sider'd: or at least to take the parts of a copulat axiom, both absolutely affirmative, and to say the first is absolutely true, the other not, but must bee limited to a certain time and custome; which is no less then to say they are both false. For in this compound axiom, be the parts never so many, if one of them doe but falter, & be not equally absolute and generall, the rest are all fals. If therefore, that he who marries her which is put away committs adultery, be not generally true, neither is it generally true that he committs adultery who puts away for other cause then fornication. And if the marrying her which is put away must be understood limited, which they cannot but yeild it must, with the same limitation must be understood the putting away. Thus doth the common exposition confound it selfe, and justify this which is heer brought; that our Saviour as well in the first part of this sentence as in the second, prohibited onely such divorses as the Jewes then made through malice or through plotted licence, not those which are for necessary and just causes; where charity and wisedom disjoyns, that which not God, but Error and Disastre joyn'd.
And there is yet to this our exposition, a stronger siding freind, then any can be an adversary, unlesse Saint Paul be doubted, who repeating a command concerning divorce, I Cor. 7. which is agreed by writers to be the same with this of our Saviour, and appointing that the wife remaine unmaried, or be reconcil'd to her husband, leavs it infallible that our Saviour spake cheifly against putting away for casual and choleric disagreements, or any other cause which may with human patience and wisedom be reconcil'd; not hereby meaning to hale and dash together the irreconcilable aversations of nature, nor to tie up a faultlesse person like a parricide, as it were into one sack with an enemy, to be his causelesse tormenter and executioner the length of a long life. Lastly, let this sentence of Christ bee understood how it will, yet that it was never intended for a judicial law, to be inforc'd by the Magistrat, besides that the office of our Saviour had no such purpose in the Gospel, this latter part of the sentence may assure us, And who so marrieth her which is put away committs adultery. Shall the exception for adultery belong to this clause or not? if not, it would be strange, that he who marries a woman really divorc't for adultery, as Christ permitted should becom an adulter by marrying one who is now no other mans wife, himself being also free, who might by this meanes reclaim her from common whordome. And if the exception must belong hither, then it followes that he who marries an adultresse divorc'd commits no adultry; which would soone discover to us what an absurd and
