to bestow their children seasonably, they agree joyntly that the Church or Magistrat may bestow them, though without the Fathers consent: and for this they have no express autority in Scripture. So that they may see by their own handling of this very place, that it is not the stubborn letter must govern us, but the divine and softning breath of charity which turns and windes the dictat of every positive command, and shapes it to the good of mankind. Shall the outward accessory of a Fathers will wanting, rend the fittest and most affectionat Mariage in twain, after all nuptial consummations; and shall not the want of love and the privation of all civil and religious concord, which is the inward essence of wedlock, doe as much to part those who were never truly wedded? shall a Father have this power to vindicate his own wilful honour and autority to the utter breach of a most dearly-united mariage, and shall not a man in his own power have the permission to free his Soul, his life, and all his comfort of life from the disastre of a no-mariage? Shall fatherhood, which is but man, for his own pleasure dissolve matrimony, and shall not matrimony, which is Gods Ordinance, for its own honour and better conservation, dissolv it self, when it is wrong, and not fitted to any of the cheif ends which it owes us?
[And they shall be one flesh.] These words also inferre that there ought to be an individualty in Mariage; but without all question presuppose the joyning causes. Not a rule yet that we have met with, so universall in this whole institution, but hath admitted limitations and conditions according to human necessity. The very foundation of Matrimony, though God laid it deliberately, that it is not good for man to bee alone holds not always, if the Apostle can secure us. Soon after wee are bid leav Father and Mother, and cleav to a Wife, but must understand the Fathers consent withall, els not. Cleav to a Wife, but let her bee a wife, let her be a meet help, a solace, not a nothing, not an adversary, not a desertrice; can any law or command be so unreasonable as to make men cleav to calamity, to ruin, to perdition? In like manner heer, They shall be one flesh; but let the causes hold, and be made really good, which only have the possibility to make them one flesh. Wee know that flesh can neither joyn, nor keep together two bodies of it self; what is it then must make them one flesh, but likenes, but fitnes of mind and disposition, which may breed the Spirit of concord, and union between them? If that be not in the nature
