Epiphanius no less ancient, writing against heretics, and therefore should himself be orthodoxal above others, acquaints us in his second book, Tom. 1, not that his private persuasion was, but that the whole church in his time generally thought other causes of divorce lawful besides adultery, as comprehended under that name: "If," saith he, "a divorce 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 joined 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 wedlock is not God's joining:" and to the 19th of Prov. "That a wife is prepared of the Lord," as the old Latin translates it, he answers, that the Septuagint renders it, "a wife is fitted by the Lord, and tempered to a kind of harmony; and where that harmony is, there God joins; where it is not, there 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 divorced without sin: but he who sees not this argument how plainly it serves to divorce any untunable, or unatonable matrimony, sees little. On the first to the Cor. vii. he grants a woman may leave her husband not only for fornication, "but for apostacy, and inverting nature, though not marry again; but the man may;" here are causes of divorce assigned other than adultery. And going on, he affirms, "that the cause of God is greater than the cause of matrimony; that the reverence of wedlock is not due to him who hates the author thereof; that no matrimony is firm without devotion. to God; that 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 thereof, a man may freely divorce." What can breed that suspicion, but sundry faults leading that way? By Jerom's consent therefore divorce is free not only for actual adultery, but for any cause that may incline a wise man to the just suspicion thereof.

Austin also must be remembered among those who hold, that this instance of fornication gives equal inference to other faults equally hateful, for which to divorce: and therefore 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 on the mount, under the name of fornication, will have "idolatry, or any harmful superstition," contained, which are not thought to disturb matrimony so directly as some other obstinacies and disaffections, more against the daily duties of that covenant, and in the Eastern tongues not unfrequently called fornication, as hath been shown. "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 constrained to interpret in a general sense." And in the first book of his "Retractations," chap. 16, he retracts not this his opinion,

but commends it to serious consideration; and explains that he counted not there all sin to be fornication, but the more detestable sort of sins. The cause of fornication therefore is not in this discourse newly interpreted to signify other faults infringing the duties of wedlock, besides adultery.

Lastly, the council of Agatha in the year 506, Can. 25, decreed, that "if laymen who divorced without some great fault, or giving no probable cause, therefore divorced, that they might marry some unlawful person, or some other man's, if before the provincial bishops were made acquainted, or judgment passed, they presumed 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 therefore divorce, that they might presume with some unlawful person, or what was another man's, the censure of church in those days did not touch them.

Thus having alleged enough to show, after what manner the primitive church for above 500 years understood our Saviour's words touching divorce, I shall now, with a labour less dispersed, and sooner dispatched, bring under view what the civil law of those times constituted about this matter: I say the civil law, which is the honour of every true civilian to stand for, rather than to count that for law, which the pontifical canon had enthralled them to, and instead of interpreting a generous and elegant law, made them the drudges of a blockish Rubric.

Theodosius and Valentinian, pious emperors both, ordained that, "as by consent lawful marriages were made, so by consent, but not without the bill of divorce, they might be dissolved; and to dissolve was the more difficult, only in favour of the children." We see the wisdom and piety of that age, one of the purest and learnedest since Christ, conceived no hinderance in the words of our Saviour, but that a divorce, mutually consented, might be suffered by the law, especially if there were no children, or if there were, careful provision was made. And further saith that law, (supposing there wanted the consent of either,) "We design the causes of divorce by this most wholesome law; for as we forbid the dissolving of marriage without just cause, so we desire that a husband or a wife distressed by some adverse necessity, should be freed though by an unhappy, yet a necessary relief." What dram of wisdom or religion (for charity is. the truest religion) could there be in that knowing age, which is not virtually summed 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 Moasic, it might be the likeliest cause why they altered 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. Therefore "if a man were absent from his wife four years, and in that space not heard of, though gone to war in the service of the empire," she might divorce, and marry another, by the edict of Constantine to Dalmatius, Cod. 1. 5, tit. 17. And this was an age of the church, both ancient and cried up still for the most flourishing in knowledge and pious government since the apostles. But to return to this law of Theodosius, with this observation by the way, that still as the church corrupted, as the clergy grew more ignorant, and yet more usurping on the magistrate, who also now declined, so still divorce grew more restrained; though certainly if better times permitted the thing that worse times restrained, it would not weakly argue that the permission was better, and the restraint worse. This law therefore of Theodosius, wiser in this than the most of his successors, though no wiser than God and Moses, reduced the causes of divorce to a

In

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 sages understood that place in the gospel, whereby not the pilfering of a benevolence was considered as the main and only breach of wedlock, as is now thought, but the breach of love and peace, a more holy union 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. 1. 5, tit. 17, and Authent. collat. 4, tit. i. Novell. 22, where Justinian added three causes more. the 117 Novell. most of the same causes are allowed, but the liberty of divorcing by consent is repealed; but by whom? by Justinian, not a wiser, not a more religious emperor 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, deciphers 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 called in; which, as I said, gives us every way more reason to suspect this restraint, more than that liberty: which therefore in the reign of Justin, the succeeding emperor, was recalled, Novell. 140, and established 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 remained 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 compared by Pho. tius the patriarch, with the avertiments of Balsamon and Matthæus Monachus thereon.

But long before those days, Leo, the son of Basilius Macedo, reigning about the year 886, and for his excellent wisdom surnamed the "Philosopher," constituted, "that in case of madness, the husband might divorce after three years, the wife after five." Constit. Leon. 111, 112. This declares how he expounded our Saviour, and derived his reasons from the institution, which in his preface with great eloquence are set down; where of 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 doing so, it was requisite that the providence of law, or if any other care be to the good of man, should teach and ordain those things which are to the help and comfort of married persons, and confirm the end of marriage purposed in the beginning, not those things which afflict and bring perpetual misery to them." Then answers the objection, that they are one flesh; "If matrimony had held so as God ordained it, he were wicked that would dissolve it. But if we respect this in matrimony, that it be contracted to the good of both, how shall he, who for some great evil feared, persuades not to marry though contracted, not persuade to unmarry, if after marriage a calamity befall? Should we bid beware lest any fall into an evil, and leave him helpless who by human error is fallen therein? This were as if we should use remedies to prevent a disease, but let the sick die without remedy." The rest will be worth reading in the author. And thus we have the judgment first of primitive fathers; next of the

imperial law not disallowed by the universal church in ages of her best authority; and lastly, of the whole Greek church and civil state, incorporating their canons and edicts together, that divorce was lawful for other causes equivalent to adultery, contained under the word fornication. So that the exposition of our Saviour's sentence here alleged hath all these ancient and great asserters; is therefore 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 license; whenas indeed they fear it would remove license, and leave them but few companions.

That the pope's canon law, encroaching upon civil magistracy, abolished all divorce even for adultery. What the reformed divines have recovered; 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 displaced it. For, that the volumes of Justinian never came into Italy, or beyond Illyricum, is the opinion of good antiquaries. And that only manuscript thereof 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 received as a rarity not to be matched. And although the Goths, and after them the Lombards and Franks, who overrun 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 followed the Roman laws in their contracts in marriages, Agathias the historian is alleged. 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 presumed also to set this in the front: "That the constitutions of princes are not above the constitutions of clergy, but beneath them." Using this very instance of divorce, as the first prop of their tyranny; by a false consequence drawn from a passage of Ambrose upon Luke, where he saith, though "man's law grant it, yet God's law prohibits it:" whence Gregory the pope, writing to Theoctista, infers that ecclesiastical courts cannot be dissolved by the magistrate. A fair conclusion from a double error. First, in saying that the divine law prohibited divorce: (for what will he make of Moses?) Next, supposing that it did, how will it follow, that whatever Christ forbids in his evangelic precepts, should be hauled 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 VIII., whose divorce he opposed. Yet was not that rigour executed anciently in spiritual

courts, until Alexander the IIId, who trod upon the neck of Frederic Barbarossa the emperor, and summoned our Henry IId 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 dissolved, though for many causes it might separate; as may be seen Decret. Gregor. 1. 4, tit. 19, and in other places of the canonical tomes. The main good of which invention, wherein it consists, who can tell? but that it hath one virtue incomparable, to fill all Christendom with whoredoms and adulteries, beyond the art of 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 renounced 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. It is true, we grant divorce for actual and proved adultery, and not for less than many tedious and unrepairable years of desertion, wherein a man shall lose all his hope of posterity, which great and holy men have bewailed, ere he can be righted; and then perhaps on the confines of his old age, when all is not worth the while. But grant this were seasonably 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 deserved, if it be in the way of salvation, that it should be mortgaged thus, and may not redeem itself according to conscience out of the hands of such ignorant and slothful teachers as these, who are neither able nor mindful to give due tendance to that precious cure which they rashly undertake; nor have in them the noble goodness to consider these distresses and accidents of man's life, but are bent rather to fill their mouths with tithe and oblation? Yet if they can learn to follow, as well as they can seek to be followed, I shall direct them to a fair number of renowned men, worthy to be their leaders, who will commend to them a doctrine in this point wiser than their own; and if they be not impatient, it will be the same doctrine which this treatise hath defended.

Wickliff, that Englishman honoured 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 forced to cite from "Arnisæus of Halberstad on the Rite of Marriage," who cites it from Corrasius of Toulouse, c. 4, Cent. Sect., and he from Wickliff, 1. 4, Dial. c. 21. So much the sorrier, for that I never looked into an author cited by his adversary upon this occasion, but found him more conducible to the question than his quotation rendered him.

Next, Luther, how great a servant of God! in his book of "Conjugal Life" quoted by Gerard out of the Dutch, allows divorce for the obstinate denial of conjugal duty; and "that a man may send away a proud Vashti, and marry an Esther in her stead." It seems, if this example shall not be impertinent, that Luther meant not only the refusal of benovelence, but a stubborn denial of any main conjugal duty; or if he did not, it will be evinced 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