reason. Now though efficient causes are not requisite in a definition, yet divine institution hath such influence upon the Form, and is so a conserving cause of it, that without it the Form is not sufficient to distinguish matrimony from other conjunctions of male and female, which are not to be counted mariage. Joyning man and woman in a love, &c. This brings in the parties consent; until which be, the mariage hath no true beeing. When I say consent, I mean not error, for error is not properly consent: And why should not consent be heer understood with equity and good to either part, as in all other freindly covnants, and not be strain'd and cruelly urg'd to the mischeif and destruction of both? Neither doe I mean that singular act of consent which made the contract, for that may remain, and yet the mariage not true nor lawful; and that may cease, and yet the mariage both true and lawful, to their sin that break it. So that either as no efficient at all, or but a transitory, it comes not into the definition. That consent I mean which is a love fitly dispos'd to mutual help and comfort of life: this is that happy Form of mariage naturally arising from the very heart of divine institution in the Text, in all the former definitions either obscurely, and under mistak'n terms exprest, or not at all. This gives mariage all her due, all her benefits, all her beeing, all her distinct and proper beeing. This makes a mariage not a bondage, a blessing not a curse, a gift of God not a snare. Unless ther be a love, and that love born of fitnes, how can it last? unless it last, how can the best and sweetest purposes of mariage be attain'd, and they not attain'd, which are the cheif ends, and with a lawful love constitute the formal cause it self of mariage, how can the essence thereof subsist? How can it bee indeed what it goes for? Conclude therfore by all the power of Reason, that where this essence of mariage is not, there can bee no true mariage; and the parties, either one of them, or both are free, and without fault, rather by a nullity then by a divorce may betake them to a second choys, if thir present condition be not tolerable to them. If any shall ask, why domestic in the definition? I answer, that because both in the Scriptures, and in the gravest Poets and Philosophers, I finde the properties and excellencies of a wife set out only from domestic vertues; if they extend furder, it diffuses them into the notion of som more common duty then matrimonial.
Thus farre of the definition; the Consectary which flows from
