that God hath joyn'd error, fraud, unfitnesse, wrath, contention, perpetuall lonelinesse, perpetuall discord; what ever lust, or wine, or witchery, threate, or inticement, avarice or ambition hath joyn'd together, faithfull with unfaithfull, christian with antichristian, hate with hate, or hate with love, shall we say this is Gods joyning?
[Let not man put a sunder. ] That is to say, what God hath joyn'd; for if it be, as how oft we see it may be, not of Gods joyning, and his law tells us he joynes not unmachable things, but hates to joyne them, as an abominable confusion, then the divine law of Moses puts them asunder, his owne divine will in the institution puts them asunder, as oft as the reasons be not extant, for which God ordain'd their joyning. Man only puts asunder when his inordinate desires, his passion, his violence, his injury makes the breach: not when the utter want of that which lawfully was the end of his joyning, when wrongs and extremities and unsupportable greevances compell him to disjoyne: when such as Herod & the pharises divorce beside law, or against law, then only man separates, and to such only this prohibition belongs. In a word, if it be unlawful for man to put asunder that which God hath joyn'd, let man take heede it be not detestable to joyne that by compulsion which God hath put asunder.
Vers. 7. They say unto him, why did Moses command to give a writing of divorcement, and to put her away? Vers. 8 He saith unto them, Moses because of the hardnesse of your hearts suffered you to put away your wives, but from the beginning it was not so.
[Moses because of the hardnesse of your hearts suffered you.] Hence the Divinity now current argues that this judiciall Moses is abolisht. But suppose it were so, though it hath bin prov'd otherwise, the firmenesse of such right to divorce as here pleads is fetcht from the prime institution, does not stand or fall with the judiciall Jew, but is as morall as what is moralest. Yet as I have shewn positively that this law cannot bee abrogated, both by the words of our Saviour pronouncing the contrary, and by that unabolishable equity which it convaies to us, so I shall now bring to view those appearances of strength which are levied from this text to maintaine the most grosse and massy paradox that ever did violence to reason and religion, bred only under the shadow of these words, to all other piety or philosophy strange and insolent, that God by act of law
