name of marriage, unaccompanied with love. Thus much his own objection hath done against himself.

Argument 7th. He insists, "that man and wife are one flesh, therefore must not separate." But must be sent to look again upon the 35th page of that book, where he might read an answer, which he stirs not. Yet can he not abstain, but he must do us another pleasure ere he goes; although I call the common pleas to witness, I have not hired his tongue, whatever men may think by his arguing. For besides adultery, he excepts other causes which dissolve the union of being one flesh, either directly, or by consequence. If only adultery be excepted by our Saviour, and he voluntarily can add other exceptions that dissolve that union, both directly and by consequence; these words of Christ, the main obstacle of divorce, are open to us by his own invitation, to include whatever causes dissolve that union of flesh, either directly or by consequence. Which, till he name other causes more likely, I affirm to be done soonest by unfitness and contrariety of mind; for that induces hatred, which is the greatest dissolver both of spiritual and corporal union, turning the mind, and consequently the body, to other objects. Thus our doughty adversary, either directly or by consequence, yields us the question with his own mouth: and the next thing he does, recants it again.

His 8th argument shivers in the uttering, and he confesseth to be "not over-confident of it:" but of the rest it may be sworn he is. St. Paul, 1 Cor. vii. saith, that the "married have trouble in the flesh," therefore we must bear it, though never so intolerable.

I answer, if this be a true consequence, why are not all troubles to be borne alike? Why are we suffered to divorce adulteries, desertions, or frigidities? Who knows not that trouble and affliction is the decree of God upon every state of life? Follows it therefore, that, though they grow excessive and insupportable, we must not avoid them? If we may in all other conditions, and not in marriage, the doom of our suffering ties us not by the trouble, but by the bond of marriage: and that must be proved inseparable from other reasons, not from this place. And his own confession declares the weakness of this argument, yet his ungoverned arrogance could not be dissuaded from venting it.

His 9th argument is, "that a husband must love his wife as himself; therefore he may not divorce for any disagreement, no more than he may separate his soul from his body." I answer: if he love his wife as himself, he must love her so far as he may preserve him to her in a cheerful and comfortable manner, and not so as to ruin himself by anguish and sorrow, without any benefit to her. Next, if the husband must love his wife as himself, she must be understood a wife in some reasonable measure, willing and sufficient to perform the chief duties of her covenant, else by the hold of this argument it would be his great sin to divorce either for adultery or desertion. The rest of this will run circuit with the union of one flesh, which was answered before. And that to divorce a relative and metaphorical union of two bodies into one flesh cannot be likened in all things to the dividing of that natural union of soul and body into one person, is apparent of itself.

His last argument he fetches " from the inconvenience that would follow upon his freedom of divorce, to the corrupting of men's minds, and the overturning of all human society."

But for me let God and Moses answer this blasphemer, who dares bring

*First edition.

in such a foul indictment against the divine law. Why did God permit this to his people the Jews, but that the right and good, which came directly thereby, was more in his esteem than the wrong and evil, which came by accident? And for those weak supposes of infants that would be left in their mothers' belly, (which must needs be good news for chamber-maids, to hear a serving-man grown so provident for great bellies,) and portions and jointures likely to incur embezzlement hereby, the ancient civil law instructs us plentifully how to award, which our profound opposite knew not, for it was not in his tenures.

His arguments are spun; now follows the chaplain with his antiquities, wiser if he had refrained, for his very touching aught that is learned soils it, and lays him still more and more open, a conspicuous gull. There being both fathers and councils more ancient, where with to have served his purpose better than with what he cites, how may we do to know the subtle drift, that moved him to begin first with the "twelfth council of Toledo?" I would not undervalue the depth of his notion; but perhaps he had heard that the men of Toledo had store of good blade-mettle, and were excellent at cuttling; who can tell but it might be the reach of his policy, that these able men of decision would do best to have the prime stroke among his testimonies in deciding this cause? But all this craft avails himself not; for seeing they allow no cause of divorce by fornication, what do these keen doctors here, but cut him over the sinews with their Toledoes, for holding in the precedent page other causes of divorce besides, both directly and by consequence? As evil doth that Saxon council, next quoted, bestead him. For if it allow divorce precisely for no cause but fornication, it thwarts his own exposition: and if it understand fornication largely, it sides with whom he would confute. However, the authority of that synod can be but small, being under Theodorus, the Canterbury bishop, a Grecian monk of Tarsus, revolted from his own church to the pope. What have we next? the civil law stuffed in between two councils, as if the Code had been some synod; for that he understood himself in this quotation, is incredible; where the law, Cod. 1. 3, tit. 38, leg. 11, speaks not of divorce, but against the dividing of possessions to divers heirs, whereby the married servants of a great family were divided, perhaps into distant countries and colonies; father from son, wife from husband, sore against their will. Somewhat lower he confesseth, that the civil law allows many reasons of divorce, but the canon law decrees otherwise; a fair credit to his cause! And I amaze me, though the fancy of this dolt be as obtuse and sad as any mallet, how the licenser could sleep out all this, and suffer him to uphold his opinion by canons and Gregorial decretals; a law which not only his adversary, but the whole reformation of this church and state, hath branded and rejected. As ignorantly, and too ignorantly to deceive any reader but an unlearned, he talks of Justin Martyr's Apology, not telling us which of the twain; for that passage in the beginning of his first, which I have cited elsewhere, plainly makes against him: so doth Tertullian, cited next, and next Erasmus, the one against Marcion, the other in his annotations on Matthew, and to the Corinthians. And thus ye have the list of his choice antiquities, as pleasantly chosen as ye would wish from a man of his handy vocation, puffed up with no luck at all above the stint of his capacity.

Now he comes to the position, which I set down whole; and, like an able textman, slits it into four, that he may the better come at it with his barber-surgery, and his sleeves turned up. Wherein first, he denies "that any disposition, unfitness, or contrariety of mind, is unchangeable in nature, but that by the help of diet and physic it may be altered."

I mean not to dispute philosophy with this pork, who never read any. But I appeal to all experience, though there be many drugs to purge these redundant humours and circulations, that commonly impair health, and are not natural, whether any man can with the safety of his life bring a healthy constitution into physic with this design, to alter his natural temperament and disposition of mind. How much more vain and ridiculous would it be, by altering and rooting up the grounds of nature, which is most likely to produce death or madness, to hope the reducing of a mind to this or that fitness, or two disagreeing minds to a mutual sympathy! Suppose they might, and that with great danger of their lives and right senses, alter one temperature, how can they know that the succeeding disposition will not be as far from fitness and agreement? They would perhaps change melancholy into sanguine; but what if phlegm and choler in as great a measure come instead, the unfitness will be still as difficult and troublesome? But lastly, whether these things be changeable or not, experience teaches us, and our position supposes that they seldom do change in any time commensurable to the necessities of man, or convenient to the ends of marriage: and if the fault be in the one, shall the other live all his days in bondage and misery for another's perverseness, or immedicable disaffection? To my friends, of which may fewest be so unhappy, I have a remedy, as they know, more wise and manly to prescribe: but for his friends and followers, (of which many may deserve justly to feel themselves the unhappiness which they consider not in others,) I send them by his advice to sit upon the stool and strain, till their cross dispositions and contrarieties of mind shall change to a better correspondence, and to a quicker apprehension of common sense, and their own good.

His second reason is as heedless; "because that grace may change the disposition, therefore no indisposition may cause divorce."

Answ. First, it will not be deniable that many persons, gracious both, may yet happen to be very unfitly married, to the great disturbance of either. Secondly, What if one have grace, the other not, and will not alter, as the Scriptures testify there be of those, in whom we may expect a change, when "the blackamoor changes his colour, or the leopard his spots," Jer. xiii. 23. Shall the gracious therefore dwell in torment all his life, for the ungracious? We see that holiest precepts, than which there can no better physic be administered to the mind of man, and set on with powerful preaching, cannot work this cure, no not in the family, not in the wife of him that preaches day and night to her. What an unreasonable thing is it, that men, and clergymen especially, should exact such wondrous changes in another man's house, and are seen to work so little in their own!

To the second point of the position, that this unfitness hinders the main ends and benefits of marriage; he answers, "if I mean the unfitness of choler, or sullen disposition, that soft words, according to Solomon, pacify wrath."

But I reply, that the saying of Solomon is a proverb, frequently true, not universally, as both the event shows, and many other sentences written by the same author, particularly of an evil woman, Prov. xxi. 9, 19, and in other chapters, that she is better shunned than dwelt with, and a desert is preferred before her society. What need the Spirit of God put this choice into our heads, if soft words could always take effect with her? How frivolous is not only this disputer, but he that taught him thus, and let him come abroad!

To his second answer I return this, that although there be not easily found such an antipathy, as to hate one another like a toad or poison; yet

that there is oft such a dislike in both, or either, to conjugal love, as hinders all the comfort of matrimony, scarce any can be so simple as not to apprehend. And what can be that favour, found or not found, in the eyes of the husband, but a natural liking or disliking; whereof the law of God, Deut. xxiv. bears witness, as of an ordinary accident, and determines wisely and divinely thereafter. And this disaffection happening to be in the one, not without the unspeakable discomfort of the other, must he be left like a thing consecrated to calamity and despair, without redemption? Against the third branch of the position, he denies that "solace and peace, which is contrary to discord and variance, is the main end of marriage." What then? He will have it "the solace of male and female." Came this doctrine out of some school, or some sty? Who but one forsaken of all sense and civil nature, and chiefly of Christianity, will deny that peace, contrary to discord, is the calling and the general end of every Christian, and of all his actions, and more especially of marriage, which is the dearest league of love, and the dearest resemblance of that love which in Christ is dearest to his church? How then can peace and comfort, as it is contrary to discord, which God hates to dwell with, not be the main end of marriage? Discord then we ought to fly, and to pursue peace, far above the observance of a civil covenant already broken, and the breaking daily iterated on the other side. And what better testimony than the words of the institution itself, to prove that a conversing solace, and peaceful society, is the prime end of marriage, without which no other help or office can be mutual, beseeming the dignity of reasonable creatures, that such as they should be coupled in the rites of nature by the mere compulsion of lust, without love or peace, worse than wild beasts? Nor was it half so wisely spoken as some deem, though Austin spake it, that if God had intended other than copulation in marriage, he would for Adam have created a friend, rather than a wife, to converse with; and our own writers blame him for this opinion; for which and the like passages, concerning marriage, he might be justly taxed with rusticity in these affairs. For this cannot but be with ease conceived, that there is one society of grave friendship, and another amiable and attractive society of conjugal love, besides the deed of procreation, which of itself soon cloys, and is despised, unless it be cherished and reincited with a pleasing conversation. Which if ignoble and swinish minds cannot apprehend, shall such merit therefore be the censures of more generous and virtuous spirits?

Against the last point of the position, to prove that contrariety of mind is not a greater cause of divorce than corporal frigidity, he enters into such a tedious and drawling tale "of burning, and burning, and lust and burning," that the dull argument itself burns too for want of stirring; and yet all this burning is not able to expel the frigidity of his brain. So long therefore as that cause in the position shall be proved a sufficient cause of divorce, rather than spend words with this phlegmy clod of an antagonist, more than of necessity and a little merriment, I will not now contend whether it be a greater cause than frigidity or no.

His next attempt is upon the arguments which I brought to prove the position. And for the first, not finding it of that structure as to be scaled with his short ladder, he retreats with a bravado, that it deserves no answer. And I as much wonder what the whole book deserved, to be thus troubled and solicited by such a paltry solicitor. I would he had not cast the gracious eye of his duncery upon the small deserts of a pamphlet, whose every line meddled with uncases him to scorn and laughter.

That which he takes for the second argument, if he look better, is no

argument, but an induction to those that follow. Then he stumbles that I should say, "the gentlest ends of marriage," confessing that he understands it not. And I believe him heartily: for how should he, a serving-man both by nature and by function, an idiot by breeding, and a solicitor by presumption, ever come to know or feel within himself what the meaning is of "gentle?" He blames it for "a neat phrase," for nothing angers him more than his own proper contrary. Yet altogether without art sure he is not; for who could have devised to give us more briefly a better description of his own servility?

But what will become now of the business I know not; for the man is suddenly taken with a lunacy of law, and speaks revelations out of the attorney's academy only from a lying spirit: for he says, "that where a thing is void ipso facto, there needs no legal proceeding to make it void:" which is false; for marriage is void by adultery or frigidity, yet not made void without legal proceeding. Then asks my opinion of John-a-Noaks and John-a-Stiles: and I answer him, that I, for my part, think John Dory was a better man than both of them; for certainly they were the greatest wranglers that ever lived, and have filled all our law-books with the obtunding story of their suits and trials.

After this he tells a miraculous piece of antiquity, how "two Romans, Titus and Sempronius, made feoffments," at Rome sure, and levied fines by the common law. But now his fit of law past, yet hardly come to himself, he maintains, that if marriage be void, as being neither of God nor nature, "there needs no legal proceeding to part it," and I tell him that offends not me: then, quoth he, "this is nothing to your book, being the Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce." But that I deny him; for all discipline is not legal, that is to say, juridical, but some is personal, some economical, and some ecclesiastical.

Lastly, If I prove that contrary dispositions are joined neither of God nor nature, and so the marriage void, "he will give me the controversy." I have proved in that book to any wise man, and without more ado the institution proves it.

Where I answer an objection usually made, that "the disposition ought to be known before marriage," and show how difficult it is to choose a fit consort, and how easy to mistake: the servitor would know "what I mean by conversation," declaring his capacity nothing refined since his law-puddering, but still the same it was in the pantry, and at the dresser. Shall I argue of conversation with this hoyden, to go and practise at his opportu nities in the larder? To men of quality I have said enough; and experience confirms by daily example, that wisest, soberest, justest men are sometimes miserably mistaken in their choice. Whom to leave thus without remedy, tossed and tempested in a most unquiet sea of afflictions and temptations, I say is most unchristianly.

But he goes on to untruss my arguments, imagining them his master's points. Only in the passage following I cannot but admire the ripeness and the pregnance of his native treachery, endeavouring to be more a fox than his wit will suffer him. Whereas I briefly mentioned certain heads of discourse, which I referred to a place more proper according to my method, to be treated there at full with all their reasons about them, this brain-worm against all the laws of dispute, will needs deal with them here. And as a country hind, sometimes ambitious to show his betters that he is not so simple as you take him, and that he knows his advantages, will teach us a new trick to confute by. And would you think to what a pride he swells in the contemplation of his rare stratagem, offering to carp at the