disposed 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 expressed, 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 attained? And they not attained, which are the chief ends, and with a lawful love constitute the formal cause itself of marriage, how can the essence thereof subsist? How can it be indeed what it goes for? Conclude therefore 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 virtues; 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, altogether depends thereon, is manifestly brought in by this connective particle "therefore;" and branches itself into a double consequence; First, individual society, "therefore shall a man leave father and mother :" Secondly, conjugal benevolence, "and they shall be one flesh." Which, as was shown, is not without cause here mentioned, to prevent and to abolish the suspect of pollution in that natural and undefiled act. These consequences therefore 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 although it be not for the majesty of Scripture, to humble herself in artificial theorems, and definitions, and corollaries, like a professor in the schools, but looks to be analyzed, and interpreted by the logical industry of her disciples and followers, and to be reduced 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 referred; 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 aversely upon this our decision, (although 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 the three following discourses to perform that office.

DEUTERONOMY xxiv. 1, 2.

1. "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 uttered, 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 been said formerly concerning this law in "the Doctrine of Divorce." Whereof 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 questioned, till Vatablus within these hundred years professed Hebrew at Paris, a man of no religion, as Beza deciphers 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, Malachi ii. 16, "Let him who hateth put away, saith the Lord God of Israel." Although this place also hath been tampered with, as if it were to be thus rendered, "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, thereby signifying his majesty and omnipresence. He would have said, I bate putting away, saith the Lord; and not sent word by Malachi in a sudden fallen style, "The Lord God saith, that he hateth putting away:" that were a phrase to shrink the glorious omnipresence of God speaking, into a kind of circumscriptive absence. And were as if a herald, in the achievement of a king, should commit the indecorum to set his helmet sideways and close, not full-faced and open in the posture of direction and command. We cannot think therefore 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 this 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 Judah'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 received, that this prophet lived in those times of Ezra and Nehemiah, (nay by some is thought to be Ezra himself,) when the people were forced by these two worthies to put their strange wives away. So that what the story of those times, and the plain context of the eleventh 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, though counted apocryphal, yet of no small account for piety and wisdom, the author of Ecclesiasticus. Which book, begun by the grandfather of that Jesus, who

is called the son of Sirach, might have been written in part, not much after the time when Malachi lived, if we compute by the reign of Ptolemæus 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. xxv. 26. Which doubtless that wise and ancient writer would never have advised, had either Malachi so lately forbidden it, or the law by a full precept not left it lawful. But I But I urge not this for want of better proof; our Saviour himself allows divorce to be a command, Mark x. 3, 5. Neither do they weaken this assertion, who say it was only a sufferance, as shall be proved 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 allowed 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 wholesome 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, how, 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 allowed? In few words then, this custom of divorce either was allowable, or not allowable; if not allowable, how could it be allowed? 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 whereon Euclid builds his propositions.

Thus being every way a law of God, who can without blasphemy 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. xxxii., "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, the judgments 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. xiv., "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 shouldst keep all his commandments, and be high in praise, in name, and in honour, holy to the Lord!" chap xxvi. And in the fourth, "Behold I have taught you statutes and judgments, even as the Lord my God commanded me, keep therefore 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?" 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 endure to let them slug and grow inveterately wicked, under base

Thus

allowances, and whole adulterous lives by dispensation. They might not eat, they might not touch an unclean thing; to what hypocrisy then were they trained 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 unwashed, unregarded, so foul a scab of Egypt in their souls? What would we more? The statutes of the Lord are all pure and just: 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 mere authorizing of license, as the Pharisees took it, Moses adds the reason, for "some uncleanness found." Some heretofore have been 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, shows 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 engage 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 referred 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 joined 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 distasteful, 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 æquius melius erit, ut inter bonos bene agitur;" we will not grudge to think, that God intended not license 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 joined. 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. So that the sin was not in the permission, nor simply in the action of divorce, (for then the permitting also had been 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 therefore 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 expressed, yet to these ages wherein canons, and Scotisms, and Lombard laws, have dulled, and almost obliterated the lively sculpture of ancient reason and humanity; it will be requisite 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 license and confusion. Whenas indeed there is not a judicial point in all Moses, consisting of more true equity, high wisdom, and godlike pity than this law; 2A2

VOL. I.

39

not derogating, but preserving the honour and peace of marriage, and exactly agreeing with the sense and mind of that institution in Genesis.

For, first, if marriage be but an ordained 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 irksome, grievous, actively hateful, and injurious even to hostility, especially in a conjugal respect, wherein antipathies are invincible, and where the forced 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 unhallowed and profaned, than by the forcible uniting of such disunions and separations. Which if we see ofttimes they cannot join or piece up 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 wedlock? 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, joined together by the Holy Ghost to a spiritual work, thought it better to separate, when once they grew at variance. If these great saints, joined 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 colleagueship 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 compelled, not against a sudden passion, but against the permanent and radical discords of nature, to the most intimate and incorporating duties of love and embracement, therein 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 persuasion. If then this unfitness and disparity be not till after marriage discovered, 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. xxx. 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 exposed to all evil.