for anothers perversnes, or immedicable disaffection? To my freinds, of which may fewest bee so unhappy, I have a remedy, as they know, more wise and manly to prescribe: but for his freinds and followers (of which many may deserv justly to feel themselvs the unhappines which they consider not in others) I send them by his advice to sit upon the stool and strain, till their cross dispositions and contrarieties of minde shall change to a better correspondence, and to a quicker apprehension of common sense, and thir own good.
His second Reason is as heedles; because that grace may change the disposition, therfore no indisposition may cause divorce.
Answ. First, it will not bee deniable that many persons, gracious both, may yet happen to bee very unfitly marryed to the great disturbance of either. Secondly, what if one have grace, the other not, and will not alter, as the Scripture testifies ther bee of those, in whom we may expect a change, when the Blackamore changes his colour, or the Leopard his Spots, Jer. 13. 23. shall the gracious therfore dwell in torment all his life, for the ungracious? Wee see that holiest precepts, then which there can no better physic bee administerd to the minde of man, and set on with powerfull preaching, cannot work this cure, no not in the family, not in the wife of him that Preaches day and night to her. What an unreasonable thing it is, that men, and Clergy-men especially, should exact such wondrous changes in another mans house, and are seen to work so little in thir own?
To the second point of the position, that this unfitnes hinders the main ends, and benefits of mariage, hee answers, if I mean the unfitnes of choler, or sullen disposition, that soft words, according to Solomon, pacify wrath.
But I reply, that the saying of Solomon is a Proverb, frequently true, not universally, as both the event shews, and many other sentences writtn by the same Author, particularly of an evill woman, Prov. 21. 9. 19. and in other Chapters, that shee is better shun'd then dwelt with, and a desert is preferr'd before her society. What need the Spirit of God put this chois into our heads, if soft words could alwaies take effect with her? How frivolous is, not only this disputer, but hee that taught him thus, and let him come abroad.
To his second answer I return this, that although there bee not easily found such an antipathy, as to hate one another like a toad or poison, yet
