it should inhabit thus long in the sense of so many disputing theologians, unless it be the lowest lees of a canonical infection liver-grown to their sides; which perhaps will never uncling, without the strong abstersive of some heroic magistrate, whose mind, equal to his high office, dares lead him both to know and to do without their frivolous case-putting. For certain he shall have God and this institution plainly on his side. And if it be true both in divinity and law, that consent alone, though copulation. never follow, makes a marriage; how can they dissolve it for the want of that which made it not, and not dissolve it for that not continuing which nade it and should preserve it in love and reason, and difference it from a brute conjugality?

"Meet for him."] The original here is more expressive than other languages word for word can render it; but all agree effectual conformity of disposition and affection to be hereby signified; which God as it were, not satisfied with the naming of a help, goes on describing another self, a second self, a very self itself. Yet now there is nothing in the life of man, through our misconstruction, made more uncertain, more hazardous and full of chance, than this divine blessing with such favourable significance here conferred upon us; which if we do but err in our choice, the most unblameable error that can be, err but one minute, one moment after those mighty syllables pronounced, which take upon them to join heaven and hell together unpardonably till death pardon: this divine blessing that looked but now with such a humane smile upon us, and spoke such gentle reason, straight vanishes like a fair sky, and brings on such a scene of cloud and tempest, as turns all to shipwreck without haven or shore, but to a ransomless captivity. And then they tell us it is our sin but let them be told again, that sin through the mercy of God, hath not made such waste upon us, as to make utterly void to our use any temporal benefit, much less any so much availing to a peaceful and sanctified life, merely for a most incident error, which no wariness can certainly shun. And wherefore serves our happy redemption, and the liberty we have in Christ, but to deliver us from calamitous yokes, not to be lived under without the endangerment of our souls, and to restore us in some competent measure to a right in every good thing both of this life, and the other? Thus we see how treatably and distinctly God hath here taught us what the prime ends of marriage are; mutual solace and help. That we are now, upon the most irreprehensible mistake in choosing, defeated and defrauded of all this original benignity, was begun first through the snare of anti-christian canons long since obtruded upon the church of Rome, and not yet scoured off by reformation, out of a lingering vain-glory that abides among us to make fair shows in formal ordinances, and to enjoin continence and bearing of crosses in such a garb as no scripture binds us, under the thickest arrows of temptation, where we need not stand. Now we shall see with what acknowledgment and assent Adam received this new associate which God brought him.

Ver. 23. "And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called woman, because she was taken out of man.'

That there was a nearer alliance between Adam and Eve, than could be ever after between man and wife, is visible to any. For no other woman was ever moulded out of her husband's rib, but of mere strangers for the most part they come to have that consanguinity, which they have by wedlock. And if we look nearly upon the matter, though marriage be most agreeable

to holiness, to purity, and justice, yet is it not a natural, but a civil and ordained relation. For if it were in nature, no law or crime could disannul it, to make a wife, or husband, otherwise than still a wife or husband, but only death; as nothing but that can make a father no father, or a son no son. But divorce for adultery or desertion, as all our churches agree but England, not only separates, but nullifies, and extinguishes the relation itself of matrimony, so that they are no more man and wife; otherwise the innocent party could not marry elsewhere, without the guilt of adultery. Next, were it merely natural, why was it here ordained more than the rest of moral law to man in his original rectitude, in whose breast all that was natural or moral was engraven without external constitutions and edicts? Adam therefore in these words does not establish an indissoluble bond of marriage in the carnal ligaments of flesh and bones; for if he did, it would belong only to himself in the literal sense, every one of us being nearer in flesh of flesh, and bone of bones, to our parents than to a wife; they therefore were not to be left for her in that respect. But Adam, who had the wisdom given him to know all creatures, and to name them according to their properties, no doubt but had the gift to discern perfectly that which concerned him much more; and to apprehend at first sight the true fitness of that consort which God provided him. And therefore spake in reference to those words which God pronounced before; as if he had said, This is she by whose meet help and society I shall no more be alone; this is she who was made my image, even as I the image of God; not so much in body as in unity of mind and heart. And he might as easily know what were the words of God, as he knew so readily what had been done with his rib, while he slept so soundly. He might well know, if God took a rib out of his inside to form of it a double good to him, he would far sooner disjoin it from his outside, to prevent a treble mischief to him; and far sooner cut it quite off from all relation for his undoubted ease, than nail it into his body again, to stick for ever there a thorn in his heart. Whenas nature teaches us to divide any limb from the body to the saving of its fellows, though it be the maiming and deformity of the whole; how much more is it her doctrine to sever by incision, not a true limb so much, though that be lawful, but an adherent, a sore, the gangrene of a limb, to the recovery of a whole man! But if in these words we shall make Adam to erect a new establishment of marriage in the mere flesh, which God so lately had instituted, and founded in the sweet and mild familiarity of love and solace, and mutual fitness; what do we but use the mouth of our general parent, the first time it opens, to an arrogant opposition and correcting of God's wiser ordinance? These words therefore cannot import any thing new in marriage, but either that which belongs to Adam only, or to us in reference only to the instituting words of God, which made a meet help against loneliness. Adam spake like Adam the words of flesh and bones, the shell and rind of matrimony; but God spake like God, of love, and solace, and meet help, the soul both of Adam's words and of matrimony.

Ver. 24. "Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife; and they shall be one flesh."

This verse, as our common herd expounds it, is the great knot-tier, which hath undone by tying, and by tangling, millions of guiltless consciences: this is that grisly porter, who having drawn men and wisest men by subtle allurement within the train of an unhappy matrimony, claps the dungeongate upon them, as irrecoverable as the grave. But if we view him well, and hear him with not too hasty and prejudicant ears, we shall find no such

terror in him. For first, it is not here said absolutely without all reason he shall cleave to his wife, be it to his weal or to his destruction as it happens; but he shall do this upon the premises and considerations of that meet help and society before mentioned. "Therefore he shall cleave to his wife," no otherwise a wife than a fit help. He is not bid to leave the dear cohabitation of his father, mother, brothers, and sisters, to link himself inseparably with the mere carcass of a marriage, perhaps an enemy. This joining particle "Therefore" is in all equity, nay in all necessity of construction, to comprehend first and most principally what God spake concerning the inward essence of marriage in his institution, that we may learn how far to attend what Adam spake of the outward materials thereof in his approbation. For if we shall bind these words of Adam only to a corporal meaning, and that the force of this injunction upon all us his sons, to live individually with any woman which hath befallen us in the most mistaken wedlock, shall consist not in those moral and relative causes of Eve's creation, but in the mere anatomy of a rib, and that Adam's insight concerning wedlock reached no further, we shall make him as very an idiot as the Socinians make him; which would not be reverently done of us.

be content to allow our great forefather so much wisdom, as to take the instituting words of God along with him into this sentence, which if they be well minded, will assure us that flesh and ribs are but of a weak and dead efficacy to keep marriage united where there is no other fitness. The rib of marriage, to all since Adam, is a relation much rather than a bone; the nerves and sinews thereof are love and meet help, they knit not every couple that marries, and where they knit they seldom break; but where they break, which for the most part is where they were never truly joined, to such at the same instant both flesh and rib cease to be in common: so that here they argue nothing to the continuance of a false or violated marriage, but must be led back again to receive their meaning from those institutive words of God, which give them all the life and vigour they have.

"Therefore shall a man leave his father," &c.] What to a man's thinking more plain by this appointment, that the fatherly power should give place to conjugal prerogative? Yet it is generally held by reformed writers against the papist, that though in persons at discretion the marriage in itself be never so fit, though it be fully accomplished with benediction, board, and bed, yet the father not consenting, his main will without dispute shall dissolve all. And this they affirm only from collective reason, not any direct law; for that in Exod. xxii. 17, which is most particular, speaks that a father may refuse to marry his daughter to one who hath defloured her, not that he may take her away from one who hath soberly married her. Yet because the general honour due to parents is great, they hold he may, and perhaps hold not amiss. But again when the question is of harsh and rugged parents, who defer to bestow their children seasonably, they agree jointly, that the church or magistrate may bestow them, though without the father's consent; and for this they have no express authority in Scripture. So that they may see by their own handling of this very place, that it is not the stubborn letter must govern us, but the divine and softening breath of charity, which turns and winds the dictate of every positive command, and shapes it to the good of mankind. Shall the outward accessory of a father's will wanting rend the fittest and most affectionate marriage in twain, after all nuptial consummations; and shall not the want of love, and the privation of all civil and religious concord, which is the inward essence of wedlock, do as much to part those who were never truly wedded? Shall a father have this power to vindicate his own wilful honour and authority VOL. I.

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to the utter breach of a most dearly united marriage, and shall not a man in his own power have the permission to free his soul, his life, and all his comfort of life from the disaster of a no-marriage? Shall fatherhood, which is but man, for his own pleasure dissolve matrimony; and shall not matrimony, which is God's ordinance, for its own honour and better conservation dissolve itself, when it is wrong and not fitted to any of the chief ends which it owes us?

not.

"And they shall be one flesh."] These words also infer, that there ought to be an individuality in marriage; but without all question presuppose the joining causes. Not a rule yet that we have met with, so universal in this whole institution, but hath admitted limitations and conditions according to human necessity. The very foundation of matrimony, though God laid it deliberately, "that it is not good for man to be alone," holds not always, if the apostle can secure us. Soon after we are bid leave father and mother, and cleave to a wife, but must understand the father's consent withal, else "Cleave to a wife," but let her be a wife, let her be a meet help, a solace, not a nothing, not an adversary, not a desertrice: can any law or command be so unreasonable, as to make men cleave to calamity, to ruin, to perdition? In like manner here "they shall be one flesh;" but let the causes hold, and be made really good which only have the possibility to make them one flesh. We know that flesh can neither join nor keep together two bodies of itself; what is it then must make them one flesh, but likeness, but fitness of mind and disposition, which may breed the spirit of concord and union between them? If that be not in the nature of either, and that there has been a remediless mistake, as vain we go about to compel them into one flesh, as if we undertook to weave a garment of dry sand. It were more easy to compel the vegetable and nutritive power of nature to assimilations and mixtures, which are not alterable each by other; or force the concoctive stomach to turn that into flesh, which is so totally unlike that substance, as not to be wrought on. For as the unity of mind is nearer and greater than the union of bodies, so doubtless is the dissimilitude greater and more dividual, as that which makes between bodies all difference and distinction. Especially whenas besides the singular and substantial differences of every soul, there is an intimate quality of good or evil, through the whole progeny of Adam, which like a radical heat, or mortal chillness, joins them, or disjoins them irresistibly. In whom therefore either the will or the faculty, is found to have never joined, or now not to continue so, it is not to say, they shall be one flesh, for they cannot be one flesh. God commands not impossibilities; and all the ecclesiastical glue, that liturgy or laymen can compound, is not able to sodder up two such incongruous natures into the one flesh of a true beseeming marriage. Why did Moses then set down their uniting into one flesh? And I again ask why the gospel so oft repeats the eating of our Saviour's flesh, the drinking of his blood? "That we are one body with him, the members of his body, flesh of his flesh, and bone of his bone," Ephes. v. Yet lest we should be Capernaitans, as we are told there, that the flesh profiteth nothing; so we are told here, if we be not as deaf as adders, that this union of the flesh proceeds from the union of a fit help and solace. We know, that there was never a more spiritual mystery than this gospel taught us under the terms of body and flesh; yet nothing less intended than that we should stick there. What a stupidness then is it, that in marriage, which is the nearest resemblance of our union with Christ, we should deject ourselves to such a sluggish and underfoot philosophy, as to esteem the validity of marriage merely by the flesh, though never so broken and disjointed from love and peace,

which only can give a human qualification to that act of the flesh, and distinguish it from bestial! The text therefore uses this phrase, that "they shall be one flesh," to justify and make legitimate the rites of marriagebed; which was not unneedful, if for all this warrant they were suspected of pollution by some sects of philosophy, and religions of old, and latelier among the papists, and other heretics elder than they. Some think there is a high mystery in those words, from that which Paul saith of them, Ephes. v. "This is a great mystery, but I speak of Christ and the church and thence they would conclude marriage to be inseparable.

For me, I dispute not now whether matrimony be a mystery or no; if it be of Christ and his church, certainly it is not meant of every ungodly and miswedded marriage, but then only mysterious, when it is a holy, happy, and peaceful match. But when a saint is joined with a reprobate, or both alike wicked with wicked, fool with fool, a he-drunkard with a she; when the bed hath been nothing else for twenty years or more, but an old haunt of lust and malice mixed together, no love, no goodness, no loyalty, but counterplotting, and secret wishing one another's dissolution; this is to me the greatest mystery in the world, if such a marriage as this can be the mystery of aught, unless it be the mystery of iniquity: according to that which Paraus cites out of Chrysostom, that a bad wife is a help for the devil, and the like may be said of a bad husband. Since therefore none but a fit and pious matrimony can signify the union of Christ and his church, there cannot hence be any hinderance of divorce to that wedlock wherein there can be no good mystery. Rather it might to a Christian conscience be matter of finding itself so much less satisfied than before, in the continuance of an unhappy yoke, wherein there can be no representation either of Christ, or of his church.

Thus having inquired the institution how it was in the beginning, both from the 1st chap. of Gen. where it was only mentioned in part, and from the second, where it was plainly and evidently instituted; and having attended each clause and word necessary with a diligence not drowsy, we shall now fix with some advantage, and by a short view backward gather up the ground we have gone, and sum up the strength we have, into one argumentative head, with that organic force that logic proffers us. All arts acknowledge, that then only we know certainly, when we can define; for definition is that which refines the pure essence of things from the circumstance. If therefore we can attain in this our controversy to define exactly what marriage is, we shall soon learn when there is a nullity thereof, and when a divorce.

The part therefore of this chapter, which hath been here treated, doth orderly and readily resolve itself into a definition of marriage, and a consectary from thence. To the definition these words chiefly contribute; "It is not good," &c. "I will make," &c. Where the consectary begins this connection, "Therefore" informs us, "Therefore shall a man," &c. Definition is decreed by logicians to consist only of causes constituting the essence of a thing. What is not therefore among the causes constituting marriage, must not stay in the definition. Those causes are concluded to be matter, and, as the artist calls it, Form. But inasmuch as the same thing may be a cause more ways than one, and that in relations and institutions which have no corporal subsistence, but only a respective being, the Form, by which the thing is what it is, is oft so slender and undistinguishable, that it would soon confuse, were it not sustained by the efficient. and final causes, which concur to make up the Form, invalid otherwise of itself, it will be needful to take in all the four causes into the definition.