upon some rationall cause not difficult to be apprehended, being in a matter which equally concernes the meanest and the plainest sort of persons in a houshold life. Our next way then will be to inquire if there bee not more reasons then one, and if there be, whether this be the best and cheifest. That we shall finde by turning to the first institution, to which Christ referrs our owne reading; He himselfe having to deale with treacherous assailants, useth brevity, and lighting on the first place in Genesis that mentions any thing tending to Marriage in the first chapter, joynes it immediately to the 24. verse of the 2 chapter, omitting all the prime words between, which create the institution, and containe the noblest and purest ends of Matrimony, without which attain'd, that conjunction hath nothing in it above what is common to us with beasts. So likewise beneath in this very chapter, to the young man who came not tempting him, but to learne of him, asking him which commandments he should keepe, he neither repeates the first table, nor all the second, nor that in order which he repeates. If heere then being tempted, hee desire to bee the shorter, and the darker in his conference, and omitt to cite that from the second of Genesis, which all Divines confesse is a commentary to what he cites out of the first, the making them Male and Female: what are we to doe, but to search the institution our selves; and we shall finde there his owne authority giving other manner of reasons why such firme union is to bee in matrimony, without which reasons their being male and female can be no cause of joyning them unseparably: for if it be, then no Adultery can sever. Therefore the prohibition of divorce depends not upon this reason heere exprest to the Pharises, but upon the plainer & more eminent causes omitted heere and referr'd to the institution; which causes not being found in a particular and casuall Matrimony, this sensitive and materious cause alone can no more hinder a divorce against those higher and more human reasons urging it, then it can alone without them to warrant a copulation, but leaves arbitrary to those who in their chance of marriage finde not why divorce is forbidd them, but why it is permitted them; and finde both here and in Genesis, that the forbidding is not absolute, but according to the reasons there taught us, not here. And that our Saviour taught them no better, but uses the most vulgar, most animal and corporal argument to convince them, is first to shew us, that as through their licentious divorces they made no more of mariage then, as if to marry, were no more then to be male and female, so hee goes no higher in his confutation; deeming them unworthy to be talkt with in a
