live to 
be, as shall more than whisper to the next ages.  Yet 
that the Author may be known to ground himself 
upon his own innocence, and the merit of his cause, 
not upon the favour of a diversion, or a delay to any 
just censure, but wishes rather he might see those 
his detracters at any fair meeting, as learned 
debatements are privileg'd with a due freedom under 
equal Moderators, I shall here briefly single one of 
them (because he hath oblig'd me to it) who I 
perswade me having scarce read the book, nor 
knowing him who writ it, or at least feigning the 
latter, hath not forborn to scandalize him, 
unconferr'd with, unadmonish'd, undealt with by 
any pastorly or brotherly convincement, in the most 
open and invective manner, and at the most bitter 
opportunity that drift or set design could have 
invented.  And this, whenas the Canon Law, though 
commonly most favouring the boldness of their 
Priests, punishes the naming or traducing of any 
person in the Pulpit, was by him made no scruple.  If 
I shall therfore take licence by the right of nature, 
and that liberty wherin I was born, to defend my self 
publicly against a printed Calumny, and do willingly 
appeal to those Judges to whom I am accus'd, it can 
be no immoderate, or unallowable course of seeking 
so just and needful reparations.  Which I had done 
long since, had not these employments, which are 
now visible, deferr'd  me.  It was preach'd before ye, 
Lords and Commons, in August  last upon a special 
day of Humiliation, that there was a wicked Book 
abroad, and ye were taxt of sin that it was yet 
uncensur'd, the Book deserving to be burnt; and 
Impudence also was charg'd upon the Author, who 
durst set his name to it, and dedicate it to your 
selves.  First, Lords and Commons, I pray to that God, 
before whom ye then were prostrate, so to forgive ye 
those omissions and trespasses, which ye desire most 
should find forgiveness, as I shall soon shew to the 
world how easily ye absolve your selves of that 
which this man calls your Sin, and is indeed your 
Wisdom, and your Nobleness, wherof to this day ye 
have done well not to repent.  He terms it a wicked 
Book, and why not for allowing other Causes of 
Divorce, than Christ and his Apostles mention? and 
with the same censure condemns of wickedness not 
only Martin Bucer, that elect Instrument of 
Reformation, highly honour'd and had in reverence 
by Edward the sixth, and his whole Parlament, whom 
also I had published in English by a good providence, 
about a week before this calumnious digression was 
preach'd; so that if he knew not Bucer then, as he 
ought to have known, he might at least have known 
him some months after, ere the Sermon came in 
print, wherin notwithstanding he persists in his 
former sentence, and condemns again of wickedness, 
either ignorantly or wilfully, not only Martin Bucer, 
and all the choicest and holiest of our Reformers, but 
the whole Parlament and Church of England in those 
best and purest times of Edward the sixth.  All which 
I shall prove with good evidence at the end of those 
Explanations.  And then let it be judg'd and seriously 
consider'd with what hope the affairs of our Religion 
are committed to one among others, who hath now 
only left him which of the twain he will choose, 
whether this shall be his palpable ignorance, or the 
same wickedness of his own Book, which he so 
lavishly imputes to the writings of other men: and 
whether this of his, that thus peremptorily defames 
and attaints of wickedness unspotted Churches, 
unblemish'd Parlaments, and the most eminent 
Restorers of Christian Doctrine, deserve not to be 
burnt first.  And if his heat had burst out only 
against the Opinion, his wonted passion had no doubt 
been silently borne with wonted patience.  But since, 
against the charity of that solemn place and meeting, 
it serv'd him further to inveigh opprobriously 
against the person, branding him with no less than 
impudence, only for setting his name to what he had 
written; I must be excus'd not to be so wanting to the 
defence of an honest Name, or to the reputation of 
those good Men who afford me their society, but to be 
sensible of such a foul endeavour'd disgrace: not 
knowing aught either in mine own deserts, or the 
Laws of this Land, why I should be subject, in such a 
notorious and illegal manner, to the intemperances 
of this man's preaching choler.  And indeed to be so 
prompt and ready in the midst of his humbleness, to 
toss reproaches of this bulk and size, argues as if 
they were the weapons of his exercise, I am sure not 
of his Ministry, or of that day's work.  Certainly to 
subscribe my name at what I was to own, was what 
the State had order'd and requires.  And he who lists 
not to be malicious, would call it ingenuity, clear 
conscience, willingness to avouch what might be 
question'd, or to be better instructed.  And if God 
were so displeas'd with those, Isa. 58. who on the 
solemn fast were wont to smite with the fist of 
wickedness, it could be no sign of his own humiliation 
accepted, which dispos'd him to smite so keenly with 
a reviling tongue.  But if only to have writ my name 
must be counted impudence, how doth this but 
justify another, who might affirm with as good 
warrant, that the late Discourse of Scripture and 
Reason, which is certain to be chiefly his own 
draught, was publish'd without a name, out of base 
fear, and the sly avoidance of what might follow to 
his detriment, if the party at Court should hap to 
reach him?  And I, to have set my name, where he 
accuses me to have set it, am so far from recanting, 
that I offer my hand also if need be, to make good the 
same opinion which I there maintain, by inevitable 
consequences drawn parallel from his own principal 
arguments in that of Scripture and Reason: which I 
shall pardon him, if he can deny, without shaking his 
own composition to pieces.  The impudence therfore, 
since he weigh'd so little what a gross revile that was 
to give his equal, I send him back again for a 
phylactery to stitch upon his arrogance, that 
censures not only before conviction so bitterly 
without so much as one reason given, but censures 
the Congregation of his Governors to their faces, for 
not being so hasty as himself to censure.
	And wheras my other crime is, that I address'd 
the Dedication of what I had studied, to the 
Parlament, how could I better declare the loyalty 
which I owe to that supreme and majestic Tribunal, 
and the opinion which I have of the high-entrusted 
judgment, and personal worth assembled in that 
place?  With the same affections therfore, and the 
same addicted fidelity, Parlament of England, I here 
again have brought to your perusal on the same 
argument these following Expositions of Scripture.  
The former Book, as pleas'd some to think, who were 
thought judicious, had of reason in it to a sufficiency; 
what they requir'd, was that the Scriptures there 
alledg'd might be discuss'd more fully.  To their 
desires, thus much further hath been labour'd in the 
Scriptures.  Another sort also who wanted more 
authorities, and citations, have not been here 
unthought of.  If all this attain not to satisfy them, as 
I am confident that none of those our great 
controversies at this day hath had a more 
demonstrative explaining, I must confess to admire 
what it is; for doubtless it is not reason now-a-days 
that satisfies, or suborns the common credence of 
men, to yield so easily, and grow so vehement in 
matters much more disputable, and far less 
conducing to the daily good and peace of life.  Some 
whose necessary shifts have long enur'd them to 
cloak the defects of their unstudied years, and 
hatred now to learn, under the appearance of a 
grave solidity, which estimation they have gain'd 
among weak perceivers, find the ease of slighting 
what they cannot refute, and are determin'd, as I 
hear, to hold it not worth the answering.  In which 
number I must be forc'd to reckon that Doctor, who 
in a late equivocating Treatise plausibly set afloat 
against the Dippers, diving the while himself with a 
more deep prelatical malignance against the present 
State and Church-government, mentions with 
ignominy the Tractate of Divorce; yet answers 
nothing, but instead therof (for which I do not 
commend his marshalling) sets Moses also among the 
crew of his Anabaptists, as one who to a holy Nation, 
the Commonwealth of Israel, gave Laws breaking the 
bonds of Marriage to inordinate lust.  These are no 
mean surges of blasphemy, not only dipping Moses 
the divine Lawgiver, but dashing with a high hand 
against the justice and purity of God himself; as 
these ensuing Scriptures plainly and freely handled 
shall verify to the launcing of that old apostemated 
error.  Him therfore I leave now to his repentance.
	Others, which is their courtesy, confess that wit 
and parts may do much to make that seem true 
which is not (as was objected to Socrates by them 
who could not resist his efficacy, that he ever made 
the worst cause seem the better) and thus thinking 
themselves discharg'd of the difficulty, love not to 
wade further into the fear of a convincement.  These 
will be their excuses to decline the full examining of 
this serious point.  So much the more I press it and 
repeat it, Lords and Commons, that ye beware while 
time is, ere this grand secret, and only art of 
ignorance affecting tyranny, grow powerful, and rule 
among us.  For if sound argument and reason shall be 
thus put off, either by an undervaluing silence, or 
the masterly censure of a railing word or two in the 
Pulpit, or by rejecting the force of truth, as the meer 
cunning of Eloquence and Sophistry, what can be the 
end of this, but that all good learning and knowledge 
will suddenly decay?  Ignorance, and illiterate 
presumption, which is yet but our disease, will turn 
at length into our vey constitution, and prove the 
hectic evil of this age: worse to be fear'd, if it get 
once to reign over us, than any fifth Monarchy.  If 
this shall be the course, that what was wont to be a 
chief commendation, and the ground of other men's 
confidence in an Author, his diligence, his learning, 
his elocution whether by right, or by ill meaning 
granted him, shall be turn'd now to a disadvantage 
and suspicion against him, that what he writes, 
though unconfuted, must therfore be mistrusted, 
therfore not receiv'd for the industry, the exactness, 
the labour in it, confess'd to be more than ordinary; 
as if wisdom had now forsaken the thirsty and 
laborious inquirer to swell against her nature with 
the arrogant and shallow babler, to what purpose all 
those pains and that continual searching requir'd of 
us by Solomon to the attainment of understanding; 
why are men bred up with such care and expence to 
a life of perpetual studies, why do your selves with 
such endeavour seek to wipe off the imputation of 
intending to discourage the progress and advance of 
learning?  He therfore whose heart can bear him to 
the high pitch of your noble enterprizes, may easily 
assure himself that the prudence and far-judging 
circumspectness of so grave a Magistracy sitting in 
Parlament, who have before them the prepar'd and 
purpos'd Act of their most religious predecessors to 
imitate in this question, cannot reject the clearness 
of these reasons, and these allegations both here and 
formerly offer'd them; nor can over-look the 
necessity of ordaining more wholesomly and more 
humanly in the casualties of Divorce, than our Laws 
have yet establish'd: if the most urgent and 
excessive grievance happening in domestic life, be 
worth the laying to heart, which, unless Charity be 
far from us, cannot be neglected.  And that these 
things both in the right constitution, and in the right 
reformation of a Commonwealth call for speediest 
redress, and ought to be the first consider'd, enough 
was urg'd in what was prefac'd to that momument of 
Bucer which I brought to your remembrance, and 
the other time before.  Henceforth, except new cause 
be given, I shall say less and less.  For if the Law 
make not timely provision, let the Law, as reason is, 
bear the censure of those consequences, which her 
own default now more evidently produces.  And if 
men want manliness to expostulate the right of their 
due ransom, and to second their own occasions, they 
may sit hereafter and bemoan themselves to have 
neglected through faintness the only remedy of their 
sufferings, which a seasonable and well-grounded 
speaking might have purchas'd them.  And perhaps 
in time to come, others will know how to esteem what 
is not every day put into their hands, when they 
have mark'd events, and better weigh'd how hurtful 
and unwise it is, to hide a secret and pernicious 
rupture under the ill counsel of bashful silence.  But 
who would distrust aught, or not be ample in his 
hopes of your wise and Christian determinations? 
who have the prudence to consider, and should have 
the goodness like Gods, as ye are call'd, to find out 
readily, and by just Law to administer those 
redresses which have of old, not without God 
ordaining, been granted to the adversities of 
mankind, ere they who needed, were put to ask.  
Certainly, if any other have enlarg'd his thoughts to 
expect from this Government so justly undertaken, 
and by frequent assistances from Heaven so 
apparently upheld, glorious changes and renovations 
both in Church and State, he among the foremost 
might be nam'd, who prays that the fate of England 
may tarry for no other Deliverers. 

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Tetrachordon:

Expositions upon the four chief Places in 
Scripture
which treat of Marriage, or Nullities in 
Marriage.
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Gen. I, 27.
So God created Man in his own image, in the image of 
God created he him; male and female created he 
them.
28.  And God blessed them, and God said unto them, 
Be fruitful, &c.

Gen II. 18.
And the Lord God said, It is not good that Man should 
be alone, I will make him a help-meet for him.
23.  And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, 
and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, 
because she was taken out of Man.
24.  Therfore shall a Man leave his Father and his 
Mother, and shall cleave unto his Wife, and they 
shall be one flesh.

Gen. I. 27.

So God created Man in his own image.]  To be inform'd 
aright in the whole History of Marriage, that we may 
know for certain, not by a forc'd yoke, but by an 
impartial definition, what Marriage is, and what is 
not Marriage; it will undoubtedly be safest, fairest, 
and most with our obedience, to enquire, as our 
Saviour's direction is, how it was in the beginning.  
And that we begin so high as Man created after God's 
own Image, there want not earnest causes.  For 
nothing now-a-days is more degenerately forgotten, 
than the true dignity of Man, almost in every 
respect, but especially in this prime institution of 
Matrimony, wherin his native pre-eminence ought 
most to shine.  Although if we consider that just and 
natural privileges men neither can rightly seek, nor 
dare fully claim, unless they be ally'd to inward 
goodness, and stedfast knowledge, and that the want 
of this quells them to a servile sense of their own 
conscious unworthiness, it may save the wondring 
why in this age many are so opposite both to human 
and to Christian liberty, either while they 
understand not, or envy others that do; contenting, 
or rather priding themselves in a specious humility 
and strictness bred out of low ignorance, that never 
yet conceiv'd the freedom of the Gospel; and is 
therfore by the Apostle to the Colossians rank'd with 
no better company, than Will-worship and the meer 
shew of wisdom.  And how injurious herin they are, 
if not to themselves, yet to their neighbours, and not 
to them only, but to the all-wise and bounteous 
Grace offer'd us in our redemption, will orderly 
appear.
	In the Image of God created he him. ]  It is enough 
determin'd, that this Image of God wherin Man was 
created, is meant Wisdom, Purity, Justice, and Rule 
over all creatures.  All which being lost in Adam, was 
recover'd with gain by the merits of Christ.  For 
albeit our first parent and Lordship over Sea, and 
Land, and Air, yet there was a Law without him, as a 
guard set over him.  But Christ having cancell'd the 
hand-writing of Ordinances which was against us, 
Coloss. 2. 14. and interpreted the fulfilling of all 
through charity, hath in that respect set us over 
Law, in the free custody of his love, and left us 
victorious under the guidance of his living Spirit, not 
under the dead letter; to follow that which most 
edifies, most aids and furthers a religious life, makes 
us holiest and likest to his immortal Image, not that 
which makes us most conformable and captive to civil 
and subordinate precepts; wherof the strictest 
observance may oft-times prove the destruction not 
only of many innocent persons and families, but of 
whole Nations.  Although indeed no Ordinance human 
or from heaven can bind against the good of Man; so 
that to keep them strictly against that end, is all one 
with to break them.  Men of most renowned virtue 
have sometimes by transgressing, most truly kept 
the Law; and wisest Magistrates have permitted and 
dispensed it; while they lookt not peevishly at the 
letter, but with a greater spirit at the good of 
mankind, if always not written in the characters of 
Law, yet engraven in the heart of Man by a divine 
impression.  This Heathens could see, as the well-
read in story can recount of Solon and Epaminondas, 
whom Cicero in his first Book of Invention nobly 
defends.  All law, saith he, we ought to refer to the 
common good, and interpret by that, not by the 
scrowl of letters.  No man observes Law for Law's 
sake, but for the good of them for whom it was made.  
The rest might serve well to lecture these times, 
deluded through belly-doctrines into a devout 
slavery.  The Scripture also affords us David in the 
shew-bread, Hezekiah in the passover, sound and 
safe transgressors of the literal command, which also 
dispens'd not seldom with it self; and taught us on 
what just occasions to do so: until our Saviour, for 
whom that great and God-like work was reserv'd, 
redeem'd us to a state above prescriptions, by 
dissolving the whole Law into Charity.  And have we 
not the soul to understand this, and must we against 
this glory of God's transcendent Love towards us be 
still the servants of literal indightment?
	Created he him. ]  It might be doubted why he 
saith, In the Image of God created he him, not them, 
as well as male and female them; especially since that 
Image might be common to them both, but male and 
female could not, however the Jews fable, and please 
themselves with the accidental concurrence of Plato's 
wit, as if Man at first had been created 
Hermaphrodite: but then it must have been male and 
female created he him.  So had the Image of God been 
equally common to them both, it had no doubt been 
said, In the Image of God created he them.  But St. 
Paul ends the controversy, by explaining that the 
Woman is not primarily and immediately the Image 
of God, but in reference to the Man.  The head of the 
Woman, saith he, 1 Cor. 11. is the Man: he the image 
and glory of God, she the glory of the Man; he not for 
her, but she for him.  Therfore his precept is, Wives 
be subject to your Husbands as is fit in the Lord, 
Coloss. 3. 18.  In every thing, Eph. 5. 24.  
Nevertheless man is not to hold her as a servant, but 
receives her into a part of that empire which God 
proclaims him to, though not equally, yet largely, as 
his own image and glory: for it is no small glory to 
him, that a creature so like him, should be made 
subject to him.  Not but that particular exceptions 
may have place, if she exceed her Husband in 
prudence and dexterity, and he contentedly yield; 
for then a superiour and more natural Law comes in, 
that the wiser should govern the less wise, whether 
male or female.  But that which far more easily and 
obediently follows from this verse, is that, seeing 
Woman was purposely made for Man, and he her 
head, it cannot stand before the breath of this divine 
utterance, that Man the portraiture of God, joining to 
himself for his intended good and solace an inferiour 
sex, should so become her thrall, whose wilfulness or 
inability to be a wife frustrates the occasional end of 
her creation, but that he may acquit himself to 
freedom by his natural birth-right, and that 
indelible character of priority which God crown'd 
him with.  If it be urg'd that sin hath lost him this, 
the answer is not far to see, that from her the sin 
first proceeded, which keeps her justly in the same 
proportion still beneath.  She is not to gain by being 
first in the transgression, that Man should further 
lose to her, because already he hath lost by her 
means.  Oft it happens that in this matter he is 
without fault; so that his punishment herein is 
causeless: and God hath the praise in our speeches of 
him, to sort his punishment in the same kind with 
the offence.  Suppose he err'd; it is not the intent of 
God or Man, to hunt an error so to the death with a 
revenge beyond all measure and proportion.  But if 
we argue thus, this affliction is befaln him for his sin, 
therfore he must bear it, without seeking the only 
remedy; first it will be false that all affliction comes 
for sin, as in the case of Job, and of the Man born 
blind, Joh. 9. 3. was evident: next by that reason, all 
miseries coming for sin, we must let them all lie upon 
us like the vermin of an Indian Catharist, which his 
fond Religion forbids him to molest.  Were it a 
particular punishment inflicted through the anger of 
God upon a person, or upon a land, no Law hinders 
us in that regard, no Law but bids us remove it if we 
can; much more if it be a dangerous temptation 
withal; much more yet, if it be certainly a 
temptation, and not certainly a punishment, though 
a pain.  As for what they say we must bear with 
patience; to bear with patience, and to seek effectual 
remedies, implies no contradiction.  It may no less be 
for our disobedience, our unfaithfulness, and other 
sins against God, that wives become adulterous to the 
bed; and questionless we ought to take the affliction 
as patiently as Christian prudence would wish; yet 
hereby is not lost the right of divorcing for adultery.  
No you say, because our Saviour excepted that only.  
But why, if he were so bent to punish our sins, and 
try our patience in binding on us a disastrous 
Marriage, why did he except Adultery?  Certainly to 
have been bound from Divorce in that case also had 
been as plentiful a punishment to our Sins, and not 
too little work for the patientest.  Nay, perhaps they 
will say it was too great a sufferance, and with as 
slight a reason, for no wise man but would sooner 
pardon the act of Adultery once and again committed 
by a person worth pity and forgiveness, than to lead 
a wearisome life of unloving and unquiet 
conversation with one who neither affects nor is 
affected, much less with one who exercises all 
bitterness, and would commit Adultery too, but for 
envy lest the persecuted condition should therby get 
the benefit of his freedom.  'Tis plain therfore, that 
God enjoins not this supposed strictness of not 
divorcing either to punish us, or to try our patience.
	Moreover, if Man be the image of God, which 
consists in holiness, and Woman ought in the same 
respect to be the image and companion of Man, in 
such wise to be lov'd as the Church is belov'd of 
Christ; and if, as God is the head of Christ, and Christ 
the head of Man, so Man is the head of Woman; I 
cannot see by this golden dependance of headship 
and subjection, but that Piety and Religion is the 
main tie of Christian Matrimony: so as if there be 
found between the pair a notorious disparity either 
of wickedness or heresy, the Husband by all manner 
of right is disingag'd from a creature, not made and 
inflicted on him to the vexation of his righteousness; 
the Wife also, as her subjection is terminated in the 
Lord, being her self the redeem'd of Christ, is not still 
bound to be the vassal of him, who is the bond-slave 
of Satan: she being now neither the image nor the 
glory of such a person, nor made for him, nor left in 
bondage to him; but hath recourse to the wing of 
Charity, and protection of the Church, unless there 
be a hope on either side; yet such a hope must be 
meant, as may be a rational hope, and not an endless 
servitude.  Of which hereafter.
	But usually it is objected, that if it be thus, then 
there can be no true Marriage between misbelievers 
an irreligious persons.  I might answer, let them see 
to that who are such; the Church hath no commission 
to judge those without, 1 Cor. 5.  But this they will 
say perhaps, is but penuriously to resolve a doubt.  I 
answer therfore, that where they are both 
irreligious, the Marriage may be yet true enough to 
them in a civil relation.  For there are left some 
remains of God's image in man, as he is merely man; 
which reason God gives against the shedding of man's 
blood, Gen. 9. as being made in God's image, without 
expression whether he were a good man or a bad, to 
exempt the slayer from punishment.  So that in those 
Marriages where the parties are alike void of 
Religion, the Wife owes a civil homage and subjection, 
the Husband owes a civil loyalty.  But where the yoke 
is mis-yok'd, heretic with faithful, godly with 
ungodly, to the grievance and manifest endangering 
of a brother or sister, reasons of a higher strain than 
matrimonial bear sway; unless the Gospel instead of 
freeing us, debase it self to make us bondmen, and 
suffer evil to controul good.
	Male and female created he them. ]  This contains 
another end of matching Man and Woman, being the 
right and lawfulness of the Marriage-bed; though 
much inferior to the former end of her being his 
image and help in religious society.  And who of 
weakest insight may not see that this creating of 
them Male and Female, cannot in any order of 
reason, or Christianity, be of such moment against 
the better and higher purposes of their creation, as 
to enthral Husband or Wife to duties or to sufferings, 
unworthy and unbeseeming the image of God in 
them?  Now whenas not only men, but good men, do 
stand upon their right, their estimation, their 
dignity, in all other actions and deportments, with 
warrant enough and good Conscience, as having the 
image of God in them, it will not be difficult to 
determine what is unworthy and unseemly for a man 
to do or suffer in Wedloc; and the like proportionally 
may be found for woman, if we love not to stand 
disputing below the principles of humanity.  He that 
said, Male and female created he them, immediately 
before that said also in the same verse, In the image 
of God created he him, and redoubled it, that our 
thoughts might not be so full of dregs as to urge this 
poor consideration of male and female, without 
remembring the nobleness of that former Repetition; 
lest when God sends a wise eye to examine our trivial 
glosses, they be found extremely to creep upon the 
ground: especially since they confess that what here 
concerns Marriage is but a brief touch, only 
preparative to the Institution which follows more 
expresly in the next Chapter; and that Christ so took 
it, as desiring to be briefest with them who came to 
tempt him, account shall be given in due place.
	
	Ver. 28.  And God blessed them, and God said 
unto them, Be fruitful and multiply, and 
replenish the earth, &c.

This declares another end of Matrimony, the 
propagation of Mankind; and is again repeated to 
Noah and his sons.  Many things might be noted on 
this place not ordinary, nor unworth the noting; but 
I undertook not a general Comment.  Hence therfore 
we see the desire of children is honest and pious; if 
we be not less zealous in our Christianity, than Plato 
was in his heathenism; who in the sixth of his Laws, 
counts off-spring therfore desirable, that we may 
leave in our stead sons of our sons, continual 
servants of God: a religious and prudent desire, if 
people knew as well what were requir'd to breeding 
as to begetting; which desire perhaps was a cause 
why the Jews hardly could endure a barren wedloc: 
and Philo in his book of special Laws, esteems him 
only worth pardon that sends not barrenness away.  
Carvilius, the first recorded in Rome to have sought 
Divorce, had it granted him for the barrenness of his 
Wife, upon his oath that he married to the end he 
might have Children; as Dionysius and Gellius are 
authors.  But to dismiss a wife only for barrenness, is 
hard: and yet in some the desire of children is so 
great and so just, yea sometime so necessary, that to 
condemn such a one to a childless age, the fault 
apparently not being in him, might seem perhaps 
more strict than needed.  Sometimes inheritances, 
crowns, and dignities are so interested and annext in 
their common peace and good to such or such lineal 
descent, that it may prove of great moment both in 
the affairs of Men and Religion, to consider throughly 
what might be done herein, notwithstanding the 
waywardness of our School Doctors.
Gen. II. 18.
And the Lord said, It is not good that man should be 
alone; I will make him a help-meet for him.
Ver. 23.  And Adam said, &c.  Ver. 24.  Therefore 
shall a man leave, &c.

This 2d  Chapter is granted to be a Commentary on 
the 1st, and these verses granted to be an exposition 
of that former verse, Male and female created he 
them: and yet when this male and female is by the 
explicite words of God himself here declar'd to be not 
meant other than a fit help, and meet society, some 
who would ingross to themselves the whole trade of 
interpreting, will not suffer the clear text of God to 
do the office of explaining it self.
	  And the Lord God said, It is not good. ]  A man 
would think that the consideration of who spake, 
should raise up the intention of our minds to enquire 
better, and obey the purpose of so great a Speaker: 
for as we order the business of Marriage, that which 
he here speaks is all made vain; and in the decision of 
matrimony, or not matrimony, nothing at all 
regarded.  Our presumption hath utterly chang'd the 
state and condition of this ordinance: God ordain'd it 
in love and helpfulness to be indissoluble, and we in 
outward act and formality to be a forc'd bondage; so 
that being subject to a thousand errors in the best 
men, if it prove a blessing to any, it is of meer 
accident, as man's Law hath handled it, and not of 
institution.
	It is not good for man to be alone. ]  Hitherto all 
things that have been nam'd, were approv'd of God 
to be very good: loneliness is the first thing which 
God's eye nam'd not good: whether it be a thing, or 
the want of something, I labour not; let it be their 
tendance, who have the art to be industriously idle.  
And here alone is meant alone without woman; 
otherwise Adam had the company of God himself, and 
Angels to converse with; all creatures to delight him 
seriously, or to make him sport.  God could have 
created him out of the same mould a thousand 
friends and brother Adams to have been his 
consorts; yet for all this till Eve was given him, God 
reckon'd him to be alone.
	It is not good. ]  God here presents himself like to 
a man deliberating; both to shew us that the matter 
is of high consequence, and that he intended to found 
it according to natural reason, not impulsive 
command; but that the duty should arise from the 
reason of it, not the reason be swallow'd up in a 
reasonless duty.  Not good, was as much to Adam 
before his fall, as not pleasing, not expedient; but 
since the coming of Sin into the world, to him who 
hath not receiv'd the continence, it is not only not 
expedient to be alone, but plainly sinful.  And 
therfore he who wilfully abstains from Marriage, not 
being supernaturally gifted, and he who by making 
the yoke of Marriage unjust and intolerable, causes 
men to abhor it, are both in a diabolical sin, equal to 
that of Antichrist who forbids to marry.  For what 
difference at all whether he abstain men from 
marrying, or restrain them from Marriage hapning 
totally discommodious, distasteful, dishonest and 
pernicious to him without the appearance of his 
fault?  For God does not here precisely say, I make a 
female to this male, as he did before; but expounding 
himself here on purpose, he saith, because it is not 
good for man to be alone, I make him therfore a meet 
help.  God supplies the privation of not good, with the 
perfect gift of a real and positive good; it is man's 
perverse cooking who hath turn'd this bounty of God 
into a Scorpion, either by weak and shallow 
constructions, or by proud arrogance and cruelty to 
them who neither in their purposes nor in their 
actions have offended against the due honour of 
Wedloc.
	Now wheras the Apostle's speaking in the Spirit, I 
Cor. 7. pronounces quite contrary to this word of 
God, It is good for a man not to touch a woman, and 
God cannot contradict himself; it instructs us that his 
commands and words, especially such as bear the 
manifest title of some good to man, are not to be so 
strictly wrung, as to command without regard to the 
most natural and miserable necessities of mankind.  
Therfore the Apostle adds a limitation in the 26 
verse of that chapter for the present necessity it is 
good; which he gives us doubtless as a pattern how to 
reconcile other places by the general rule of Charity.
	For man to be alone. ]  Some would have the sense 
hereof to be in respect of procreation only: and 
Austin contests that manly friendship in all other 
regards had been a more becoming solace for Adam, 
than to spend so many secret years in an empty 
world with one woman.  But our writers deservedly 
reject this crabbed opinion; and defend that there is 
a peculiar comfort in the married state beside the 
genial bed, which no other society affords.  No mortal 
nature can endure either in the actions of Religion, 
or study of Wisdom, without sometime slackening the 
cords of intense thought and labour: which lest we 
should think faulty, God himself conceals us not his 
own recreations before the World was built: I was, 
saith the eternal Wisdom, daily his delight, playing 
always before him.  And to him indeed Wisdom is as a 
high tower of pleasure, but to us a steep hill, and we 
toiling ever about the bottom: he executes with ease 
the exploits of his Omnipotence, as easy as with us it 
is to will: but no worthy enterprise can be done by 
us without continual plodding and wearisomeness to 
our faint and sensitive abilities.  We cannot therfore 
always be contemplative, or pragmatical abroad, but 
have need of some delightful intermissions, wherin 
the enlarg'd soul may leave off a while her severe 
schooling; and like a glad youth in wandring vacancy, 
may keep her holidays to joy and harmless pastime: 
which as she cannot well do without company, so in 
no company so well as where the different sex in 
most resembling unlikeness, and most unlike 
resemblance, cannot but please best, and be pleas'd 
in the aptitude of that variety.  Wherof lest we 
should be too timorous, in the awe that our flat Sages 
would form us and dress us, wisest Solomon among 
his gravest Proverbs countenances a kind of 
ravishment and erring fondness in the 
entertainment of wedded leisures; and in the Song of 
Songs, which is generally believ'd, even in the jolliest 
expressions to figure the Spousals of the Church with 
Christ, sings of a thousand raptures between those 
two lovely ones far on the hither side of carnal 
injoyment.  By these instances, and more which 
might be brought, we may imagine how indulgently 
God provided against man's Loneliness; that he 
approv'd it not, as by himself declar'd not good; that 
he approv'd the remedy therof, as of his own 
ordaining, consequently good: and as he ordain'd it, 
so doubtless proportionably to our fallen estate he 
gives it; else were his ordinance at least in vain, and 
we for all his gifts still empty handed.  Nay, such an 
unbounteous giver we should make him, as in the 
Fables Jupiter was to Ixion, giving him a cloud instead 
of Juno, giving him a monstrous issue by her, the 
breed of Centaurs, aŹneglected and unlov'd race, the 
fruits of a delusive Marriage; and lastly, giving him 
her with a damnation to that wheel in Hell, from a life 
thrown into the midst of temptations and disorders.  
But God is no deceitful giver, to bestow that on us for 
a remedy of Loneliness, which if it bring not a 
sociable mind as well as a conjuctive body, leaves us 
no less alone than before; and if it bring a mind 
perpetually averse and disagreeable, betrays us to a 
worse condition than the most deserted Loneliness.  
God cannot in the justice of his own promise and 
institution so unexpectedly mock us, by forcing that 
upon us as the remedy of Solitude, which wraps us in 
a misery worse than any Wilderness, as the Spirit of 
God himself judges, Prov. 19. especially knowing that 
the best and wisest men amidst the sincere and most 
cordial designs of their heart, do daily err in 
choosing.  We may conclude therfore, seeing 
orthodoxal Expositors confess to our hands, that by 
Loneliness is not only meant the want of Copulation, 
and that Man is not less alone by turning in a body to 
him, unless there be within it a mind answerable, 
that it is a work more worthy the care and 
consultation of God to provide for the worthiest part 
of man which is his Mind, and not unnaturally to set 
it beneath the formalities and respects of the body, 
to make it a servant of its own vassal; I say, we may 
conclude that such a Marriage, wherin the mind is so 
disgrac'd and vilify'd below the body's interest, and 
can have no just or tolerable contentment, is not of 
God's institution, and therfore no Marriage.  Nay, in 
concluding this, I say we conclude no more than what 
the common Expositors themselves give us, both in 
that which I have recited, and much more hereafter.  
But the truth is, they give us, in such a manner as 
they who leave their own mature positions like the 
eggs of an Ostrich in the dust; I do but lay them in 
the sun; their own pregnancies hatch the truth; and 
I am taxt of novelties and strange producements, 
while they, like that inconsiderate bird, know not 
that these are their own natural breed.
	I will make him a help-meet for him. ]  Here the 
heavenly Institutor, as if he labour'd not to be 
mistaken by the supercilious hypocrisy of those that 
love to master their brethren, and to make us sure 
that he gave us not now a servile yoke, but an 
amiable knot, contents not himself to say, I will make 
him a wife; but resolving to give us first the meaning 
before the name  of a wife, saith graciously, I will 
make him a help-meet for him.  And here again, as 
before, I do not require more full and fair deductions 
than the whole consent of our Divines usually raise 
from this text, that in Matrimony there must be first 
a mutual help to Piety, next to civil fellowship of Love 
and Amity, then to Generation, so to houshold 
Affairs, lastly the remedy of Incontinence.  And 
commonly they reckon them in such order, as leaves 
generation and incontinence to be last considered.  
This I amaze me at, that though all the superior and 
nobler ends both of Marriage and of the married 
persons be absolutely frustrate, the matrimony stirs 
not, loses no hold, remains as rooted as the center: 
but if the body bring but in a complaint of frigidity, 
by that cold application only, this adamantine Alp of 
Wedloc has leave to dissolve; which else all the 
machinations of religious or civil Reason at the suit of 
a distressed mind, either for divine worship or 
human conversation violated, cannot unfasten.  What 
courts of concupiscence are these, wherin fleshly 
appetite is heard before right reason, lust before 
love or devotion?  They may be pious Christians 
together, they may be loving and friendly, they may 
be helpful to each other in the family, but they 
cannot couple, that shall divorce them, tho' either 
party would not.  They can neither serve God 
together, nor one be at peace with the other, nor be 
good in the Family one to other, but live as they 
were dead, or live as they were deadly enemies in a 
cage together; 'tis all one, they can couple, they shall 
not divorce till death, no though this sentence be 
their death.  What is this, besides tyranny, but to 
turn nature upside down, to make both religion, and 
the mind of man wait upon the slavish errands of the 
body, and not the body to follow either the sanctity, 
or the sovereignty of the mind, unspeakably 
wrong'd, and with all equity complaining?  What is 
this but to abuse the sacred and mysterious bed of 
Marriage to be the compulsive stye of an ingrateful 
and malignant lust, stirr'd up only from a carnal 
acrimony, without either love or peace, or regard to 
any other thing holy or human.  This I admire how 
possibly it should inhabit thus long in the sense of so 
many disputing Theologians, unless it be the lowest 
lees of a canonical infection liver-grown to their 
sides; which perhaps will never uncling, without the 
strong abstersive of some heroic Magistrate, whose 
Mind, equal to his high Office, dares lead him both to 
know and do without their frivolous case-putting.  
For certain he shall have God and this Institution 
plainly on his side.  And if it be true both in Divinity 
and Law, that consent alone, though copulation 
never follow, makes a Marriage, how can they 
dissolve it for the want of that which made it not, 
and not dissolve it for that not continuing which 
made it, and should preserve it in love and reason, 
and difference it from a brute conjugality?
	Meet for him. ]  The original here is more 
expressive than other languages word for word can 
render it; but all agree effectual conformity of 
disposition and affection to be hereby signify'd; 
which God as it were, not satisfy'd with the naming of 
a help, goes on describing another self, a second self, 
a very self it self.  Yet now there is nothing in the life 
of man, through our misconstruction, made more 
uncertain, more hazardous and full of chance than 
this divine blessing with such favourable significance 
here conferr'd upon us; which if we do but err in our 
choice, the most unblameable error that can be, err 
but one minute, one moment after those mighty 
Syllables pronounc'd, which take upon them to join 
Heaven and Hell together unpardonably till Death 
pardon: this divine Blessing that look'd but now with 
such a humane smile upon us, and spoke such gentle 
reason, strait vanishes like a fair Sky, and brings on 
such a scene of Cloud and Tempest, as turns all to 
shipwrack without haven or shore, but to a 
ransomless Captivity.  And then they tell us it is our 
sin: but let them be told again, that sin through the 
mercy of God hath not made such waste upon us, as 
to make utterly void to our use any temporal benefit, 
much less any so much availing to a peaceful and 
sanctify'd life, meerly for a most incident error 
which no weariness can certainly shun.  And 
wherfore serves our happy redemption, and the 
liberty we have in Christ, but to deliver us from 
calamitous yokes, not to be liv'd under without the 
endangerment of our souls, and to restore us in some 
competent measure to a right in every good thing 
both of this life, and the other?  Thus we see how 
treatably and distinctly God hath here taught us 
what the prime ends of Marriage are, mutual solace 
and help.  That we are now, upon the most 
irreprehensible mistake in chusing, defeated and 
defrauded of all this original benignity, was begun 
first through the snare of Antichristian Canons long 
since obtruded upon the Church of Rome, and not 
yet scoured off by Reformation, out of a lingring 
vain-glory that abides among us to make fair shews 
in formal Ordinances, and to enjoin Continence and 
bearing of Crosses in such a garb as no Scripture 
binds us, under the thickest Arrows of temptation, 
where we need not stand.  Now we shall see with 
what acknowledgment and assent Adam receiv'd this 
new associate which God brought him.

Ver. 23.  And Adam said, This is now bone of my 
bones, and flesh of my flesh; she shall be 
called Woman, because she was taken out of 
Man.

	That there was a nearer Alliance between Adam 
and Eve, than could be ever after between Man and 
Wife, is visible to any.  For no other Woman was ever 
moulded out of her Husband's Rib, but of meer 
Strangers for the most part they come to have that 
consanguinity which they have by Wedloc.  And if we 
look nearly upon the matter, though Marriage be 
most agreeable to holiness, to purity and justice, yet 
is it not a natural, but a civil and ordain'd relation.  
For if it were in nature, no law or crime could 
disannul it, to make a Wife, or Husband, otherwise 
than still a Wife or Husband, but only Death; as 
nothing but that can make a Father no Father, or a 
Son no Son.  But Divorce for Adultery or Desertion, 
as all our Churches agree but England, not only 
separates, but nullifies, and extinguishes the relation 
it self of Matrimony, so that they are no more Man 
and Wife; otherwise the innocent party could not 
marry elsewhere, without the guilt of Adultery.  
Next, were it merely natural, why was it here 
ordain'd more than the rest of moral Law to Man in 
his original rectitude, in whose breast all that was 
natural or moral was engraven without external 
Constitutions and Edicts?  Adam therfore in these 
words does not establish an indissoluble bond of 
Marriage in the carnal ligaments of flesh and bones; 
for if he did, it would belong only to himself in the 
literal sense, every one of us being nearer in flesh of 
flesh, and bone of bones to our Parents than to a 
Wife; they therfore were not to be left for her in that 
respect.  But Adam, who had the wisdom given him 
to know all creatures, and to name them according to 
their properties, no doubt but had the gift to discern 
perfectly that which concern'd him much more; and 
to apprehend at first sight the true fitness of that 
Consort which God provided him.  And therfore 
spake in reference to those words which God 
pronounc'd before; as if he had said, This is she by 
whose meet help and society I shall no more be alone; 
this is she who was made my image, even as I the 
Image of God; not so much in body, as in unity of 
mind and heart.  And he might as easily know what 
were the words of God, as he knew so readily what 
had been done with his Rib, while he slept so 
soundly.  He might well know, if God took a Rib out of 
his inside, to form of it a double good to him, he 
would far sooner disjoin it from his outside, to 
prevent a treble mischief to him; and far sooner cut 
it quite off from all relation for his undoubted ease, 
than nail it into his body again, to stick for ever 
there a thorn in his heart.  Whenas Nature teaches 
us to divide any limb from the body to the saving of 
its fellows, though it be the maiming and deformity of 
the whole; how much more is it her doctrine to sever 
by incision, not a true limb so much, though that be 
lawful, but an adherent, a sore, the gangrene of a 
limb, to the recovery of a whole Man?  But if in these 
words we shall make Adam to erect a new 
establishment of Marriage in the meer flesh, which 
God so lately had instituted, and founded in the 
sweet mild familiarity of love and solace, and mutual 
fitness; what do we but use the mouth of our general 
parent, the first time it opens, to an arrogant 
opposition and correcting of God's wiser Ordinance?  
These words therfore cannot import any thing new 
in Marriage, but either that which belongs to Adam 
only, or to us in reference only to the instituting 
words of God, which made a meet help against 
loneliness.  Adam spake like Adam the words of flesh 
and bones, the shell and rind of Matrimony; but God 
spake like God, of love solace and meet help, the soul 
both of Adam's words and of Matrimony.

V. 24.  Therfore shall a man leave his father and his 
mother, and shall cleave unto his wife; and they 
shall be one flesh.

	This verse, as our common herd expounds it, is 
the great knot-tier, which hath undone by tying, and 
by tangling, millions of guiltless consciences: this is 
that grisly Porter, who having drawn men and wisest 
men by suttle allurement within the train of an 
unhappy matrimony, claps the dungeon-gate upon 
them, as irrecoverable as the grave.  But if we view 
him well, and hear him with not too hasty and 
prejudicant ears, we shall find no such terror in him.  
For first, it is not here said absolutely without all 
reason he shall cleave to his wife, be it to his weal or 
to his destruction as it happens, but he shall do this 
upon the premises and considerations of that meet 
help and society before mention'd.  Therfore he shall 
cleave to his wife, no otherwise a wife than a fit help.  
He is not bid to leave the dear cohabitation of his 
father, mother, brothers and sisters, to link himself 
inseparably with the mere carcass of a Marriage, 
perhaps an enemy.  This joining particle Therfore is 
in all equity, nay in all necessity of construction to 
comprehend first and most principally what God 
spake concerning the inward essence of Marriage in 
his institution, that we may learn how far to atttend 
what Adam spake of the outward materials therof in 
his approbation.  For if we shall bind these words of 
Adam  only to a corporal meaning, and that the force 
of this injunction upon all us his sons to live 
individually with any woman which hath befaln us in 
the most mistaken wedloc, shall consist not in those 
moral and relative causes of Eve's creation, but in 
the meer anatomy of a rib, and that Adam's insight 
concerning wedloc reach'd no further, we shall make 
him as very an idiot as the Socinians make him; 
which would not be reverently done of us.  Let us be 
content to allow our great fore-father so much 
wisdom, as to take the instituting words of God along 
with him into this sentence, which if they be well 
minded, will assure us that flesh and ribs are but of a 
weak and dead efficacy to keep Marriage united 
where there is no other fitness.  The rib of Marriage, 
to all since Adam, is a relation much rather than a 
bone; the nerves and sinews therof are love and 
meet help, they knit not every couple that marries, 
and where they knit never truly join'd, to such at 
the same instant both flesh and rib cease to be in 
common: so that here they argue nothing to the 
continuance of a false or violated Marriage, but must 
be led back again to receive their meaning from those 
institutive words of God which give them all the life 
and vigour they have.
	Therfore shall a man leave his father, &c. ]  What 
to a man's thinking more plain by this appointment, 
that the fatherly power should give place to conjugal 
prorogative?  Yet it is generally held by reformed 
writers against the Papist, that though in persons at 
discretion the Marriage in it self be never so fit, 
though it be fully accomplisht with benediction, 
board and bed, yet the father not consenting, his 
main Will without dispute shall dissolve all.  And this 
they affirm only from collective reason, not any 
direct law; for that in Exod. 22. 17. which is most 
particular, speaks that a father may refuse to marry 
his daughter to one who hath deflour'd her, not that 
he may take her away from one who hath soberly 
married her.  Yet because the general honour due to 
parents is great, they hold he may, and perhaps hold 
not amiss.  But again, when the question is of harsh 
and rugged parents, who defer to bestow their 
children seasonably, they agree jointly that the 
Church or Magistrate may bestow them, though 
without the Father's consent: and for this they have 
no express authority in Scripture.  So that they may 
see by their own handling of this very place, that it 
is not the stubborn letter must govern us, but the 
divine and softning breath of charity which turns 
and winds the dictate of every positive command, 
and shapes it to the good of mankind.  Shall the 
outward accessory of a Father's will wanting, rend 
the fittest and most affectionate Marriage in twain, 
after all nuptial consummations; and shall not the 
want of love and the privation of all civil and 
religious concord, which is the inward essence of 
Wedloc, do as much to part those who were never 
truly wedded?  Shall a Father have this power to 
vindicate his own wilful honour and authority to the 
utter breach of a most dearly-united Marriage, and 
shall not a man in his own power have the 
permission to free his Soul, his Life, and all his 
comfort of life from the disaster of a no-marriage?  
Shall fatherhood, which is but man, for his own 
pleasure dissolve matrimony; and shall not 
matrimony, which is God's Ordinance, for its own 
honour and better conservation, dissolve it self, 
when it is wrong, and not fitted to any of the chief 
ends which it owes us?
	And they shall be one flesh. ]  These words also 
infer that there ought to be an individualty in 
Marriage; but without all question presuppose the 
joining causes.  Not a rule yet that we have met with, 
so universal in this whole institution, but hath 
admitted limitations and conditions according to 
human necessity.  The very foundation of 
Matrimony, though God laid it deliberately, that it is 
not good for man to be alone, holds not always, if the 
Apostle can secure us.  Soon after we are bid leave 
Father and Mother, and cleave to a Wife, but must 
understand the Father's consent withal, else not.  
Cleave to a Wife, but let her be a wife, let her be a 
meet help, a solace, not a nothing, not an adversary, 
not a desertrice; can any law or command be so 
unreasonable as to make men cleave to calamity, to 
ruin, to perdition?  In like manner here, They shall 
be one flesh; but let the causes hold, and be made 
really good, which only have the possibility to make 
them one flesh.  We know that flesh can neither join, 
nor keep together two bodies of it self; what is it then 
must make them one flesh, but likeness, but fitness 
of mind and disposition, which may breed the Spirit 
of concord, and union between them?  If that be not 
in the nature of either, and that there has bin a 
remediless mistake, as vain we go about to compel 
them into one flesh, as if we undertook to weave a 
garment of dry sand.  It were more easy to compel 
the vegetable and nutritive power of nature to 
assimilations and mixtures which are not alterable 
each by other; or force the concoctive stomach to 
turn that into flesh which is so totally unlike that 
substance as not to be wrought on.  For as the unity 
of mind is nearer and greater than the union of 
bodies, so doubtless is the dissimilitude greater and 
more dividual, as that which makes between bodies 
all difference and distinction.  Especially whenas 
besides the singular and substantial differences of 
every Soul, there is an intimate quality of good or 
evil, through the whole Progeny of Adam, which like 
a radical heat, or mortal chillness, joins them, or 
disjoins them irresistibly.  In whom therfore either 
the will, or the faculty is found to have never join'd, 
or now not to continue so, 'tis not to say, they shall 
be one flesh, for they cannot be one flesh.  God 
commands not impossibilities; and all the 
Ecclesiastical glue, that Liturgy or Laymen can 
compound, is not able to soder us two such 
incongruous Natures into the one flesh of a true 
beseeming Marriage.  Why did Moses then set down 
their uniting into one flesh?  And I again ask, why 
the Gospel so oft repeats the eating of our Saviour's 
flesh, the drinking of his blood?  That we are one 
body with him, the members of his body, flesh of his 
flesh, and bone of his bone, Ephes. 5.  Yet lest we 
should be Capernaitans, as we are told there, that 
the flesh profiteth nothing; so we are told here, if we 
be not as deaf as Adders, that this union of the flesh 
proceeds from the union of a fit help and solace.  We 
know that there was never a more spiritual mystery 
than this Gospel taught us under the terms of body 
and flesh; yet nothing less intended than that we 
should stick there.  What a stupidness then is it, that 
in Marriage, which is the nearest resemblance of our 
union with Christ, we should deject our selves to 
such a sluggish and underfoot Philosophy, as to 
esteem the validity of Marriage meerly by the flesh, 
though never so broken and disjointed from love and 
peace, which only can give a human qualification to 
that act of the flesh, and distinguish it from bestial.  
The Text therfore uses this phrase, that they shall be 
one flesh, to justify and make legitimate the rites of 
Marriage-bed; which was not unneedful, if for all this 
warrant they were suspected of pollution by some 
sects of Philosophy, and Religions of old, and latelier 
among the Papists, and other Heretics elder than 
they.  Some think there is a high mystery in those 
words, from that which Paul saith of them, Ephes. 5. 
This is a great mystery, but I speak of Christ and the 
Church: and thence they would conclude Marriage to 
be inseparable.  For me I dispute not now whether 
Matrimony be a mystery or no; if it be of Christ and 
his Church, certainly it is not meant of every 
ungodly and miswedded Marriage, but then only 
mysterious, when it is a holy, happy, and peaceful 
match.  But when a Saint is join'd with a Reprobate, 
or both alike wicked with wicked, fool with fool, a he-
drunkard with a she; when the bed hath bin nothing 
else for twenty years or more, but an old haunt of 
lust and malice mixt together, no love, no goodness, 
no loyalty, but counterplotting, and secret wishing 
one another's dissolution; this is to me the greatest 
mystery in the world, if such a Marriage as this can 
be the mystery of aught, unless it be the mystery of 
iniquity: According to that which Par¾us cites out of 
Chrysostom, that a bad Wife is a help for the Devil, 
and that like may be said of a bad Husband.  Since 
therfore none but a fit and pious Matrimony can 
signify the union of Christ and his Church, there 
cannot hence be any hindrance of divorce to that 
Wedloc wherin there can be no good mystery.  
Rather it might to a Christian Conscience be matter 
finding it self so much less satisfy'd than before, in 
the continuance of an unhappy yoke, wherin there 
can be no representation either of Christ, or of his 
Church.
	Thus having enquir'd the Institution how it was 
in the beginning, both from the I Chap. of Gen. where 
it was only mention'd in part, and from the second, 
where it was plainly and evidently instituted; and 
having attended each clause and word necessary 
with a diligence not drousy, we shall now fix with 
some advantage, and by a short view backward 
gather up the ground we have gone, and sum up the 
strength we have, into one argumentative Head, with 
that organic force that Logic proffers us.  All Arts 
acknowledge that then only we know certainly, when 
we can define; for Definition is that which refines the 
pure essence of things from the circumstance.  If 
therfore we can attain in this our Controversy to 
define exactly what Marriage is, we shall soon learn 
when there is a nullity therof, and when a divorce.
	The part therfore of this Chapter which hath bin 
here treated, doth orderly and readily resolve it self 
into a definition of Marriage, and a consectary from 
thence.  To the definition these words chiefly 
contribute; It is not good, &c.  I will make, &c.  where 
the consectary begins this connexion, Therfore 
informs us, Therfore shall a Man, &c.  Definition is 
decreed by Logicians to consist only of causes 
constituting the essence of a thing.  What is not 
therfore among the causes constituting Marriage, 
must not stay in the definition.  Those causes are 
concluded to be Matter, and, as the Artist calls it, 
Form.  But inasmuch as the same thing may be a 
cause more ways than one, and that in relations and 
institutions which have no corporal subsistence, but 
only a respective being, the Form by which the thing 
is what it is, is oft so slender and undistinguishable, 
that it would soon confuse, were it not sustain'd by 
the efficient and final causes, which concur to make 
up the form invalid otherwise of it self, it will be 
needful to take in all the four Causes into the 
definition.  First therfore the material cause of 
Matrimony is Man and Woman; the Author and 
Efficient, God and their consent; the internal Form 
and Soul of this relation, is conjugal love arising from 
a mutual fitness to the final causes of Wedloc, help 
and society in religious, civil and domestic 
conversation, which includes as an inferior end the 
fulfilling of natural desire, and specifical increase; 
these are the final causes both moving the efficient, 
and perfecting the form.  And although copulation be 
consider'd among the ends of Marriage, yet the act 
therof in a right esteem can no longer be 
matrimonial, than it is an effect of conjugal love.  
When love finds it self utterly unmatcht, and justly 
vanishes, nay rather cannot but vanish, the fleshly 
act indeed may continue, but not holy, not pure, not 
beseeming the sacred bond of Marriage; being at best 
but an animal excretion, but more truly worse and 
more ignoble than that mute kindliness among the 
herds and flocks: in that proceeding as it ought from 
intellective principles, it participates of nothing 
rational, but that which the field and the fold equals.  
For in human actions the soul is the agent, the body 
in a manner passive.  If then the body do out of 
sensitive force, what the soul complies not with, how 
can Man, and not rather something beneath Man, be 
thought the doer?
	But to proceed in the pursuit of an accurate 
definition, it will avail us something, and whet our 
thoughts, to examine what fabric hereof others have 
already rear'd.  Par¾us on Gen. defines Marriage to 
be an indissoluble conjunction of one Man and one 
Woman to an individual and intimate conversation, 
and mutual benevolence, &c.  Wherin is to be markt 
his placing of intimate conversation before bodily 
benevolence; for bodily is meant, though indeed 
benevolence rather founds will than body.  Why then 
shall divorce be granted for want of bodily 
performance, and not for want of fitness to intimate 
conversation, whenas corporal benevolence cannot 
in any human fashion be without this?  Thus his 
definition places the ends of Marriage in one order, 
and esteems them in another.  His Tautology also of 
indissoluble and individual is not to be imitated; 
especially since neither indissoluble nor individual 
hath aught to do in the exact definition, being but a 
consectary flowing from thence, as appears by plain 
Scripture, Therfore shall a Man leave, &c.  For 
Marriage is not true Marriage by being individual, 
but therfore individual, if it be true Marriage.  No 
argument but causes enter the definition; a 
Consectary is but the effect of those causes.  Besides, 
that Marriage is indissoluble, is not Catholicly true; 
we know it dissoluble for Adultery, and for Desertion 
by the verdict of all Reformed Churches.  Dr. Ames 
defines it an individual conjunction of one man and 
one woman, to communion of body and mutual 
society of life: But this perverts the Order of God, 
who in the institution places meet help and society of 
life before communion of body.  And vulgar 
estimation undervalues beyond comparison all 
society of life and communion of mind beneath the 
communion of body; granting no divorce, but to the 
want, or miscommunicating of that Hemingius, an 
approved Author, Melanchion's Scholar, and who, 
next to Bucer and Erasmus, writes of Divorce most 
like a Divine, thus comprises, Marriage is a 
conjunction of one man and one woman lawfully 
consenting, into one flesh, for mutual help's sake, 
ordain'd of God.  And in his explantion stands 
punctually upon the conditions of consent, that it be 
not in any main matter deluded, as being the life of 
Wedloc, and no true Marriage without a true consent.  
Into one flesh he expounds into one mind, as well as 
one body, and makes it the formal cause: Herein only 
missing, while he puts the effect into his definition 
instead of the cause which the Text affords him.  For 
one flesh is not the formal essence of Wedloc, but one 
end, or one effect of a meet help: The end oft-times 
being the effect and fruit of the form, as Logic 
teaches: Else many aged and holy Matrimonies, and 
more eminently that of Joseph and Mary, would be no 
true Marriage.  And that maxim generally receiv'd, 
would be false, that consent alone, tho' copulation 
never follow, makes the Marriage.  Therfore to 
consent lawfully into one flesh, is not the formal 
cause of Matrimony, but only one of the effects.  The 
Civil Lawyers, and first Justinian or Tribonian defines 
Matrimony a conjunction of man and woman 
containing individual accustom of life.  Wherin first, 
individual is not so bad as indissoluble put in by 
others: And altho' much cavil might be made in the 
distinguishing between indivisible and individual, yet 
the one taken for possible, the other for actual, 
neither the one nor the other can belong to the 
essence of Marriage; especially when a Civilian 
defines, by which Law Marriage is actually divorc'd 
for many causes, and with good leave, by mutual 
consent.  Therfore where conjunction is said, they 
who comment the Institutes, agree that conjunction 
of mind is by the Law meant, not necessarily 
conjunction of body.  That Law then had good reason 
attending to its own definition, that divorce should 
be granted for the breaking of that conjunction 
which it holds necessary, sooner than for the want of 
that conjunction which it holds not necessary.  And 
wheras Tuningus a famous Lawyer excuses individual 
as the purpose of Marriage, not always the success, it 
suffices not.  Purpose is not able to constitute the 
essence of a thing.  Nature her self, the universal 
Mother, intends nothing but her own perfection and 
preservation; yet is not the more indissoluble for 
that.  The Pandects out of Modestinus, tho' not define, 
yet well describe Marriage, the conjunction of male 
and female, the society of all life, the communion of 
divine and human right: which Bucer also imitates on 
the fifth to the Ephesians.  But it seems rather to 
comprehend the several ends of Marriage than to 
contain the more constituting cause that makes it 
what it is.
	That I therfore among others (for who sings not 
Hylas) may give as well as take matter to be judg'd 
on, it will be look'd I should produce another 
definition than these which have not stood the trial.  
Thus then I suppose that Marriage by the natural 
and plain order of God's institution in the Text may 
be more demonstratively and essentially defin'd.  
Marriage is a divine institution, joining man and 
woman in a love fitly dispos'd to the helps and 
comforts of domestic life.  A divine institution.  This 
contains the prime efficient cause of Marriage: as for 
consent of Parents and Guardians, if seems rather a 
concurrence than a cause; for as many that marry 
are in their own power as not; and where they are 
not their own, yet are they not subjected beyond 
reason.  Now tho' efficient causes are not requisite in 
a definition, yet divine institution hath such 
influence upon the Form, and is so a conserving 
cause of it, that without it the Form is not sufficient 
to distinguish matrimony from other conjunctions of 
male and female, which are not to be counted 
Marriage.  Joining man and woman in a love, &c.  This 
brings in the parties consent; until which be, the 
Marriage hath no true being.  When I say consent, I 
mean not error, for error is not properly consent: 
And why should not consent be here understood 
with equity and good to either part, as in all other 
friendly Covenants, and not be strain'd and cruelly 
urg'd to the mischief and destruction of both?  
Neither do I mean that singular act of consent which 
made the contract, for that may remain, and yet the 
Marriage not true nor lawful; and that may cease, 
and yet the Marriage both true and lawful, to their 
sin that break it.  So that either as no efficient at all, 
or but a transitory, it comes not into the definition.  
That consent I mean which is a love fitly dispos'd to 
mutual help and comfort of life: this is that happy 
Form of Marriage naturally arising from the very 
heart of divine institution in the Text, in all the 
former definitions either obscurely, and under 
mistaken terms exprest, or not at all.  This gives 
Marriage all her due, all her benefits, all her being, 
all her distinct and proper being.  This makes a 
Marriage not a bondage, a blessing not a curse, a gift 
of God not a snare.  Unless there be a love, and that 
love born of fitness, how can it last? unless it last, 
how can the best and sweetest purposes of Marriage 
be attain'd, and they not attain'd, which are the chief 
ends, and with a lawful love constitute the formal 
cause it self of Marriage?  How can the essence therof 
subsist?  How can it be indeed what it goes for?  
Conclude therfore by all the power of Reason, that 
where this essence of Marriage is not, there can be 
no true Marriage; and the Parties, either one of them 
or both, are free, and without fault, rather by a 
Nullity than by a Divorce, may betake them to a 
second choice, if their present condition be not 
tolerable to them.  If any shall ask, why domestic in 
the definition?  I answer, that because both in the 
Scriptures, and in the gravest Poets and 
Philosophers, I find the properties and excellencies of 
a wife set out only from domestic vertues; if they 
extend further, it diffuses them into the notion of 
some more common duty than matrimonial.
	Thus far of the definition; the Consectary which 
flows from thence, and altogether depends theron, is 
manifestly brought in by this connexive particle 
Therfore; and branches it self into a double 
consequence; First individual Society, therfore shall 
a man leave father and mother: Secondly, conjugal 
benevolence, and they shall be one flesh.  Which, as 
was shewn, is not without cause here mention'd, to 
prevent and to abolish the suspect of pollution in 
that natural and undefiled act.  These consequences 
therfore cannot either in Religion, Law, or Reason be 
bound, and posted upon Mankind to his sorrow and 
misery, but receive what force they have from the 
meetness of help and solace, which is the formal 
cause and end of that definition that sustains them.  
And altho' it be not for the Majesty of Scripture to 
humble her self in artificial Theorems, and 
Definitions, and Corollaries, like a professor in the 
Schools, but looks to be analys'd, and interpreted by 
the logical industry of her Disciples and Followers, 
and to be reduc'd by them as oft as need is, into 
those Sciential rules, which are the implements of 
instruction; yet Moses, as if foreseeing the miserable 
work that man's ignorance and pusillanimity would 
make in this matrimonious business, and 
endeavouring his utmost to prevent it, condescends 
in this place to such a methodical and school-like way 
of defining, and consequencing, as in no place of the 
whole Law more.
	Thus we have seen, and if we be not contentious, 
may know what was Marriage in the beginning, to 
which in the Gospel we are referr'd; and what from 
hence to judge of Nullity, or Divorce.  Here I esteem 
the work done; in this field the controversy decided; 
but because other places of Scripture seem to look 
aversly upon this our decision, altho' indeed they 
keep all harmony with it, and because it is a better 
work to reconcile the seeming diversities of 
Scripture, than the real dissensions of nearest 
friends, I shall assay in three following Discourses to 
perform that Office.
Deut. XXIV. 1, 2.
I.  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, then let him write her a bill of divorcement, 
and give it in her hand, and send her out of his 
house.
2.  And when she is departed out of his house, she 
may go and be another man's wife.

That which is the only discommodity of speaking in a 
clear matter, the abundance of argument that 
presses to be utter'd, and the suspense of judgment 
what to choose, and how in the multitude of reason 
to be not tedious, is the greatest difficulty which I 
expect here to meet with.  Yet much hath bin said 
formerly concerning this Law in the Doctrine of 
Divorce.  Wherof I shall repeat no more than what is 
necessary.  Two things are here doubted: First, and 
that but of late, whether this be a Law or no; next, 
what this reason of uncleanness might mean, for 
which the Law is granted.  That it is a plain Law no 
man ever question'd, till Vatablus within these 
hundred years profess'd Hebrew at Paris, a man of 
no Religion, as Beza decyphers him.  Yet some there 
be who follow him, not only against the current of all 
Antiquity both Jewish and Christian, but the 
evidence of Scripture also, Malach. 2. 16.  Let him 
who hateth put away, saith the Lord God of Israel.  
Altho' this place also hath bin tamper'd with, as if it 
were to be thus render'd, The Lord God saith, that he 
hateth putting away.  But this new interpretation 
rests only in the Authority of Junius; for neither 
Calvin, nor Vatablus himself, nor any other known 
Divine so interpreted before.  And they of best note 
who have translated the Scripture since, and Diodati 
for one, follow not his reading.  And perhaps they 
might reject it, if for nothing else, for these two 
Reasons: First, it introduces in a new manner the 
person of God speaking less Majestic than he is ever 
wont: When God speaks by his Prophet, he ever 
speaks in the first person, therby signifying his 
Majesty and Omnipresence.  He would have said, I 
hate puttting away, saith the Lord; and not sent 
word by Malachi in a sudden fal'n stile, The Lord God 
saith that he hateth putting away: that were the 
phrase to shrink the glorious Omnipresence of God 
speaking, into a kind of circumscriptive absence.  And 
were as if a Herald in the Atchievement of a King, 
should commit the indecorum to set his helmet 
sideways and close, not full-fac'd and open in the 
posture of direction and command.  We cannot think 
therfore that this last Prophet would thus in a new 
fashion absent the person of God from his own words, 
as if he came not along with them.  For it would also 
be wide from the proper scope of his place: he that 
reads attentively will soon perceive, that God blames 
not here the Jews for putting away their wives, but 
for keeping strange Concubines, to the profaning of 
Juda's holiness, and the vexation of their Hebrew 
wives, v. 11, and 14.  Judah hath married the 
daughter of a strange God: And exhorts them rather 
to put their wives away whom they hate, as the Law 
permitted, than to keep them under such affronts.  
And it is receiv'd that this Prophet liv'd in those 
times of Ezra and Nehemiah (nay by some is thought 
to beEzra himself) when the People were forc'd by 
these two Worthies to put their strange wives away.  
So that what the story of those times, and the plain 
context of the 11 verse, from whence this rebuke 
begins, can give us to conjecture of the obscure and 
curt Ebraisms that follow, this Prophet does not 
forbid putting away, but forbids keeping, and 
commands putting away according to God's Law, 
which is the plainest Interpreter both of what God 
will, and what he can best suffer.  Thus much evinces 
that God there commanded Divorce by Malachi, and 
this confirms that he commands it also here by 
Moses.
	I may the less doubt to mention by the way an 
Author, tho' counted Apocryphal, yet of no small 
account for Piety and Wisdom, the Author of  
Ecclesiasticus.  Which Book, begun by the Grand-
father of that Jesus who is call'd the Son of Sirach, 
might have bin written in part, not much after the 
time when Malachi liv'd; if we compute by the Reign 
of Ptolem¾us Euergetes.  It professes to explain the 
Law and the Prophets; and yet exhorts us to Divorce 
for incurable causes, and to cut off from the flesh 
those whom it there describes, Ecclesiastic. 25. 26.  
Which doubtless that wise and ancient Writer would 
never have advis'd, had either Malachi so lately 
forbidden it, or the Law by a full precept not left it 
lawful.  But I urge not this for want of better proof; 
our Saviour himself allows Divorce to be a command, 
Mark 10. 3, 5.  Neither do they weaken this assertion, 
who say it was only a sufferance, as shall be prov'd 
at large in that place of Mark.  But suppose it were 
not a written Law, they never can deny it was a 
custom, and so effect nothing.  For the same reasons 
that induce them why it should not be a Law, will 
straiten them as hard why it should be allow'd a 
custom.  All custom is either evil or not evil; if it be 
evil, this is the very end of Lawgiving, to abolish evil 
customs by wholesom Laws; unless we imagine Moses 
weaker than every negligent and startling Politician.  
If it be, as they make this of Divorce to be, a custom 
against nature, against justice, against charity, now, 
upon this most impure custom tolerated, could the 
God of pureness erect a nice and precise Law, that 
the Wife married after Divorce could not return to 
her former Husband, as being defiled?  What was all 
this following niceness worth, built upon the lewd 
foundation of a wicked thing allow'd?  In few words 
then, this custom of Divorce either was allowable or 
not allowable; if not allowable, how could it be 
allow'd? if it were allowable, all who understand Law 
will consent, that a tolerated custom hath the force 
of a Law, and is indeed no other but an unwritten 
Law, as Justinian calls it, and is as prevalent as any 
written statute.  So that their shift of turning this 
Law into a custom wheels about, and gives the onset 
upon their own flanks; not disproving, but 
concluding it to be the more firm Law, because it was 
without controversy a granted custom; as clear in 
the reason of common life, as those given rules 
wheron Euclides builds his propositions.
	Thus being every way a Law of God, who can 
without balsphemy doubt it to be a just and pure 
Law?  Moses continually disavows the giving them 
any statute, or judgment, but what he learnt of God; 
of whom also in his Song he saith, Deut. 32.  He is the 
rock, his work is perfect, all his ways are judgment, a 
God of truth and without iniquity, just and right is 
he.  And David testifies, thejudgments of the Lord are 
true and righteous altogether.  Not partly right and 
partly wrong, much less wrong altogether, as Divines 
of now-a-days dare censure them.  Moses again, of 
that people to whom he gave this Law, saith, Deut. 
14. Ye are the children of the Lord your God, the 
Lord hath chosen thee to be a peculiar people to 
himself above all the nations upon the earth, that 
thou shouldest keep all his Commandments, and be 
high in praise, in name, and in honour, holy to the 
Lord, Chap. 26.  And in the fourth, Behold I have 
taught you statutes and judgments, even as the Lord 
my God commanded me, keep therfore and do them.  
For this is your wisdom and your understanding in 
the sight of Nations that shall hear all these Statutes, 
and say, surely this great Nation is a wise and 
understanding people.  For what Nation is there so 
great, who hath God so nigh to them? and what 
Nation that hath Statutes and Judgments so 
righteous as all this Law which I set before you this 
day?  Thus whether we look at the purity and justice 
of God himself, the jealousy of his honour among 
other Nations, the holiness and moral perfection 
which he intended by his Law to teach this people, we 
cannot possibly think how he could indure to let 
them slug and grow inveterately wicked, under base 
allowances, and whole adulterous lives by 
dispensation.  They might not eat, they might not 
touch an unclean thing; to what hypocrisy then were 
they train'd up, if by prescription of the same Law, 
they might be unjust, they might be adulterous for 
term of life? forbid to soil their garments with a coy 
imaginary pollution, but not forbid, but 
countenanced and animated by Law to soil their 
Souls with deepest defilements.  What more unlike to 
God, what more like that God should hate, than that 
his Law should be so curious to wash vessels, and 
vestures, and so careless to leave unwash'd, 
unregarded, so foul a scab of Egypt  in their Souls? 
what would we more? the Statutes of the Lord are all 
pure andjust: and if all, then this of Divorce.
	Because he hath found some uncleanness in her. ]  
That we may not esteem this Law to be a meer 
authorizing of licence, as the Pharisees took it, Moses 
adds the reason, for some uncleanness found.  Some 
hertofore have bin so ignorant, as to have thought, 
that this uncleanness means Adultery.  But Erasmus, 
who for having writ an excellent Treatise of Divorce, 
was wrote against by some burly standard Divine 
perhaps of Cullen, or of Lovain, who calls himself 
Phimostomus, shews learnedly out of the Fathers, 
with other Testimonies and Reasons, that 
uncleanness is not here so understood; defends his 
former work, though new to that age, and perhaps 
counted licentious, and fears not to ingage all his 
fame on the Argument.  Afterward, when Expositors 
began to understand the Hebrew Text, which they 
had not done of many ages before,  they translated 
word for word not uncleanness, but the nakedness of 
any thing; and considering that nakedness is usually 
referr'd in Scripture to the mind as well as to the 
body, they constantly expound it any defect, 
annoyance, or ill quality in nature, which to be join'd 
with, makes life tedious, and such company worse 
than solitude.  So that here will be no cause to vary 
from the general consent of exposition, which gives 
us freely that God permitted divorce, for whatever 
was unalterably distastful, whether in body or mind.  
But with this admonishment, that if the Roman Law, 
especially in contracts and dowries, left many things 
to equity with these cautions, ex fide bona, quod 
¾quius melius erit, ut inter bonos bene agitur, we 
will not grudge to think that God intended not licence 
here to every humour, but to such remediless 
grievances as might move a good and honest and 
faithful man then to divorce, when it can no more be 
peace or comfort to either of them continuing thus 
join'd.  And although it could not be avoided, but 
that Men of hard hearts would abuse this liberty, yet 
doubtless it was intended, as all other privileges in 
Law are, to good men principally, to bad only by 
accident.  Also that the Sin was not in the 
permission, nor simply in the action of Divorce (for 
then the permitting also had bin sin) but only in the 
abuse.  But that this Law should, as it were, be wrung 
from God and Moses, only to serve the 
hardheartedness, and the lust of injurious men, how 
remote it is from all sense, and law, and honesty, and 
therfore surely from the meaning of Christ, shall 
abundantly be manifest in due order.
	Now although Moses needed not to add other 
reason of this Law than that one there exprest, yet 
to these ages wherin Canons, and Scotisms, and 
Lumbard Laws, have dull'd, and almost obliterated 
the lively Sculpture of ancient reason, and 
humanity, it will be requisit to heap reason upon 
reason, and all little enough to vindicate the 
whiteness and the innocence of this divine Law, from 
the calumny it finds at this day, of being a door to 
licence and confusion.  Whenas indeed there is not a 
judicial point in all Moses, consisting of more true 
equity, high wisdom, and god-like pity than this Law; 
not derogating, but preserving the honour and peace 
of Marriage, and exactly agreeing with the sense and 
mind of that institution of Genesis.
	For first, if Marriage be but an ordain'd relation, 
as it seems not more, it cannot take place above the 
prime dictates of nature; and if it be of natural right, 
yet it must yield to that which is more natural, and 
before it by eldership and precedence in nature.  
Now it is not natural that Hugh marries Beatrice, or 
Thomas Rebecca, being only a civil contract, and full 
of many chances; but that these men seek them meet 
helps, that only is natural, and that they espouse 
them such, that only is Marriage.  But if they find 
them neither fit helps nor tolerable society, what 
thing more natural, more original and first in nature 
than to depart from that which is irksom, grievous, 
actively hateful, and injurious even to hostility, 
especially in a conjugal respect, wherin antipathies 
are invincible, and where the forc'd abiding of the 
one can be no true good, no real comfort to the 
other?  For if he find no contentment from the other, 
how can he return it from himself? or no acceptance, 
how can he mutually accept?  What more equal, more 
pious than to untie a civil knot for a natural enmity 
held by violence from parting, to dissolve an 
accidental conjunction of this or that Man and 
Woman, for the most natural and most necessary 
disagreement of meet  from unmeet, guilty from 
guiltless, contrary from contrary?  It being certain 
that the mystical and blessed unity of Marriage can 
be no way more unhallow'd and profan'd, than by 
the forcible uniting of such disunions and 
separations.  Which if we see oftimes they cannot join 
or piece up to a common friendship, or to a willing 
conversation in the same house, how should they 
possibly agree to the most familiar and united amity 
of Wedloc?  Abraham and Lot, though dear friends 
and brethren in a strange Country, chose rather to 
part asunder, than to infect their friendship with the 
strife of their servants: Paul and Barnabas, join'd 
together by the Holy Ghost to a spiritual work, 
thought it better to separate when once they grew at 
variance.  If these great Saints, join'd by Nature, 
Friendship, Religion, high Providence, and 
Revelation, could not so govern a casual difference, a 
sudden passion, but must in wisdom divide from the 
outward duties of a Friendship, or a Collegueship in 
the same family, or in the same journey, lest it 
should grow to a worse division; can any thing be 
more absurd and barbarous, than that they whom 
only Error, Casualty, Art, or Plot, hath joined, should 
be compell'd, not against a sudden passion, but 
against the permanent and radical discords of 
Nature, to the most intimate and incorporating 
duties of Love and Imbracement, therin only rational 
and human, as they are free and voluntary; being 
else an abject and servile yoke, scarce not brutish?  
And that there is in man such a peculiar sway of 
liking or disliking in the affairs of Matrimony, is 
evidently seen before Marriage among those who can 
be friendly, can respect each other, yet to marry 
each other would not for any perswasion.  If then 
this unfitness and disparity be not till after Marriage 
discover'd, through many Causes, and Colours, and 
Concealments, that may overshadow; undoubtedly it 
will produce the same effects, and perhaps with more 
vehemence, that such a mistaken pair would give the 
world to be unmarried again.  And their condition 
Solomon to the plain justification of Divorce 
expresses, Prov. 30. 21, 23. where he tells us of his 
own accord, that a hated, or a hateful Woman, when 
she is married, is a thing for which the earth is 
disquieted, and cannot bear it: thus giving divine 
testimony to this divine Law, which bids us nothing 
more than is the first and most innocent lesson of 
Nature, to turn away peaceably from what afflicts, 
and hazards our destruction; especially when our 
staying can do no good, and is expos'd to all evil.
	Secondly, It is unjust that any Ordinance, 
ordain'd to the good and comfort of Man, where that 
end is missing, without his fault, should be forc'd 
upon him to an unsufferable misery and discomfort, 
if not commonly ruin.  All Ordinances are establisht 
in their end; the end of Law is the vertue, is the 
righteousness of Law: and therfore him we count an 
ill Expounder who urges Law against the intention 
therof.  The general end of every Ordinance, of every 
severest, every divinest, even of Sabbath, is the 
good of Man; yea his temporal good not excluded.  But 
Marriage is one of the benignest ordinances of God to 
man, wherof both the general and particular end is 
the peace and contentment of man's mind, as the 
institution declares.  Contentment of body they 
grant, which if it be defrauded, the plea of frigidity 
shall divorce: But here lies the fathomless absurdity, 
that granting this for bodily defect, they will not 
grant it for any defect of the mind, any violation of 
religious or civil society.  Whenas, if the argument of 
Christ be firm against the ruler of the Synagogue, 
Luke 13.  Thou hypocrite, doth not each of you on 
the Sabbath-day  loosen his Ox or his Ass from the 
stall, and lead him to watering, and should not I 
unbind a daughter of Abraham from this bond of 
Satan?  It stands as good here; ye have regard in 
Marriage to the grievance of body, should you not 
regard more the grievances of the mind, seeing the 
Soul as much excels the body, as the outward man 
excels the Ass, and more? for that animal is yet a 
living creature, perfect in itself; but the body 
without the Soul is a meer senseless trunk.  No 
ordinance therfore given particularly to the good 
both spiritual and temporal of man, can be urged 
upon him to his mischief: and if they yield this to the 
unworthier part, the body, whereabout are they in 
their principles, that they yield it not to the more 
worthy the mind of a good man?
	Thirdly, As no Ordinance, so no Covenant, no not 
between God and Man, much less between Man and 
Man, being, as all are, intended to the good of both 
Parties, can hold to the deluding or making miserable 
of them both.  For Equity is understood in every 
Covenant, even between enemies, tho' the terms be 
not exprest.  If Equity therfore made it, Extremity 
may dissolve it.  But Marriage, they use to say, is the 
Covenant of God.  Undoubted: and so in any Covenant 
frequently called in Scripture, wherin God is call'd to 
witness: The Covenant of Friendship between David 
and Jonathan, is call'd the Covenant of the Lord, 1 
Sam. 20.  The Covenant of Zedekiah with the King of 
Babel, a Covenant to be doubted whether lawful or 
no, yet in respect of God invok'd therto is call'd the 
Oath, and the Covenant of God, Ezek. 17.  Marriage 
also is call'd the Covenant of God, Prov. 2. 17.  Why, 
but as before, because God is the witness therof, Mal. 
2. 14.  So that this denomination adds nothing to the 
Covenant of Marriage, above any other civil and 
solemn contract: nor is it more indissoluble for this 
reason than any other against the end of its own 
Ordination; nor is any Vow or Oath to God exacted 
with such a rigour, where superstition reigns not.  
For look how much divine the Covenant is, so much 
the more equal, so much the more to be expected 
that every Article therof should be fairly made good; 
no false dealing, or unperforming should be thrust 
upon men without redress, if the covenant be so 
divine.  But Faith, they say, must be kept in 
Covenant, tho' to our damage.  I answer, that only 
holds true, where the other side performs; which 
failing, he is no longer bound.  Again, this is true, 
when the keeping of Faith can be of any use or 
benefit to the other.  But in Marriage, a league of 
Love and Willingness, if Faith be not willingly kept, it 
scarce is worth the keeping; nor can be any delight to 
a generous mind, with whom it is forcibly kept: and 
the question still supposes the one brought to an 
impossibility of keeping it as he ought, by the other's 
default; and to keep it formally, not only with a 
thousand shifts and dissimulations, but with open 
anguish, perpetual sadness and disturbance, no 
willingness, no cheerfulness, no contentment, cannot 
be any good to a mind not basely poor and shallow, 
with whom the contract of Love is so kept.  A 
Covenant therfore brought to that pass, is on the 
unfaulty side without injury dissolv'd.
	Fourthly, The Law is not to neglect men under 
greatest sufferances, but to see Covenants of 
greatest moment faithfullest perform'd.  And what 
injury comparable to that sustain'd in a frustrate 
and false-dealing Marriage, to lose, for another's 
fault against him, the best portion of his temporal 
comforts, and of his spiritual too, as it may fall out?  
It was the Law, that for man's good and quiet, 
reduc'd things to propriety, which were at first in 
common; how much more Law-like were it to assist 
Nature in disappropriating that evil which by 
continuing proper becomes destructive?  But he 
might have bewar'd.  So he might in any other 
Covenant, wherin the Law does not constrain Error 
to so dear a forfeit.  And yet in these matters wherin 
the wisest are apt to err, all the wariness that can 
be, ofttimes nothing avails.  But the Law can compel 
the offending party to be more duteous.  Yes, if all 
these kind of offences were fit in public to be 
complain'd on, or being compell'd were any 
satisfaction to a mate not sottish, or malicious.  And 
these injuries work so vehemently, that if the Law 
remedy them not, by separating the cause when no 
way else will pacify, the person not reliev'd betakes 
him either to such disorderly courses, or to such a 
dull dejection as renders him either infamous, or 
useless to the service of God and his Country.   
Fifthly, The Law is to tender the liberty and the 
human dignity of them that live under the Law, 
whether it be the man's right above the woman, or 
the woman's just appeal against wrong and 
servitude.  But the duties of Marriage contain in 
them a duty of Benevolence, which to do by 
compulsion against the Soul, where there can be 
neither peace, nor joy, nor love, but an enthralment 
to one who either cannot, or will not be the mutual in 
the godliest and the civilest ends of that society, is 
the ignoblest, and the lowest slavery that a human 
shape can be put to.  This Law therfore justly and 
piously provides against such an unmanly task of 
bondage as this.  The Civil Law, tho' it favour'd the 
setting free of a slave, yet if he prov'd ungrateful to 
his Patron, reduc'd him to a servile condition.  If that 
Law did well to reduce from liberty to bondage for an 
ingratitude not the greatest, much more became it 
the Law of God to enact the restorement of a free-
born man from an unpurpos'd, and unworthy 
bondage, to a rightful liberty, for the most unnatural 
fraud and ingratitude that can be committed against 
him.  And if the Civilian Emperor in his title of 
Donations, permit the giver to recall his gift from him 
who proves unthankful towards him; yea, tho' he 
had subscrib'd, and sign'd in the deed of the gift, not 
to recall it, though for this very cause of ingratitude; 
with much more equity doth Moses permit here the 
giver to recall no petty gift, but the gift of himself 
from one who most injuriously and deceitfully uses 
him against the main ends and condition of his giving 
himself, exprest in God's institution.
	Sixthly, Altho' there be nothing in the plain 
words of this Law, that seems to regard the afflictions 
of a Wife, how great soever; yet Expositors 
determine, and doubtless determine rightly, that God 
was not uncompassionate of them also in the framing 
of this Law.  For should the rescript of Antoninus in 
the Civil Law give release to servants flying for 
refuge to the Emperor's statue, by giving leave to 
change their cruel Masters; and should God, who in 
his Law also is good to injur'd servants, by granting 
them their freedom in divers cases, not consider the 
wrongs and miseries of a wife, which is no servant?  
Tho' herin the counter-sense of our Divines, to me, I 
must confess seems admirable; who teach that God 
gave this as a merciful Law, not for Man whom he 
here names, and to whom by name he gives this 
power; but for the Wife, whom he names not, and to 
whom by name he gives no power at all.  For 
certainly if Man be liable to injuries in Marriage, as 
well as Woman, and Man be the worthier Person, it 
were a preposterous Law to respect only the less 
worthy; her whom God made for Marriage, and not 
him at all for whom Marriage was made.
	Seventhly, The Law of Marriage gives place to the 
power of parents: for we hold, that consent of 
Parents not had, may break the Wedloc, tho' else 
accomplisht.  It gives place to masterly Power, for the 
Master might take away from an Hebrew servant 
which he gave him, Exod. 21.  If it be answer'd, that 
the Marriage of Servants is no Matrimony: 'tis 
reply'd, That this in the ancient Roman Law is true, 
not in the Mosaic.  If it be added, she was a Stranger, 
not an Hebrew, therfore easily divorc'd; it will be 
answer'd, That Strangers not being Canaanites, and 
they also being Converts, might be lawfully married, 
as Rahab was.  And her conversion is here suppos'd; 
for an Hebrew master could not lawfully give an 
Heathen wife to an Hebrew servant.  However, the 
divorcing of an Israelitish woman was as easy by the 
Law, as the divorcing of a Stranger, and almost in the 
same words permitted, Deut. 24. and Deut. 21.  
Lastly, it gives place to the right of War, for a captive 
Woman lawfully marry'd, and afterwards not 
belov'd, might be dismiss'd, only without ransom, 
Deut. 21.  If Marriage be dissolv'd by so many 
exterior powers, not superior, as we think, why may 
not the power of Marriage it self, for its own peace 
and honour, dissolve it self, where the persons 
wedded be free persons?  Why may not a greater and 
more natural power complaining dissolve Marriage?  
For the ends why Matrimony was ordain'd, are 
certainly and by all Logic above all the Ordinance it 
self; why may not that dissolve Marriage, without 
which that institution hath no force at all?  For the 
prime ends of Marriage, are the whole strength and 
validity therof, without which Matrimony is like an 
Idol, nothing in the world.  But those former 
allowances were all for hardness of heart.  Be that 
granted, until we come where to understand it 
better: if the Law suffer thus far the obstinacy of a 
bad man, is it not more righteous here, to do 
willingly what is but equal, to remove in season the 
extremities of a good man?
	Eighthly, If a man had deflowr'd a Virgin, or 
brought an ill name on his Wife that she came not a 
Virgin to him, he was amerc'd in certain shekels of 
Silver, and bound never to divorce her all his days, 
Deut. 22. which shews that the Law gave no liberty to 
divorce, where the injury was palpable; and that the 
absolute forbidding to divorce, was in part the 
punishment of a deflowerer, and a defamer.  Yet not 
so but that the wife questionless might depart when 
she pleases.  Otherwise this course had not so much 
righted her, as delivered her up to more spight and 
cruel usage.  This Law therfore doth justly 
distinguish the privilege of an honest and blameless 
man in the matter of divorce from the punishment of 
a notorious offender.
	Ninthly, Suppose it should be imputed to a man 
that he was too rash in his choice, and why he took 
not better heed, let him now smart, and bear his 
folly as he may; altho' the Law of God, that terrible 
Law, do not thus upbraid the infirmities and 
unwilling mistakes of man in his integrity: But 
suppose these and the like proud aggravations of 
some stern hypocrite, more merciless in his mercies, 
than any literal Law in the vigour of severity, must 
be patiently heard; yet all Law, and God's Law 
especially grants every-where to error easy 
remitments, even where the utmost penalty exacted 
were no undoing.  With great reason therfore and 
mercy doth it here not torment an error, if it be so, 
with the indurance of a whole life lost to all houshold 
comfort and society, a punishment of too vast and 
huge dimension for an error, and the more 
unreasonable for that the like objection may be 
oppos'd against the plea of divorcing for Adultery; he 
might have lookt better before to her breeding under 
religious parents: why did he not more diligently 
inquire into her manners, into what company she 
kept? every glance of her eye, every step of her gait 
would have prophesy'd adultery, if the quick scent of 
these discerners had been took along; they had the 
divination to have foretold you all this, as they have 
now the divinity to punish an error inhumanly.  As 
good reason to be content, and forc'd to be content 
with your Adulteress, if these objecters might be the 
judges of human frailty.  But God, more mild and 
good to man, than man to his brother, in all this 
liberty given to divorcement, mentions not a word of 
our past errors and mistakes, if any were, which 
these men objecting from their own inventions, 
prosecute with all violence and iniquity.  For if the 
one be to look so narrowly what he takes, at the peril 
of ever keeping, why should not the other be made 
as wary what is promis'd, by the peril of losing? for 
without those promises the treaty of Marriage had 
not proceeded.  Why should his own error bind him, 
rather than the other's fraud acquit him?  Let the 
buyer beware, saith the old Law-beaten termer.  
Belike then there is no more honesty, nor ingenuity 
in the bargain of a Wedloc, than in the buying of a 
Colt: We must it seems drive it on as craftily with 
those whose affinity we seek, as if they were a pack 
of sale-men and complotters.  But the deceiver 
deceives himself in the unprosperous Marriage, and 
therin is sufficiently punisht.  I answer, that the 
most of those who deceive, are such as either 
understand not, or value not the true purposes of 
Marriage; they have the prey they seek, not the 
punishment: yet say it prove to them some cross, it 
is not equal that error and fraud should be linkt in 
the same degree of forfeiture, but rather that error 
should be acquitted, and fraud bereav'd his morsel, if 
the mistake were not on both sides; for then on both 
sides the acquitment will be reasonable, if the 
bondage be intolerable; which this Law graciously 
determines, not unmindful of the wife, as was 
granted willingly to the common Expositors, tho' 
beyond the letter of this Law, yet not beyond the 
spirit of charity.
	Tenthly, Marriage is a solemn thing, some say a 
holy, the resemblance of Christ and his Church? and 
so indeed it is where the persons are truly religious; 
and we know all sacred things not perform'd 
sincerely as they ought, are no way acceptable to 
God in their outward formality.  And that wherin it 
differs from personal duties, if they be not truly 
done, the fault is in our selves; but Marriage to be a 
true and pious Marriage is not in the single power of 
any person; the essence wherof, as of all other 
Covenants, is in relation to another, the making and 
maintaining causes therof are all mutual, and must 
be a communion of spiritual and temporal comforts.  
If then either of them cannot, or obstinately will not 
be answerable in these duties, so as that the other 
can have no peaceful living, or endure the want of 
what he justly seeks, and sees no hope, then strait 
from that dwelling love, which is the soul of Wedloc, 
takes his flight, leaving only some cold performances 
of civil and common respects; but the true bond of 
Marriage, if there were ever any there, is already 
burst like a rotten thread.  Then follows 
dissimulation, suspicion, false colours, false pretences 
and worse than these, disturbance, annoyance, 
vexation, sorrow, temptation even in the faultless 
person, weary of himself, and of all actions public or 
domestic; then comes disorder, neglect, hatred, and 
perpetual strife, all these the enemies of Holiness and 
Christianity, and every one persisted in, a 
remediless violation of Matrimony.  Therfore God who 
hates all feigning and formality, where there should 
be all faith and sincereness, and abhors the 
inevitable discord, where there should be greater 
concord, when thro' another's default, faith and 
concord cannot be, counts it neither just to punish 
the innocent with the Transgressor, nor holy, nor 
honourable for the sanctity of Marriage, that should 
be the union of peace and love to be made the 
commitment, and close fight of enmity and hate.  And 
therfore doth in this Law, what best agrees with his 
goodness, loosning a sacred thing to peace and 
charity, rather than binding it to hatred and 
contention; loosning only the outward and formal tie 
of that which is already inwardly and really broken, 
or else was really never join'd.
	Eleventhly, One of the chief matrimonial ends is 
said to seek a holy seed; but where an unfit Marriage 
administers continual cause of hatred and distemper, 
there, as was heard before, cannot choose but much 
unholiness abide.  Nothing more unhallows a man, 
more unprepares him to the service of God in any 
duty, than a habit of wrath and perturbation, arising 
from the importunity of troublous causes never 
absent.  And where the houshold stands in this 
plight, what love can there be to the unfortunate 
issue, what care of their breeding, which is of main 
conducement to their being holy?  God therfore 
knowing how happy it would be for children to be 
born in such a family, gives this Law either as a 
prevention, that being an unhappy pair, they should 
not add to tbe unhappy parents, or else as a remedy 
that if there be children, while they are fewest, they 
may follow either parent, as shall be agreed, or 
judg'd, from the house of hatred and discord to place 
of more holy and peaceable education.
	Twelfthly, All Law is available to some good end, 
but the final prohibition of Divorce avails to no good 
end, causing only the endless aggravation of evil, and 
therfore this permission of divorce was given to the 
Jews by the wisdom and fatherly providence of God; 
who knew that Law cannot command love, without 
which Matrimony hath no true being, no good, no 
solace, nothing of God's instituting, nothing but so 
sordid and so low, as to be disdain'd of any generous 
person.  Law cannot inable natural inability either of 
body, or mind, which gives the grievance; it cannot 
make equal those inequalities, it cannot make fit 
those unfitnesses; and where there is malice more 
than defect of nature, it cannot hinder ten thousand 
injuries, and bitter actions of despight, too suttle and 
too unapparent for Law to deal with.  And while it 
seeks to remedy more outward wrongs, it exposes 
the injur'd person to other more inward and more 
cutting.  All these evils unavoidably will redound 
upon the children, if any be, and upon the whole 
family.  It degenerates and disorders the best spirits, 
leaves them to unsettled imaginations, and degraded 
hopes, careless of themselves, their housholds and 
their friends, unactive to all public service, dead to 
the Commonwealth; wherin they are by one mishap, 
and no willing trespass of theirs, outlaw'd from all 
the benefits and comforts of married life and 
posterity.  It confers as little to the honour and 
inviolable keeping of Matirmony, but sooner stirs up 
temptations and occasions to secret adulteries and 
unchaste roving.  But it maintains public honesty.  
Public folly rather; who shall judge of public 
honesty?  The Law of God and of ancientest 
Christians, and all Civil Nations, or the illegitimate 
Law of Monks and Canonists, the most malevolent, 
most unexperienc'd, most incompetent Judges of 
Matrimony?
	These reasons, and many more that might be 
alleg'd, afford us plainly to perceive, both what good 
cause this Law had to do for good men in mischances, 
and what necessity it had to suffer accidentally the 
hard-heartedness of bad men, which could not 
certainly discover, or discovering, could not subdue, 
no nor endeavour to restrain without multiplying 
sorrow to them, for whom all was indeavour'd.  The 
guiltless  therfore were not depriv'd their needful 
redresses, and the hard hearts of others 
unchastisable in those judicial Courts, were so 
remitted there, as bound over to the higher Session 
of Conscience.
	Notwithstanding all this, there is a loud exception 
against this Law of God, nor can the holy Author 
save his Law from this exception, that it opens a door 
to all licence and confusion.  But this is the rudest, I 
was almost saying the most graceless objection, and 
with the least reverence to God and Moses, that could 
be devis'd: This is to cite God before man's Tribunal, 
to arrogate a wisdom and holiness above him.  Did not 
God then foresee what event of licence or confusion 
could follow?  Did not he know how to ponder these 
abuses with more prevailing respects, in the most 
even ballance of his justice and pureness, till these 
correctors came up to shew him better?  The Law is, 
if it stir up sin any way, to stir it up by forbidding, as 
one contrary excites another, Rom. 7. but if it once 
come to provoke sin, by granting licence to sin, 
according to Laws that have no other honest end, but 
only to permit the fulfilling of obstinate lust, how is 
God not made the contradicter of himself?  No man 
denies that best things may be abus'd: but it is a Rule 
resulting from many pregnant expeeriences, that 
what doth most harm in the abusing, us'd rightly 
doth most good.  And such a good to take away from 
honest men, for being abus'd by such as abuse all 
things, is the greatest abuse of all.  That the whole 
Law is no further useful, than as a man uses it 
lawfully, S. Paul teaches 1 Tim. 1.  And that Christian 
liberty may be us'd for an occasion to the flesh, the 
same Apostle confesses, Gal. 5. yet thinks not of 
removing it for that, but bids us rather stand fast in 
the liberty wherwith Christ hath freed us, and not 
be held again in the yoke of bondage.  The very 
permission which Christ gave to Divorce for 
Adultery, may be foully abus'd, by any whose 
hardness of heart can either feign Adultery, or dares 
commit, that he may divorce.  And for this cause the 
Pope, and hitherto the Church of England, forbid all 
divorce from the bond of Marriage, tho' for openest 
Adultery.  If then it be righteous to hinder for the 
fear of abuse, that which God's Law, notwithstanding 
that caution, hath warranted to be done, doth not 
our righteousness come short of Antichrist? or do we 
not rather herein conform our selves to his 
unrighteousness in this undue and unwise fear?  For 
God regards more to relieve by this Law the just 
complaints of good men, than to curb the licence of 
wicked men, to the crushing withal, and the 
overwhelming of his afflicted servants.  He loves 
more that his Law should look with pity upon the 
difficulties of his own, than with rigor upon the 
boundless riots of them who serve another Master, 
and hinder'd here by the strictness, will break 
another way to worse enormities.  If this Law 
therfore have any good reasons for which God gave 
it, and no intention of giving scope to lewdness, but 
as abuse by accident comes in with every good Law, 
and every good thing, it cannot be wisdom in us, 
while we can content us with God's wisdom, nor can 
be purity, if his purity will suffice us, to except 
against this Law, as if it foster'd licence.  But if they 
affirm this Law had no other end, but to permit 
obdurat lust, because it would be obdurat, making 
the Law of God intentionally to proclaim and enact 
Sin lawful, as if the will of God were become sinful, or 
Sin stronger than his direct and law-giving will, the 
men would be admonish'd to look well to it, that while 
they are so eager to shut the door against licence, 
they do open a worse door to blasphemy.  And yet 
they shall be here further shewn their iniquity; 
what more foul common sin among us than 
drunkenness?  And who can be ignorant, that if the 
importation of Wine, and the use of all strong drink, 
were forbid, it would both clean rid the possibility of 
committing that odious vice, and men might 
afterwards live happily and healthfully without the 
use of those intoxicating liquors.  Yet who is there 
the severest of them all, that ever propounded to 
lose his Sack, his Ale, toward the certain abolishing of 
so great a Sin?  Who is there of them, the holiest, 
that less loves his rich canary at meals, tho' it be 
fetcht from places that hazard the Religion of them 
who fetch it, and tho' it make his Neighbour drunk 
out of the same Tun?  While they forbid not therfore 
the use of that liquid Merchandize, which forbidden 
would utterly remove a most loathsome sin, and not 
impair either the health or the refreshment of 
mankind, supply'd many other ways; why do they 
forbid a Law of God, the forbidding wherof brings into 
excessive bondage oftimes the best of men, and 
betters not the worse?  He to remove a national vice, 
will not pardon his cups, nor think it concerns him to 
forbear the quaffing of that outlandish Grape, in his 
unnecessary fulness, tho' other men abuse it never 
so much; nor is he so abstemious as to intercede with 
the Magistrate that all matter of drunkenness be 
banish'd the Commonwealth; and yet for the fear of a 
less inconvenience unpardonably requires of his 
brethren, in their extreme necessity, to debar 
themselves the use of God's permissive Law, tho' it 
might be their saving, and no man's indangering the 
more.  Thus this peremptory strictness we may 
discern of what sort it is, how unequal and how 
unjust.
	But it will breed confusion.  What confusion it 
would breed, God himself took the care to prevent in 
the fourth verse of this Chapter, that the divorc'd 
being married to another, might not return to her 
former husband.  And Justinian's Law counsels the 
same in his Title of Nuptials.  And what confusion else 
can there be in separation, to separate upon extreme 
urgency, the religious from the irreligious, the fit 
from the unfit, the willing from the wilful, the abus'd 
from the abuser?  Such a separation is quite 
contrary to confusion.  But to bind and mix together 
holy with atheist, heavenly with hellish, fitness with 
unfitness, light with darkness, antipathy with 
antipathy, the injur'd with the injurer, and force 
them into the most inward nearness of a detested 
union, this doubtless is the most horrid, the most 
unnatural mixture, the greatest confusion that can 
be confus'd.
	Thus by this plain and Christian Talmud, 
vindicating the Law of God from irreverent and 
unwary expostions, I trust, where it shall meet with 
intelligible perusers, some stay at least of men's 
thoughts will be obtain'd, to consider these many 
prudent and righteous ends of this divorcing 
permission: That it may have, for the great Author's 
sake, hereafter some competent allowance to be 
counted a little purer than the prerogative of a legal 
and public ribaldry, granted to that holy seed.  So 
that from hence, we shall hope to find the way still 
more open to the reconciling of those places which 
treat this matter in the Gospel.  And thither now 
without interruption the course of method brings us.

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Tetrachordon.

MATTH. V. 31, 32.
31.  It hath been said, whosoever put away his Wife, 
let him give her a writing of Divorcement.

32.  But I say unto you, that whosoever shall put 
away his Wife, &c.

MATTH. XIX. 3, 4, &c.
3.  And the Pharisees also came unto him, tempting 
him, &c.

It hath been said. ]  What hitherto hath been spoke 
upon the Law of God touching Matimony or Divorce, 
he who will deny to have been agru'd according to 
reason and all equity of Scripture, I cannot edify 
how, or by what rule of proportion that man's virtue 
calculate, what his elements are, nor what his 
analytics.  Confidently to those who have read good 
books, and to those whose reason is not an illiterate 
book to themselves, I appeal, whether they would not 
confess all this to be the commentary of truth and 
justice, were it not for these recited words of our 
Saviour.  And if they take not back that which they 
thus grant, nothing sooner might persuade them 
that Christ here teaches no new precept, and nothing 
sooner might direct them to find his meaning, than 
to compare and measure it by the rules of nature 
and eternal righteousness, which no written Law 
extinguishes, and the Gospel least of all.  For what 
can be more opposite and disparaging to the 
covenant of love, of freedom, and of our manhood in 
grace, than to be made the yoking pedagogue of new 
severities, the scribe of syllables and rigid letters, 
not only grievous to the best of men, but different 
and strange from the light of reason in them, save 
only as they are fain to stretch and distort their 
apprehensions for fear of displeasing the verbal 
straitness of a text, which our own servile fear gives 
us not the leisure to understand aright?  If the Law 
of Christ shall be written in our hearts, as was 
promis'd to the Gospel, Jer. 31. how can this in the 
vulgar and superficial sense be a Law of Christ, so far 
from being written in our hearts, that it injures and 
disallows not only the free dictates of Nature and 
moral Law, but of Charity also and Religion in our 
heart?  Our Saviour's doctrine is, that the end, and 
the fulfilling of every command is charity; no faith 
without it, no truth without it, no worship, no works 
pleasing to God but as they partake of charity.  He 
himself sets us an example, breaking the solemnest 
and strictest ordinance of religious rest, and justify'd 
the breaking, not to cure a dying man, but such 
whose cure might without danger have been 
deferr'd. And wherfore needs must the sick man's 
bed be carried home on that day by his 
appointment?  And why were the Disciples, who 
could not forbear on that day to pluck the corn, so 
industriously defended, but to shew us that if he 
preferr'd the slightest occasions of Man's good before 
the observing highest and severest ordinances, he 
gave us much more easy leave to break the 
intolerable yoke of a never well-join'd Wedloc for the 
removing of our heaviest afflictions?  Therfore it is 
that the most evangelic precepts are given us in 
proverbial forms, to drive us from the letter, tho' we 
love ever to be sticking there.  For no other cause did 
Christ assure us that whatsoever things we bind, or 
slacken on earth, are so in heaven, but to signify 
that the christian arbitrement of charity is supreme 
decider of all controversy, and supreme resolver of 
all Scripture; not as the Pope determines for his own 
tyranny, but as the Church ought to determine for 
its own true liberty.  Hence Eusebius, not far from 
the beginning of his History, compares the state of 
Christians to that of Noah and the Patriarchs before 
the Law.  And this indeed was the reason why 
Apostolic tradition in the ancient Church was 
counted nigh equal to the written word, tho' it 
carried them at length awry, for want of considering 
that tradition was not left to be impos'd as Law, but 
to be a pattern of that Christian prudence, and 
liberty which holy men by right assum'd of old; 
which truth was so evident, that it found entrance 
even into the Council of Trent, when the point of 
Tradition came to be discust.  And Marinaro, a 
learned Carmelite, for approaching too near the true 
cause that gave esteem to Tradition, that is to say, 
the difference between the Old and New Testament, 
the one punctually prescribing written Law, the 
other guiding by the inward Spirit, was reprehended 
by Cardinal Pool as one that had spoken more worthy 
a German Colloquy, than a General Council.  I omit 
many instances, many proofs and arguments of this 
kind, which alone would compile a just volume, and 
shall content me here to have shewn briefly that the 
great and almost only commandment of the Gospel, is 
to command nothing against the good of man, and 
much more no civil command against his civil good.  
If we understand not this, we are but crackt cimbals, 
we do but tinkle, we know nothing, we do nothing, all 
the sweat of our toilsomest obedience will but mock 
us.  And what we suffer superstitiously, returns us 
no thanks.  Thus med'cining our eyes, we need not 
doubt to see more into the meaning of these our 
Saviour's words, than many who have gone before 
us.
	It hath been said, whosoever shall put away his 
wife. ]  Our Saviour was by the Doctors of his time 
suspected of intending to dissolve the Law.  In this 
Chapter he wipes off this aspersion upon his 
Accusers, and shews, how they were the Law-
breakers.  In every Commonwealth, when it decays, 
corruption makes two main steps; first, when men 
cease to do according to the inward and uncompell'd 
actions of Virtue, caring only to live by the outward 
constraint of Law, and turn the simplicity of real 
good into the craft of seeming so by Law.  To this 
hypocritical honesty was Rome  declin'd in that Age 
wherin Horace liv'd, and discover'd it to Quintius.
Whom do we count a good man, whom 
but he
Who keeps the laws and statutes of the 
Senate?
Who judges in great suits and 
controversies,
Whose witness and opinion wins the 
cause?
But his own house, and the whole 
neighbourhood
Sees his foul inside through his whited 
skin.

	The next declining is, when Law becomes now too 
strait for the secular Manners, and those too loose 
for the cincture of Law.  This brings in false and 
crooked interpretations to eke out Law, and invents 
the suttle encroachment of obscure Traditions hard 
to be disprov'd.  To both these descents the Pharisees 
themselves were fallen.  Our Saviour therfore shews 
them both where they broke the Law, in not marking 
the divine Intent therof, but only the Letter; and 
where they depraved the Letter also with sophistical 
Expositions.  This Law of Divorce they had deprav'd 
both ways: first, by teaching that to give a Bill of 
Divorce was all the duty which that Law requir'd, 
whatever the cause were; next by running to Divorce 
for any trivial, accidental cause; whenas the Law 
evidently stays in the grave causes of natural and 
immutable dislike.  It hath been said, saith he.  Christ 
doth not put any contempt or disesteem upon the 
Law of Moses, by citing it so briefly; for in the same 
manner God himself cites a Law of greatest caution, 
Jer. 3.  They say if a man put away his Wife, shall he 
return to her again? &c.  Nor doth he more abolish it 
than the Law of swearing, cited next with the same 
brevity, and more appearance of contradicting: for 
Divorce hath an exception left it; but we are charg'd 
there, as absolutely as words can charge us, not to 
swear at all:yet who denies the awfulness of an Oath, 
tho' here it be in no case permitted?  And what shall 
become of his solemn Protestation not to abolish one 
Law, or one tittle of any Law, especially of those 
which he mentions in this Chapter?  And that he 
meant more particularly the not abolishing of Mosaic 
Divorce, is beyond all cavil manifest in Luke 16. 17, 
18. where this Clause against abrogating is inserted 
immediately before the sentence against Divorce, as 
if it were call'd thither on purpose to defend the 
equity of this particular Law against the foreseen 
rashness of common Textuaries, who abolish Laws, as 
the Rabble demolish Images, in the zeal of their 
hammers oft violating the Sepulchers of good men; 
like Pentheus in the Tragedies, they see that for 
Thebes which is not, and take that for Superstition, 
as these men in the heat of their annulling perceive 
not how they abolish Right, and Equal, and Justice, 
under the appearance of judicial.   And yet are 
confessing all the while, that these sayings of Christ 
stand not in contradiction to the Law of Moses, but to 
the false Doctrine of the Pharisees rais'd from 
thence; that the Law of God is perfect, not liable to 
additions or diminutions: and Par¾us accuses the 
Jesuit Maldonatus of greatest falsity for limiting the 
perfection of that Law only to the rudeness of the 
Jews.  He adds, That the Law promiseth life to the 
performers therof, therfore needs not perfecter 
precepts than such as bring to life; that if the 
corrections of Christ stand opposite, not to the 
corruptious of the Pharisees, but to the Law it self of 
God, the heresy of Manes would follow, one God of the 
Old Testament, and another of the New.  That Christ 
saith not here, Except your righteousness exceed the 
righteounsess of Moses Law, but if the Scribes and 
Pharisees.  That all this may be true: whether is 
common sense flown asquint, if we can maintain that 
Christ forbid the Mosaic Divorce utterly, and yet 
abolish'd not the Law that permits it?  For if the 
Conscience only were checkt, and the Law not 
repeal'd, what means the Fanatic boldness of this 
Age, that dares tutor Christ to be more strict than 
he thought fit?  Ye shall have the evasion, it was a 
judicial Law.  What could infancy and slumber have 
invented more childish?  Judicial or not judicial, it 
was one of those Laws expresly which he forewarn'd 
us with protestation, that his mind was, not to 
abrogate: and if we mark the steerage of his words, 
what course they hold, we may perceive that what 
he protested not to dissolve (that he might faithfully 
and not deceitfully remove a suspicion from himself) 
was principally concerning the judicial Law; for of 
that sort are all these here which he vindicates, 
except the last.  Of the Ceremonial Law he told them 
true, that nothing of it should pass until all were 
fulfill'd.  Of the Moral Law he knew the Pharisees did 
not suspect he meant to nullify that : for so doing 
would soon have undone his authority, and advanced 
theirs.  Of the judicial Law therfore chiefly this 
Apology was meant: For how is that fulfill'd longer 
than the common equity therof remains in force?  
And how is this our Saviour's defence of himself not 
made fallacious, if the Pharisees chief fear be lest he 
should abolish the judicial Law, and he to satisfy 
them, protests his good intention to the Moral Law?  
It is the general grant of Divines that what in the 
Judicial Law is not meerly judicial, but reaches to 
human equity in common, was never in the thought 
of being abrogated.  If our Saviour took away aught 
of the Law, it was the burthensome of it, not the ease 
of burden; it was the bondage, not the liberty of any 
divine Law, that he remov'd: this he often profest to 
be the end of his coming.  But what if the Law of 
Divorce be a Moral Law, as most certainly it is 
fundamentally, and hath been so prov'd in the 
reasons therof?  For tho' the giving of a Bill may be 
judicial, yet the act of Divorce is altogether 
conversant in good and evil, and so absolutely moral.  
So far as it is good, it never can be abolisht, being 
moral; and so far as it is simply evil, it never could 
be judicial, as hath been shewn at large in the 
Doctrine of Divorce, and will be reassum'd anon.  
Whence one of these two necessities follow, that 
either it was never establisht, or never abolisht.  
Thus much may be enough to have said on this place.  
The following Verse will be better unfolded in the 
19th Chapter, where it meets us again, after a large 
debatement on the Question between our Saviour 
and his Adversaries.

Mat. XIX. 3, 4, &c.

V. 3.  And the Pharisees came unto him, tempting 
him, and saying unto him.

Tempting him. ]  The manner of these men coming to 
our Saviour, not to learn, but to tempt him, may give 
us to expect that their Answer will be such as is 
fittest for them; not so much a teaching, as an 
intangling.  No man, though never so willing or so 
well enabled to instruct, but if he discern his 
willingness and candor made use of to intrap him, 
will suddenly draw in himself, and laying aside the 
facil vein of perspicuity, will know his time to utter 
Clouds and Riddles; if he be not less wise than that 
noted Fish, whenas he should be not unwiser than 
the Serpent.  Our Saviour at no time exprest any 
great desire, to teach the obstinate and unteachable 
Pharisees; but when they came to tempt him, then 
least of all.  As now about the liberty of Divorce, so 
another time about the punishment of Adultery, 
they came to sound him; and what saisfaction got 
they from his answer, either to themselves or to us, 
that might direct a Law under the Gospel new from 
that of Moses, unless we draw his absolution of 
Adultery into an Edict?  So about the Tribute, who is 
there can pick out a full Solution, what and when we 
must give to C¾sar, that which is C¾sar's, and all be 
C¾sar's which hath his Image, we must either new 
stamp our Coin, or we may go new stamp our 
foreheads with the superscription of Slaves instead 
of Freemen.  Besides, it is a general Precept not only 
of Christ, but of all other Sages, not to instruct the 
unworthy and the conceited, who love Tradition 
more than Truth, but to perplex and stumble them 
purposely with contrived obscurities.  No wonder 
then if they who would determine of divorce by this 
place, have ever found it difficult, and unsatisfying 
through all the Ages of the Church, as Austin himself 
and other great Writers confess.  Lastly, it is 
manifest to be the principal scope of our Saviour, 
both here, and in the 5th of Matthew, to convince the 
Pharisees of what they being evil did licentiously, not 
to explain what others being good and blameless men 
might be permitted to do in case of extremity.  
Neither was it reasonable to talk of honest and 
conscientious liberty among them, who had abused 
legal and civil liberty to uncivil licence.  We do not 
say to a Servant what we say to a Son; nor was it 
expedient to preach Freedom to those who had 
transgressed in wantonness.  When we rebuke a 
Prodigal, we admonish him of Thrift, not of 
Magnificence, or Bounty.  And to school a proud man 
we labour to make him humble, not magnanimous.  
So Christ to retort these arrogant Inquisitors their 
own, took the course to lay their Haughtiness under 
a severity which they deserv'd; not to acquaint 
them, or to make them Judges either of the just 
man's Right and Privilege, or of the afflicted man's 
Necessity.  And if we may have leave to conjecture, 
there is a likelihood offer'd us by Tertullian in his 
4th against Marcion, wherby it may seem very 
probable that the Pharisees had a private drift of 
Malice against our Saviour's life in proposing this 
Question; and our Saviour had a peculiar aim in the 
rigor of his answer, both to let them know the 
freedom of his spirit, and the sharpness of his 
discerning. This I must now shew, saithTertullian, 
whence our Lord deduced this sentence, and which 
way he directed it, wherby it will more fully appear 
that he intended not to dissolve  Moses.  And 
thereupon tells us, that the vehemence of this our 
Saviour's speech was chiefly darted against Herod 
and Herodias.  The Story is out of Josephus; Herod 
had been a long time married to the Daughter of 
Aretas King of Petra, till happening on his journey 
toward Rome to be entertain'd at his brother Philip's 
house, he cast his eye unlawfully and unguestlike 
upon Herodias there, the wife of Philip, but Daughter 
of Aristobulus their common Brother, and durst 
make words of marrying her his Niece from his 
Brother's bed.  She assented, upon agreement he 
should expel his former Wife.  All was accomplish'd, 
and by the Baptist rebuk'd with the loss of his head.  
Though doubtless that stay'd not the various 
discourses of men upon the fact, which while the 
Herodian flatterers, and not a few perhaps among the 
Pharisees, endeavour'd to defend by wresting the 
Law, it might be a means to bring the Question of 
Divorce into a hot agitation among the People, how 
far Moses gave allowance.  The Pharisees therfore 
knowing our Saviour to be a friend of John the 
Baptist, and no doubt but having heard much of his 
Sermon in the mount, wherin he spake rigidly 
against the licence of Divorce, they put him this 
Question, both in hope to find him a contradicter of 
Moses, and a Condemner of Herod; so to insnare him 
within compass of the same accusation which had 
ended his friend; and our Saviour so orders his 
Answer, as that they might perceive Herod and his 
Adulteress, only not nam'd: so lively it concern'd 
them both what he spake.  No wonder then if the 
sentence of our Saviour sounded stricter than his 
custom was; which his conscious attempters 
doubtless apprehended sooner than his other 
Auditors.  Thus much we gain from hence to inform 
us, that what Christ intends to speak here of Divorce, 
will be rather the forbidding of what we may not do 
herein passionately and abusively, as Herod and 
Herodias did, than the discussing of what herein we 
may do reasonably and necessarily.
	Is it lawful for a man to put away his Wife? ]  It 
might be rendered more exactly from the Greek, to 
loosen or to set free; which tho' it seem to have  
milder signification than the two Hebrew words 
commonly us'd for divorce, yet interpreters hav 
enoted, that the Greek also is read in the Septuagint, 
for an act which is not without constraint.  As when 
Achish drove from the presence David, 
counterfeiting madness.  Psal. 34. the Greek word is 
the same with this here, to put away.  And Erasmus 
quotes Hilary rendering it by an expression not so 
soft.  Whence may be doubted, whether the Pharisees 
did not state this question in the strict right of the 
man, not tarrying for the wife's consent.  And if our 
Saviour answer directy according to what was askt in 
the term of putting away, it will be questionable, 
whether the rigor of his sentence did not forbid only 
such putting away as is without mutual consent, in a 
violent and harsh manner, or without any reason 
but will, as the Tetrarch did.  Which might be the 
cause that those christian Emperors fear'd not in 
their constitutions to dissolve Marriage by mutual 
consent; in that our Saviour seems here, as the case 
is most likely, not to condemn all divorce, but all 
injury and violence in divorce.  But no injury can be 
done to them, who seek it, as the Ethics of Aristotle 
sufficiently prove.  True it is, that an unjust thing 
may be done to one tho' willing, and so may justly be 
forbidden: But divorce being in itself no unjust or 
evil thing, but only as it is join'd with injury, or lust; 
injury it cannot be at law, if consent be, and 
Aristotle err not.  And lust it may as frequently not 
be, while charity hath the judging of so many private 
grievances in a misfortun'd Wedloc, which may 
pardonably seek a redemption.  But whether it be or 
not, the Law cannot discern, nor examine lust, so 
long as it walks from one lawful term to another, 
from Divorce to Marriage, both in themselves 
indifferent.  For if the Law cannot take hold to punish 
many actions apparently covetous, ambitious, 
ingrateful, proud, how can it forbid and punish that 
for lust, which is but only surmis'd so, and can no 
more be certainly prov'd in the divorcing now, than 
before in the marrying?  Whence if Divorce be no 
unjust thing, but through lust, a cause not 
discernable by Law, as Law is wont to discern in 
other cases, and can be no injury, where consent is; 
there can be nothing in the equity of Law, why 
Divorce by consent may not be lawful: leaving 
secrecies to conscience, the thing which our Saviour 
here aims to rectify, not to revoke the statutes of 
Moses.  In the mean while the word to put away, 
being in the Greek to loosen or dissolve, utterly takes 
away that vain papistical distinction of divorce from 
bed, and divorce from bond, evincing plainly, that 
Christ and the Pharisees mean here that divorce 
which finally dissolves the bond, and frees both 
parties to a second Marriage.
	For every cause. ]  This the Pharisees held, that 
for every cause they might divorce, for every 
accidental cause, and quarrel of difference that might 
happen.  So both Josephus and Philo, men who liv'd 
in the same age, explain; and the Syriac translator, 
whose antiquity is thought parallel to the Evangelists 
themselves, reads it conformably upon any occasion 
or pretence.  Divines also generally agree that thus 
the Pharisees meant.  Cameron a late Writer, much 
applauded commenting this place not undiligently, 
affirms that the Greek preposition kała translated 
unusually (for) hath a force in it implying the 
suddenness of those Pharisaic divorces; and that 
their queston was to this effect, whether for any 
cause whatever it chanced to be, straight as it rose, 
the divorce might be lawful.  This he freely gives, 
whatever mov'd him, and I as freely take, nor can 
deny his observation to be acute and learn'd.  If 
therfore we insist upon the word of putting away, 
that it imports a constraint without consent, as 
might be insisted, and may enjoy what Cameron 
bestows on us, that for every cause is to be 
understood, according as any cause may happen, 
with a relation to the speediness of those divorces, 
and that Herodian act especially, as is already 
brought us, the sentence of our Saviour will appear 
nothing so strict a prohibition as hath been long 
conceiv'd, forbidding only to divorce for casual and 
temporary causes, that may be soon ended, or soon 
remedied; and likewise forbidding to divorce rashly, 
and on the sudden heat, except it be for adultery.  If 
these qualifications may be admitted, as partly we 
offer them, partly are offered them by some of their 
own opinion, and that where nothing is repugnant, 
why they should not be admitted, nothing can wrest 
them from us, the severe sentence of our Saviour 
will straight unbend the seeming frown into that 
gentleness and compassion which was so abundant in 
all his actions, his office and his doctrine, from all 
which otherwise it stands off at no mean distance.

Ver. 4.  And he answered and said unto them, 
have ye not read that he which made them at the 
beginning, made them Male and Female?
Ver. 5.  And said, for this cause shall a man leave 
Father and Mother, and shall cleave to his Wife, and 
they twain shall be one flesh.
Ver. 6.  Wherefore they are no more twain, but 
one flesh: What therfore God hath joined together, 
let no man put asunder.

	4, and 5.  Made them male and female; And said, 
for this cause, &c. ]  We see it here undeniably, that 
the Law which our Saviour cites to prove that 
divorce was forbidden, is not an absolute and 
tyrannical command without reason, as now-a-days 
we make it little better, but is grounded upon some 
rational cause not difficult to be apprehended, being 
in a matter which equally concerns the meanest and 
the plainest sort of persons in a houshold life.  Our 
next way then will be to enquire if there be not more 
reasons than one; and if there be, whether this be 
the best and chiefest.  That we shall find by turning 
to the first institution, to which Christ refers our 
own reading: He himself having to deal with 
treacherous assailants, useth brevity, and lighting 
on the first place in Genesis that mentions any thing 
tending to Marriage in the first chapter, joins it 
immediately to the 24th verse of the 2d chapter, 
omitting all the prime words between, which create 
the institution, and contain the noblest and purest 
ends of Matrimony; without which attain'd, that 
conjunction hath nothing in it above what is common 
to us with beasts.  So likewise beneath in this very 
chapter, to the young man who came not tempting 
him, but to learn of him, asking him which 
commandments he should keep; he neither repeats 
the first Table, nor all the second, nor that in order 
which he repeats.  If here then being tempted, he 
desire to be the sorter, and the darker in his 
Conference, and omit to cite that from the second of 
Genesis, which all Divines confess is a Commentary to 
what he cites out of the first, the making them Male 
and Female: what are we to do, but to search the 
institution our selves?  And we shall find there his 
own authority, giving other manner of reasons why 
such firm union is to be in Matrimony; without which 
reasons, their being male and female can be no cause 
of joining them unseparably: for if it be, then no 
Adultery can sever.  Therfore the prohibition of 
Divorce depends not upon this reason here exprest 
to the Pharisees, but upon the plainer and more 
eminent causes omitted here, and referr'd to the 
institution; which causes not being found in a 
particular and casual Matrimony, this sensitive and 
materious cause alone can no more hinder a divorce 
against those higher and more human reasons 
urging it, than it can alone without them to warrant 
a copulation, but leaves arbitrary to those who in 
their chance of Marriage find not why Divorce is 
forbid them, but why it is permitted them; and find 
both here and in Genesis, that the forbidding is not 
absolute, but according to the reasons there taught 
us, not here.  And that our Saviour taught them no 
better, but uses the most vulgar, most animal and 
corporal argument to convince them, is first to shew 
us, that as thro' their licentious Divorces they made 
no more of Marriage than, as if to marry were no 
more than to be male and female, so he goes no 
higher in his confutation, deeming them unworthy to 
be talk'd with in a higher strain, but to be ty'd in 
Marriage by the meer material cause therof, since 
their own licence testify'd that nothing matrimonial 
was in their thought, but to be male and female.  
Next, it might be done to discover the brute 
ignorance of these carnal doctors, who taking on 
them to dispute of Marriage and Divorce, were put to 
silence with such a slender opposition as this, and 
outed from their hold with scarce one quarter of an 
argument.  That we may believe this, his 
entertainment of the young man soon after may 
persuade us.  Whom, tho' he came to preach eternal 
life by faith only, he dismisses with a salvation 
taught him by his words only.  On which place 
Par¾us notes, That this man was to be convinc'd by a 
false persuasion; and that Christ is wont otherwise to 
answer hypocrites, otherwise those that are docible.  
Much rather then may we think that in handling 
these tempters he forgot not so to frame his prudent 
ambiguities and concealments, as was to the 
troubling of those peremptory disputants most 
wholesome.  When therfore we would know what 
right there may be, in ill accidents, to divorce, we 
must repair thither where God professes to teach his 
Servants by the prime institution, and not where we 
see him intending to dazle Sophisters: we must not 
read, he made them Male and Female, and not 
understand he made them more intendedly a meet 
help to remove the evil of being alone.  We must take 
both these together, and then we may infer 
compleatly, as from the whole cause, why a man shall 
cleave to his wife, and they twain shall be one flesh: 
but if the full and chief cause why we may not 
divorce be wanting here, this place may skirmish 
with the Rabbies while it will, but to the true 
Christian it prohibits nothing beyond the full reason 
of its own prohibiting, which is best known by the 
institution.
	Ver. 6.  Wherfore they are no more twain, but 
one flesh. ]  This is true in the general right of 
Marriage, but not in the chance-medley of every 
particular match.  For if they who were once 
undoubtedly one flesh, yet become twain by 
adultery, then sure they who were never one flesh 
rightly, never helps meet for each other according to 
the plain prescript of God, may with less ado than a 
volume be concluded still twain.  And so long as we 
account a Magistrate no Magistrate, if there be but a 
flaw in his election, why should we not much rather 
count a Matrimony no Matrimony, if it cannot be in 
any reasonable manner according to the words of 
God's institution?
	What therfore God hath joined, let no man put 
asunder. ]  but here the Christian prudence lies to 
consider what God hath join'd; shall we say that God 
hath join'd error, fraud, unfitness, wrath, 
contention, perpetual loneliness, perpetual discord; 
whatever lust, or wine, or witchery, threat, or 
inticement, avarice, or ambition hath joined 
together, faithful with unfaithful, Christian with 
Antichristian, hate with hate, or hate with love, shall 
we say this is God's joining?
	Let no man put asunder. ]  That is to say, what 
God hath join'd; for if it be, as how oft we see it may 
be, not of God's joining, and his Law tells us he joins 
not unmatchable things, but hates to join them, as an 
abominable confusion, then the divine law of Moses 
puts them asunder, his own divine will in the 
institution puts them asunder, as oft as the reasons 
be not extant, for which God ordain'd their joining.  
Man only puts asunder when his inordinate desires, 
his passion, his violence, his injury makes the 
breach: not when the utter want of that which 
lawfully was the end of his joining, when wrongs and 
extremities and unsupportable grievances compel 
him to disjoin: when such as Herod and the Pharisees 
divorce beside law, or against law, then only man 
separates, and to such only this prohibition belongs.  
In a word, if it be unlawful for man to put asunder 
that which God hath join'd, let man take heed it be 
not detestable to join that by compulsion which God 
hath put asunder.

Ver. 7.  They say unto him, Why did Moses 
command to give a writing of divorcement, and to 
put her away?
Ver. 8.  He saith unto them, Moses because of the 
hardness of your hearts suffer'd you to put away 
your wives; but from the beginning it was not so.

	Moses because of the hardness of your hearts 
suffer'd you.  Hence the Divinity now current argues 
that this judicial Moses is abolish'd.  But suppose it 
were so, tho' it hath been prov'd otherwise, the 
firmness of such right to divorce as here pleads is 
fetch'd from the prime institution, does not stand or 
fall with the judicial Jew, but is as moral as what is 
moralest.  Yet as I have shewn positively that this 
law cannot be abrogated, both by the words of our 
Saviour pronouncing the contrary, and by that 
unabolishable equity which it conveys to us; so I 
shall now bring to view those appearances of 
strength which are levied from this text to maintain 
the most gross and massy paradox that ever did 
violence to reason and religion, bred only under the 
shadow of these words, to all other Piety or 
Philosophy strange and insolent, that God by act of 
law drew out a line of Adultery almost two thousand 
years long: altho' to detect the prodigy of this 
surmise, the former book set forth on this argument 
hath already been copious.  I shall not repeat much, 
tho' I might borrow of mine own; but shall 
endeavour to add something either yet untouch'd, or 
not largely enough explain'd.  First, it shall be 
manifest that the common exposition cannot possibly 
consist with christian doctrine: next, a truer 
meaning of this our Saviour's reply shall be left in 
the room.  The receiv'd exposition is, that God, tho' 
not approving, did enact a law to permit adultery by 
divorcement simply unlawful.  And this conceit they 
feed with fond supposals that have not the least 
footing in Scripture: As that the Jews learnt this 
custom of divorce in Egypt, and therfore God would 
not unteach it them till Christ came, but let it stick as 
a notorious botch of deformity in the midst of his 
most perfect and severe law.  And yet he saith, Levit. 
the 18th, After the doings of Egypt ye shall not do.  
Another while they invent a slander (as what thing 
more bold than teaching Ignorance when he shifts to 
hide his nakedness?) that the Jews were naturally to 
their wives the cruellest men in the world; would 
poison, brain, and do I know not what if they might 
not divorce.  Certain, if it were a fault heavily 
punish'd, to bring an evil report upon the land which 
God gave, what is it to raise a groundless calumny 
against the people which God made choice of?  But 
that this bold interpretament, how commonly soever 
sided with, cannot stand a minute with any 
competent reverence to God or his Law, or his 
People, nor with any other maxim of religion, or good 
manners, might be prov'd thro' all the heads and the 
Topics of argumentation; but I shall willingly be as 
concise as possible.  First the Law, not only the moral, 
but the judicial, given by Moses, is just and pure; for 
such is God who gave it.  Hearken O Israel, saith 
Moses, Deut. 4. unto the statutes and the judgments 
which I teach you, to do them, that ye may live, &c.  
Ye shall not add unto the word which I command 
you, neither shall ye diminish aught from it, that ye 
may keep the commandments of the Lord your God 
which I command you.  And onward in this chapter, 
Behold, I have taught you statutes and judgments, 
even as the Lord my God commanded me.  Keep 
therfore and do them, for this is your wisdom and 
your understanding.  For what nation hath God so 
nigh unto them, and what nation hath statutes and 
judgments so righteous as all this law which I set 
before ye this day?  Is it imaginable there should be 
among these a law which God allow'd not, a law giving 
permissions laxative to unmarry a wife and marry a 
lust, a law to suffer a kind of tribunal adultery?  
Many other Scriptures might be brought to assert 
the purity of this judicial Law, and many I have 
alledg'd before; this law therfore is pure and just.  
But if it permit, if it teach, if it defend that which is 
both unjust and impure, as by the common doctrine 
it doth, what think we?  The three general doctrines 
of Justinian's Law, are To live in honesty, To hurt no 
man, to Give every one his due.  Shall the Roman 
Civil law observe these three things, as the only end 
of law, and shall a statute be found in the civil law of 
God, enacted simply and totally against all these 
three precepts of nature and morality?
	Secondly, the gifts of God are all perfect, and 
certainly the Law is of all his other gifts one of the 
perfectest.  But if it give that outwardly which it 
takes away really, and give that seemingly, which, if 
a man take it, wraps him into sin and damns him; 
what gift of an enemy can be more dangerous and 
destroying than this?
	Thirdly, Moses every-where commends his Laws, 
prefers them before all of other Nations, and 
warrants them to be the way of Life and Safety to all 
that walk therin, Levit. 18.  But if they contain 
Statutes which God approves not, and train men 
unweeting to commit injustice and adultery under 
the shelter of Law; if those things be sin, and death 
sin's wages, what is this Law but the snare of death?
	Fourthly, The Statutes and Judgments of the Lord, 
which, without exception, are often told us to be 
such, as doing we may live by them, are doubtless to 
be counted the rule of knowledge and of conscience.  
For I had not known lust, saith the Apostle, but by 
the law.  But if the Law come down from the state of 
her incorruptible Majesty to grant lust his boon, 
palpably it darkens and confounds both knowledge 
and conscience; it goes against the common office of 
all goodness and friendliness, which is at least to 
counsel and admonish; it subverts the rules of all 
sober education, and is itself a most negligent and 
debauching Tutor.
	Fifthly, If the Law permits a thing unlawful, it 
permits that which else-where it hath forbid; so that 
hereby it contradicts it self, and transgresses it self.  
But if the Law become a transgressor, it stands guilty 
to itself, and how then shall it save another?  It 
makes a confederacy with sin, how then can it justly 
condemn a sinner?  And thus reducing it self to the 
state of neither saving nor condemning, it wil not fail 
to expire solemnly ridiculous.
	Sixthly, The Prophets in Scripture declare 
severely against the decreeing of that which is 
unjust, Psal. 94. 20.  Isaiah the 10th.  But it was 
done, they say, for hardness of heart: To which 
objection the Apostle's rule, not to do evil that good 
may come therby, gives an invincible repulse: and 
here especially, where it cannot be shewn how any 
good came by doing this evil, how rather more evil 
did not hereon abound; for the giving way to 
hardness of heart hardens the more, and adds more 
to the number.  God to an evil and adulterous 
generation would not grant a sign; much less would 
he for their hardness of heart pollute his Law with 
adulterous permission.  Yea, but to permit evil, is not 
to do evil.  Yes, it is in a most eminent manner to do 
evil: where else are all our grave and faithful 
sayings, that he whose office is to forbid and forbids 
not, bids, exhorts, encourages?  Why hath God 
denounc'd his anger against Parents, Masters, 
Friends, Magistrates neglectful of forbidding what 
they ought, if Law, the common Father, Master, 
Friend, and perpetual Magistrate shall not only 
forbid, but enact, exhibit, and uphold with 
countenance and protection, a deed every way 
dishonest, whatever the pretence be.  If it were of 
those inward vices, which the Law cannot by 
outward constraint remedy, but leaves to conscience 
and persuasion, it had been guiltless in being silent: 
but to write a Decree of that which can be no way 
lawful, and might with ease be hinder'd, makes Law 
by the doom of Law it self accessory in the highest 
degree.
	Seventhly, It makes God the direct Author of Sin: 
For altho' he be not made the Author of what he 
silently permits in his Providence, yet in his Law, the 
image of his Will, when in plain expression he 
constitutes and ordains a fact utterly unlawful; what 
wants he to authorize it, and what wants that to be 
the author?
	Eighthly, To establish by Law a thing wholly 
unlawful and dishonest, is an affirmation was never 
heard of before in any Law, Reason, Philosophy, or 
Religion, till it was rais'd by inconsiderate Glossists 
from the mistake of this Text.  And tho' the Civilians 
have been contented to chew this opinion, after the 
Canon had subdu'd them, yet they never could bring 
example or authority either from divine Writ, or 
human Learning, or human Practice in any Nation, or 
well-form'd Republic, but only from the customary 
abuse of this text.  Usually they allege the Epistle of 
Cicero to Atticus; wherin Cato is blam'd for giving 
sentence to the scum of Romulus, as if he were in 
Plato's Commonwealth.  Cato could have call'd some 
great one into judgment for Bribery; Cicero, as the 
time stood, advis'd against it.  Cato, not to endamage 
the public Treasury, would not grant to the Roman 
Knights, that the Asian Taxes might be farm'd them 
at a less rate.  Cicero wish'd it granted.  Nothing in all 
this will be like the establishing of a Law to sin: Here 
are no Laws made, here only the execution of Law is 
crav'd might be suspended: between which and our 
question is a broad difference.  And what if human 
Lawgivers have confest they could not frame their 
Laws to that Perfection which they desir'd?  We hear 
of no such confession from Moses concerning the 
Laws of God, but rather all praise and high testimony 
of perfection given them.  And altho' man's nature 
cannot bear exactest Laws, yet still within the 
confines of good it may and must, so long as less good 
is far enough from altogether evil.  As for what they 
instance of Usury, let them first prove Usury to be 
wholly unlawful, as the Law allows it; which learned 
Men as numerous on the other side will deny them.  
Or if it be altogether unlawful, why is it tolerated 
more than Divorce?  He who said, Divorce not, said 
also, Lend, hoping for nothing again, Luk. 6. 35.  But 
then they put it, that Trade could not stand, and so 
to serve the commodity of insatiable trading, Usury 
shall be permitted; but Divorce, the only means 
oftimes to right the innocent and outragiously 
wrong'd, shall be utterly forbid.  This is egregious 
doctrine, and for which one day Charity will much 
thank them.  Beza not finding how to salve this 
perplexity, and Cameron since him, would secure us; 
although the latter confesses, that to permit a wicked 
thing by law, is a wickedness which God abhors; yet 
to limit sin, and prescribe it a certain measure, is 
good.  First, this evasion will not help here; for this 
Law bounded no man; he might put away whatever 
found not favour in his eyes.  And how could it forbid 
to divorce, whom it could not forbid to dislike, or 
command to love?  If these be the limits of Law to 
restrain sin, who so lame a sinner but may hop over 
them more easily than over those Romulean 
circumscriptions, not as Remus did with hard 
success, but with all indemnity?  Such a limiting as 
this were not worth the mischief that accompanies it.  
This Law therfore not bounding the supposed sin, by 
permitting enlarges it, gives it enfranchisement.  
And never greater confusion, than when Law and Sin 
more their Landmarks, mix their Territories, and 
correspond, have intercourse and traffic together.  
When Law contracts a kindred and hospitality with 
Transgression, becomes the godfather of Sin, and 
names it lawful; when sin revels, and gossips within 
the Arsenal of Law, plays and dandles the Artillery 
of Justice that should be bent against her, this is a 
fair limitation indeed.  Besides, it is an absurdity to 
say that Law can measure sin, or moderate sin; sin is 
not in a predicament, to be measur'd and modify'd, 
but is always an excess.  The least sin that is, exceeds 
the measure of the largest Law that can be good; and 
is as boundless as that vacuity beyond the world.  If 
once it square to the measure of Law, it ceases to be 
an excess, and consequently ceases to be a sin; or 
else Law conforming itself to the obliquity of sin, 
betrays itself to be not streight, but crooked, and so 
immediately no Law.  And the improper conceit of 
moderating sin by Law, will appear, if we can imagine 
any Law-giver so sensless as to decree that so far a 
man may steal, and thus far be drunk, that 
moderately he may couzen, and moderately  commit 
adultery.  To the same extent it would be as pithily 
absurd to publish that a man may moderately 
divorce, if to do that be intirely naught.  But to end 
this moot, the Law of Moses is manifest to fix no limit 
therin at all, or such at least as impeaches the 
fraudulent abuser no more than if it were not set; 
only requires the dismissive writing without other 
caution, leaves that to the inner man, and the bar of 
Conscience.  But it stopt other sins.  This is as vain as 
the rest, and dangerously uncertain: the contrary to 
be fear'd rather, that one sin admitted courteously 
by Law, open't the gate to another.  However, evil 
must not be done for good.  And it were a fall to be 
lamented, and indignity unspeakable, if Law should 
become tributary to sin her slave, and forc'd to yield 
up into his hands her awful Minister, Punishment, 
should but out her peace with sin for sin, paying as it 
were her so many Philistian foreskins to the proud 
demand of Transgression.  But suppose it any way 
possible to limit Sin, to put a girdle about that Chaos, 
suppose it also good; yet if to permit sin by Law be an 
abomination in the eyes of God, as Cameron 
acknowledges, the evil of permitting will eat out the 
good of limiting.  For though sin be not limited, there 
can but evil come out of evil; but if it be pemitted and 
decreed lawfully by divine Law, of force then sin 
must proceed from the infinite good, which is a 
dreadul thought.  But if the restraining of sin by this 
permission being good, as this author testifies, be 
more good than the permission of more sin by the 
restraint of Divorce, and that God weighing both 
these like two ingots, in the perfect scales of his 
Justice and Providence, found them so, and others 
coming without authority from God, shall change this 
counterpoise, andjudge it better to let sin multiply 
by setting a judicial restraint upon divorce, which 
Christ never set; then to limit sin by this permission, 
as God himself thought best to permit it, it will 
behove them to consult betimes whether these their 
ballances be not false and abominable; and this their 
limiting that which God loosen'd, and their loosening 
the sins that he limited, which they confess was good 
to do: and were it possible to do by Law, doubtless it 
would be most morally good; and they so believing, 
as we hear they do, and yet abolishing a Law so good 
and moral, the limiter of sin, what are they else but 
contrary to themselves?  For they can never bring 
us to that time wherin it will not be good to limit sin, 
and they can never limit it better than so as God 
prescribed in his Law.
	Others conceive it a more defencible retirement 
to say this permission to divorce sinfully for 
hardness of heart was a dispensation.  But surely 
they either know not or attend not to what a 
dispensation means.  A dispensation is for no long 
time, is particular to some persons, rather than 
general to whole people; always hath Charity the 
end, is granted to necessities and infirmities, not to 
obstinate lust.  This permission is another creature, 
hath all those evils and absurdities following the 
name of a dispensation, as when it was nam'd a Law; 
and is the very antarctic pole against Charity, 
nothing more adverse, ensnaring and ruining those 
that trust in it, or use it; so leud and criminous as 
never durst enter into the head of any Politician, 
Jew, or Proselyte, till they became the apt Scholars of 
this Canonistic Exposition.  Aught in it, that can 
allude in the least manner to Charity, or Goodness, 
belongs with more full right to the Christian under 
Grace and Liberty, than to the Jew under Law and 
Bondage.  To Jewish ignorance it could not be 
dispensed, without a horrid imputation laid upon the 
Law, to dispense foully, instead of teaching fairly; like 
that dispensation that first polluted Christendom 
with Idolatry, permitting to laymen Images instead 
of Books and Preaching.  Sloth or malice in the Law 
would they have this call'd?  But what ignorance can 
be pretended of the Jews, who had all the same 
Precepts about Marriage, that we now? for Christ 
refers all to the institution.  It was as reasonable for 
them to know then as for us now, and concern'd 
them alike: for wherin hath the Gospel alter'd the 
nature of Matrimony?  All these considerations, or 
many of them, have been further amplify'd in the 
Doctrine of Divorce.  And what Rivetus and Par¾us 
have objected, or given over as past cure, hath been 
there discuss'd.  Wherby it may be plain enough to 
men of eyes, that the vulgar exposition of a 
permittance by Law to an entire sin, whatever the 
colour may be, is an opinion both ungodly, unpolitic, 
unvirtuous, and void of all honesty and civil sense.  
It appertains therfore to every zealous Christian 
both for the honour of God's Laws, and the 
vindication of our Saviour's Words, that such an 
irreligious depravement no longer may be sooth'd 
and flatter'd through custom, but with all diligence 
and speed solidly refuted, and in the room a better 
explanation given; which is now our next endeavour.
	Moses suffered you to put away, &c. ]  Not 
commanded you, says the common observer, and 
therfore car'd not how soon it were abolish'd, being 
but suffer'd; herein declaring his annotation to be 
slight, and nothing law-prudent.  For in this place 
commanded and suffer'd are interchangably us'd in 
the same sense both by our Saviour and the 
Pharisees.  Our Saviour, who here saith, Moses 
suffer'd you, in the 10th of Mark saith, Moses wrote 
you this Command.  And the Pharisees who here say, 
Moses commanded, and would mainly have it a 
command, in that place of Mark say Moses suffer'd, 
which had made against them in their own mouths, if 
the word of suffering had weaken'd the command.  So 
that suffer'd and commanded is here taken for the 
same thing on both sides of the controversy: as 
Cameron also and others on this place acknowledge.  
And Lawyers know that all the precepts of Law are 
divided into obligatory and permissive, containing 
either what we must do, or what we may do; and of 
this latter sort are as many precepts as of the 
former, and all as lawful.  Tutelage, an ordainment 
than which nothing more just, being for the defence 
of Orphans, the Institutes of Justinian say is given 
and permitted by the Civil Law: and to Parents it is 
permitted to choose and appoint by will the 
Guardians of their Children.  What more equal, and 
yet the Civil Law calls this permission.  So likewise to 
manumise, to adopt, to make a Will, and to be made 
an Heir, is called permission by the Law.  Marriage 
itself, and this which is already granted, to divorce 
for Adultery, obliges no man, is but a permission by 
Law, is but suffer'd.  By this we may see how weakly 
it hath been thought that all Divorce is utterly 
unlawful because the Law is said to suffer it: whenas 
to suffer is but the legal phrase denoting what by 
Law a Man may do or not do.
	Because of the hardness of your hearts. ]  Hence 
they argue that therfore he allow'd it not; and 
therfore it must be abolisht.  But the contrary to this 
will sooner follow, that because he suffer'd it for a 
cause, therfore in relation to that cause he allow'd it.  
Next, if he in his wisdom, and in the midst of his 
severity allow'd it for hardness of neart, it can be 
nothing better thn arrogance and presumption to 
take stricter courses against hardness of heart, than 
God ever set an example; and that under the Gospel, 
which warrants them to no judicial act of compulsion 
in this matter, much less to be more severe against 
hardness of extremity, than God thought good to be 
against hardness of heart.  He suffer'd it, rather than 
worse inconveniences; these men wiser, as they 
make themselves, will suffer the worst and 
heinousest inconveniences to follow, rather than 
they will suffer what God suffer'd.  Altho' they can 
know when they please, that Christ spake only to the 
Conscience, did not judge on the civil bench, but 
always disavow'd it.  What can be more contrary to 
the ways of God than these their doings?  If they be 
such enemies to hardness of heart, altho' this 
groundless rigor proclaims it to be in themselves, 
they may yet learn, or consider that hardness of 
heart hath a twofold acceptation in the Gospel.  One, 
when it is in a good man taken for infirmity, and 
imperfection, which was in all the Apostles, whose 
weakenss only, not utter want of belief, is call'd 
hardness of heart, Mark 16.  Partly for this hardness 
of heart, the imperfection and decay of man from 
original righteousness, it was that God suffer'd not 
Divorce only, but all that which by Civilians is term'd 
the secondary Law of Nature and of Nations.  He 
suffer'd his own People to waste and spoil and slay by 
War, to lead captives, to be some masters, some 
servants, some to be Princes, others to be Subjects; 
he suffered propriety to divide all things by several 
possession, trade and commerce, not without usury; 
in his commonwealth some to be undeservedly rich, 
others to be undeservedly poor.  All which till 
hardness of heart came in, was most unjust; whenas 
prime Nature made us all equal, made us equal 
coheirs by common right and dominion over all 
creatures.  In the same manner, and for the same 
cause he suffer'd Divorce as well as Marriage, our 
imperfect and degenerate condition of necessity 
requiring this Law among the rest, as a remedy 
against intolerable wrong and servitude above the 
patience of man to bear.  Nor was it given only 
because our infirmity, or if it must be so call'd, 
hardness of heart could not endure all things; but 
because the hardness of another's heart might not 
inflict all things upon an innocent person, whom far 
other ends brought into a league of love, and not of 
bondage and indignity.  If therfore we abolish 
Divorce as only suffer'd for hardness of heart, we 
may as well abolish the whole Law of Nations, as only 
suffer'd for the same cause, it being shewn us by S. 
Paul, 1 Cor. 6. that the very seeking of a man's right 
by Law, and at the hands of a worldly Magistrate, is 
not without the hardness of our hearts.  For why do 
ye not rather take wrong, saith he, why suffer ye 
not rather your selves to be defrauded?  If nothing 
now must be suffer'd for hardness of heart, I say the 
very prosecution of our right by way of civil Justice 
can no more be suffer'd among Christians, for the 
hardness of heart wherwith most men pursue it.  
And that would next remove all our judicial Laws, 
and this restraint of Divorce also in the number; 
which would more than half end the controversy.  
But if it be plain that the whole juridical Law and 
Civil Power is only suffer'd under the Gospel, for the 
hardness of our hearts, then wherfore should not 
that which Moses suffer'd, be suffer'd still by the 
same reason?
	In a second signification hardness of heart is 
taken for a stubborn resolution to do evil.  And that 
God ever makes any Law purposely to such, I deny; 
for he vouchsafes not to enter Covenant with them, 
but as they fortune to be mixt with good men, and 
pass undiscover'd; much less that he should decree 
an unlawful thing only to serve their licentiousness.  
But that God suffers this reprobate hardness of 
heart I affirm, not only in this law of Divorce, but 
throughout all his best and purest Commandments.  
He commands all to worship in singleness of heart 
according to all his Ordinances; and yet suffers the 
wicked man to perform all the rites of Religion 
hypocritally, and in the hardness of his heart.  He 
gives us general statutes and privileges in all civil 
matters, just and good of themselves, yet suffers 
unworthiest men to use them, and by them to 
prosecute their own right, or any colour of right, 
tho' for the most part maliciously, covetously, 
rigorously, revengefully.  He allow'd by law the 
discreet Father and Husband to forbid, if he thought 
fit, the religious vows of his wife or daughter, Numb. 
30. and in the same law suffer'd the hard-
heartedness of impious and covetous fathers or 
husbands abusing this law to forbid their wives or 
daughters in their offerings and devotions of 
greatest zeal.  If then God suffer hardness of heart 
equally in the best Laws, as in this of Divorce, there 
can be no reason that for this cause this Law should 
be abolish'd.  But other Laws, they object, may be 
well us'd, this never.  How often shall I answer both 
from the institution of Marriage, and from other 
general rules in Scripture, that this Law of Divorce 
hath many wise and charitable ends besides he being 
suffer'd for hardness of heart; which is indeed no 
end, but an accident hapning through the whole Law; 
which gives to good men right and to bad men, who 
abuse right under false pretences, gives only 
sufferance.  Now although Christ express no other 
reasons here, but only what was suffer'd, it nothing 
follows that this Law had no other reason to be 
permitted but for hardness of heart.  The Scripture 
seldom or never in one place sets down all the 
reasons of what it grants or commands, especially 
when it talks to enemies and tempters.  St. Paul 
permitting Marriage, 1 Cor. 7. seems to permit even 
that also for hardness of heart only, lest we should 
run into fornication; yet no intelligent man thence 
concludes Marriage allow'd in the gospel only to avoid 
an evil, because no other end is there exprest.  Thus 
Moses of necessity suffer'd many to put away their 
wives for hardness of heart; but enacted the Law of 
Divorce doubtless for other good cause, not for this 
only sufferance.  He permitted not Divorce by law as 
an evil, for that was impossible to divine Law, but 
permitted by accident the evil of them who divorc'd 
against the Law's intention undiscoverably.  This also 
may be thought not improbable, that Christ, stirr'd 
up in his spirit against these tempting Pharisees, 
answer'd them in a certain form of indignation usual 
among good authors; wherby the question, or the 
truth is not directly answer'd, but something which 
is fitter for them, who ask, to hear.  So in the 
Ecclesiastical stories, one demanding how God 
imploy'd himself before the world was made? had 
answer, that he was making hell for curious 
questioners.  Another (and Libanius the Sophist, as I 
remember) asking in derision some Christian, What 
the Carpenter, meaning our Saviour, was doing, now 
that Julian so prevail'd? had it return'd him, that the 
Carpenter was making a coffin for the Apostate.  So 
Christ being demanded maliciously why Moses made 
the Law of Divorce, answers them in a vehement 
scheme, not telling them the cause why he made it, 
but what was fittest to be told them, that for the 
hardness of their hearts he suffer'd them to abuse it.  
And albeit Mark say not he suffer'd you, but to you 
he wrote this precept; Mark may be warrantably 
expounded by Matthew the larger.  And whether he 
suffer'd, or gave precept, being all one as was heard, 
it changes not the trope of indignation, fittest 
account for such askers.  Next, for the hardness of 
your hearts, to you he wrote this precept, infers not 
therfore for this cause only he wrote it, as was 
parallell'd by other Scirptures.  Lastly, It may be 
worth the observing, that Christ speaking to the 
Pharisees, does not say in general that for hardness 
of heart he gave this precept, but you he suffer'd, 
and to you he gave this precept for your hardness of 
heart.  It cannot be easily thought that Christ here 
included all the children of Israel under the person 
of these tempting Pharisees, but that he conceals; 
wherfore he gave the better sort of them this Law, 
and expresses by saying emphaticallyTo you how he 
gave it to the worse, such as the Pharisees best 
represented, that is to say, for the hardness of your 
hearts: as indeed to wicked man and hardned hearts 
he gives the whole Law and the Gospel also, to 
harden them the more.  Thus many ways it may 
orthodoxally be understood how God or Moses 
suffer'd such as the demanders were, to divorce for 
hardness of heart.  Wheras the vulgar Expositor, 
beset with contradictions and absurdities round and 
resolving at any peril to make an exposition of it, as 
there is nothing more violent and boistrous than a 
reverend ignorance in fear to be convicted, rushes 
brutely and impetuously against all the principles 
both of Nature, Piety, and moral Goodness; and in the 
fury of his literal expounding overturns them all.
	But from the beginning it was not so. ]  Not how 
from the beginning?  Do they suppose that men 
might not divorce at all, not necessarily, not 
deliberately, except for Adultery, but that some law, 
like canon law, presently attacht them both before 
and after the flood, till stricter Moses came, and with 
law brought licence into the world? that were a fancy 
indeed to smile at.  Undoubtedly as to point of judicial 
Law, Divorce was more permissive from the 
beginning before Moses than under Moses.  But from 
the beginning, that is to say, by the institution in 
Paradise, it was not intended that Matrimony should 
dissolve for every trivial cause, as you Pharisees 
accustom.  But that it was not thus suffer'd from the 
beginning ever since the race of men corrupted and 
Laws were made, he who will affirm, must have found 
out other antiquities than are yet known.  Besides, 
we must consider now, what can be so as from the 
beginning, not only what should be so.  In the 
beginning, had men continu'd perfect, it had been 
just that all things should have remain'd, as they 
began to Adam and Eve.  But after that the Sons of 
Men grew violent and injurious, it alter'd the lore of 
justice, and put the government of things into a new 
frame.  While man and woman were both perfect each 
to other, there needed no Divorce; but when they 
both degenerated to imperfection, and oft-times 
grew to be an intolerable evil each to other, then Law 
more justly did permit the alienating of that evil 
which mistake made proper, than it did the 
appropriating of that good  which Nature at first 
made common.  For if the absence of outward good be 
not so bad as the presence of close evil, and that 
propriety, whether by covenant or possession, be 
but the attainment of some outward good, it is more 
natural and righteous that the Law should sever us 
from an intimate evil, than appropriate any outward 
good to us from the Community of nature.  The 
Gospel indeed tending ever to that which is 
perfectest, aim'd at the restorement of all things as 
they were in the beginning, and therfore all things 
were in common to those primitive Christians in the 
Acts, which Ananias and Sapphira dearly felt.  That 
custom also continu'd more or less till the time of 
Justin Martyr, as may be read in his second Apology, 
which might be writ after that act of communion 
perhaps some forty years above a hundred.  But who 
will be the man that shall introduce this kind of 
Commonwealth, as Christianity now goes?  If then 
Marriage must be as in the beginning, the persons 
that marry must be such as then were; the 
institution must make good, in some tolerable sort, 
what it promises to either party.  If not, it is but 
madness to drag this one Ordinance back to the 
beginning, and draw down all other to the present 
necessity and condition, far from the beginning, even 
to the tolerating of extortions and oppressions.  
Christ only told us that from the beginning it was not 
so; that is to say, not so as the Pharisees manur'd the 
business; did not command us that it should be 
forcibly so again in all points, as at the beginning; or 
so at least in our intentions and desires, but so in 
execution, as reason and present nature can bear.  
Although we are not to seek, that the institution it 
self from the first beginning was never but 
conditional, as all Covenants are: because thus and 
thus, therfore so and so; if not thus, then not so.  
Then moreover was perfectest to fulfil each Law in it 
self; now is perfectest in this estate of things, to ask 
of charity how much law may be fulfill'd: else the 
fulfilling oft-times is the greatest breaking.  If any 
therfore demand, which is now most perfection, to 
ease an extremity by Divorce, or to enrage and fester 
it by the grievous observance of a miserable Wedloc, 
I am not destitute to say which is most perfection, 
(although some who believe they think favourably of 
Divorce, esteem it only venial to infirmity.)  Him I 
hold more in the way to perfection who forgoes an 
unfit, ungodly, and discordant Wedloc, to live 
according to peace and love, and God's institution in 
a fitter choice, than he who debars himself the happy 
experience of all godly, which is peaceful 
conversation in his family, to live a contentious, and 
unchristian life not to be avoided, in temptations not 
to be liv'd in, only for the false keeping of a most 
unreal nullity, a Marriage that hath no affinity with 
God's intention, a daring phantasm, a meer toy of 
terror awing weak sense, to the lamentable 
superstition of ruining themselves; the remedy 
wherof God in his Law vouchsafes us.  Which not to 
dare use, he warranting, is not our perfection, is our 
infirmity, our little faith, our timorous and low 
conceit of Charity: and in them who force us, it is 
their masking pride and vanity, to seem holier and 
more circumspect than God.  So far is it that we need 
impute to him infirmity, who thus divorces: since the 
rule of perfection is not so much that which was done 
in the beginning, as that which now is nearest to the 
rule of charity.  This is the greatest, the perfectest, 
the highest commandment.

Ver. 9.  And I say unto you, Whoso shall put away 
his wife, except it be for Fornication, and shall 
marry another, committeth adultery; and whoso 
marrieth her which is put away, doth commit 
adultery.

	And I say unto you. ]  That this restrictive 
denouncement of Christ contradicts and refutes that 
permissive precept of Moses, common Expositors 
themselves disclaim: and that it does not traverse 
from the Closet of Conscience to the Courts of Civil or 
Canon Law, with any Christian rightly commenc'd, 
requires not long evincing.  If Christ then did not 
here check permissive Moses, nor did reduce 
Matrimony to the beginning more than all other 
things, as the reason of man's condition could bear, 
we would know precisely what it was which he did, 
and what the end was of his declaring thus austerely 
against Divorce.  For this is a confest Oracle in Law, 
that he who looks not at the intention of a Precept, 
the more superstitious he is of the letter, the more 
he misinterprets.  Was it to shame Moses? that had 
been monstrous: or all those purest Ages of Israel, to 
whom the Permission was granted: that were as 
incredible.  Or was it that he who came to abrogate 
the burden of Law, not the equity, should put this 
yoke upon a blameless person, to league himself in 
chains with a begirting mischief, not to separate till 
death?  He who taught us that no man puts a piece of 
new cloth upon an ond garment, nor new wine into 
old bottles, that he should sew this patch of 
strictness upon the old apparel of our frailty, to 
make a rent more incurable, whenas in all other 
amendments his doctrine still charges, that regard 
be had to the garment, and to the vessel, what it can 
endue; this were an irregular and single piece of 
rigour, not only sounding disproportion to the whole 
Gospel, but outstretching the most rigorous nerves 
of Law and Rigour it self.  No other end therfore can 
be left imaginable of this excessive restraint, but to 
bridle those erroneous and licentious postillers the 
Pharisees; not by telling them what may be done in 
necessity, but what censure they deserve who 
divorce abusively, which their Tetrarch had done.  
And as the offence was in one extreme, so the 
rebuke, to bring more efficaciously to a rectitude and 
mediocrity, stands not in the middle way of duty, but 
in the other extreme.  Which art of powerful 
reclaiming, wisest men have also taught in their 
ethical Precepts and Gnomologies, resembling it, as 
when we bend a crooked wand the contrary way; not 
that it should stand so bent, but that the 
overbending might reduce it to a straitness by its 
own reluctance.  And as the Physician cures him who 
hath taken down poison, not by the middling temper 
of nourishment, but by the other extreme of 
Antidote, so Christ administers here a sharp and 
corrosive sentence against a foul and putrid licence; 
not to eat into the flesh, but into the sore.  And 
knowing that our Divines through all their Comments 
make no scruple, where they please, to soften the 
high and vehement speeches of our Saviour, which 
they call Hyperboles; why in this one Text should 
they be such crabbed Masorites of the letter, as not 
to mollify a transcendance of literal rigidity, which 
they confess to find often elsewhere in his manner of 
delivery, but must make their exposition here such 
an obdurate Cyclops, to have but one eye for this 
Text, and that only open to cruelty and enthralment, 
such as no divine or human Law before ever heard 
of?  No, let the foppish Canonist, with his fardel of 
matrimonial cases, go and be vendible where men be 
so unhappy as to cheapen him: the words of Christ 
shall be asserted from such elemental Notaries, and 
resolv'd by the now-only lawgiving mouth of 
charity; which may be done undoubtedly by 
understanding them as follows.
	Whosoever shall put away his wife. ]  That is to 
say, shall so put away as the Propounders of this 
question, the Pharisees, were wont to do, and 
covertly defended Herod for so doing; whom to 
rebuke, our Saviour here mainly intends, and not to 
determine all the cases of Divorce, as appears by St. 
Paul.  Whosoever shall put away, either violently 
without mutual consent for urgent reasons, or 
conspiringly by plot of lust, or cunning malice, shall 
put away for any sudden mood, or contingency of 
disagreement, which is not daily practice, but may 
blow soon over, and be reconcil'd, except it be 
Fornication; whosoever shall put away rashly, as his 
choler prompts him, without due time of 
deliberating, and think his Conscience dischar'd ony 
by the bill of Divorce given, and the outward Law 
satisfy'd; whosoever, lastly, shall put away his Wife, 
that is a Wife indeed, and not in name only, such a 
one who both can and is willing to be a meet help 
toward the chief ends of Marriage both civil and 
sanctify'd, except fornication be the cause, that Man, 
or that Pair, commit Adultery.  Not he who puts away 
by mutual consent, with all the considerations and 
respects of humanity and gentleness, without 
malicious or lustful drift.  Not he who after sober and 
cool experience, and long debate within himself, puts 
away, whom though he cannot love or suffer as a 
Wife, with that sincere affection that Marriage 
requires, yet loves at least with that civility and 
goodness, as not to keep her under a neglected and 
unwelcome residence, where nothing can be hearty, 
and not being, it must needs be both unjoyous, and 
injurious to any perceiving person so detain'd, and 
more injurious than to be freely, and upon good 
terms dismist.  Nor doth he put away adulterously 
who complains of causes rooted in immutable nature, 
utter unfitness, utter disconformity, not conciliable, 
because not to be amended without a miracle.  Nor he 
who puts away an unquenchable vexation from his 
bosom, and flies an evil than which a greater cannot 
befall human society.  Nor he who puts away with the 
full suffrage and applause of his conscience, not 
relying on the written bill of Law, but claiming by 
faith and fulness of perswasion the rights and 
promises of God's institution, of which he finds 
himself in a mistaken wedloc defrauded.  Doubtless 
this man hath bail enough to be no Adulterer, giving 
Divorce for these causes.
	His Wife. ]  This word is not to be idle here, a meer 
word without a sense, much less a fallacious word 
signifying contrary to what it pretends; but 
faithfully signifies a Wife, that is, a comfortable help 
and society, as God instituted; does not signify 
deceitfully under this name, an intolerable 
adversary, not a helpless, unaffectionate and sullen 
mass, whose very company represents the visible 
and exactest figure of loneliness it self.  Such an 
associate he who puts away, divorces not a wife, but 
disjoins a nullity which God never join'd, if she be 
neither willing, nor to her proper and requisite 
duties sufficient, as the words of God institute her.  
And this also is Bucer's explication of this place.
	Except it be for fornication, or saving for the 
cause of fornication, as Matt. 5. ]  This declares what 
kind of causes our Saviour meant; fornication being 
no natural and perpetual cause, but only accidental 
and temporary; therfore shews that head of causes 
from whence it is excepted, to be meant of the same 
sort.  For exceptions are not logically deduc'd from a 
divers kind, as to say whoso puts away for any 
natural cause except Fornication, the exception 
would want salt.  And if they understand it, whoso 
for any cause whatever, they cast themselves; 
granting Divorce for frigidity a natural cause of their 
own allowing, though not here exprest, and for 
desertion without infidelity, whenas he who marries, 
as they allow him for desertion, deserts as well as is 
deserted, and finally puts away for another cause 
besides Adultery.  It will with all due reason therfore 
be thus better understood, whoso puts away for any 
accidental and temporary causes, except one of them, 
which is fornication.  Thus this exception finds out 
the causes from whence it is excepted, to be of the 
same kind, that is casual, not continual.
	Saving for the cause of fornication. ]  The New 
Testament, though it be said originally writ in Greek, 
yet hath nothing near so many Atticisms as 
Hebraisms, and Syriacisms, which was the Majesty of 
God, not fitting the tongue of Scripture to a Gentilish 
Idiom, but in a princely manner offering to them as 
to Gentiles and Foreigners grace and mercy, though 
not in foreign words, yet in a foreign stile that might 
induce them to the fountains; and though their 
calling were high and happy, yet still to acknowledge 
God's ancient people their betters, and that language 
the Metropolitan language.  He therfore who thinks to 
Scholiaze upon the Gospel, though Greek, according 
to his Greek Analogies, and hath not been Auditor to 
the Oriental dialects, shall want in the heat of his 
Analysis no accommodation to stumble.  In this place, 
as the 5th of Matth. reads it, Saving for the cause of 
fornication, the Greek, such as it is, sounds it except 
for the word, report, speech, or proportion of 
fornication.  In which regard, with other 
inducements, many ancient and learned Writers 
have understood this exception, as comprehending 
any fault equivalent and proportional to fornication.  
But truth is, the Evangelist here Hebraizes, taking 
word or speech for cause or matter in the common 
Eastern phrase, meaning perhaps no more than if he 
had said for fornication, as in this 19th chapter.  And 
yet the word is found in the 5th of Exodus also 
signifying Proportion; where the Israelites are 
commanded to do their tasks, the matter of each day 
in his day.  A task we know is a proportion of work 
not doing the same thing absolutely every day, but 
so much.  Wherby it may be doubtful yet, whether 
here be not excepted not only fornication it self, but 
other causes equipollent, and proportional to 
fornication.  Which very word also to understand 
rightly, we must of necessity have recourse again to 
the Hebrew.  For in the Greek and Latin sense by 
fornication is meant the common prostitution of body 
for sale.  So that they who are so exact for the letter, 
shall be dealt with by the Lexicon, and the 
Etymologicon too if they please, and must be bound 
to forbid divorce for adultery also, until it come to 
open whoredom and trade, like that for which 
Claudius divorc'd Messalina.  Since therfore they take 
not here the word fornication in the common 
significance, for an open exercise in the stews, but 
grant Divorce for one single act of privatest 
Adultery, notwithstanding that the word speaks a 
public and notorious frequency of fact, not without 
price; we may reason with as good leave, and as little 
straining to the text, that our Saviour on set purpose 
chose this wordFornication, improperly apply'd to 
the lapse of Adultery, that we might not think our 
selves bound from all Divorce, except when that fault 
hath been actually committed.  For the language of 
Scripture signifies by fornication (and others besides 
St. Austin so expounded it) not only the trespass of 
Body, nor perhaps that between married persons, 
unless in a degree or quality as shameless as the 
Bordello;  but signifies also any notable disobedience, 
or intractable carriage of the Wife to the Husband, as 
Judg. 19. 2. wherof at large in the Doctrine of 
Divorce, l. 2. c. 18.  Secondly, signifiest the apparent 
alienation of mind not to Idolatry, (which may seem 
to answer the act of Adultery) but far on this side, to 
any point of will-worship, though to the true God; 
sometimes it notes the love of earthly things, or 
worldly pleasures, though in a right Believer, 
sometimes the least suspicion of unwitting Idolatry.  
As Numb. 15. 39. wilful disobedience to any the least 
of God's Commandment is call'd fornication, Psal. 73. 
26, 27.  A distrust only in God, and withdrawing 
from that nearness of zeal and confidence which 
ought to be , is call'd fornication.  We may be sure it 
could not import thus much less than Idolatry in the 
borrow'd metaphor between God and Man, unless it 
signify'd as much less than Adultery in the ordinary 
acceptation between Man and Wife.  Add also, that 
there was no need our Saviour should grant divorce 
for Adultery, it being death by Law, and Law then in 
force.  Which was the cause why Joseph sought to put 
away his betrothed Wife privately, lest he should 
make her an example of captial punishment, as 
learnedest Expounders affirm, Herod being a great 
zealot of the Mosaic Law, and the Pharisees great 
masters of the Text, as the woman taken in Adultery 
doubtless had cause to fear.  Or if they can prove it 
was neglected, which they cannot do, why did our 
Saviour shape his Answer to the corruption of that 
age, and not rather tell them of their neglect?  If 
they say he came not to meddle with their 
Judicatures, much less then was it in his thought to 
make them new ones, or that Divorce should be 
judicially restrain'd in a stricter manner by these 
his words, more than Adultery judicially acquitted 
by those his words to the Adultress.  His sentence 
doth no more by Law forbid Divorce here, than by 
Law it doth absolve Adultery there.  To them 
therfore who have drawn this yoke upon Christians 
from his words thus wrested, nothing remains but 
the guilt of a presumption and perverseness, which 
will be hard for them to answer.  Thus much that the 
word Fornication is to be understood as the Language 
of Christ understands it, for a constant alienation 
and disaffection of mind, or for the continual practice 
of disobedience and crossness from the duties of love 
and peace; that is in sum, when to be a tolerable Wife 
is either naturally not in their power, or obstinately 
not in their will: and this Opinion also is St. Austins's, 
lest it should hap to be suspected of novelty.  Yet 
grant the thing here meant were only Adultery, the 
reason of things will afford more to our assertion, 
than did the reason of words.  For why is Divorce 
unlawful but only for Adultery? because, say they, 
that crime only breaks the Matrimony. But this, I 
reply, the Institution it self gainsays: for that which 
is most contrary to the words and meaning of the 
Institution, that most breaks the Matrimony; but a 
perpetual unmeetness and unwillingness to all the 
duties of Help, of Love, and Tranquillity, is most 
contrary to the words and meaning of the 
Institution; that therfore much more breaks 
Matrimony than the act of Adultery, though 
repeated.  For this, as it is not felt, nor troubles him 
who perceives it not, so being perceiv'd, may be soon 
repented, soon amended, soon, if it can be pardon'd, 
may be redeem'd with the more ardent love and 
duty in her who hath the pardon.  But this natural 
unmeetness both cannot be unknown long, and ever 
after cannot be amended, if it be natural, and will 
not, if it be far gone obstinate.  So that wanting aught 
in the instant to be as great a breach as adultery, it 
gains it in the perpetuity to be greater.  Next, 
Adultery does not exclude her other fitness, her 
other pleasingness; she may be otherwise both loving 
and prevalent, as many Adulteresses be; but in this 
general unfitness or alienation she can be nothing to 
him that can please.  In Adultery nothing is given 
from the Husband, which he misses, or enjoys the 
less, as it may be suttly given: but this unfitness 
defrauds him of the whole contentment which is 
sought in Wedloc.  And what benefit to him, though 
nothing be given by the stealth of Adultery to 
another, if that which there is to give, whether it be 
solace, or society, be not such as may justly content 
him? and so not only deprives him of what it should 
give him, but gives him sorrow and affliction, which 
it did not owe him.  Besides, is Adultery the greatest 
breach of Matrimony in respect of the offence to God, 
or of the injury to Man?  If in the former, then other 
sins may offend God more, and sooner cause him to 
disunite his servant from being one flesh with such 
an offender.  If in respect of the latter, other injuries 
are demonstrated therin more heavy to man's 
nature than the iterated act of Adultery.  God 
therfore, in his wisdom, would not so dispose his 
remedies, as to provide them for the less injuries, 
and not allow them for the greater.  Thus is won both 
from the word Fornication, and the reason of 
Adultery, that the exception of Divorce is not limited 
to that act, but enlarg'd to the causes above 
specify'd.
	And whoso marrieth her which is put away, doth 
commit adultery. ]  By this Clause alone, if by 
nothing else,we may assure us, that Christ intended 
not to deliver here the whole doctrine of Divorce, but 
only to condemn abuses.  Otherwise to marry after 
Desertion, which the Apostle, and the reformed 
Churches at this day permit, is here forbid, as 
Adultery.  Be she never so wrongfully deserted, or 
put away, as the Law then suffer'd, if thus forsaken 
and expulst, she accept the refuge and protection of 
any honester man who would love her better and 
give her self in Marriage to him, by what the letter 
guides us, it shall be present Adultery to them both.  
This is either harsh and cruel, or all the Churches 
teaching as they do the contrary, are loose and 
remiss; besides that the Apostle himself stands 
deeply fin'd in a contradiction against our Saviour.  
What shall we make of this? what rather the common 
interpreter can make of it, for they be his own 
markets, let him now try; let him try which way he 
can wind in his Vertumnian distinctions and 
evasions, if his canonical Gabardine of text and letter 
do not now sit too close about him, and pinch his 
activity; which if I err not, hath here hamper'd it 
self in a spring fit for those who put their confidence 
in Alphabets.  Spanheim a writer of Evangelic Doubts, 
comes now and confesses that our Saviour's words 
are to be limited beyond the limitation there exprest, 
and excepted beyond their own exception, as not 
speaking of what happen'd rarely, but what most 
commonly.  Is it so rare, Spanheim, to be deserted? 
or was it then so rare to put away injuriously, that a 
person so hatefully expell'd, should to the heaping of 
more injury be turn'd like an infectious thing out of 
all Marriage-fruition upon pain of Adultery, as not 
considerable to the brevity of this half sentence?  Of 
what then speaks our Saviour? of that collusion, 
saith he, which was then most frequent among the 
Jews of changing wives and husbands, through 
inconstancy and unchaste desires.  Colluders your 
selves, as violent to this Law of God by your 
unmerciful binding, as the Pharisees by their 
unbounded loosening!  Have thousands of Christian 
souls perish'd as to this life, and God knows what 
hath betided their Consciences, for want of this 
healing explantion; and is it now at last obscurely 
drawn forth, only to cure a scratch, and leave the 
main wound spouting?  Whosoever putteth away his 
wife, except for fornication, committeth adultery.  
That shall be spoke of all ages, and all men, though 
never so justly otherwise mov'd to Divorce: In the 
very next breath, And whoso marrieth her which is 
put away, committeth adultery: the men are new and 
miraculous, they tell you now you are to limit it to 
that age, when it was in fashion to chop matrimonies; 
and must be meant of him who puts away with his 
wife's consent through the lightness and leudness of 
them both.  By what rule of Logic, or indeed of 
Reason, is our commission to understand the 
Antecedent one way and the Consequent another? 
for in that habitude this whole verse may be 
considered: or at least first is absolutely true, the 
other not, but must be limited to a certain time and 
custom; which is no less than to say they are both 
false?  For in this compound axiom, be the parts 
never so many, if one of them do but falter, and be 
not equally absolute and general, the rest are all 
false.  If therfore that he who marries her which is 
put away commits adultery, be not generally true, 
neither is it generally true that he commits adultery 
who puts away for other cause then fornication.  And 
if the marrying her which is put away, must be 
understood limited, which they cannot but yield it 
must, with the same limitation must be understood 
the putting away.  Thus doth the common exposition 
confound it self, and justify this which is here 
brought; that our Saviour as well in the first part of 
this sentence as in the second, prohibited only such 
Divorces as the Jews then made through malice or 
through plotted licence, not those which are for 
necessary and just causes; where charity and 
wisdom disjoins, that which not God, but Error and 
Disaster join'd.
	And there is yet to this our exposition, a stronger 
siding friend, than any can be an adversary, unless 
St. Paul be doubted, who repeating a command 
concerning Divorce, 1 Cor. 7. which is agreed by 
Writers to be the same with this of our Saviour, and 
appointing that the wife remain unmarried, or be 
reconcil'd to her husband, leaves it infallible that our 
Saviour spake chiefly against putting away for casual 
and choleric disagreements, or any other cause 
which may with human patience and wisdom be 
reconcil'd; not hereby meaning to hale and dash 
together the irreconcileable aversations of nature, 
nor to tie up a faultless person like a Parricide, as it 
were into one sack with an enemy, to be his causeless 
tormenter and executioner the length of a long life.  
Lastly, let this sentence of Christ be understood how 
it will, yet that it was never intended for a judicial 
Law, to be inforc'd by the Magistrate, besides that 
the office of our Saviour had no such purpose in the 
Gospel, this latter part of the sentence may assure 
us, And whoso marrieth her who is put away, 
commits adultery.  Shall the exception for Adultery 
belong to this clause or not?  If not, it would be 
strange, that he who marries a Woman really 
divorc'd for Adultery, as Christ permitted, should 
become an Adulterer by marrying one who is now no 
other man's Wife, himself being also free, who might 
by this means reclaim her from common Whoredom.  
And if the exception must belong hither, then it 
follows that he who marries an Adultress divorc'd 
commits no Adultery; which would soon discover to 
us what an absurd and sensless piece of injustice this 
would be to make a civil Statute of in penal Courts: 
wherby the Adultress put away may marry another 
safely, and without a crime to him that marries her; 
but the innocent and wrongfully divorc'd shall not 
marry again without the guilt of Adultery both to 
her self and to her second husband.  This saying of 
Christ therfore cannot be made a temporal Law, were 
it but for this reason.  Nor is it easy to say what 
coherence there is at all in it from the letter, to any 
perfect sense not obnoxious to some absurdity, and 
seems much less agreeable to whatever else of the 
Gospel is left us written; doubtless by our Saviour 
spoken in that fierceness and abstruse intricacy, 
first to amuse his tempters, and admonish in general 
the abusers of that Mosaic Law; next, to let Herod 
know a second knower of his unlawful act, though the 
Baptist were beheaded; last, that his Disciples and all 
good men might learn to expound him in this place, 
as in all other his precepts, not by the written letter, 
but by that unerring paraphrase of Christian Love 
and Charity, which is the sum of all commands, and 
the perfection.

Ver. 10.  His Disciples say unto him, If the case of 
the man be so with his Wife, it is not good to marry.

	This verse I add, to leave no objection behind 
unanswer'd: for some may think, if this our 
Saviour's sentence be so fair, as not commanding 
aught that patience or nature cannot brook, why 
then did the disciples murmur and say, it is not good 
to marry?  I answer, that the Disciples had been 
longer bred up under the Pharis¾an Doctrine, than 
under that of Christ, and so no marvel though they 
yet retain'd the infection of loving old licentious 
customs; no marvel though they thought it hard 
they might not for any offence that throughly 
anger'd them, divorce a Wife, as well as put away a 
Servant, since it was but giving her a Bill, as they 
were taught.  Secondly, it was no unwonted thing 
with them not to understand our Saviour in matters 
far easier.  So that be it granted their conceit of this 
text was the same which is now commonly conceiv'd, 
according to the usual rate of their capacity then, it 
will not hurt a better interpretation.  But why did 
not Christ, seeing their error, inform them? for good 
cause; it was his profest method not to teach them all 
things at all times, but each thing in due place and 
season.  Christ said, Luke 22. that he who had not 
sword should sell his garment and buy one: the 
Disciples took it in a manifest wrong sense, yet our 
Saviour did not there inform them better.  He told 
them it was easier for a Camel to go through a 
needle's eye, than a rich man in at heaven-gate.  
They were amaz'd exceedingly: he explain'd himself 
to mean of those who trust in riches, Mark 10.  They 
were amazed than out of measure, for so Mark 
relates it; as if his explaining had increas'd their 
amazement in such a plain case, and which concern'd 
so nearly their calling to be inform'd in.  Good reason 
therfore, if Christ at that time did not stand 
amplifying, to the thick prejudice and tradition 
wherin they were, this question of more difficulty, 
and less concernment to any perhaps of them in 
particular.  Yet did he not omit to sow within them 
the seeds of a sufficient determining, against the 
time that his promis'd Spirit should bring all things 
to their memory.  He had declar'd in their hearing 
not long before, how distant he was from abolishing 
the Law it self of Divorce; he had referr'd them to the 
institution; and after all this, gives them a set 
answer, from which they might collect what was 
clear enough, that all men cannot receive all sayings, 
ver. 11.  If such regard be had to each man's 
receiving of Marriage or single life, what can arise 
that the same christian regard should not be had in 
most necessary Divorce?  All which instructed both 
them and us, that it beseem'd his Disciples to learn 
the deciding of this question, which hath nothing 
new in it, first by the institution, then by the 
general grounds of Religion, not by a particular 
saying here or there, temper'd and levell'd only to 
an incident occasion, the riddance of a tempting 
assault.  For what can this be but weak and shallow 
apprehension, to forsake the standard principles of 
institution, faith, and charity; then to be blank and 
various at every occurrence in Scripture, and in a 
cold Spasm of scruple, to rear peculiar doctrines 
upon the place, that shall bid the gray authority of 
most unchangable and sovereign Rules to stand by 
and be contradicted?  Thus to this Evangelic precept 
of famous difficulty, which for these many ages 
weakly understood, and violently put in practice, 
hath made a shambles rather than an ordinance of 
Matrimony, I am firm a truer exposition cannot be 
given.  If this or that argument here us'd, please not 
every one, there is no scarcity of arguments, any 
half of them will suffice.  Or should they all fail, as 
Truth it self can fail as soon, I should content me 
with the institution alone to wage this controversy, 
and not distrust to evince.  If any need it not, the 
happier; yet Christians ought to study earnestly 
what may be another's need.  But if, as mortal 
mischances are, some hap to need it, let them be sure 
they abuse not, and give God his thanks, who hath 
reviv'd this remedy, not too late for them, and 
scower'd off an inveterate misexposition from the 
Gospel: a work not to perish by the vain breath or 
doom of this age.  Our next industry shall be, under 
the same guidance, to try with what fidelity that 
remaining passage in the Epistles touching this 
matter, hath been commented.

1 Cor. VII. 10, &c.

10.  And unto the married I command, &c.
11.  And let not the husband put away his 
wife.

This intimates but what our Saviour taught before, 
that Divorce is not rashly to be made, but 
reconcilement to be perswaded and endeavour'd, as 
oft as the cause can have to do with reconcilement, 
and is not under the dominion of blameless nature; 
which may have reason to depart, though seldomest 
and last from charitable love, yet sometimes from 
friendly, and familiar, and something oftner from 
conjugal love, which requires not only moral, but 
natural causes to the making and maintaining; and 
may be warrantably excus'd to retire from the 
deception of what it justly seeks, and the ill requitals 
which unjustly it finds.  For Nature hath her Zodiac 
also, keeps her great annual circuit over human 
things, as truly as the Sun and Planets in the 
firmament; hath her anomalies, hath her obliquities 
in ascensions and delinations, accesses and recesses, 
as blamelesly as they in Heaven.  And sitting in her 
planetary Orb with two reins in each hand, one 
strait, the other loose, tempers the course of minds 
as well as bodies to several conjunctions and 
oppositions, friendly or unfriendly aspects, 
consenting oftest with reason, but never contrary.  
This in the effect no man of meanest reach but daily 
sees; and though to every one it appear not in the 
cause, yet to a clear capacity, well nurtur'd with 
good reading and observation, it cannot but be plain 
and visible.  Other exposition therfore then hath 
been given to former places that give light to these 
two summary verses, will not be needful: save only 
that these precepts are meant to those married who 
differ not in Religion.
	But to the rest speak I, not the Lord; if any 
brother hath a wife that believeth not, and she be 
pleased to dwell with him, let him not put her away.
	Now follows what is to be done, if the persons 
wedded be of a different faith.  The common belief is, 
that a Christian is here commanded not to divorce, if 
the Infidel please to stay, though it be but to vex, or 
to deride, or to deduce the Christian.  This Doctrine 
will be the easy work of a refutation.  The other 
opinion is, that a Christian is here conditionally 
permitted to hold Wedloc with a misbeliever only, 
upon hopes limited by Christian prudence, which 
without much difficulty shall be defended.  That this 
here spoken by Paul, not by the Lord, cannot be a 
Command, these reasons avouch.  First, the Law of 
Moses, Exod. 34. 16. Deut. 7. 3, 6. interpreted by Ezra 
and Nehemiah, two infallible authors, commands to 
divorce an Infidel not for the fear only of a 
ceremonious defilement, but of an irreligious 
seducement, fear'd both in respect of the Believer 
himself, and of his Children in danger to be 
perverted by the misbelieving parent, Nehem. 13. 
24, 26.  And Peter Martyr thought this a convincing 
reason.  If therfore the legal pollution vanishing, 
have abrogated the ceremony of this Law, so that a 
Christian may be permitted to retain an Infidel 
without uncleanness, yet the moral reason of 
divorcing stands to etenity, which neither Apostle 
nor Angel from heaven can countermand.  All that 
they reply to this, is their human warrant, that God 
will preserve us in our obedience of this command 
against the danger of seducement.  And so 
undoudtedly he will, if we understand his commands 
aright; if we turn not this evangelic permission into a 
legal, and yet illegal command;  if we turn not hope 
into bondage, the charitable and free hope of gaining 
another, into the forc'd and servile temptation of 
losing our selves: but more of this beneath.  Thus 
these words of Paul by common doctrine made a 
command, are made a contradiction to the moral Law.
	Secondly, Not the Law only, but the Gospel from 
the Law, and from it self, requires even in the same 
chapter, where Divorce between them of one Religion 
is so narrowly forbid, rather than our Christian love 
should come into danger of backsliding, to forsake all 
relations how near soever, and the Wife expresly, 
with promise of a high reward, Mat. 19.  And he who 
hates not Father or Mother, Wife or Children, 
hindering his Christian course, much more if they 
despise or assault it, cannot be a Disciple, Luke 14.  
How can the Apostle then command us to love and 
continue in that matrimony, which our Saviour bids 
us hate, and forsake?  They can as soon teach our 
faculty of respiration to contract and to dilate it self 
at once, to breathe and to fetch breath in the same 
instant, as teach our minds how to do such contrary 
acts as these towards the same object, and as they 
must be done in the same moment.  For either the 
hatred of her Religion, and her hatred to our Religion 
will work powerfully against the love of her society, 
or the love of that will by degrees flatter out all our 
zealous hatred and forsaking, and soon ensnare us to 
unchristianly compliances.
	Thirdly, In Marriage there ought not only to be a 
civil love, but such a love as Christ loves his Church; 
but where the Religion is contrary without hope of 
conversion, there can be no love, no faith, no 
peaceful society, (they of the other opinion confess 
it) nay there ought not to be, further than in 
expectation of gaining a soul; when that ceases, we 
know God hath put an enmity between the seed of 
the Woman, and the seed of the Serpent.  Neither 
should we love them that hate the Lord, as the 
Prophet told Jehosaphat, 2 Chron. 19.  And this 
Apostle himself in another place warns us that we be 
not unequally yok'd with Infidels, 2 Cor. 6. for that 
there can be no fellowship, no communion, no 
concord between such.  Outward commerce and civil 
intercourse cannot perhaps be avoided; but true 
friendship and familiarity there can be none.  How 
vainly therfore, not to say how impiously would the 
most inward and dear alliance of Marriage or 
continuance in Marriage be commanded, where true 
friendship is confest impossible?  For say they, we 
are forbid here to marry with an Infidel, not bid to 
divorce.  But to rob the words thus of their full 
sense, will not be allow'd them: it is not said, enter 
not into yoke, but be not unequally yok'd; which 
plainly forbids the thing in present act, as well as in 
purpose: and his manifest conclusion is, not only that 
we should not touch, but that having touch'd, we 
should come out from among them, and be separate; 
with the promise of a blessing therupon, that God will 
receive us, will be our father, and we his sons and 
daughters, ver. 17, 18.  Why we should stay with an 
Infidel after the expence of all our hopes, can be but 
for a civil relation; but why we should depart from a 
seducer, setting aside the misconstruction of this 
place, is from a religious necessity of departing.  The 
worse cause therfore of staying (if it be any cause at 
all, for civil Government forces it not) must not 
overtop the religious cause of separating, executed 
with such an urgent zeal, and such a prostrate 
humiliation by Ezra and Nehemiah.  What God hates 
to join, certainly he cannot love should continue 
join'd: it being all one in matter of ill consequence, to 
marry, or to continue married with an Infidel, save 
only so long as we wait willingly, and with a safe 
hope.  St.Paul therfore citing here a command of the 
Lord Almighty, for so he terms it, that we should 
separate, cannot have bound us with that which he 
calls his own, whether command or counsel, that we 
should not separate.
	Which is the fourth Reason, for he himself takes 
care lest we should mistake him, [But to the rest 
speak I, not the Lord. ]  If the Lord spake not, then 
Man spake it, and Man hath no Lordship to command 
the conscience: yet modern Interpreters will have it 
a command, maugre St. Paul himself, they will make 
him him a Prophet like Caiaphas, to speak the word of 
the Lord, not thinking, nay denying to think; though 
he disavow to have receiv'd it from the Lord, his 
word shall not be taken; though an Apostle, he shall 
be borne down in his own Epistle, by a race of 
Expositors who presume to know from whom he 
spake, better than he himself.  Paul deposes that the 
Lord speaks not this; they, that the Lord speaks it: 
Can this be less than to brave him with a full-fac'd 
contradiction?  Certainly to such a violence as this, 
for I cannot call it an expounding, what a man should 
answer I know not, unless that if it be their pleasure 
next to put a gag into the Apostle's mouth, they are 
already furnish'd with a commodious audacity 
toward the attempt.  Beza would seem to shun the 
contradictory, by telling us that the Lord spake it not 
in person, as he did the former precept.  But how 
many other Doctrines doth St. Paul deliver, which 
the Lord spake not in person, and yet never used 
this preamble but in things indifferent?  So long as 
we receive him for a messenger of God, for him to 
stand sorting Sentences what the Lord spake in 
person, and what he, not the Lord in person, would 
be but a chill trifling, and his Readers might catch an 
Ague the while.  But if we shall supply the 
Grammatical Ellipsis regularly, and as we must in the 
same tense, all will be then clear, for we cannot 
supply it thus, to the rest I speak; the Lord spake 
not, but I speak, the Lord speaks not.  If then the 
Lord neither spake in person, nor speaks it now, the 
Apostle testifying both, it follows duly, that this can 
be no command.  Forsooth the fear is, lest this not 
being a command, would prove an evangelic counsel, 
and so make way for supererogations.  As if the 
Apostle could not speak his mind in things 
indifferent, as he doth in four or five several places 
of this chapter with the like preface of not 
commanding, but that the doubted inconvenience of 
supererogating must needs rush in.  And how adds it 
to the Word of the Lord, (for this also they object) 
whenas the Apostle by his christian prudence guides 
us in the liberty which God hath left us to, without 
command?  Could not the Spirit of God instruct us by 
him what was free, as well as what was not?  But 
what need I more, when Cameron an ingenuous 
writer, and in high esteem, solidly confutes the 
surmise of a command here, and among other words 
hath these; That when Paul speaks as an Apostle, he 
uses this form, The Lord saith, not I, ver. 10. but as a 
private man he saith, I speak, not the Lord.  And 
thus also all the prime fathers, Austin, Jerom, and 
the rest understood this place.
	Fifthly, The very stating of the Question declares 
this to be no Command; If any Brother hath an 
unbelieving Wife, and she be pleased to dwell with 
him, let him not put her away.  For the Greek word 
suneudokei does not imply only her being pleas'd to 
stay, but his being pleas'd to let her stay; it must be 
a consent of them both.  Nor can the force of this 
word be render'd less, without either much 
negligence or iniquity of him that otherwise 
tranlates it.  And thus the Greek Church also and 
their Synods understood it, who best knew what 
their own language meant, as appears by Matth¾us 
Monachus, an Author set forth by Leunclavius, and 
of antiquity perhaps not inferior to Balsamon, who 
writes upon the Canons of the Apostles: this Author 
in his chap. That Marriage is not to be made with 
Heretics, thus recites the second Canon of the 6th 
Synod: As to the Corinthians, Paul determines; If the 
believing Wife chuse to live with the unbelieving 
Husband, or the believing Husband with the 
unbelieving Wife.  Mark, saith he, how the Apostle 
here condescends, if the Believer please to dwell with 
the Unbeliever; so that if he please not, out of doubt 
the Marriage is dissolv'd.  And I am perswaded it was 
so in the beginning, and thus preach'd.  And 
therupon gives an example of one, who though not 
deserted, yet by the Decree of Theodotus the 
Patriarch divorc'd an unbelieving Wife.  What 
therfore depends in the plain state of this question 
on the consent and well liking of them both, must not 
be a command.  Lay next the latter end of the 11th 
verse to the 12th (for wherfore else is Logic taught 
us) in a discreet axiom, as it can be no other by the 
phrase; The Lord saith, Let not the Husband put away 
his Wife: but I say, Let him not put away a 
misbelieving Wife.  This sounds as if by the judgment 
of Paul, a man might put away any Wife but the 
misbelieving; or else the parts are not discreet, or 
dissentany, for both conclude not putting away, and 
consequently in such a form the proposition is 
ridiculous.  Of necessity therfore the former part of 
this sentence must be conceiv'd, as understood, and 
silently granted, that although the Lord command to 
divorce an infidel, yet I, not the Lord command you?  
No, but give my judgment, that for some evangelic 
reasons a Christian may be permitted not to divorce 
her.  Thus while we reduce the brevity of St. Paul to 
a plainer sense, by the needful supply of that which 
was granted between him and the Corinthians, the 
very logic of his speech extracts him confessing that 
the Lord's command lay in a seeming contrariety to 
this his counsel: and that he meant not to thrust out 
a command of the Lord by a new one of his own, as 
one nail drives another, but to release us from the 
rigour of it, by the right of the Gospel, so far forth as 
a charitable cause leads us on in the hope of winning 
another soul without the peril of losing our own.  For 
this is the glory of the Gospel, to teach us that the 
end of the commandment is charity, 1 Tim. 1. not the 
drudging out a poor and worthless duty forc'd from 
us by the tax and tale of so many letters.  This 
doctrine therfore can be no command, but it must 
contradict the moral Law, the Gospel, and the Apostle 
himself, both elsewhere and here also even in the act 
of speaking.
	If then it be no command, it must remain to be a 
permission, and that not absolute, for so it would be 
still contrary to the law, but with such a caution as 
breaks not the Law, but as the manner of the Gospel 
is, fulfils it through Charity.  The Law had two 
reasons, the one was ceremonial, the pollution that 
all Gentiles were to the Jews; this the vision of Peter 
had abolish'd, Acts 10. and cleans'd all creatures to 
the use of Christian.  The Corinthians understood not 
this, but fear'd lest dwelling in matrimony with an 
unbeliever, they were defil'd.  The Apostle discusses 
that scruple with an Evangelic reason, shewing them 
that although God heretofore under the Law, not 
intending the conversion of the Gentiles, except some 
special ones, held them as polluted things to the Jew, 
yet now purposing to call them in, he hath purify'd 
them from that legal uncleanness wherin they stood, 
to use and to be us'd in a pure manner.
	For saith he, The unbelieving husband is 
sanctify'd by the wife, and the unbelieving wife is 
sanctify'd by the husband, else were your children 
unclean; but now they are holy.  That is, they are 
sanctify'd to you, from that legal impurity which you 
so fear; and are brought into a near capacity to be 
holy, if they believe, and to have free access to holy 
things.  In the mean time, as being God's creatures, a 
Christian hath power to use them according to their 
proper use; in as much as now, all things to the pure 
are become pure.  In this legal respect therfore ye 
need not doubt to continue in Marriage with an 
unbeliever.  Thus others also expound this place, and 
Cameron especially.  This reason warrants us only 
what we may do without fear of pollution, does not 
bind us that we must.  But the other reason of the 
Law to divorce an infidel was moral, the avoiding of 
enticement from the true Faith.  This cannot shrink; 
but remains in as full force as ever, to save the 
actual Christian from the snare of a misbeliever.  Yet 
if a Christian full of grace and spiritual gifts, finding 
the misbeliever not frowardly affected, fears not a 
seducing, but hopes rather a gaining, who sees not 
this moral Reason is not violated by not divorcing, 
which the Law commanded to do, but better fulfill'd 
by the excellence of the Gospel working through 
Charity?  For neither the faithful is seduc'd, and the 
unfaithful is either sav'd, or with all discharge of 
love, and evangelic duty sought to be sav'd.  But 
contrary-wise if the infirm Christian shall be 
commanded here against his mind, against his hope, 
and against his strength, to dwell with all the 
scandals, the houshold persecutions, or alluring 
temptations of an Infidel, how is not the Gospel by 
this made harsher than the Law, and more yoking?  
Therfore the Apostle ere he delivers this other 
reason why we need not in all haste put away an 
Infidel, his mind misgiving him, lest he should seem 
to be the imposer of a new command, stays not for 
method, but with an abrupt speed inserts the 
declaration of their liberty in this manner.
	But if the unbelieving depart, let him depart; a 
brother or a sister is not under bondage in such 
cases: but God hath called us to peace.
	But if the unbelieving depart. ]  This cannot be 
restrain'd to local departure only; for who knows not 
that an offensive society is worse than a forsaking.  If 
his purpose of cohabitation be to endanger the life, 
or the conscience, Beza himself is half persuaded, 
that this may purchase to the faithful person the 
same freedom that a desertion may; and so Gerard 
and others whom he cites.  If therfore he depart in 
affection; if he depart from giving hope of his 
conversion; if he disturb, or scoff at Religion, seduce, 
or tempt; if he rage, doubtless not the weak only, but 
the strong may leave him; if not for fear, yet for the 
dignity's sake of Religion, which cannot be liable to all 
base affronts, meerly for the worshipping of a civil 
Marriage.  I take therfore departing to be as large as 
the negative of being well pleas'd: that is, if he be not 
pleas'd for the present to live lovingly, quietly, 
inoffensively, so as may give good hope; which 
appears well by that which follows.
	A brother or a sister is not under bondage in 
such cases. ]  If St. Paul provide seriously against the 
bondage of a Christian, it is not the only bondage to 
live unmarried for a deserting Infidel, but to endure 
his presence intolerably, to bear Indignities against 
his Religion in words or deeds, to be wearied with 
seducements, to have idolatries and superstitions 
ever before his eyes, to be tormented with impure 
and prophane conversation; this must needs be 
bondage to a Christian: is this left all unprovided for, 
without remedy, or freedom granted?  Undoubtedly 
no; for the Apostle leaves it further to be consider'd 
with prudence, what bondage a brother or sister is 
not under, not only in this case, but as he speaks 
himself plurally, in such cases.
	But God hath called us to peace. ]  To peace, not to 
bondage, not to brabbles and contentions with him 
who is not pleas'd to live peaceably, as Marriage and 
Christianity require.  And where strife arises from a 
cause hopeless to be allay'd, what better way to 
peace than by separating that which is ill join'd?  It 
is not Divorce that first breaks the peace of a family, 
as some fondly comment on this place, but it is peace 
already broken, which, when other cures fail, can 
only be restor'd to the faultless person by a 
necessary Divorce.  And St. Paul here warrants us to 
seek peace, rather than remain in bondage.  If God 
hath call'd us to peace, why should we not follow 
him? why should we miserably stay in perpetual 
discord under a servitude not requir'd?
	For what knowest thou, O Wife, whether thou 
shalt save thy Husband, &c. ]  St. Paul having thus 
clear'd himself, not to go about the mining or our 
Christian liberty, not to cast a snare upon us, which 
to do he so much hated, returns now to the second 
reason of that Law, to put away an Infidel for fear of 
seducement, which he does not here contradict with 
a Command now to venture that; but if neither the 
infirmity of the Christian, nor the strength of the 
Unbeliever be fear'd, but hopes appearing that he 
may be won, he judges it no breaking of that Law, 
though the Believer be permitted to forbear Divorce, 
and can abide, without the peril of seducement, to 
offer the charity of a salvation to Wife or Husband, 
which is the fulfilling, not the transgressing of that 
Law; and well worth the undertaking with much 
hazard and patience.  For what knowest thou 
whether thou shalt save thy Wife, that is, till all 
means convenient and possible with discretion and 
probability, as human things are, have been us'd.  
For Christ himself sends not our hope on pilgrimage 
to the World's end; but sets it bounds, beyond which 
we need not wait on a Brother, much less on an 
Infidel.  If after such a time we may count a 
professing Christian no better than a Heathen, after 
less time perhaps we may cease to hope of a Heathen, 
that he will turn Christian.  Otherwise, to bind us 
harder than the Law, and tell us we are not under 
Bondage, is meer mockery.  If till the unbeliever 
please to part, we may not stir from the house of our 
bondage, then certain this our liberty is not 
grounded in the purchase of Christ, but in the 
pleasure of a Miscreant.  What knows the loyal 
Husband, whether he may not save the Adultress? 
he is not therfore bound to receive her.  What knows 
the Wife, but she may reclaim her Husband who hath 
deserted her?  Yet the reformed Churches do not 
enjoin her to wait longer than after the contempt of 
an Ecclesiastical Summons.  Beza himself here 
befriends us with a remarkable Speech, What could 
be firmly constituted in human matters, if under 
pretence of expecting grace from above, it should be 
never lawful for us to seek our right?  And yet in 
other cases not less reasonable to obtain a most just 
and needful remedy by Divorce, he turns the 
innocent party to a task of prayers beyond the 
multitude of Beads and Rosaries, to beg the gift of 
Chastity in recompence of an injurious Marriage.  But 
the Apostle is evident enough, we are not under 
bondage, trusting that he writes to those who are not 
ignorant what Bondage is, to let supercilious 
determiners cheat them of their freedom.  God hath 
call'd us to peace, and so doubtless hath left in our 
hands how to obtain it seasonably; if it be not our 
own choice to sit ever like novices wretchedly 
servile.
	Thus much the Apostle in this question between 
Christian and Pagan, to us now of little use; yet 
supposing it written for our instruction, as it may be 
rightly apply'd, I doubt not but that the difference 
between a true believer and a heretic, or any one 
truly religious either deserted or seeking Divorce 
from any one grosly erroneous or prophane, may be 
referr'd hither.  For St. Paul leaves us here the 
solution not of this case only, which little concerns 
us, but of such like cases, which may occur to us.  For 
where the reasons directly square, who can forbid 
why the verdict should not be the same?  But this 
the common Writers allow us not.  And yet from this 
Text, which in plain words gives liberty to none, 
unless deserted by an Infidel, they collect the same 
freedom, though the desertion be not for Religion, 
which, as I conceive, they need not do; but may, 
without straining, reduce it to the cause of 
Fornication.  For first, they confess that desertion is 
seldom without a just suspicion of Adultery: next, it 
is a breach of Marriage in the same kind, and in some 
sort worse: for Adultery, though it give to another, 
yet it bereaves not all; but the deserter wholly 
denies all right, and makes one flesh twain, which is 
counted the absolutest breach of Matrimony, and 
causes the other, as much as in him lies, to commit 
sin, by being so left.  Nevertheless, those reasons 
which they bring of establishing by this place the like 
liberty from any desertion, are fair and solid: and if 
the thing be lawful, and can be prov'd so, more ways 
than one, so much the safer.  Their arguments I shall 
here recite, and that they may not come idle, shall 
use them to make good the like freedom to Divorce 
for other causes; and that we are not more under 
Bondage to any heinous default against the main 
ends of Matrimony, than to a Desertion: First they 
alledge that to 1 Tim. 5. 8.  If any provide not for 
those of his own house, he hath deny'd the faith, and 
is worse than an Infidel.  But a deserter, say they, 
can have  no care of them who are most his own; 
therfore the deserted party is not less to be righted 
against such a one, than against an Infidel.  With the 
same evidence I argue, that Man or Wife who hates in 
Wedloc, is pereptually undociable, unpeaceful, or 
unduteous, either not being able, or not willing to 
perform what the main ends of Marriage demand in 
help and solace, cannot be said to care for who should 
be dearest in the house; therfore is worse than an 
Infidel in both regards, either in undertaking a duty 
which he cannot perform, to the undeserved and 
unspeakable injury of the other party so defrauded 
and betray'd, or not performing what he hath 
undertaken, whenas he may or might have, to the 
perjury of himself, more irreligious than 
heathenism.  The blameless person therfore hath as 
good a plea to sue out his delivery from this bondage, 
as from the desertion of an Infidel.  Since most 
Writers cannot but grant that desertion is not only a 
local absence, but an intolerable society; or if they 
grant it not, the reasons of St. Paul grant it, with as 
much leave as they grant to enlarge a particular 
freedom from paganism, into a general freedom from 
any desertion.  Secondly, they reason from the 
likeness of either fact, the same loss redounds to the 
deserted by a Christian, as by an Infidel,the same 
peril of temptation.  And I in like manner affirm, that 
if honest and free persons may be allow'd to know 
what is most to their own loss, the same loss and 
discontent, but worse disquiet, with continual misery 
and temptation, resides in the company, or better 
call'd the persecution of an unfit, or an unpeaceable 
Consort, than by his desertion.  For then the 
deserted may enjoy himself at least.  And he who 
deserts is more favourable to the party whom his 
presence afflicts, than that importunate thing which 
is and will be ever conversant before the eyes, a 
loyal and individual vexation.  As for those who still 
rudely urge it no loss to Marriage, no Desertion, so 
long as the Flesh is present, and offers a Benevolence 
that hates, or is justly hated; I am not of that vulgar 
and low persuasion, to think such forc'd 
embracements as these worth the honour, or the 
humanity of Marriage, but far beneath the soul of a 
rational and free-born Man.  Thirdly, they say, It is 
not the Infidelity of the deserter, but the desertion 
of the Infidel, from which the Apostle gives this 
freedom; and I join, that the Apostle could as little 
require our subjection to an unfit and injurious 
Bondage present, as to an Infidel absent.  To free us 
from that which is an evil by being distant, and not 
from that which is an inmate, and in the bosom evil, 
argues an improvident and careless Deliverer.  And 
thus all occasions, which way soever they turn, are 
not unofficious to administer something which may 
conduce to explain, or to defend the assertion of this 
book touching Divorce.  I complain of nothing, but 
that it is indeed too copious to be the matter of a 
dispute, or a defence, rather to be yielded, as in the 
best Ages, a thing of common Reason, not of 
Controversy.  What have I left to say?  I fear to be 
more elaborate in such perspicuity as this; lest I 
should seem not to teach, but to upbraid the dulness 
of an Age; not to commune with reason in men, but 
to deplore the loss of reason from among men: this 
only, and not the want of more to say, is the limit of 
my discourse.

Who among the Fathers have interpreted the 
words of Christ concerning Divorce, as is here 
interpreted; and what the Civil Law of Christian 
Emperors in the primitive Church determin'd.

	Although testimony be in Logic an argument 
rightly call'd inartificial, and doth not solidly fetch 
the truth by multiplicity of Authors, nor argue a 
thing false by the few that hold so; yet seeing most 
men from their youth so accustom, as not to scan 
reason, nor clearly to apprehend it, but to trust for 
that the names and numbers of such, as have got, 
and many times undeservedly, the reputation among 
them to know much; and because there is a vulgar 
also of teachers, who are as blindly by whom they 
fancy led, as they lead the people, it will not be amiss 
for them who had rather list themselves under this 
weaker sort, and follow authorities, to take notice 
that this opinion which I bring, hath been favour'd, 
and by some of those affirm'd, who in their time 
were able to carry what they taught, had they urg'd 
it, through all Christendom; or to have left it such a 
credit with all good men, as they who could not 
boldly use the opinion, would have fear'd to censure 
it.  But since by his appointment on whom the times 
and seasons wait, every point of doctrine is not fatal 
to be throughly sifted out in every age, it will be 
enough for me to find, that the thoughts of wisest 
heads heretofore, and hearts no less reverenc'd for 
devotion have tended this way, and contributed 
their lot in some good measure towards this which 
hath been here attain'd.  Others of them, and modern 
especially, have been as full in the assertion, though 
not so full in the reason; so that either in this 
regard, or in the former, I shall be manifest in a 
middle fortune to meet the praise or dispraise of 
being something first.
	But I defer not what I undertood to shew, that in 
the Church both primitive and reformed, the words 
of Christ have been understood to grant Divorce for 
other causes than Adultery; and that the word 
fornication in Marriage hath a larger sense than that 
commonly suppos'd.
	Justin Martyr in his first Apology, written within 
50 years after St. John died, relates a story which 
Eusebius transcribes, that a certain Matron of Rome, 
the Wife of a vicious Husband, her self also formerly 
vicious, but converted to the Faith, and persuading 
the same to her Husband, at least the amendment of 
his wicked life, upon his not yielding to her daily 
entreaties and persuasions in this behalf, procur'd 
by Law to be divorc'd from him.  This was neither for 
Adultery, nor Desertion, but as the relation says, 
esteeming it an ungodly thing to be the consort of 
bed with him, who against the Law of Nature and of 
Right sought out voluptuous ways.  Suppose he 
endeavour'd some unnatural abuse, as the Greek 
admits that meaning, it cannot yet be call'd 
Adultery; it therfore could be thought worthy of 
Divorce no otherwise than as equivalent, or worse; 
and other vices will appear in other respects as much 
divorcive.  Next, 'tis said her friends advis'd her to 
stay a while; and what reason gave they? not 
because they held unlawful what she purpos'd, but 
because they thought she might longer yet hope his 
repentance.  She obey'd, till the man going to 
Alexandria, and from thence reported to grow still 
more impenitent, not for any Adultery or Desertion, 
wherof neither can be gather'd, but saith the 
Martyr, and speaks it like one approving, lest she 
should be partaker of his unrighteous and ungodly 
deeds, remaining in Wedloc, the communion of bed 
and board with such a person, she left him by a 
lawful Divorce.  This cannot but give us the judgment 
of the Church in those pure and next to Apostolic 
times.  For how else could the Woman have been 
permitted, or here not reprehended? and if a Wife 
might then do this without reproof, a Husband 
certainly might no less, if not more.
	Tertullian in the same Age, writing his 4th Book 
against Marcion, witnesses that Christ by his answer 
to the Pharisees, protected the constitution of Moses 
as his own, and directed the institution of the 
Creator, for I alter not his Carthaginian phrase; he 
excus'd rather than destroy'd the constitution of 
Moses; I say, he forbid conditionally, if any one 
therfore put away, that he may marry another: so 
that if he prohibited conditionally, then not wholly; 
and what he forbad not wholly, he permitted 
otherwise, where the cause ceases for which he 
prohibited: that is, when a man makes it not the 
cause of his putting away, meerly that he may marry 
again.  Christ teaches not contrary to Moses, the 
justice of Divorce hath Christ the asserter: he would 
not have Marriage separate, nor kept with ignominy, 
permitting then a Divorce; and guesses that this 
vehemence of our Saviour's sentence was chiefly 
bent against Herod, as was cited before.  Which leaves 
it evident howTertullian interpreted this prohibition 
of our Saviour: for wheras the Text is,Whosoever 
putteth away, and marrieth another; wherfore 
shouldTertullian explain it,Whosoever putteth away, 
that he may marry another, but to signify this 
opinion, that our Saviour did not forbid Divorce from 
an unworthy Yoke, but forbid the Malice or the Lust 
of a needless Change, and chiefly those plotted 
Divorces than in use?
	Origen in the next century testifies to have 
known certain who had the government of Churches 
in his time, who permitted some to marry, while yet 
their former husbands liv'd, and excuses the deed, as 
done not without cause, though without Scripture, 
which confirms that cause not to be Adultery; for 
how then was it against Scripture that they married 
again?  And a little beneath, for I cite his 7th homily 
on Matthew, saith he, To endure faults worse than 
adultery and fornication, seems a thing 
unreasonable; and disputes therfore that Christ did 
not speak by way of precept, but as it were 
expounding.  By which, and the like speeches, Origen 
declares his mind, far from thinking that our Saviour 
confin'd all the causes of Divorce to actual adultery.
	Lactantius of the age that succeeded, speaking of 
this matter in the 6th of his Institutions, hath these 
words: But lest any think he may circumscribe 
divine precepts, let this be added, that all 
misinterpreting, and occasion of fraud or death may 
be remov'd, he commits adultery who marries the 
divorc'd wife; and, besides the crime of adultery, 
divorces a wife that he may marry another.  To 
divorce and marry another, and to divorce that he 
may marry another, are two different things; and 
imply that Lanctantius thought not this place the 
forbidding of all necessary Divorce, but such only as 
proceeded from the wanton desire of a future choice, 
not from the burden of a present affliction.
	About this time the Council of Eliberis in Spain 
decreed the husband excommunicate, if he kept his 
wife being an adulteress; but if he left her, he might 
after ten years be receiv'd into communion, if he 
retain'd her any while in his house after the 
adultery known.  The Council of Neoc¾sarea in the 
year 314, decreed, That if the wife of any Laic were 
convicted of adultery, that man could not be 
admitted into the Ministry: if after ordination it were 
committed, he was to divorce her; if not, he could not 
hold his Ministry.  The Council of Nantes condemn'd 
in seven years penance the husband that would 
reconcile with an adulteress.  But how proves this 
that other causes may divorce?  It proves thus: 
There can be but two causes why these Councils 
enjoin'd so strictly the divorcing of an adultress, 
either as an offender against God, or against the 
husband; in the latter respect they could not impose 
on him to divorce; for every man is the master of his 
own forgiveness; who shall hinder him to pardon the 
injuries done against himself?  It follows therfore, 
that the divorce of an adultress was commanded by 
these three Councils, as it was a sin against God; and 
by all consequence they could not but believe that 
other sins as heinous might with equal justice be the 
ground of a divorce.
	Basil in his 73d Rule, as Chamier numbers it, thus 
determines; That divorce ought not to be, unless for 
adultery, or the hindrance to a godly life.  What doth 
this but proclaim aloud more causes of divorce than 
adultery, if by other sins besides this, in wife or 
husband, the godliness of the better person may be 
certainly hinder'd and endanger'd?
	Epiphanius no less ancient, writing against 
Heretics, and therfore should himself be orthodoxal 
above others, acquaints us in his second book, Tom. 
1. not that his private persuasion was, but that the 
whole Church in his time generally thought other 
causes of divorce lawful besides adultery, as 
comprehended under that name: If, saith he, a 
divorce happen for any cause, either fornication, or 
adultery, or any heinous fault, the word of God 
blames not either the man or wife marrying again, 
nor cuts them off from the congregation, or from life, 
but bears with the infirmity; not that he may keep 
both wives, but that leaving the former he may be 
lawfully join'd to the latter: the holy Word, and the 
holy Church of God commiserates this man, 
especially if he be otherwise of good conversation, 
and live according to God's Law.  This place is clearer 
than exposition, and needs no comment.
	Ambrose on the 16th of Luke, teaches that all 
wedloc is not God's joining: and to the 19th of Prov.  
That a wife is prepar'd of the Lord, as the old Latin 
translates it, he answers, that the Septuagint 
renders it, a wife is fitted by the Lord, and temper'd 
to a kind of harmony; and where that harmony is, 
there God joins; where it is not, there dissension 
reigns, which is not from God, for God is Love.  This 
he brings to prove the marrying of Christian with 
Gentile to be no marriage, and consequently divorc'd 
without sin: but he who sees not this Argument now 
plainly it serves to divorce any untunable, or 
unatonable matrimony, sees little.  On the 1st  to the 
Cor. 7. he grants a woman may leave her husband 
not for only Fornication, but for Apostacy, and 
inverting nature, though not marry again; but the 
man may: here are causes of divorce assign'd other 
than adultery.  And going on, he affirms, that the 
cause of God is greater than the cause of matrimony; 
that the reverence of wedloc is not due to him who 
hates the author therof; that no matrimony is firm 
without devotion to God; that dishonour done to God 
acquits the other being deserted from the bond of 
matrimony; that the faith of marriage is not to be 
kept with such.  If these contorted sentences be 
aught worth, it is not the desertion that breaks what 
is broken, but the impiety; and who then may not for 
that cause better divorce, than tarry to be deserted? 
or these grave sayings of St. Ambrose are but 
knacks.
	Jerom  on the 19th of Matthew  explains, that for 
the cause of fornication, or the suspicion therof, a 
man may freely divorce.  What can breed that 
suspicion, but sundry faults leading that way? by 
Jerom's consent therfore Divorce is free not only for 
actual adultery, but for any cause that may incline a 
wise man to the just suspicion therof.
	Austin also must be remeber'd among those who 
hold that this instance of fornication gives equal 
inference to other faults equally hateful, for which to 
divorce: and therfore in his Books to Pollentius he 
disputes that Infidelity, as being a greater sin than 
Adultery, ought so much the rather cause a divorce.  
And on the Sermon in the Mount, under the name of 
fornication will have idolatry, or any harmful 
superstition contain'd, which are not thught to 
disturb Matrimony so directly as some other 
obstinacies and disaffections, more against the daily 
duties of that covenant, and in the Eastern tongues 
not unfrequently call'd fornication, as hath been 
shewn.  Hence is understood, saith he, that not only 
for bodily fornication, but for that which draws the 
mind from God's law, and foully corrupts it, a man 
may without fault put away his wife, and a wife her 
husband, because the Lord excepts the cause of 
fornication, which fornication we are constrain'd to 
interpret in a general sense.  And in the first book of 
his Retractations, chap 16. he retracts not this his 
opinion, but commends it to serious consideration; 
and explains that he counted not there all sin to be 
fornication, but the more detestable sort of sins.  The 
cause of Fornication therfore is not in this discourse 
newly interpreted to signify other faults infringing 
the duties of Wedloc, besides Adultery.
	Lastly, the Council of Agatha in the year 506, 
Can. 25. decreed, that if Laymen who divorc'd 
without some great fault,or giving no probable cause, 
therfore divorc'd, that they might marry some 
unlawful person, or some other man's, if before the 
provincial Bishops were made acquainted, or 
judgment past, they presum'd this, Excommunication 
was the penalty.  Whence it follows, that if the cause 
of Divorce were some great offence, or that they gave 
probable causes for what they did, and did not 
therfore divorce that they might presume with some 
unlawful person, or what was another man's, the 
censure of Church in those days did not touch them.
	Thus having alledg'd enough to shew, after what 
manner the primitive Church for above 500 years 
understood our Saviour's words touching Divorce, I 
shall now, with a labour less disperst, and sooner 
dispatch'd, bring under view what the civil Law of 
those times constituted about this matter: I say the 
civil Law, which is the honour of every true Civilian 
to stand for, rather than to count that for Law, which 
the Pontificial Canon had enthrall'd them to, and 
instead of interpreting a generous and elegant Law, 
made them the drudges of a blockish Rubric.
	Theodosius and Valentinian, pious Emperors both, 
ordain'd that as by consent lawful Marriages were 
made, so by consent, but not without the bill of 
Divorce, they might be dissolv'd; and to dissolve was 
the more difficult, only in favour of the children.  We 
see the Wisdom and Piety of that age, one of the 
purest and learnedest since Christ, conceiv'd no 
hindrance in the words of our Saviour, but that a 
Divorce mutually consented, might be suffer'd by the 
Law, especially if there were no children, or if there 
were, careful provision was made.  And further saith 
that Law (supposing there wanted the consent of 
either,) We design the causes of Divorce by this most 
wholesome Law; for as we forbid the dissolving of 
Marriage without just cause, so we desire that a 
husband or a wife distrest by some adverse 
necessity, should be freed, though by an unhappy, 
yet a necessary relief.  What dram of Wisdom or 
Religion (for Charity is truest Religion) could there 
be in that knowing age, which is not virtually sum'd 
up in this most just Law?  As for those other 
Christian Emperors, from Constantine the first of 
them, finding the Roman Law in this point so 
answerable to the Mosaic, it might be the likeliest 
cause why they alter'd nothing to restraint; but if 
aught, rather to liberty, for the help and 
consideration of the weaker sex, according as the 
Gospel seems to make the wife more equal to her 
husband in these conjugal respects than the law of 
Moses doth.  Therfore if a man were absent from his 
wife four years, and in that space not heard of, 
though gone to war in the service of the Empire, she 
might divorce, and marry another by the edict of 
Constantine to Dalmatius, Cl. l. 5. tit. 17.   And this 
was an age of the Church, both ancient and cry'd up 
still for the most flourishing in knowledge and pious 
government since the Apostles.  But to return to this 
Law of Theodosius, with this observation by the way, 
that still as the Church corrupted, as the Clergy 
grew more ignorant, and yet more usurping on the 
Magistrate, who also now declin'd, so still Divorce 
grew more restrain'd; though certainly if better 
times permitted the thing that worse times 
restrain'd, it would not weakly argue that the 
permission was better, and the restraint worse.  This 
law therfore of Theodosius, wiser in this than the 
most of his successors, though not wiser than God 
and Moses, reduc'd the causes of Divorce to a certain 
number, which by the judicial law of God, and all 
recorded humanity, were left before to the breast of 
each husband, provided that the dismiss was not 
without reasonable conditions to the Wife.  But this 
was a restraint not yet come to extremes.  For 
besides Adultery, and that not only actual, but 
suspected by many signs there set down, any fault 
equally punishable with Adultery, or equally 
infamous, might be the cause of a Divorce. Which 
informs us how the wisest of those ages understood 
that place in the Gospel, wherby, not the pilfering of 
a Benevolence was consider'd as the main and only 
breach of wedloc, as is now thought, but the breach 
of love and peace, a more holy union than that of the 
flesh; and the dignity of an honest person was 
regarded, not to be held in bondage with one whose 
ignominy was infectious.  To this purpose was 
constituted Cod. l. 5. tit. 17. and Authent. collat. 4. tit. 
1. Novell. 22. where Justinian added three causes 
more.  In the 117 Novell. most of the causes are 
allow'd, but the liberty of divorcing by consent is 
repeal'd: but by whom? by Justinian, not a wiser, not 
a more religious Emperor than either of the former, 
but noted by judicious writers for his fickle head in 
making and unmaking Laws; and how Procopius, a 
good Historian, and a Counsellor of State then living, 
decyphers him in his other actions, I willingly omit.  
Nor was the Church then in better case, but had the 
corruption of a hundred declining years swept on it, 
when the statute of Consent was call'd in; which, as I 
said, gives us every way more reason to suspect this 
restraint, more than that liberty: which therfore in 
the reign of Justin, the succeeding Emperor, was 
recall'd, Novell. 140, and establish'd with a preface 
more wise and christianly than for those times, 
declaring the necessity to restore that Theodosian 
Law, if no other means of reconcilement could be 
found.  And by whom this Law was abrogated, or how 
long after, I do not find; but that those other causes 
remain'd in force as long as the Greek Empire 
subsisted, and were assented to by that Church, is to 
be read in the Canons and Edicts compar'd by Photius 
the Patriarch, with the avertiments of Balsamon and 
Matth¾us Monachus theron.
	But long before those Days, Leo, the Son of 
Basilius Macedo, reigning about the year 886, and for 
his excellent wisdom surnam'd the Philosopher, 
constituted, that in the case of madness, the Husband 
might divorce after three years, the Wife after five.  
Constitut. Leon. 111, 112.  This declares how he 
expounded our Saviour, and deriv'd his reasons from 
the Institution, which in his Preface with great 
eloquence are set down; wherof a passage or two may 
give some proof, though better not divided from the 
rest.  There is not,  saith he, a thing more necessary 
to preserve Mankind, than the help given him from 
his own rib; both God and Nature so teaching us: 
which being so, it was requisite that the providence 
of Law, or if any other care be to the good of Man, 
should teach and ordain those things which are to 
the help and comfort of married persons, and 
confirm the end of Marriage purposed in the 
beginning, not those things which afflict and bring 
perpetual misery to them.  Then answers the 
Objection, that they are one flesh; If Matrimony had 
held so as God ordain'd it, he were wicked that would 
dissolve it.  But if we respect this in Matrimony, that 
it be contracted to the good of both, how shall he, 
who for some great evil feared, persuades not to 
marry though contracted, nor persuade to unmarry, 
if after Marriage a calamity befall?  Should we bid 
beware lest any fall into an evil, and leave him 
helpless who by human error is fallen therin?  This 
were as if we should use remedies to prevent a 
disease, but let the sick die without remedy.  The rest 
will be worth reading in the Author.
	And thus we have the judgment first of primitive 
fathers; next of the imperial Law not disallow'd by 
the universal Church in ages of her best authority; 
and lastly, of the whole Greek Church and civil State, 
incorporating their Canons and Edicts together, that 
Divorce was lawful for other causes equivalent to 
Adultery, contain'd under the word Fornication.  So 
that the exposition of our Saviour's Sentences here 
alledg'd hath all these ancient and great asserters, is 
therfore neither new nor licentious, as some would 
persuade the Commonalty; although it be nearer 
truth that nothing is more new than those teachers 
themselves, and nothing more licentious than some 
known to be, whose hypocrisy yet shames not to take 
offence at this Doctrine for Licence; whenas indeed 
they fear it would remove Licence, and leave them 
but few Companions.

That the Pope's Canon Law encroaching upon civil 
Magistracy, abolish'd all Divorce even for Adultery.  
What the reformed Divines have recover'd; and 
that the famousest of them have taught according 
to the assertion of this Book.
	But in these Western parts of the Empire, it will 
appear almost unquestionable that the cited Law of 
Theodosius and Valentinian stood in force until the 
blindest and corruptest times of Popedom displac'd it.  
For, that the Volumes of Justinian never came into 
Italy, or beyond Illyricum, is the Opinion of good 
Antiquaries.  And that only Manuscript therof found 
in Apulia, by Lotharius the Saxon, and given to the 
States of Pisa, for their aid at Sea against the 
Normans of Sicily, was receiv'd as a rarity not to be 
match'd.  And altho' the Goths, and after them the 
Lombards and Franks, who over-run the most of 
Europe, except this Island, (unless we make our 
Saxons and Normans a limb of them) brought in their 
own customs, yet that they follow'd the Roman Laws 
in their Contracts and Marriages, Agathias the 
Historian is alledg'd.  And other testimonies relate 
that Alaricus and Theodoric their Kings, writ their 
Statutes out of this Theodosian Code, which hath the 
recited Law of Divorce.  Nevertheless, while the 
Monarchs of Christendom were yet barbarous, and 
but half-christian, the Popes took this advantage of 
their weak Superstition, to raise a corpulent Law out 
of the Canons and Decretals of audacious Priests; and 
presum'd also to set this in the front; That the 
Constitutions of Princes are not above the 
Constitutions of Clergy, but beneath them.  Using 
this very instance of Divorce as the first prop of 
their tyranny; by a false consequence drawn from a 
passage of Ambrose upon Luke, where he saith, tho' 
Man's law grant it, yet God's law prohibits it: whence 
Gregory the Pope, writing to Theoctista, infers that 
Ecclesiastical Courts cannot be dissolv'd by the 
Magistrate.  A fair conclusion from a double error.  
First, in saying that the Divine Law prohibited 
Divorce, for what will he make of Moses?  Next, 
supposing that it did, how will it follow, that 
whatever Christ forbids in his Evangelic Precepts, 
should be hal'd into a judicial constraint against the 
pattern of a Divine Law?  Certainly the Gospel came 
not to enact such compulsions.  In the mean while we 
may note here, that the restraint of Divorce was one 
of the first fair seeming pleas which the Pope had, to 
step into secular Authority, and with his 
Antichristian rigour to abolish the permissive Law of 
Christian Princes conforming to a sacred Lawgiver.  
Which if we consider, this papal and unjust 
restriction of Divorce need not be so dear to us, since 
the plausible restraining of that was in a manner the 
first loosening of Antichrist, and as it were, the 
substance of his eldest horn.  Nor do we less 
remarkably owe the first means of his fall here in 
England, to the contemning of that restraint by 
Henry the 8th, whose Divorce he opposed.  Yet was 
not that rigour executed anciently in spiritual 
Courts, until Alexander the third, who trod upon the 
neck of Frederic Barbarossa the Emperor, and 
summon'd our Henry II. into Normandy, about the 
death of Becket.  He it was, that the worthy Author 
may be known, who first actually repealed the 
imperial Law of Divorce, and decreed this tyrannous 
Decree, that Matrimony for no cause should be 
dissolv'd, tho' for many causes it might separate; as 
may be seen Decret. Gregor. l. 4. tit. 19. and in other 
places of the canonical Tomes.  The main good of 
which invention, wherin it consists, who can tell? but 
that it hath one virtue incomparable, to fill all 
Christendom with Whoredoms and Adulteries, 
beyond the art of Balaams, or of Devils.  Yet neither 
can these, though so perverse, but acknowledge that 
the words of Christ, under the name of Fornication, 
allow putting away for other causes than Adultery, 
both from Bed and Board, but not from the Bond; 
their only reason is, because Marriage they believe 
to be a Sacrament.  But our Divines, who would seem 
long since to have renounc'd that reason, have so 
forgot themselves, as yet to hold the absurdity, 
which but for that reason, unless there be some 
mystery of Satan in it, perhaps the Papist would not 
hold.  'Tis true, we grant Divorce for actual and 
prov'd Adultery, and not for less than many tedious 
and unrepairable Years of Desertion, wherin a Man 
shall lose all his hope of posterity, which great and 
holy Men have bewail'd, ere he can be righted; and 
then perhaps on the confines of his old age, when all 
is not worth the while.  But grant this were 
seasonably done; what are these two cases to many 
other, which afflict the state of Marriage as bad, and 
yet find no redress? What hath the soul of Man 
deserv'd, if it be in the way of Salvation, that it 
should be mortgaged thus, and may not redeem it 
self according to conscience, out of the hands of such 
ignorant and slothful teachers as these, who are 
neither able nor mindful to give due tendance to that 
precious cure which they rashly undertake; nor 
have in them the noble goodness to consider these 
distresses and accidents of Man's life, but are bent 
rather to fill their mouths with Tithe and Oblation?  
Yet if they can learn to follow, as well as they can 
seek to be follow'd, I shall direct them to a fair 
number of renowned Men, worthy to be their 
leaders, who will commend to them a doctrine in this 
point wiser than their own; and if they be not 
impatient, it will be the same doctrine which this 
Treatise hath defended.
	Wicklef, that Englishman honour'd of God to be 
the first Preacher of a general Reformation to all 
Europe, was not in this thing better taught of God, 
than to teach among his chiefest recoveries of Truth, 
that Divorce is lawful to the Christian for many other 
causes equal to Adultery.  This Book indeed, through 
the poverty of our Libraries, I am forc'd to cite from 
Arnis¾us of Halberstad on the Rite of Marriage, who 
cites it from Corasius of Toulouse, c. 4. Cent  Sct. and 
he from Wicklef, l. 4. Dial. c. 21.  So much the sorrier, 
for that I never look'd into an Author cited by his 
Adversary upon this occasion, but found him more 
conducible to the question than his quotation 
render'd him.
	Next, Luther, how great a servant of God, in his 
book of conjugal Life quoted by Gerard out of the 
Dutch, allows Divorce for the obstinate denial of 
conjugal duty; and that a Man may send away a 
proud Vasthi, and marry an Esther in her stead.  It 
seems, if this example shall not be impertinent, that 
Luther meant not only the refusal of benevolence, 
but a stubborn denial of any main conjugal duty; or 
if he did not, it will be evinc'd from what he allows.  
For out of question, with Men that are not barbarous, 
love and peace, and fitness, will be yielded as 
essential to marriage, as corporal benevolence.  
Though I give my Body to be burnt, saith St. Paul, 
and have not charity, it profits me nothing.  So 
though the body prostitute itself to whom the mind 
affords no other love or peace, but constant malice 
and vexation, can this bodily benevolence deserve to 
be call'd a Marriage between Christians and rational 
Creatures?
	Melancton, the third great luminary of 
Reformation, in his book concerning Marriage, grants 
Divorce for cruel Usage, and danger of life, urging 
the authority of that Theodosian Law, which he 
esteems written with the grave deliberation of godly 
Men; and that they who reject this law, and think it 
disagreeing from the Gospel, understand not the 
difference of Law and Gospel; that the Magistrate 
ought not only to defend life, but to succour the weak 
conscience; lest broke with grief and indignation, it 
reliquish Prayer, and turn to some unlawful thing.  
What if this heavy plight of despair arise from other 
discontents in Wedloc, which may go to the soul of a 
good Man more than the danger of his Life, or cruel 
using? which a Man cannot be liable to, suppose it be 
ingrateful usage, suppose it be perpetual spight, and 
disobedience, suppose a hatred; shall not the 
Magistrate free him from this disquiet which 
interrupts his prayers, and disturbs the course of 
his service to God and his Country all as much, and 
brings him such a misery, as that he more desires to 
leave his life, than fears to lose it?  shall not this 
equally concern the office of civil protection and 
much more the charity of a true Church to remedy?
	Erasmus, who for Learning was the wonder of his 
Age, both in his Notes on Matthew, and on the first to 
the Corinthians, in a large and eloquent Discourse, 
and in his answer to Phimostomus, a Papist, 
maintains (and no Protestant then living 
contradicted him) that the words of Christ 
comprehend many other causes of Divorce under the 
name of Fornication.
	Bucer, (whom our famous Dr. Rainolds was wont 
to prefer before Calvin) in his Comment on Matthew, 
and in his second book of the Kingdom of Christ, 
treats of Divorce at large, to the same effect as is 
written in the Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce 
lately publish'd, and the Translation is exant: whom, 
lest I should be thought to have wrested to mine own 
purpose, take something more out of his 49th 
Chapter, which I then for brevity omitted.  It will be 
the duty of pious Princes, and all who govern Church 
or Commonwealth, if any, whether Husband or Wife, 
shall affirm their want of such who either will, or can 
tolerably perform the necessary duties of married 
life, to grant that they may seek them such, and 
marry them; if they make it appear that such they 
have not.  This Book he wrote here in England, where 
he liv'd the greatest admir'd Man; and this he 
dedicated to Edward the sixth.
	Fagius, rank'd among the famous Divines of 
Germany, whom Frederic, at that time the Palatine, 
sent for to be the Reformer of his Dominion, and 
whom afterwards England  sought to, and obtain'd of 
him to come and teach her, differs not in this opinion 
from Bucer, as his Notes on the Chaldee Paraphrast 
well testify.
	The whole Church of Strasburgh in her most 
flourishing time,when Zellius, Hedio, Capito, and 
other great Divines taught there, and those two 
renowned Magistrates, Farrerus and Sturmius 
govern'd that Commonwealth and Academy to the 
admiration of all Germany, hath thus in the 21st 
Article: We teach, that if according to the word of 
God, yea, or against it, Divorces happen, to do 
according to God's word, Deut. xxiv. 1.  Mat. xix.  1 
Cor. vii. and the observations of the primitive 
Church, and the Christian constitution of pious 
C¾sars.
	Peter Martyr seems in word our easy adversary, 
but is in deed for us: toward which, though it be 
something when he saith of this opinion, that it is not 
wicked, and can hardly be refuted, this which follows 
is much more; I speak not here, saith he, of natural 
Impediments, which may so happen, that the 
Matrimony can no longer hold: but adding, that he 
often wonder'd, how the ancient and most Christian 
Emperors establish'd those Laws of Divorce, and 
neither Ambrose, who had such influence upon the 
Laws of Theodosius, nor any of those holy Fathers 
found faults, nor any of the Churches, why the 
Magistrates of this day should be so loth to constitute 
the same.  Perhaps they fear an inundation of 
Divorces, which is not likely; whenas we read not 
either among the Hebrews, Greeks, or Romans, that 
they were much frequent where they were most 
permitted.  If they judge Christian Men, worse than 
Jews or Pagans, they both injure that name, and by 
this reason will be constrain'd to grant Divorces the 
rather; because it was permitted as a remedy of evil, 
for who would remove the medicine, while the 
disease is yet so rife?  This being read both in his 
common places, and on the first to the Corinthians, 
with what we shall relate more of him yet ere the 
end, sets him absolutely on this side.  Not to insist 
that in both these, and other places of his 
commentaries, he grants Divorce not only for 
Desertion, but for the seducement and scandalous 
demeanor of a heretical Consort.
	Musculus, a Divine of no obscure fame, 
distinguishes between the religious and the civil 
determination of Divorce; and leaving the civil wholly 
to the Lawyers, pronounces a conscionable Divorce 
for impotence not only natural, but accidental, if it 
be durable.  His equity, it seems, can enlarge the 
words of Christ, to one Cause more than Adultery; 
why may not the reason of another Man as wise, 
enlarge them to another Cause?
	Gualter of Zuric, a well-known judicious 
Commentator, in his Homilies on Matthew, allows 
Divorce for Leprosy, or any other cause which 
renders unfit for wedloc, and calls this rather a 
Nullity of Marriage than a Divorce.  And who, that is 
not himself a mere body, can restrain all the 
unfitness of Marriage, only to a corporeal defect?
	Hemingius, an Author highly esteem'd, and his 
works printed at Geneva, writing of Divorce, 
confesses that learned Men vary in this Question, 
some granting three Causes therof, some five, others 
many more; he himself gives us six, Adultery, 
Desertion, Inability, Error, Evil-usage, and Impiety, 
using argument that Christ under one special 
contains the whole kind, and under the name and 
example of Fornication, he includes other causes 
equipollent.  This discourse he wrote at the request 
of many who had the judging of these causes in 
Denmark, and Norway, who by all likelihood follow'd 
his advice.
	Hunnius, a Doctor of Wittenberg, well known in 
Divinity and other Arts, on the 19th of Matth. 
affirms, That the exception of Fornication express'd 
by our Saviour, excludes not other causes equalling 
Adultery, or destructive to the substantials of 
Matrimony; but was oppos'd to the custom of the 
Jews, who made Divorce for every light cause.
	Felix Bidenbachius, an eminent Divine in the 
Dutchy of Wirtemberg, affirms, That the obstinate 
refusal of conjugal due, is a lawful cause of Divorce; 
and gives an instance, that the Consistory of that 
State so judg'd. 
	Gerard cites Harbardus, an Author not unknown, 
and Arnis¾us cites Wigandus, both yielding Divorce 
in case of cruel usage; and another Author, who 
testifies to have seen, in a Dukedom of Germany, 
Marriages disjoined for some implacable enmities 
arising.
	Beza, one of the strictest against Divorce, denies it 
not for danger of life from a Heretic, or importunate 
solicitation to do aught against Religion: and counts it 
all one whether the Heretic desert, or would stay 
upon intolerable conditions.  But this decision well 
examin'd, will be found of no solidity.  For Beza would 
be ask'd why, if God so strictly exact our stay in any 
kind of Wedlock, we had not better stay and hazard a 
murdering for Religion at the hand of a Wife or 
Husband, as he and others enjoin us to stay and 
venture it for all other causes but that? and why a 
Man's Life is not as well and warrantably sav'd by 
divorcing from an orthodox Murderer, as a heretical?  
Again, if desertion be confess'd by him to consist not 
only in the forsaking, but in the unsufferable 
conditions of staying, a Man may as well deduce the 
lawfulness of divorcing from any deserter, by finding 
it lawful to divorce from a deserting Infidel.  For this 
is plain, if St. Paul's permission to divorce an Infidel 
deserter, infer it lawful for any malicious desertion, 
then doth Beza's definition of a deserter, transfer 
itself with like facility from the cause of Religion, to 
the cause of Malice, and proves it as good to divorce 
from him who intolerably stays, as from him who 
purposely departs; and leaves it as lawful to depart 
from him who urgently requires a wicked thing, 
though professing the same Religion, as from him 
who urges a heathenish or superstitious compliance 
in a different faith.  For if there be such necessity of 
our abiding, we ought rather to abide the utmost for 
Religion, than for any other cause; seeing both the 
cause of our stay is pretended our Religion to 
Marriage, and the cause of our suffering is supposed 
our constant Marriage to Religion.  Beza therfore, by 
his own definition of a deserter, justifies a divorce 
from any wicked or intolerable conditions rather in 
the same Religion than in a different.
	Aretius, a famous Divine of Bern, approves many 
causes of divorce in his Problems, and adds, that the 
law and consistories of Switzerland approve them 
also.  As first, Adultery, and that not actual only, but 
intentional; alledging Matthew 5.  Whosoever looketh 
to lust, hath committed Adultery already in his 
heart.  Wherby, saith he, our Saviour shews that the 
breach of Matrimony may be not only by outward 
act, but by the heart and desire; when that hath 
once possess'd, it renders the conversation 
intolerable, and commonly the fact follows.  Other 
causes to the number of nine or ten, consenting in 
most with the imperial Laws, may be read in the 
Author himself, who avers them to be grave and 
weighty.  All these are Men of name in Divinity; and 
to these, if need were, might be added more.  Nor 
have the Civilians bin all so blinded by the Canon, as 
not to avouch the justice of those old permissions 
touching Divorce.
	Alciat of Milan, a Man of extraordinary Wisdom 
and Learning, in the sixth Book of his Parerga, 
defends those imperial Laws, not repugnant to the 
Gospel, as the Church then interpreted.  For, saith 
he, the ancients understood him separate by Man, 
whom passions and corrupt affections divorc'd, not if 
the provincial Bishops first heard the matter, and 
judg'd, as the Council of  Agatha declares: and on 
some part of the Code he names Isidorus Hispalensis, 
the first computer of Canons, to be in the same mind.  
And in the former place gives his opinion that 
Divorce might be more lawfully permitted than 
Usury.
	Corasius, recorded by Helvicus, among the famous 
Lawyers, hath bin already cited of the same 
judgment.
	Wesembechius, a much-nam'd Civilian, in his 
Comment on this Law defends it, and affirms, That 
our Saviour excluded not other faults equal to 
Adultery; and that the word Fornication signifies 
larger among the Hebrews than with us, 
comprehending every fault which alienates from him 
to whom obedience is due, and that the primitive 
Church interpreted so.
	Grotius, yet living, and of prime note among 
learned Men, retires plainly from the Canon to the 
ancient Civility, yea, to the Mosaic Law, as being most 
just and undeceivable.  On the 5th of Matth. he saith, 
That Christ made no civil Laws, but taught us how to 
use Law: That the Law sent not a husband to the 
Judge about this matter of Divorce, but left him to his 
own conscience; that Christ therfore cannot be 
thought to send him; that Adultery may be judg'd by 
a vehement suspicion; that the exception of Adultery 
seems an example of other like offences; proves it 
from the manner of speech, the maxims of Law, the 
reason of Charity, and common Equity.
	These Authorities, without long search, I had to 
produce, all excellent Men, some of them such as 
many ages had brought forth none greater: almost 
the meanest of them might deserve to obtain credit 
in a singularity; what might not then all of them 
joined in an opinion so consonant to reason?  For 
although some speak of this cause, others of that, 
why Divorce may be, yet all agreeing in the 
necessary enlargement of that textual straitness, 
leave the matter to equity, not to literal bondage; 
and so the Opinion closes.  Nor could I have wanted 
more testimonies, had the cause needed a more 
solicitous enquiry.  But herein the satisfaction of 
others hath bin studies, not the gaining of more 
assurance to mine own persuasion: although 
authorities contributing reason withal, be  good 
confirmation and a welcome.  But God, I solemnly 
attest him, with-held from my knowledge the 
consenting judgment of these Men so late, until they 
could not be my instructors, but only my unexpected 
witnesses to partial Men, that in this work I had not 
given the worst experiment of an industry join'd 
with integrity, and the free utterance, tho' of an 
unpopular truth.  Which yet to the people of England 
may, if God so please, prove a memorable informing; 
certainly a benefit which was intended them long 
since by Men of highest repute for Wisdom and Piety, 
Bucer and Erasmus.  Only this one authority more, 
whether in place or out of place, I am not to omit; 
which if any can think a small one, I must be patient, 
it is no smaller than the whole assembled Authority 
of England both Church and State; and in those times 
which are on record for the purest and sincerest 
that ever shone yet on the reformation of this 
Island, the time of Edward the 6th.  That worthy 
Prince having utterly abolish'd the Canon Law out of 
his Dominions, as his Father did before him, 
appointed by full vote of Parlament, a Committee of 
two and thirty chosen Men, Divines and Lawyers, of 
whom Cranmer the Archbishop, Peter Martyr, and 
Walter Haddon (not without the assistance of Sir John 
Cheeke the King's Tutor, a Man at that time counted 
the learnedest of Englishmen, and for Piety not 
inferior) were the chief, to frame a-new some 
Ecclesisastical Laws that might be instead of what was 
abrogated.  The work with great diligence was 
finish'd, and with as great approbation of that 
reforming age was receiv'd, and had bin doubtless, as 
the learned Preface therof testifies, establish'd by act 
of Parlament, had not the good King's death so soon 
enduing, arrested the further growth of Religion 
also, from that season to this.  Those Laws, thus 
founded on the memorable Wisdom and Piety of that 
religious Parlament and Synod, allow Divorce and 
second Marriage not only for Adultery or Desertion, 
but for any captial enmity or plot laid against the 
other's life, and likewise for evil and fierce usage: 
nay the 12th Chapter of that title by plain 
consequence declares, that lesser contentions, if they 
be perpetual, may obtain Divorce: which is all one 
really with the position by me held in the former 
Treatise published on this argument, herin only 
differing, that there the cause of perpetual strife was 
put for example in the unchangeable discord of some 
natures; but in these Laws intended us by the best of 
our ancestors, the effect of continual strife is 
determined no unjust plea of Divorce, whether the 
cause be natural or wilful.  Wherby the wariness and 
deliberation from which that discourse proceeded, 
will appear, and that God hath aided us to make no 
bad conclusion of this point; seeing the Opinion which 
of late hath undergone ill censures among the 
vulgar, hath now prov'd to have done no violence to 
Scripture, unless all these famous Authors alledged 
have done the like; nor hath affirmed aught more 
than what indeed the most nominated Fathers of the 
Church, both ancient and modern, are expectedly 
affirming, the Law of God's peculiar People and of 
primitive Christendom found to have practis'd, 
reformed Churches and States to have imitated, and 
especially the most pious Church-times of this 
Kingdom to have fram'd and publish'd, and but for 
sad hindrances in the sudden change of Religion, had 
enacted by the Parlament.  Henceforth let them who 
condemn the assertion of this book for new and 
licentious, be sorry; lest, while they think to be of 
the graver sort, and take on them to be teachers, 
they expose themselves rather to be pledg'd up and 
down by Men who intimately know them, to the 
discovery and contempt of their ignorance and 
presumption.
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