of it, not the ease of burden; it was the bondage, not the liberty of any divine law, that he removed; this he often professed 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 proved in the reasons thereof? For though 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 abolished, being moral; and so far as it is simply evil, it never could be judicial, as hath been shown at large "in the Doctrine of Divorce," and will be reassumed anon. Whence one of these two necessities follow, that either it was never established, or never abolished. 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.

MATTHEW Xix. 3, 4, &c.

Ver. 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 entangling. No man, though never so willing or so well enabled to instruct, but if he discern his willingness and candour made use of to entrap 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 expressed any great desire to teach the obstinate and unteachable Pharisees; but when they came to tempt him, then least of all. As now about the liberty of divorce, so another time about the punishment of adultery, they came to sound him; and what satisfaction got they from his answer, either to themselves, or to us, that might direct a law under the gospel, new from that of Moses, unless we draw his absolution of adultery into an edict? So about the tribute, who is there can pick out a full solution, what and when we must give to Cæsar, by the answer which he gave the Pharisees? If we must give to Cæsar that which is Cæsar's, and all be Cæsar'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 fifth 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 seasonable to talk of honest and conscientious liberty among them, who had abused legal and civil liberty to uncivil license. We do not say to a servant what we say to a son; nor was it expedient to preach freedom to those who had transgressed in wantonness. When we rebuke a prodigal, we admonish him of thrift, not of magnificence, or bounty. And to school a proud man, we 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 deserved; not to acquaint them, or to make them judges either of the just man's right and privilege, or of the afflicted man's necessity. And if we may have leave to conjecture, there is a likelihood offered us by Tertullian in his fourth against Marcion, whereby 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 rigour of his answer, both to let them know the freedom of his spirit, and the sharpness of his discerning. "This I must now show," saith Tertullian, "whence our Lord deduced this sentence, and which way he directed it, whereby it will more fully appear, that he intended not to dissolve Moses." And 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 towards Rome to be entertained at his brother Philip's house, he cast his eye unlawfully and unguestlike upon Herodias there, the wife of Philip, but daughter to Aristobulus their common brother, and durst make words of marrying her his niece from his brother's bed. She assented, upon agreement he should expel his former wife. All was accomplished, and by the Baptist rebuked with the loss of his head. Though doubtless that stayed not the various discourses of men upon the fact, which while the Herodian flatterers, and not a few perhaps among the Pharisees, endeavoured to defend by wresting the law, it might be a means to bring the question of divorce into a hot agitation among the people, how far Moses gave allowance. The Pharisees therefore knowing our Saviour to be a friend of John the Baptist, and no doubt but having heard much of his sermon on the mount, wherein he spake rigidly against the license of divorce, they put him this question, both in hope to find him a contradictor 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 named: so lively it concerned 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 though it seem to have a milder signification than the two Hebrew words commonly used for divorce, yet interpreters have noted, that the Greek also is read in the Septuagint for an act which is not without constraint. As when Achish drove from his presence David, counterfeiting madness, Psal. xxxiv., 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 answered directly according to what was asked in the term of putting away, it will be questionable, whether the rigour 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 feared not in their constitutions to dis

solve 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 though willing, and so may justly be forbidden: but divorce being in itself no unjust or evil thing, but only as it is joined 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 misfortuned wedlock, which may pardonably seek a redemption. But whether it be or not, the law cannot discern or examine lust, so long as it walks from one lawful term to another, from divorce to marriage, both in themselves indifferent. For if the law cannot take hold to punish many actions apparently covetous, ambitious, ingrateful, proud, how can it forbid and punish that for lust, which is but only surmised so, and can no more be certainly proved in the divorcing now, than before in the marrying? Whence if divorce be no unjust thing, but through lust, a cause not discernible by law, as law is wont to discern in other cases, and can be no injury, where consent is; there can be nothing in the equity of law, why divorce by consent may not be lawful: leaving secresies 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, any quarrel or difference that might happen. So both Josephus and Philo, men who lived 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 xarà translated unusually (for) hath a force in it implying the suddenness of those pharisaic divorces; and that their question was to this effect, "whether for any cause, whatever it chanced to be, straight as it rose, the divorce might be lawful." This he freely gives, whatever moved him, and I as freely take, nor can deny his observation to be acute and learned. If therefore we insist upon the word of "putting away;" that it imports a constraint without consent, as might be insisted, and may enjoy what Cameron bestows on us, that "for every cause" is to be understood, "according as any cause may happen," with a relation to the speediness of those divorces, and that Herodian act especially, as is already brought us; the sentence of our Saviour will appear nothing so strict a prohibition as hath been long conceived, 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.

fore God hath joined together, let no man put asunder."

What there

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 household life. Our next way then will be to inquire 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 twenty-fourth verse of the second chapter, omitting all the prime words between which create the institution, and contain the noblest and purest ends of matrimony; without which attained, that conjunction hath nothing in it above what is common to us with beasts. So likewise beneath in this very chapter to the young man, who came not tempting him, but to learn of him, asking him which commandments he should keep; he neither repeats the first table, nor all the second, nor that in order which he repeats. If here then being tempted, he desire to be the shorter, and the darker in his conference, and omit to cite that from the second of Genesis, which all divines confess is a commentary to what he cites out of the first, the "making them male and female;" what are we to do, but to search the institution ourselves? And we shall find there his own authority, giving other manner of reasons why such firm union is to be in matrimony; without which reasons, their being male and female can be no cause of joining them unseparably: for if it be, then no adultery can sever. Therefore the prohibition of divorce depends not upon this reason here expressed to the Pharisees, but upon the plainer and more eminent causes omitted here, and referred 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 it 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 show us, that as through 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 talked with in a higher strain, but to be tied in marriage by the mere material cause thereof, since their own license testified 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, though he came to preach eternal life by faith only, he dismisses with a salvation taught him by works only. On which place Paræus notes, "That this man was to be convinced by a false persuasion; and that Christ is wont otherwise to answer hypocrites, otherwise those that are docible." Much rather then may we think, that, in handling these tempters, he forgot not so to frame his prudent ambiguities and concealments, as was to the troubling of those peremptory disputants most wholesome. When therefore we would know what right there may be, in all accidents, to divorce, we must repair thither where God professes to teach his servants by the prime institution, and not where we see him intending to dazzle sophisters: we must not read, "he made them male and female," 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 completely, as from the whole cause, why a man shall cleave to his wife, and they twain shall be one flesh: but if the full and chief cause why we may not divorce be wanting here, this place may skirmish with the rabbies while it will, but to the true Christian it prohibits nothing beyond the full reason of its own prohibiting, which is best known by the institution.

Ver. 6. "Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh."] This is true in the general right of marriage, but not in the chance medley of every particular match. For if they who were once undoubtedly one flesh, yet become twain by adultery, then sure they who were never one flesh rightly, never helps meet for each other according to the plain prescript of God, may with less ado 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 therefore God hath joined, let not man put asunder."] But here the Christian prudence lies to consider what God hath joined; shall we say that God hath joined 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 and unfaithful, Christian with antichristian, hate with hate, or hate with love; shall we say this is God's joining?

"Let not man put asunder."] That is to say, what God hath joined; 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 only God ordained their joining. Man only puts asunder when his inordinate desires, his passion, his violence, his injury makes the breach: not when the utter want of that which lawfully was the end of his joining, when wrongs and extremities and unsupportable grievances compel him to 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 joined, 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 then command to give a writing of divorcement, and to put her away?"

Ver. S. He saith unto them, Moses because of the hardness of your VOL. I.

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