The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce/Bk2 Chapter 5
CHAP. V.
What a Dispensation is.
THerfore to get some better satisfaction, we must proceed to enquire as diligently as we can, what a dispensation is, which I find to be either properly so call'd, or improperly. Improperly so call'd, is rather a particular and exceptive law absolving and disobliging from a more general command for some just and reasonable cause. As Numb. 9. they who were unclean, or in a journey, had leave to keep the passover, in the second moneth, but otherwise ever in the first. As for that in Leviticus of marying the brothers wife, it was a penall statute rather than a dispense; and commands nothing injurious or in it selfe unclean, onely preferres a speciall reason of charitie, before an institutive decencie, and perhaps is meant for life time onely, as is exprest beneath in the prohibition of taking two sisters. What other edict of Moses, carrying but the semblance of a Law in any other kind, may beare the name of a dispence, I have not readily to instance. But a dispensation most properly, is some particular accident rarely happ'ning, and therfore not specify'd in the Law, but left to the decision of charity, ev'n under the bondage of Jewish rites, much more under the liberty of the Gospel. Thus did David enter into the house of God, and did eat the Shew bread, he and his followers, which was ceremonially unlawfull. Of such dispenses as these it was that Verdune the French Divine so gravely disputed in the Councell of Trent against Friar Adrian, who held that the Pope might dispence with any thing. It is a fond perswasion, saith Verdune, that dispencing is a favour, nay it is as good distributive justice, as what is most, and the Priest sins if he give it not: for it is nothing else but a right interpretation of law. Thus farre that I can learn touching this matter wholsomly decreed. But that God who is the giver of every good and perfect gift, James I. should give out a rule and directory to sin by, should enact a dispensation as long liv'd as a law wherby to live in priviledg'd adultery for hardnes of heart, and yet this obdurat disease cannot bee conceiv'd how it was the more amended by this unclean remedy, is the most deadly and Scorpion like gift that the enemy of mankind could have given to any miserable sinner, and is rather such a dispence as that was which the serpent gave to our first parents. God gave Quails in his wrath, and Kings in his wrath, yet neither of these things evill in themselves, but that hee whose eyes cannot behold impurity, should in the book of his holy covnant, his most unpassionat law, give licence, and statute for uncontroul'd adultery, although it goe for the receiv'd opinion, I shall ever disswade my soul from such a creed, such an indulgence as the shop of Antichrist never forg'd a baser.