his singular life and sincere doctrine. A most certain token whereof may be his sumptuous burial at Cambridge, solemnized with so great an assistance of all the university, that it was not possible to devise more to the setting out and amplifying of the same. Dr. Pern, the Popish Vice-chancellor of Cambridge, his adversary. Cardinal Pool, about the fourth year of Queen Mary, intending to reduce the university of Cambridge to popery again, thought no way so effectual, as to cause the bones of Martin Bucer and Paulus Fagius, which had been four years in the grave, to be taken up and burnt openly with their books, as knowing that those two worthy men had been of greatest moment to the reformation of that place from popery, and had left such powerful seeds of their doctrine behind them, as would never die, unless the men themselves were digged up, and openly condemned for heretics by the university itself. This was put in execution, and Doctor Pern, vice-chancellor, appointed to preach against Bucer: who, among other things, laid to his charge the opinions which he held of the marriage of priests, of divorcement, and of usury. But immediately after his sermon, or somewhat before, as the Book of Martyrs for a truth relates, vol. iii. p. 770, the said Doctor Pern smiting himself on the breast, and in manner weeping, wished with all his heart, that God would grant his soul might then presently depart, and remain with Bucer's; for he knew his life was such, that if any man's soul were worthy of heaven, he thought Bucer's in special to be most worthy. Histor. de Combust. Buceri et Fagii. Acworth, the University-orator. cribes to Bucer; for thus he writes in a lette tus: "What a manifold loss befel the chur in the death of Bucer, as oft as I call to m my heart almost rent asunder." Soon after that Queen Elizabeth came to the crown, this condemnation of Bucer and Fagius by the cardinal and his doctors was solemnly repealed by the university; and the memory of those two famous men celebrated in an oration by Acworth, the University-orator, which is yet extant in the Book of Martyrs, vol. iii. p. 773, and in Latin, Scripta Anglican. p. 936. Peter Martyr Epist. to Conradus Hub He is dead, who hath overcome in many the Lord. God lent us for a time this our our teacher, never enough praised. Deat vided me from a most unanimous friend, on cording to mine own heart. My mind is with grief, insomuch that I have not pow more. I bid thee in Christ farewell, and mayst be able to bear the loss of Bucer b can bear it. Nicholas Carre, a learned man; Walter Haddon, master of the requests to Queen Elizabeth; Matthew Parker, afterwards primate of England; with other eminent men, in their funeral orations and sermons, express abundantly how great a man Martin Bucer was; what an incredible loss England sustained in his death; and that with him died the hope of a perfect reformation for that age. Ibid. Testimonies given by learned men to Pau who held the same opinion with Martin cerning divorce. Paulus Fagius, born in the Palatinate, b skilful in the Hebrew tongue. Being ministry at Isna, he published many anci fitable Hebrew books, being aided in the a senator of that city, as Origen someti certain rich man called Ambrosius. At le to Strasburgh, he there famously discharg of a teacher; until the same persecution and Bucer into England, where he was professor's place in Cambridge, and soo Bezæ Icones. Melchior Adamus writes his life among German divines. Sleidan and Huanus mention him wi their history and Verheiden in his elog : TO THE PARLIAMEN THE Book which, among other gr points of reformation, contains as a thereof, this treatise here presented, sup parliament! was, by the famous author dedicated to Edward the VI: whose youth doubtless had brought forth to England such a glorious manhood, reached it, as would have left in the af nothing without an excellent pattern fo low. But since the secret purpose of ment hath reserved no less perhaps th of such a sacred work to be accomplis and principally, as we trust, by your Jacobus Verheiden of Grave, in his elogies of famous dom and authority, religious lords divines. Though the name of Martin Luther be famous, yet thou, Martin Bucer, for piety, learning, labour, care, vigilance, and writing, art not to be held inferiour to Luther. Bucer was a singular instrument of God, so was Luther. By the death of this most learned and most faithful man, the church of Christ sustained a heavy loss, as Calvin witnesseth; and they who are studious of Calvin are not ignorant how much he as what wonder if I seek no other, to judgment and review I may commend worthiest labours of this renowned living all the pious nobility of those your truest and best-imitated ancestors admired. Nor was he wanting to a rec as was himself; when both at many t especially among his last sighs and p his dear and fatherly affection to the fore having reduced his model of reformation to fourteen heads, he bestows almost as much time about this one point of divorce, as about all the rest; which also was the judgment of his heirs and learned friends in Germany, best acquainted with his meaning; who first published this his book by Oporinus at Basil, (a city for learning and constancy in the true faith honourable among the first,) added a special note in the title," that there the reader should find the doctrine of divorce handled so solidly, and so fully, as scarce the like in any writer of that age:" and with this particular commendation they doubted not to dedicate the book, as a most profitable and exquisite discourse, to Christian the IIId, a worthy and pious king of Denmark, as the author himself had done before to our Edward the VIth. Yet did not Bucer in that volume only declare what his constant opinion was herein, but also in his comment upon Matthew, written at Strasburgh divers years before, he treats distinctly and copiously the same argument in three several places; touches it also upon the 7th to the Romans, and promises the same solution more largely upon the first to the Corinthians, omitting no occasion to weed out this last and deepest mischief of the canon law, sown into the opinions of modern men, against the laws and practice both of God's chosen people, and the best primitive times. Wherein his faithfulness and powerful evidence prevailed so far with all the church of Strasburgh, that they published this doctrine of divorce as an article of their confession, after they had taught so eight and twenty years, through all those times, when that city flourished, and excelled most, both in religion, learning, and government, under those first restorers of the gospel there, Zelius, Hedio, Capito, Fagius, and those who incomparably then governed the commonwealth, Farrerus and Sturmius. If therefore God in the former age found out a servant, and by whom he had converted and reformed many a city, by him thought good to restore the most needful doctrine of divorce from rigorous and harmful mistakes on the right hand; it can be no strange thing, if in this age he stir up by whatsoever means whom it pleases him, to take in hand and maintain the same assertion. Certainly if it be in man's discerning to sever providence from chance, I could allege many instances, wherein there would appear cause to esteem of me no other than a passive instrument under some power and counsel higher and better than can be human, working to a general good in the whole course of this matter. For that I owe no light, or leading received from any man in the discovery of this truth, what time I first undertook it in "the Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce," and had only the infallible grounds of Scripture to be my guide; he who tries the inmost heart, and saw with what severe industry and examination of myself I set down every period, will be my witness. When I had almost finished the first edition, I chanced to read in the notes of Hugo Grotius upon the 5th of Matthew, whom I straight understood inclining to reasonable terms in this controversy: and something of England, he sincerely wished in the hearing of many devout men, "that what he had in his last book written to King Edward concerning discipline might have place in this kingdom. His hope was then, that no calamity, no confusion, or deformity would happen to the commonwealth; but otherwise he feared, lest in the midst of all this ardency to know God, yet by the neglect of discipline, our good endeavours would not succeed."* These remarkable words of so godly and so eminent a man at his death, as they are related by a sufficient and wellknown witness, who beard them, and inserted by Thuanus into his grave and serious history; so ought they to be chiefly considered by that nation, for whose sake they were uttered, and more especially by that general council, which represents the body of that nation. If therefore the book, or this part thereof, for necessary causes, be now revived and recommended to the use of this undisciplined age; it hence appears, that these reasons have not erred in the choice of a fit patronage for a discourse of such importance. But why the whole tractate is not here brought entire, but this matter of divorcement selected in particular, to prevent the fell speed of some misinterpreter, I hasten to disclose. First, it will be soon manifest to them who know what vise men should know, that the constitution and reformation of a commonwealth, if Ezra and Nehemiah did not misreform, is, like a building, to begin orderly from the foundation thereof, which is marriage and the family, to set right first whatever is amiss therein. How can there else grow up a race of warrantable men, while the base and home that breeds them is troubled and disquieted under a bondage not of God's constraining, with a natureless constraint, (if his most righteous judgments may be our rule,) but laid upon us imperiously in the worst and weakest ages of knowledge, by a canetical tyranny of stupid and malicious monks? who baving rashly vowed themselves to a single life, which they could not undergo, invented new fetters to throw on matrimony, that the world thereby waxing more dissolate, they also in a general looseness might sin with more favour. Next, there being yet among many soch a strange iniquity and perverseness against all necessary divorce, while they will needs expound the Saviour, not duly by comparing other places, as they must do in the resolving of a hundred ether scriptures, but by persisting deafly in the abrupt and papistical way of a literal apprehension against the direct analogy of sense, reason, law, and gospel; at therefore may well seem more than time, to apply the sound and holy persuasions of this apostolic man to part in us, which is not yet fully dispossessed of an errour as absurd, as most that we deplore in our blandest adversaries; and to let his authority and unanswerable reasons be vulgarly known, that either his ame, or the force of his doctrine, may work a wholesome effect. Lastly, I find it clear to be the author's tention, that this point of divorcement should be held and received as a most necessary and prime part of discipline in every Christian government. And there words of our that • Nicol. Car, de obitu Buceri. he whispered rather than disputed about the law of | writer, I had laboured out, and laid together. charity, and the true end of wedlock. Glad therefore that there is some difference in the handlin of such an able assistant, however at much distance, I order, and the number of arguments, but still resolved at length to put off into this wild and calum- in the same conclusion. So as I may justly nious world. For God, it seems, intended to prove me, mine own mind with due acknowledgment whether I durst alone take up a rightful cause against ance from above, which led me, not as a 1 a world of disesteem, and found I durst. My name I as a collateral teacher, to a sympathy of did not publish, as not willing it should sway the reader with no less a man than Martin Bucer. either for me or against me. But when I was told that our things here below arrive him where he the style, which what it ails to be so soon distinguish repent him to see that point of knowledge able I cannot tell, was known by most men, and that first and with an unchecked freedom preach some of the clergy began to inveigh and exclaim on more knowing times of England, now four what I was credibly informed they had not read; Isary, though what he admonished were los took it then for my proper season, both to shew them a name that could easily contemn such an indiscreet kind of censure, and to reinforce the question with a more accurate diligence: that if any of them would be so good as to leave railing, and to let us hear so much of his learning and christian wisdom, as will be strictly demanded of him in his answering to this problem, care was had he should not spend his preparations against a nameless pamphlet. By this time I had learned that Paulus Fagius, one of the chief divines in Germany, sent for by Frederic the Palatine, to reform his dominion, and after that invited hither in King Edward's days, to be a professor of divinity in Cambridge, was of the same opinion touching divorce, which these men so lavishly traduced in me. What I found, I inserted where fittest place was, thinking sure they would respect so grave an author, at least to the moderating of their odious inferences. And having now perfected a second edition, I referred the judging thereof to your high and impartial sentence, honoured lords and commons! For I was confident, if any thing generous, any thing noble, and above the multitude, were left yet in the spirit of England; it could be no where sooner found, and no where sooner understood, than in that house of justice and true liberty, where ye sit in council. Nor doth the event hitherto, for some reasons which I shall not here deliver, fail me of what I conceived so highly. Nevertheless, being far otherwise dealt with by some, of whose profession and supposed knowledge I had better hope, and esteemed the deviser of a new and pernicious paradox; I felt no difference within me from that peace and firmness of mind, which is of nearest kin to patience and contentment: both for that I knew I had divulged a truth linked inseparably with the most fundamental rules of Christianity, to stand or fall together, and was not uninformed, that divers learned and judicious men testified their daily approbation of the book. Yet at length it hath pleased God, who had already given me satisfaction in myself, to afford me now a means whereby I may be fully justified also in the eyes of men. When the book had been now the second time set forth well-nigh three months, as I best remember, I then first came to hear that Martin Bucer had written much concerning divorce: whom, earnestly turning over, I soon perceived, but not without amazement, in the same opinion, confirmed with the same reasons which in that published book, without the help or imitation of any precedent memory; yet that God doth now again crea doctrine in another unwritten table, and immediately out of his pure oracle to the co of a perverse age, eager in the reformatio and ceremonies, but in realities as traditi ignorant as their forefathers. I would foremost of my profound accusers, wheth affirm that to be licentious, new, and dang Martin Bucer so often and so urgently av most lawful, most necessary, and most ch out the least blemish to his good name, a worthy men of that age, and since, who tes of him? If they dare, they must then set up of their own against all those churches a honoured him without this exception: ift how can they now make that licentious d other, which was never blamed or confu or in Fagius? The truth is, there will b for this their unadvised rashness the best can be given them; I mean, a round that where they thought to be most ma have displayed their own want, both of of judgment. First, to be so unacqu writings of Bucer, which are so obvious in their own faculty; next, to be so caus dicating weakness, as to condemn that f (whether they knew or not) these ele Christ commended for lawful; and for was taught by these almost the first an thors of reformation, who were never teaching; and dedicated without scru pair of the first reforming kings in ch confessed in the public confession of a m church and state in Germany. This fault which I must tell them; that t now almost this whole year clamouring the book hath been twice printed, tw and never once vouchsafed a friendly the author, who would be glad and shown an errour, either by private d answer, and could retract, as well as him; might also be worth the gaini heretofore hath done good service to their own confession. Or if he be obs futation would have rendered him wit reclaimed others of no mean parts, w opinion. But now their work is mo and how they will hold up their he sudden aspect of these two great and reverend saints, whom they have defamed, how they will make good the censuring of that, for a novelty of licence, which Bucer constantly taught to be a pure and holy law of Christ's kingdom, let them advise. For against these my adversaries, who, before the examining of a propounded truth in a fit time of reformation, have had the conscience to oppose naught else but their blind reproaches and surmises, that a single innocence might not be oppressed and overborn by a crew of mouths, for the restoring of a law and doctrine falsely and unlearnedly reputed new and scandalous; God, that I may ever magnify and record this his goodness, hath unexpectedly raised up as it were from the dead more than one famous light of the first reformation, to bear witness with me, and to do me honour in that very thing, wherein these men thought to have blotted me; and hath given them the proof of a capacity, which they despised, running equal, and authentic with some of their chiefest masters unthought of, and in a point of sagest moment. However, if we know at all when to scribe the occurrences of this life to the work of a special Providence, as nothing is more usual in the talk of good men, what can be more like to a special Providence of God, than in the first reformation of England, that this question of divorce, as a main thing to be restored to just freedom, was written, and seriasly commended to Edward the VIth, by a man called from another country to be the instructor of our nation; and now in this present renewing of the church and commonwealth, which we pray may be more lasting, that the same question should be again treated and presented to this parliament, by one enabled to use the same reasons without the least sight or knowledge of what was done before? It were no trespass, lords and commons! though something of less note were attributed to the ordering of a heavenly power; this question therefore of such prime concernment both to christian and civil welfare, in such an extraordinary manner, not recovered, but plainly twice born to these latter ages, as from a divine hand I tender to your acceptance, and most considerate thoughts. Think not that God raised up in vain a man of greatest authority in the church, to tell a trivial and licentious tale in the ears of that good prince, and to bequeath it as his last will and testament, nay rather as the testament and royal law of Christ, to this nation; or that it should of itself, after so many years, as it were in a new field where it was never sown, grow up again as a vicious plant in the mind of another, who had spoke honestest things to the nation; though he knew not that what his youth then reasoned without a pattern had been heard already, and well allowed from the gravity and worth of Martin Bucer: till meeting with the envy of men ignorant in their own undertaken calling, God directed hum to the forgotten writings of this faithful evangelist to be his defence and warrant against the gross imputation of broaching licence. Ye are now in the glorious way to high virtue, and matchless deeds, trust ed with a most inestimable trust, the asserting of our just liberties. Ye have a nation that expects now, and M from mighty sufferings aspires to be the example of all christendom to a perfectest reforming. Dare to be as great, as ample, and as eminent in the fair progress of your noble designs, as the full and goodly stature of truth and excellence itself; as unlimited by petty precedents and copies, as your unquestionable calling from Heaven gives ye power to be. What are all our public immunities and privileges worth, and how shall it be judged, that we fight for them with minds worthy to enjoy them, if we suffer ourselves in the mean while not to understand the most important freedom, that God and nature hath given us in the family; which no wise nation ever wanted, till the popery and superstition of some former ages attempted to remove and alter divine and most prudent laws for human and most imprudent canons: whereby good men in the best portion of their lives, and in that ordinance of God which entitles them from the beginning to most just and requisite contentments, are compelled to civil indignities, which by the law of Moses bad men were not compelled to? Be not bound about, and straitened in the spacious wisdom of your free spirits, by the scanty and unadequate and inconsistent principles of such as condemn others for adhering to traditions, and are themselves the prostrate worshippers of custom; and of such a tradition as they can deduce from no antiquity, but from the rudest and thickest barbarism of antichristian times. But why do I anticipate the more acceptable and prevailing voice of learned Bucer himself, the pastor of nations? And O that I could set him living before ye in that doctrinal chair, where once the learnedest of England thought it no disparagement to sit at his feet! He would be such a pilot, and such a father to ye, as ye would soon find the difference of his hand and skill upon the helm of reformation. Nor do I forget that faithful associate of his labours, Paulus Fagius; for these their great names and merits, how precious soever, God hath now joined with me necessarily, in the good or evil report of this doctrine, which I leave with you. It was written to a religious king of this land; written earnestly as a main matter wherein this kingdom needed a reform, if it purposed to be the kingdom of Christ: written by him, who if any, since the days of Luther, merits to be counted the apostle of the church: whose unwearied pains and watching for our sakes, as they spent him quickly here among us, so did they, during the shortness of his life, incredibly promote the gospel throughout this realm. The authority, the learning, the godliness of this man consulted with, is able to outbalance all that the lightness of a vulgar opposition can bring to counterpoise. I leave him also as my complete surety and testimonial, if truth be not the best witness to itself, that what I formerly presented to your reading on this subject, was good, and just, and honest, not licentious. Not that I have now more confidence by the addition of these great authors to my party: for what I wrote was not my opinion, but my knowledge; even then when I could trace no footstep in the way I went: nor that I think to win upon your apprehensions with numbers and with names, rather than with reasons; yet certainly the worst of my detractors will not except against so good a bail of my integrity and judgment, as now appears for me. They must else put in the fame of Bucer and of Fagius, as my accomplices and confederates, into the same indictment; they must dig up the good name of these prime worthies, (if their names could be ever buried,) they must dig them up and brand them as the papists did their bodies; and those their pure unblamable spirits, which live not only in heaven, but in their writings, they must attaint with new attaintures, which no protestant ever before aspersed them with. Or if perhaps we may obtain to get our appeachment new drawn a writ of errour, not of libertinism, that those two principal readers of reformation may not now come to be sued in a bill of licence, to the scandal of our church; the brief result will be, that for the errour, if their own works be not thought sufficient to defend them, their lives yet, who will be ready, in a fair and christianly discussive way, to debate and sift this matter to the utmost ounce of learning and religion, in him that shall lay it as an errour, either upon Martin Bucer, or any other of his opinion. If this be not enough to qualify my traducers, and that they think it more for the wisdom of their virulence, not to recant the injuries they have bespoke me, I shall not, for much more disturbance than they can bring me, intermit the prosecution of those thoughts, which may render me best serviceable, either to this age, or, if it so happen, to posterity; following the fair path, which your illustrious exploits, honoured lords and commons! against the breast of tyranny have opened; and depending so on your happy successes in the hopes that I have conceived either of myself, or of the nation, as must needs conclude me one who most affectionately wishes and awaits the prosperous issue of your noble and valorous counsels. JOHN MILTON THE JUDGMENT OF MARTIN BUCER, TOUCHING DIVORCE: ་་ TAKEN OUT OF THE SECOND BOOK ENTITLED, "OF THE KINGDOM OF CHRIST;" WRITTEN BY MARTIN BUCER TO EDWARD THE SIXTH, KING OF ENGLAND. CHAP. XV. The seventh law of the sanctifying and ordering of marriage. That the ordering of marriage belongs to the civil power. That the popes have evaded by fraud and force the ordering of marriage. BESIDES these things, Christ our king, and his churches, require from your sacred majesty, that you would take upon you the just care of marriages. For it is unspeakable how many good consciences are hereby entangled, afflicted, and in danger, because there are no just laws, no speedy way constituted according to God's word, touching this holy society and fountain of mankind. For seeing matrimony is a civil thing, men, that they may rightly contract, inviolably keep, and not without extreme necessity dissolve marriage, are not only to be taught by the doctrine and discipline of the church, but also are to be acquitted, aided, and compelled by laws and judicature of the commonwealth. Which thing pious emperors acknowledging, and therein framing themselves to the law of nations, gave laws both of contracting and preserving, and also where an unhappy need required, of divorcing marriages. As may be seen in the code of Justinian, the 5th book, from the beginning through twenty-four titles. And in the authentic of Justinian the 22d, and some others. But the Antichrists of Rome, to get the imperial power into their own hands, first by fraudulent persua sion, afterwards by force, drew to themselves the whole authority of determining and judging as well in matrimonial causes, as in most other matters. Therefore it hath been long believed, that the care and government thereof doth not belong to the civil magistrate. Yet where the gospel of Christ is received, the laws of Antichrist should be rejected. If therefore kings and governors take not this care, by the power of law and justice, to provide that marriages be piously contracted, religiously kept, and lawfully dissolved, if need require. who sees not what confusion and trouble is brought upon this holy society; and what a rack is prepared, even for many of the best consciences, while they have no certain laws to follow, no justice to implore, if any intolerable thing happen? And how much it concerus the honour and safety of the commonwealth, that marriages, according to the will of Christ, be made, maintained, and not without just cause dissolved, whe understands not? For unless that first and holiest society of man and woman be purely constituted, that |