The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce/Bk2 Chapter 10
CHAP. X.
SOme will have it no Law, but the granted premises of another Law following, contrary to the words of Christ, Mark 10.5. and all other translations of gravest authority, who render it in form of a Law; agreeable to Malach. 2.16. as it is most anciently and modernly expounded. Besides the bill of divorce, and the particular occasion therein mention'd, declares it to bee orderly and legall. And what avails this to make the matter more righteous, if such an adulterous condition shal be mention'd to build a law upon without either punishment, or so much as forbidding; they pretend it is implicitly reprov'd in these words, Deut. 24.4. after she is defil'd; but who sees not that this defilement is onely in respect of returning to her former husband after an intermixt mariage; els why was not the defiling condition first forbidd'n, which would have sav'd the labour of this after law; nor is it seemly or piously attributed to the justice of God and his known hatred of sinne, that such a hainous fault as this through all the Law, should be onely wip't with an implicit and oblique touch (which yet is falsly suppos'd) and that his peculiar people should be let wallow in adulterous mariages almost two thousand yeares, for want of a direct Law to prohibit them; 'tis rather to be confidently assum'd that this was granted to apparent necessities, as being of unquestionable right and reason in the Law of nature, in that it stil passes without inhibition, ev'n when greatest cause is giv'n to us to expect it should be directly forbidd'n.