just restriction of divorce need not be so deere to us, since the plausible restraining of that, was in a manner the first loosning of Antichrist; and as it were the substance of his eldest horn. Nor doe we less remarkably ow the first meanes of his fall heer in England to the contemning of that restraint by Henry 8. whose divorce he oppos'd. Yet was not that rigour executed anciently in spiritual Courts untill Alexander the third, who trod upon the neck of Frederic Barbarossa the Emperor, and summond our Henry 2. into Normandy about the death of Becket. He it was, that the worthy author may be known, who first actually repeal'd the imperial law of divorce, and decreed this tyranous decree, that matrimony for no cause should be disolv'd, though for many causes it might separate; as may be seen decret. Gregor. l. 4. tit. 19. and in other places of the Canonicall Tomes. The main good of which invention, wherein it consists, who can tell? but that it hath one vertue incomparable, to fill all christendom with whordomes, and adulteries beyond the art of Balaams or of divells. Yet neither can these, though so perverse, but acknowledge that the words of Christ under the name of fornication allow putting away for other causes then adultery both from bed and bord, but not from the bond; their only reason is, because mariage they beleeve to bee a Sacrament. But our Divines who would seem long since to have renounc't that reason, have so forgot them selves, as yet to hold the absurdity, which but for that reason, unlesse there be some mystery of Satan in it, perhaps the Papist would not hold. Tis true, we grant divorce for actual & prov'd adultery, and not for lesse then many tedious and unreparable yeares of desertion, wherein a man shall loose all his hope of posterity, which great and holy men have bewail'd, ere he can be righted; and then perhaps on the confines of his old age, when all is not worth the while. But grant this were seasonably don; what are these two cases to many other, which afflict the state of mariage as bad, and yet find no redresse? What hath the soule of man deserv'd, if it be in the way of salvation, that it should be morgag'd thus, and may not redeem it selfe according to conscience out of the hands of such ignorant and slothfull teachers as these, who are neither able nor mindful to give due tendance to that pretious cure which they rashly undertake; nor have in them the noble goodnesse to consider these distresses and accidents of mans life; but are bent rather to fill their mouthes with Tithe and oblation. Yet if they can learne to follow, as well as they can seeke to be follow'd, I shall direct them to a faire number of renowned men, worthy to be their leaders, who will commend to them a doctrin in this point wiser then their own; and if they bee not
