mind was not to abrogate: and if we marke the stearage of his words, what course they hold, wee may perceive that what he protested not to disolve (that he might faithfully & not deceitfully remove a suspition from himselfe) was principally concerning the judiciall law; for of that sort are all these here which he vindicates; except the last. Of the Ceremonial law he told them true, that nothing of it should passe untill all were fulfill'd. Of the morall law he knew the Pharises did not suspect he meant to nullifie that: for so doing would soone have undone his authority, and advanc'd theirs. Of the judiciall law therefore cheifly this Apologie was meant: For how is that fulfill'd longer then the common equity thereof remaines in force? And how is this our Saviours defence of himselfe, not made fallacious, if the Pharises chiefe feare be, least he should abolish the judiciall law, and he to satisfie them, protests his good intention to the Moral law. It is the generall grant of Divines that what in the Judicial law is not meerely judaicall, but reaches to human equity in common, was never in the thought of being abrogated. If our Saviour tooke away ought of law, it was the burthensome of it, not the ease of burden, it was the bondage, not the liberty of any divine law, that he remov'd: this he often profest to be the end of his comming. But what if the law of divorce be a morall law, as most certainly it is fundamentally, and hath been so prov'd in the reasons thereof. For though the giving of a bill may be judiciall, yet the act of divorce is altogether conversant in good and evill, and so absolutely moral. So farr as it is good, it never can be abolisht, being morall; and so far as it is simply evil, it never could be judiciall, as hath been shewen at large in the Doctrine of divorce, and will be reassum'd anon. Whence one of these two necessities follow, that either it was never establisht, or never abolisht. Thus much may be enough to have said on this place. The following verse will be better unfolded in the 19. Chapter, where it meets us againe, after a large debatement on the question, between our Saviour and his adversaries.
MAT. 19. 3, 4, &c. V. 3. And the Pharises came unto him, tempting him, and saying unto him.
[Tempting him. ] The manner of these men comming to our Saviour, not to learne, but to tempt him, may give us to expect that their answer will bee such as is fittest for them, not so much a teaching, as an intangling. No man, though never so willing or so well enabl'd to in-
