The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce/Bk2 Chapter 2
CHAP. II.
NEither wil it serve to say this was permitted for the hardnes of their hearts, in that sense as it is usually explain'd, for the Law were then but a corrupt and erroneous School-master, teaching us to dash against a vitall maxim of religion, by doing foul vill in hope of some uncertain good.
This onely Text not to be match't again throughout the whole Scripture, wherby God in his perfect Law should seem to have granted to the hard hearts of his holy people under his owne hand, a civill immunity and free charter to live and die in a long successive adultery, under a covenant of works, till the Messiah, and then that indulgent permission to be strictly deny'd by a covnant of grace; besides the incoherence of such a doctrine, cannot, must not be thus interpreted, to the raising of a paradox never known til then, onely hanging by the twin'd thred of one doubtfull Scripture, against so many other rules and leading principles of religion, of justice, and purity of life. For what could be granted more either to the fear, or to the lust of any tyrant, or politician, then this authority of Moses thus expounded; which opens him a way at will to damme up justice, and not onely to admit of any Romish or Austrian dispences, but to enact a statute of that which he dares not seeme to approve, ev'n to legitimate vice, to make sinne it selfe, the ever alien & vassal sin, a free Citizen of the Common-wealth, pretending onely these or these plausible reasons. And well he might, all the while that Moses shall be alledg'd to have done as much without shewing any reason at all. Yet this could not enter into the heart of David, Psal. 94.20. how any such autority as endevours to fashion wickednes by a law, should derive it selfe from God. And Isaiah layes woe upon them that decree unrighteous decrees, 10.1. Now which of these two is the better Lawgiver, and which deserves most a woe, he that gives out an edict singly unjust, or he that confirms to generations a fixt and unmolested impunity of that which is not onely held to be unjust, but also unclean, and both in a high degree, not only as they themselves affirm, an injurious expulsion of one wife, but also an unclean freedom by more then a patent to wed another adulterously? How can we therfore with safety thus dangerously confine the free simplicity of our Saviours meaning to that which meerly amounts from so many letters, whenas it can consist neither with his former and cautionary words, nor with other more pure and holy principles, nor finally with the scope of charity, commanding by his expresse commission in a higher strain. But all rather of necessity must be understood as only against the abuse of that wise and ingenuous liberty which Moses gave, and to terrifie a roaving conscience from sinning under that pretext.