hee intended by his Law to teach this people, wee cannot possibly think how hee could indure to let them slugg & grow inveteratly wicked, under base allowances, & whole adulterous lives by dispensation. They might not eat, they might not touch an unclean thing; to what hypocrisy then were they train'd up, if by prescription of the same Law, they might be unjust, they might be adulterous for term of life? forbid to soile their garments with a coy imaginary pollution, but not forbid, but countenanc't and animated by Law to soile thir soules with deepest defilements. What more unlike to God, what more like that God should hate, then that his Law should bee so curious to wash vessels, and vestures, and so careles to leav unwasht, unregarded, so foul a scab of Egypt in thir Soules? what would wee more? the Statutes of the Lord are all pure and just: and if all, then this of Divorce.
Because hee hath found some uncleannes in her. That wee may not esteem this law to bee a meer authorizing of licence, as the Pharises took it, Moses adds the reason, for som uncleannes found. Som heertofore have bin so ignorant, as to have thought, that this uncleannes means adultery. But Erasmus, who for having writ an excellent Treatise of Divorce, was wrote against by som burly standard Divine perhaps of Cullen, or of Lovain, who calls himself Phimostomus, shews learnedly out of the Fathers with other Testimonies and Reasons, that uncleannes is not heer so understood; defends his former work, though new to that age, and perhaps counted licentious, and fears not to ingage all his fame on the Argument. Afterward, when Expositors began to understand the Hebrew Text, which they had not done of many ages before, they translated word for word not uncleannes, but the nakednes of any thing; and considering that nakednes is usually referr'd in Scripture to the minde as well as to the body, they constantly expound it any defect, annoyance, or ill quality in nature, which to bee joyn'd with, makes life tedious, and such company wors then solitude. So that heer will bee no cause to vary from the generall consent of exposition, which gives us freely that God permitted divorce, for whatever was unalterably distastful, whether in body or mind. But with this admonishment, that if the Roman law, especially in contracts and dowries, left many things to equity with these cautions, ex fide bonâ, quod æquius melius erit, ut inter bonos bene agier, wee will not grudge to think that God intended not licence heer to every humor, but to such remediles greevan-
