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that other reasons of divorce, besides adultery, were by the law of Moses, and are yet to be allowed by the christian magistrate as a piece of justice, and that the words of Christ are not hereby contraried. Next, that to prohibit absolutely any divorce whatsoever, except those which Moses excepted, is against the reason of law, as in due place I shall shew out of Fagius with many additions. He therefore who by adventuring, shall be so happy as with success to light the way of such an expedient liberty and truth as this, shall restore the muchwronged and over-sorrowed state of matrimony, not only to those merciful and life-giving remedies of Moses, but as much as may be, to that serene and blissful condition it was in at the beginning, and shall deserve of all apprehensive men, (considering the troubles and distempers, which, for want of this insight have been so oft in kingdoms, in states, and families,) shall deserve to be reckoned among the public benefactors of civil and human life, above the inventors of wine and oil; for this is a far dearer, far nobler, and more desirable cherishing to man's life, unworthily exposed to sadness and mistake, which he shall vindicate. Not that licence, and levity, and unconsented breach of faith should herein be countenanced, but that some conscionable and tender pity might be had of those who have unwarily, in a thing they never practised before, made themselves the bondmen of a luckless and helpless matrimony. In which argument, he whose courage can serve him to give the first onset, must look for two several oppositions; the one from those who having sworn themselves to long custom, and the letter of the text, will not out of the road; the other from those whose gross and vulgar apprehensions conceit but low of matrimonial purposes, and in the work of male and female think they have all. Nevertheless, it shall be here sought by due ways to be made appear, that those words of God in the institution, promising a meet help against loneliness, and those words of Christ," that his yoke is easy, and his burden light," were not spoken in vain: for if the knot of marriage may in no case be dissolved but for adultery, all the burdens and services of the law are not so intolerable. This only is desired of them who are minded to judge hardly of thus maintaining, that they would be still, and hear all out, nor think it equal to answer deliberate reason with sudden heat and noise; remembering this, that many truths now of reverend esteem and credit, had their birth and beginning once from singular and private thoughts, while the most of men were otherwise possessed; and had the fate at first to be generally exploded and exclaimed on by many violent opposers: yet I may err perhaps in soothing myself, that this present truth revived will deserve on all hands to be not sinisterly received, in that it undertakes the cure of an inveterate disease crept into the best part of human society; and to do this with no smarting corrosive, but with a smooth and pleasing lesson, which received hath the virtue to soften and dispel rooted and knotty sorrows, and without enchantment, if that be feared, or spell used, hath regard at once both to serious pity and upright honesty; that tends to the redeeming and restoring of none but such as are the object of compassion, having in an ill hour hampered themselves, to the utter dispatch of all their most beloved comforts and repose for this life's term. But if we shall obstinately dislike this new overture of unexpected ease and recovery, what remains but to deplore the frowardness of our hopeless condition, which teither can endure the estate we are in, nor admit of remedy either sharp or sweet. Sharp we ourselves distaste; and sweet, under whose hands we are, is scrupled and suspected as too luscious. In such a posture Christ found the Jews, who were neither won with the austerity of John the Baptist, and thought it too much licence to follow freely the charming pipe of him who sounded and proclaimed liberty and relief to all distresses: yet trach in some age or other will find her witness, and shall be justified at last by her own children.

CHAP. I.

The position proved by the law of Moses. That law expounded and asserted to a moral and charitable use, first by Paulus Fagius, next with other additions.

To remove therefore, if it be possible, this great and sad oppression, which through the strictness of a literal tnterpreting bath invaded and disturbed the dearest and most peaceable estate of household society, to the everburdening, if not the overwhelming of many Christans better worth than to be so deserted of the church's considerate care, this position shall be laid down, first proving, then answering what may be objected either from Scripture or light of reason.

That indisposition, unfitness, or contrariety of mind, arising from a cause in nature unchangeable,

hindering, and ever likely to hinder, the main benefits of conjugal society, which are solace and peace; is a greater reason of divorce than natural frigidity, especially if there be no children, and that there be mutual consent."

This I gather from the law in Deut. xxiv. 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, let him write her a bill of divorcement, and give it in her hand, and send her out of his house," &c. This law, if the words

of Christ may be admitted into our belief, shall never
while the world stands, for him be abrogated. First
therefore I here set down what learned Fagius hath
observed on this law; "the law of God," saith he,
"permitted divorce for the help of human weakness.
For every one that of necessity separates, cannot live
single. That Christ denied divorce to his own, hinders
not; for what is that to the unregenerate, who hath
not attained such perfection? Let not the remedy be
despised, which was given to weakness. And when
Christ saith, who marries the divorced commits adultery,
it is to be understood if he had any plot in the divorce."
The rest I reserve until it be disputed, how the magis-
trate is to do herein. From hence we may plainly dis-
cern a twofold consideration in this law: first, the end
of the lawgiver, and the proper act of the law, to com-
mand or to allow something just and honest, or indif-
ferent. Secondly, his sufferance from some accidental
result of evil by this allowance, which the law cannot
remedy. For if this law have no other end or act but
only the allowance of sin, though never to so good in-
tention, that law is no law, but sin muffled in the robe
of law, or law disguised in the loose garment of sin.
Both which are too foul hypotheses, to save the pha-
nomenon of our Saviour's answer to the Pharisees about
this matter. And I trust anon by the help of an infal-
lible guide, to perfect such Prutenic tables, as shall
mend the astronomy of our wide expositors.

CHAP. II.

The first reason of this law grounded on th son of matrimony. That no covenant obliges against the main end both of itsel parties covenanting.

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For all sense and equity reclaims, tha covenant, how solemn or strait soever, ei God and man, or man and man, though ing, should bind against a prime and of its own institution, and of both or eith nanting: neither can it be of force to eng less creature to his own perpetual sorrow his expected solace, without suffering cha and do a confessed good work of parting nothing holds together but this of God's j supposed against the express end of his And what his chief end was of creating joined with man, his own instituting and are infallible to inform us what is what is no marriage; unless we can there to no purpose: "it is not good," man should be alone, I will make him him." From which words, so plain, concluded, nor is by any learned interp in God's intention a meet and happy the chiefest and the noblest end of m find here no expression so necessarily i knowledge, as this prevention of loneli and spirit of man. To this, Fagius, Rivetus, as willingly and largely as wished. And indeed it is a greater bl more worthy so excellent a creature a higher end to honour and sanctify the riage, whenas the solace and satisfact is regarded and provided for before th ing of the body. And with all gener ried thus it is, that where the mind a aptly, there some unaccomplishment light may be better borne with, than hangs off in an unclosing dispropo body be as it ought; for there all cor soon become unsavoury and contem solitariness of man, which God had cipally ordered to prevent by marriag but lies under a worse condition than gle life: for in single life the absenc of a helper might inure him to expec out of himself, or to seek with hope; tinual sight of his deluded thoug must needs be to him, if especially cline him to melancholy, a daily tr loss, in some degree like that whic Lest therefore so noble a creature shut up incurably under a worse ev take in that ordinance which God g a less evil, reaping to himself sorrow rid away solitariness, it cannot avoi that if the woman be naturally so of

The cause of divorce mentioned in the law is translated "some uncleanness," but in the Hebrew it sounds "nakedness of aught, or any real nakedness:" which by all the learned interpreters is referred to the mind as well as to the body. And what greater nakedness or unfitness of mind than that which hinders ever the solace and peaceful society of the married couple; and what hinders that more than the unfitness and defectiveness of an unconjugal mind? The cause therefore of divorce expressed in the position cannot but agree with that described in the best and equallest sense of Moses's law. Which, being a matter of pure charity, is plainly moral, and more now in force than ever; therefore surely lawful. For if under the law such was God's gracious indulgence, as not to suffer the ordinance of his goodness and favour through any errour to be seared and stigmatized upon his servants to their misery and thraldom; much less will he suffer it now under the covenant of grace, by abrogating his former grant of remedy and relief. But the first institution will be objected to have ordained marriage inseparable. To that a little patience until this first part have amply discoursed the grave and pious reasons of this divorcive law; and then I doubt not but with one gentle stroking to wipe away ten thousand tears out of the life of man. Yet thus much I shall now insist on, that whatever the institution were, it could not be so enormous, nor so rebellious against both nature and reason, as to exalt itself above the end and person for whom it was instituted.

not help to remove, but help to increase that same Godforbidden loneliness, which will in time draw on with it a general discomfort and dejection of mind, not beseeming either christian profession or moral conversation, unprofitable and dangerous to the commonwealth, when the household estate, out of which must flourish. forth the vigour and spirit of all public enterprises, is so illcontented and procured at home, and cannot be supported; such a marriage can be no marriage, whereto the most honest end is wanting: and the aggrieved person shall do more manly, to be extraordinary and singular in claiming the due right whereof he is frustrated, than to piece up his lost contentment by visiting the stews, or stepping to his neighbour's bed; which is the common shift in this misfortune: or else by suffering his useful life to waste away, and be lost under a secret affliction of an unconscionable size to human strength. Against all which evils the mercy of this Mosaic law was graciously exhibited.

CHAP. III.

The ignorance and iniquity of canon law, providing for the right of the body in marriage, but nothing for the trongs and grievances of the mind. An objection, that the mind should be better looked to before contract, answered.

How vain therefore is it, and how preposterous in the canon law, to have made such careful provision against the impediment of carnal performance, and to have had no care about the unconversing inability of and so defective to the purest and most sacred end of and that the vessel of voluptuous enjoyent must be made good to him that has taken it upon trast, without any caution; whenas the mind, from where must flow the acts of peace and love, a far re precious mixture than the quintescence of an exTent, though it be found never so deficient and able to perform the best duty of marriage in a cheertal and agreeable conversation, shall be thought good gh, however flat and melancholious it be, and Bust serve, though to the eternal disturbance and lanishing of him that complains! Yet wisdom and hanty, weighing God's own institution, would think at the pining of a sad spirit wedded to loneliness seould deserve to be freed, as well as the impatience of sensual desire so providently relieved. It is read to

in the liturgy, that "we must not marry to satisfy The fleshly appetite, like brute beasts, that have no derstanding;" but the canon so runs, as if it dreamed

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no other matter than such an appetite to be satisf-d; for if it happen that nature hath stopped or exnguished the veins of sensuality, that marriage is alled. But though all the faculties of the underanding and conversing part after trial appear to be so and so aversely met through nature's unalterable working, as that neither peace, nor any sociable confollow, it is as nothing; the contract

ment can

I shall stand as firm as ever, betide what will. What is this but secretly to instruct us, that however many grave reasons are pretended to the married life, yet that nothing indeed is thought worth regard therein, but the prescribed satisfaction of an irrational heat? Which cannot be but ignominious to the state of marriage, dishonourable to the undervalued soul of man, and even to christian doctrine itself: while it seems more moved at the disappointing of an impetuous nerve, thau at the ingenuous grievance of a mind unreasonably yoked; and to place more of marriage in the channel of concupiscence, than in the pure influence of peace and love, whereof the soul's lawful contentment is the only fountain.

But some are ready to object, that the disposition ought seriously to be considered before. But let them know again, that for all the wariness can be used, it may yet befall a discreet man to be mistaken in his choice, and we have plenty of examples. The soberest and best governed men are least practised in these affairs; and who knows not that the bashful muteness of a virgin may ofttimes hide all the unliveliness and natural sloth which is really unfit for conversation; nor is there that freedom of access granted or presumed, as may suffice to a perfect discerning till too late; and where any indisposition is suspected, what more usual than the persuasion of friends, that acquaintance, as it increases, will amend all? And lastly, it is not strange though many, who have spent their youth chastely, are in some things not so quick-sighted, while they haste too eagerly to light the nuptial torch; nor is it therefore that for a modest errour a man should forfeit so great a happiness, and no charitable means to release him since they who have lived most loosely, by reason of their bold accustoming, prove most successful in their matches, because their wild affections unsettling at will, have been as so many divorces to teach them experience. Whenas the sober man honouring the appearance of modesty, and hoping well of every social virtue under that veil, may easily chance to meet, if not with a body impenetrable, yet often with a mind to all other due conversation inaccessible, and to all the more estimable and superior purposes of matrimony useless and almost lifeless: and what a solace, what a fit help such a consort would be through the whole life of a man, is less pain to conjecture than to have experience.

CHAP. IV.

The second reason of this law, because without it, marriage as it happens oft is not a remedy of that which it promises, as any rational creature would expect. That marriage, if we pattern from the beginning, as our Saviour bids, was not properly the remedy of lust, but the fulfilling of conjugal love and helpfulness.

AND that we may further see what a violent cruel thing it is to force the continuing of those together,

cannot be honourable for the meet reducin nating lust between two; seeing many luntary and chosen couples live together rously, and are as truly married in that all ingenuous men will see that the digu ing of marriage is placed rather in the ment of that which the wanting soul ne than of that which the plenteous body v give away. Hence it is that Plato in hi course brings in Socrates relating what have learned from the prophetess Dioti was the son of Penury, begot of Plenty of Jupiter. Which divinely sorts with effect Moses tells us, that Love was the ness, begot in Paradise by that sociab aptitude which God implanted between man toward each other. The same als ing mentioned by St. Paul, whereof n to be the remedy: the flesh hath other m curbs which are in the power of any When therefore this original and sin loneliness of the soul cannot lay itsel side of such a meet and acceptable u dained in marriage, at least in some pr not conceive and bring forth love, but unmarried under a former wedlock, an the proper meaning of St. Paul. Th not that hate that sins, but that which dissatisfaction, and the turning aside object: if that mistake have done inju dismiss with recompense; for to retain able to love, is to heap up more inju wise and pious law of dismission now beginning: he therefore who lacking most native and humane end of ma better to part than to live sadly and in cheerful covenant, (for not to be belo tained, is the greatest injury to a ge say, who therefore seeks to part, is honours the married life and would n the reasons which now move him to d to the best of those that could first

whom God and nature in the gentlest end of marriage | may be dissolved, than that of copulati never joined; divers evils and extremities, that follow upon such a compulsion, shall here be set in view. Of evils, the first and greatest is, that hereby a most absurd and rash imputation is fixed upon God and his holy laws, of conniving and dispensing with open and common adultery among his chosen people; a thing which the rankest politician would think it shame and disworship that his laws should countenance: how and in what manner that comes to pass I shall reserve till the course of method brings on the unfolding of many scriptures. Next, the law and gospel are hereby made liable to more than one contradiction, which I refer also thither. Lastly, the supreme dictate of charity is hereby many ways neglected and violated; which I shall forthwith address to prove. First, we know St. Paul saith, It is better to marry than to burn. Marriage therefore was given as a remedy of that trouble; but what might this burning mean? Certainly not the mere motion of carnal lust, not the mere goad of a sensitive desire: God does not principally take care for such cattle. What is it then but that desire which God put into Adam in Paradise, before he knew the sin of incontinence; that desire which God saw it was not good that man should be left alone to burn in, the desire and longing to put off an unkindly solitariness by uniting another body, but not without a fit soul to his, in the cheerful society of wedlock? Which if it were so needful before the fall, when man was much more perfect in himself, how much more is it needful now against all the sorrows and casualties of this life, to have an intimate and speaking help, a ready and reviving associate in marriage? Whereof who misses, by chancing on a mute and spiritless mate, remains more alone than before, and in a burning less to be contained than that which is fleshly, and more to be considered; as being more deeply rooted even in the faultless innocence of nature. As for that other burning, which is but as it were the venom of a lusty and over-abounding concoction, strict life and labour, with the abatement of a full diet, may keep that low and obedient enough: but this pure and more inbred desire of joining to itself in conjugal fellowship a fit conversing soul (which desire is properly called love) "is stronger than death," as the spouse of Christ thought; many waters cannot quench it, neither can the floods drown it." This is that rational burning that marriage is to remedy, not to be allayed with fasting, nor with any penance to be subdued: which how can be assuage who by mishap hath met the most unmeet and unsuitable mind? Who hath the power to struggle with an intelligible flame, not in Paradise to be resisted, become now more ardent by being failed of what in reason it looked for; and even then most unquenched, when the importunity of a provender burning is well enough appeased; and yet the soul hath obtained nothing of what it justly desires. Certainly such a one forbidden to divorce, is in effect forbidden to marry, and compelled to greater difficulties than in a single life: for if there be not a more humane burning which marriage must satisfy, or else

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marry; for, as was plainly shewn, bo now diverts him, and the loneliness still powerfully to seek a fit help, b grain of a sin in it, if he be worthy to self.

CHAP. V.

The third reason of this law, beca

who has happened where he finds less offences and discontents, is in temptations than ever before.

THIRDLY, Yet it is next to be fea still bound without reason by a deaf

he perceives the just expectance of his mind defeated,
he will begin even against law to cast about where he
may
find his satisfaction more complete, unless he be a
thing heroically virtuous; and that are not the com-
mon lump of men, for whom chiefly the laws ought to
be made; though not to their sins, yet to their unsin-
ning weaknesses, it being above their strength to en-
dare the lonely estate, which while they shunned they
are fallen into. And yet there follows upon this a
worse temptation: for if he be such as hath spent his
youth unblamably, and laid up his chiefest earthly
comforts in the enjoyments of a contented marriage,
ner did neglect that furtherance which was to be ob-
tained therein by constant prayers; when he shall find
himself bound fast to an uncomplying discord of na-
ture, or, as it oft happens, to an image of earth and
phlegm, with whom he looked to be the copartner of a
sweet and gladsome society, and sees withal that his
bondage is now inevitable; though he be almost the
strongest Christian, he will be ready to despair in vir-
tae, and mutiny against Divine Providence: and this
doubtless is the reason of those lapses, and that me-
ancholy despair, which we see in many wedded per-
sons, though they understand it not, or pretend other
causes, because they know no remedy; and is of ex-
treme danger: therefore when human frailty sur-
charged is at such a loss, charity ought to venture
much, and use bold physic, lest an overtossed faith en-
danger to shipwreck.

shadow of the earth, he darts out the direct rays of his then most piercing eyesight upon the impostures and trim disguises that were used with him, and discerns that this is not his genuine brother as he imagined; he has no longer the power to hold fellowship with such a personated mate: for straight his arrows lose their golden heads, and shed their purple feathers, his silken braids untwine, and slip their knots, and that original and fiery virtue given him by fate all on a sudden goes out, and leaves him undeified and despoiled of all his force; till finding Anteros at last, he kindles and repairs the almost faded ammunition of his deity by the reflection of a coequal and homogeneal fire. Thus mine author sung it to me: and by the leave of those who would be counted the only grave ones, this is no mere amatorious novel (though to be wise and skilful in these matters, men heretofore of greatest name in virtue have esteemed it one of the highest arcs, that human contemplation circling upwards can make from the globy sea whereon she stands): but this is a deep and serious verity, shewing us that love in marriage cannot live nor subsist unless it be mutual; and where love cannot be, there can be left of wedlock nothing but the empty husk of an outside matrimony, as undelightful and unpleasing to God as any other kind of hypocrisy. So far is his command from tying men to the observance of duties which there is no help for, but they must be dissembled. If Solomon's advice be not over-frolic, "live joyfully," saith he, "with the wife whom thou lovest, all thy days, for that is thy portion." How then, where we find it impossible to rejoice or to love, can we obey this precept? How miserably do we defraud ourselves of that comfortable portion, which God gives us, by striving vainly to glue an errour together, which God and nature will not join, adding but more vexation and violence to that blissful society by our importunate superstition, that will not hearken to St. Paul, 1 Cor. vii. who, speaking of marriage and divorce, determines plain enough in general, that God therein "hath called us to peace, and not to bondage." FOURTHLY, Marriage is a covenant, the very being Yea, God himself commands in his law more than once, whereof consists not in a forced cohabitation, and coun- and by his prophet Malachi, as Calvin and the best terfeit performance of duties, but in unfeigned love and translations read, that " he who hates, let him divorce," peace: and of matrimonial love, no doubt but that was that is, he who cannot love. Hence it is that the rabedy meant, which by the ancient sages was thus bins, and Maimonides, famous among the rest, in a parabled; that Love, if he be not twin born, yet hath book of his set forth by Buxtorfius, tells us, that "dibrother wondrous like him, called Anteros; whom vorce was permitted by Moses to preserve peace in while he seeks all about, his chance is to meet with marriage, and quiet in the family." Surely the Jews any false and feigning desires, that wander singly had their saving peace about them as well as we, yet up and down in his likeness: by them in their bor- care was taken that this wholesome provision for wed garb, Love, though not wholly blind, as poets household peace should also be allowed them: and g him, yet having but one eye, as being born an must this be denied to Christians? O perverseness! her aiming, and that eye not the quickest in this dark that the law should be made more provident of g here below, which is not Love's proper sphere, making than the gospel! that the gospel should be arly out of the simplicity and credulity which is na-put to beg a most necessary help of mercy from the Live to him, often deceived, embraces and consorts him law, but must not have it; and that to grind in the with these obvious and suborned striplings, as if they mill of an undelighted and servile copulation, must be were his mother's own sons; for so he thinks them, the only forced work of a christian marriage, ofttimes while they subtilly keep themselves most on his blind with such a yokefellow, from whom both love and side. But after a while, as his manner is, when soarpeace, both nature and religion mourns to be sepang up into the high tower of his Apogeum, above the rated. I cannot therefore be so diffident, as not se

CHAP. VI.

The fourth reason of this law, that God regards love and peace in the family, more than a compulsive performance of marriage, which is more broke by a grievous continuance, than by a needful divorce.

peace

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