Secondly, It is unjust that any ordinance, ordained to the good and comfort of man, where that end is missing, without his fault, should be forced upon him to an insufferable misery and discomfort, if not commonly ruin. All ordinances are established in their end; the end of law is the virtue, is the righteousness of law: and therefore him we count an ill expounder, who urges law against the intention thereof. The general end of every ordinance, of every severest, every divinest, 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, whereof both the general and particular end is the peace and contentment of man's mind, as the institution declares. Contentment of body they grant, which, if it be defrauded, the plea of frigidity shall divorce: but here lies the 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 xiii. "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 griev ances 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 mere senseless trunk. No ordinance therefore, 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, though the terms be not expressed. If equity therefore made it, extremity may dissolve it. But marriage, they used to say, is the covenant of God. Undoubted and so is any covenant frequently called in Scripture, wherein God is called to witness: the covenant of friendship between David and Jonathan is called the covenant of the Lord, 1 Sam. xx. The covenant of Zedekiah with the king of Babel, a covenant to be doubted whether lawful or no, yet, in respect of God invoked thereto, is called "the oath, and the covenant of God," Ezek. xvii. Marriage also is called "the covenant of God," Prov. ii. 17. Why, but as before, because God is the witness thereof, Mal. ii. 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 thereof 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, though to our damage. I answer, that only holds true, where the other side performs; which failing, he is no longer bound. Again, this is true, when the keeping of faith can be of any use or benefit to the other. But in marriage, a league of love and willingness, if faith be not willingly kept, it 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 therefore brought to that pass, is on the unfaulty side without injury dissolved.

Fourthly, The law is not to neglect men under greatest sufferances, but to see covenants of greatest moment faithfulest performed. And what injury comparable to that sustained 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 reduced things to propriety, which were at first in common; how much more lawlike were it to assist nature in disappropriating that evil, which by continuing proper becomes destructive? But he might have bewared. So he might in any other covenant, wherein the law does not constrain error to so dear a forfeit. And yet in these matters wherein the wisest are apt to err, all the wariness that can be, 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 complained of, or being compelled 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 relieved 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. Which the law ought to prevent as a thing pernicious to the commonwealth; and what better prevention than this which Moses used?

The

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 mutual in the godliest and the civilest ends of that society, is the ignoblest and the lowest slavery that a human shape can be put to. This law therefore justly and piously provides against such an unmanly task of bondage as this. civil law, though it favoured the setting free of a slave, yet, if he proved ungrateful to his patron, reduced 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 freeborn man from an unpurposed and unworthy bondage to a rightful liberty, for the most unnatural fraud and ingratitude that can be committed against him. And if that civilian emperor, in his title of "Donations," permit the giver to recall his gift from him who proves unthankful towards him; yea, though he had subscribed and signed in the deed of his gift not to recall it, though for this very cause of ingratitude; with much more equity doth Moses permit here the giver to recall no petty gift, but the gift of himself, from one who most injuriously and deceitfully uses him against the main ends and conditions of his giving himself, expressed in God's institution.

Sixthly, Although there be nothing in the plain words of this law, that seems to regard the afflictions of a wife, how great 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 injured servants, by granting them their freedom in divers cases, not consider the wrongs and miseries of a wife, which is no servant? Though herein the counter sense of our divines to me, I must confess, seems admirable; who teach that God gave this as a merciful law, not for man whom he here names, and to whom by name he gives this power; but for the wife, whom he names not, and to whom by name he gives no power at all. For certainly if man be liable to injuries in marriage, as well as women, and man be the worthier person, it were a preposterous law to respect only the less worthy; her whom God made for marriage, and not him at all for whom marriage was made.

Seventhly, The law of marriage gives place to the power of parents: for we hold, that consent of parents not had may break the wedlock, though else accomplished. It gives place to masterly power; for the master might take away from a Hebrew servant the wife which he gave him, Exod. xxi. If it be answered, that the marriage of servants is no matrimony; it is replied, that this in the ancient Roman law is true, not in the Mosaic. If it be added, she was a stranger, not a Hebrew, therefore easily divorced; it will be answered, that strangers not being Canaanites, and they also being converts, might be lawfully married, as Rahab was. And her conversion is here supposed; for a Hebrew master could not lawfully give a heathen wife to a 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. xxiv. and Deut. xxi. Lastly, it gives place to the right of war, for a captive woman lawfully married, and afterwards not beloved, might be dismissed, only without ransom, Deut. xxi. If marriage be dissolved by so many exterior powers, not superior, as we think, why may not the power of marriage itself, for its own peace and honour, dissolve itself, 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 ordained, are certainly and by all logic above the ordinance itself; 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 thereof, without which matrimony is like an idol, nothing in the world. But those former allowances were all for hardness of heart. Be that granted, until we come where to understand it better; if the law suffer thus far the obstinacy of a bad man, is it not more righteous here, to do willingly what is but equal, to remove in season the extremities of a good man?

Eighthly, If a man had deflowered a virgin, or brought an ill name on his wife, that she came not a virgin to him, he was amerced in certain shekels of silver, and bound never to divorce her all his days, Deut. xxii., which shows that the law gave no liberty to divorce, where the injury was palpable; and that the absolute forbidding to divorce was in part the punishment of a deflourer, and a defamer. Yet not so but that the wife questionless might depart when she pleased. Otherwise this course had not so much. righted her, as delivered her up to more spite and cruel usage. This law therefore doth justly distinguish the privilege of an honest and blameless man in the matter of divorce, from the punishment of a notorious offender. Ninthly, Suppose it 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; although the law of God, that terrible law, do not thus upbraid the infirmities and unwilling mistakes of man in his integrity: but suppose these and the like proud aggravations of some stern hypocrite, more merciless in his mercies, than any literal law in the rigour 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 therefore and mercy doth it here not torment an error, if it be so, with the endurance of a whole life lost to all household comfort and society, a punishment of too vast and huge dimension for an error, and the more unreasonable for that the like objection may be opposed against the plea of divorcing for adultery: he might have looked better before to her breeding under religious parents: why did he not more diligently inquire into her manners, into what company she kept? every glance of her eye, every step of her gait, would have prophesied 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 forced to be content with your adulteress, if these objectors 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 promised, 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 wedlock, 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 salemen and complotters. But the deceiver deceives himself in the unprosperous marriage, and therein is sufficiently punished. I answer, that the most of those who deceive are such as either understand not, or value not the true purposes of marriage; they have the prey they seek, not the punishment: yet say it prove to them some cross, it is not equal that error and fraud should be linked in the same degree of forfeiture, but rather that error should be acquitted, and fraud bereaved his morsel, if the mistake were not on both sides; for then on both sides the acquitment would be reasonable, if the bondage be intolerable; which this law graciously determines, not unmindful of the wife, as was granted willingly to the common expositors, though beyond the letter of this law, yet not beyond the spirit of charity.

Tenthly, Marriage is a solemn thing, some say a holy, the resemblance of Christ and his church: and so indeed it is where the persons are truly religious; and we know all sacred things, not performed sincerely as they ought, are no way acceptable to God in their outward formality. And that wherein it differs from personal duties, if they be not truly done, the fault is in ourselves; but marriage to be a true and pious marriage is not in the single power of any person; the essence whereof, as of all other covenants, is in relation to another, the making and maintaining causes thereof are all mutual, and must be a communion of spiritual and temporal comforts. If then either of them cannot, or obstinately will not, be answerable in these duties, so as that the other can have no peaceful living, or endure the want of what he justly seeks, and sees no hope, then straight from that dwelling, love, which is the soul of wedlock, takes his flight, leaving only some cold performaces of civil and common respects; but the true bond of marriage, if there were ever any there, is already burst like a rotten thread. follows dissimulation, suspicion, false colours, false pretences, and worse than these, disturbance, annoyance, vexation, sorrow, temptation even in

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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. Therefore 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 through 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 therefore doth in this law what best agrees with his goodness, loosening a sacred thing to peace and charity, rather than binding it to hatred and contention; loosening only the outward and formal tie of that which is already inwardly and really broken, or else was really never joined.

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 household 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 therefore, knowing how unhappy it would be for children to be born in such a family, gives this law as a prevention, that, being an unhappy pair, they should not add to be unhappy parents, or else as a remedy that if there be children, while they are fewest, they may follow either parent, as shall be agreed, or judged, from the house of hatred and discord to a place of more holy and peaceable education.

Twelfthly, All law is available to some good end, but the final prohibition of divorce avails to no good end, causing only the endless aggravation of evil, and therefore 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 disdained of any generous person. Law cannot enable 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 subtle and too unapparent for law to deal with. And while it seeks to remedy more outward wrongs, it exposes the injured person to other more inward and more cutting. All these evils unavoidably will redound upon the children, if any be, and upon the whole family. It degenerates and disorders the best spirits, leaves them to unsettled imaginations, and degraded hopes, careless of themselves, their households and their friends, unactive to all public service, dead to the commonwealth; they are by one mishap, and no willing trespass of theirs, outlawed from all the benefits and comforts of married life and posterity. It confers as little to the honour and inviolable keeping of matrimony, 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 unexperienced, most incompetent judges of matrimony?

These reasons, and many more that might be alleged, afford us plainly