believed upon his own word: for what is this else but his counsel in a thing indifferent, "to the rest speak I, not the Lord?" for though it be true, that the Lord never spake it, yet from St. Paul's mouth we should have took it as a command, had not himself forewarned us, and disclaimed; which notwithstanding if we shall still avouch to be a command, he palpably denying it, this is not to expound St. Paul, but to outface him. Neither doth it follow, that the Apostle may interpose his judgment in a case of Christian liberty, without the guilt of adding to God's word. How do we know marriage or single life to be of choice, but by such like words as these, "I speak this by permission, not of commandment; I have no command of the Lord, yet I give my judgment." Why shall not the like words have leave to signify a freedom in this our present question, though Beza deny? Neither is the Scripture hereby less inspired, because St. Paul confesses to have written there in what he had not of command for we grant that the spirit of God led him thus to express himself to Christian prudence, in a matter which God thought best to leave uncommanded. Beza therefore must be warily read, when he taxes St. Austin of blasphemy, for holding that St. Paul spake here as of a thing indifferent. But if it must be a command, I shall yet the more evince it to be a command that we should herein be left free; and that out of the Greek word used in the

12 ver. which instructs us plainly, there must be a joint assent and good liking on both sides: he that will not deprave the text must thus render it; " If a brother have an unbelieving wife, and she join in consent to dwell with him" (which cannot utter less to us than a mutual agreement) let him not put her away from the mere surmise of judaical uncleanness and the reason follows, for the body of an infidel is not polluted, neither to benevolence, nor to procreation. Moreover, this note of mutual complacency forbids all offer of seducement, which to a person of zeal cannot be attempted without great offence if therefore seducement be feared, this place hinders not divorce. Another caution was put in this supposed command, of not bringing the believer into 'bondage' hereby, which doubtless might prove extreme, if Christian liberty and conscience were left to the humour of a pagan staying at pleasure to play with, and to vex and wound with a thousand scandals and burdens, above strength to bear: If therefore the conceived hope of gaining a soul come to nothing, then charity commands that the believer be not wearied out with endless waiting under many grievances sore to his spirit; but that respect be had rather to the present suffering of a true Christian, than the uncertain winning of an obdurate heretic. The counsel we have from St. Paul to hope, cannot countermand the moral and evangelic charge we

have from God to fear seducement, to separate from the misbeliever, the unclean, the obdurate. The Apostle wisheth us to hope, but does not send us a wool-gathering after vain hope; he saith, "How knowest thou, O man, whether thou shalt save thy wife?" that is, till he try all due means, and set some reasonable time to himself, after which he may give over washing an Ethiop, if he will hear the advice of the gospel; "Cast not pearls before swine," saith Christ himself. "Let him be to thee as a heathen. Shake the dust off thy feet." If this be not enough, "hate and forsake" what relation soever. And this also that follows must appertain to the precept, "Let every man wherein he is called, therein abide with God," v. 24, that is, so walking in his inferior calling of marriage, as not by dangerous subjection to that ordinance to hinder and disturb the higher calling of his christianity. Last, and never too oft remembered, whether this be a command, or an advice, we must look that it be so understood as not to contradict the least point of moral religion that God hath formerly commanded; otherwise what do we but set the moral law and the gospel at civil war together? and who then shall be able to serve these two masters !

CHAP. IX.

That adultery is not the greatest breach of matrimony: that there may be other violations as great.

Now whether idolatry or adultery be the greatest violation of marriage, if any demand let him thus consider that among Christian writers touching matrimony, there be three chief ends thereof agreed on: godly society; next civil; and thirdly, that of the marriage bed. Of these the first in name to be the highest and most excellent, no baptized man can deny, nor that idolatry smites directly against this prime end; nor that such as the violated end is, such is the violation; but he who affirms adultery to be the highest breach, affirms the bed to be the highest of marriage, which is in truth a gross and boorish opinion, how common soever; as far from the countenance of Scripture, as from the light of all clean philosophy or civil nature. And out of question the cheerful help that may be in marriage toward sanctity of life, is the purest, and so the noblest end of that contract: but if the particular of each person be considered, then of those three ends which God appointed, that to him is greatest which is most necessary; and marriage is then most broken to him, when he utterly wants the fruition of that which he most sought therein, whether it were religious, civil, or corporal society.

Of which wants to do him right by divorce only for the last and meanest is a perverse injury, and the pretended reason of it as frigid as frigidity itself, which the code and canon are only sensible of. Thus much of this controversy. I now return to the former argument. And having shown that disproportion, contrariety, or numbness of mind may justly be divorced by proving already the prohibition thereof opposes the express end of God's institution, suffers not marriage to satisfy that intellectual and innocent desire which God himself kindled in man to be the bond of wedlock, but only to remedy a sublunary and bestial burning, which frugal diet, without marriage, would easily chasten. Next, that it drives many to transgress the conjugal bed, while the soul wanders after that satisfaction which it had hope to find at home, but hath missed; or else it sits repining, even to atheism, finding itself hardly dealt with, but misdeeming the cause to be in God's law, which is in man's unrighteous ignorance. I have shown also how it unties the inward knot of marriage, which is peace and love (if that can be untied which was never knit) while it aims to keep fast the outward formality how it lets perish the Christian man, to compel impossibly the married man.