Grotius, yet living, and of prime note among learned men, retires plainly from the canon to the ancient civility, yea, to the Mosaic law," as being most just and undeceivable." On the 5th of Matth. he saith, “That Christ made no civil laws, but taught us how to use law: that the law sent not a husband to the judge about this matter of divorce, but left him to his own conscience; that Christ therefore cannot be thought to send him; that adultery may be judged by a vehement suspicion; that the exception of adultery seems an example of other like offences ;" proves it " from the manner of speech, the maxims of law, the reason of charity, and common equity." which alienates from him to whom obedience is due, | mittee of two and thirty chosen men, divines and lawand that the primitive church interpreted so." yers, of whom Cranmer the archbishop, Peter Martyr, and Walter Haddon, (not without the assistance of Sir John Cheeke the king's tutor, a man at that time counted the learnedest of Englishmen, and for piety not inferior,) were the chief, to frame anew some ecclesiastical laws, that might be instead of what was abrogated. The work with great diligence was finished, and with as great approbation of that reforming age was received; and had been doubtless, as the learned preface thereof testifies, established by act of parliament, had not the good king's death, so soon ensuing, arrested the further growth of religion also, from that season to this. Those laws, thus founded on the memorable wisdom and piety of that religious parliament and synod, allow divorce and second marriage, "not only for adultery or desertion, but for any capital enmity or plot laid against the other's life, and likewise for evil and fierce usage:" nay the twelfth chapter of that title by plain consequence declares, “that lesser contentions, if they be perpetual, may obtain divorce:" which is all one really with the position by me held in the former treatise published on this argument, herein only differing, that there the cause of perpetual strife was put for example in the unchangeable discord of some natures; but in these laws intended us by the best of our ancestors, the effect of continual strife is determined no unjust plea of divorce, whether the cause be natural or wilful. Whereby the wariness and deliberation, from which that discourse proceeded, will appear, and that God hath aided us to make no bad conclusion of this point; seeing the opinion, which of late hath undergone il censures among the vulgar, hath now proved to have done no violence to Scripture, unless all these famous authors alleged have done the like; nor hath affirmed aught more than what indeed the most nominated fathers of the church, both ancient and modern, are unexpectedly found affirming; the laws of God's peculiar people, and of primitive christendom found to have practised, reformed churches and states to have imitated, and especially the most pious church-times of this kingdom to have framed and published, and, but for sad hinderances in the sudden change of religion, had enacted by the parliament. Henceforth let them, who condemn the assertion of this book for new and licentious, be sorry; lest, while they think to be of the graver sort, and take on them to be teachers, they expose themselves rather to be pledged up and down by men who intimately know them, to the discovery and contempt of their ignorance and presumption. These authorities, without long search, I had to produce, all excellent men, some of them such as many ages had brought forth none greater: almost the meanest of them might deserve to obtain credit in a singularity; what might not then all of them joined in an opinion so consonant to reason? For although some speak of this cause, others of that, why divorce may be, yet all agreeing in the necessary enlargement of that textual straitness, leave the matter to equity, not to literal bondage; and so the opinion closes. Nor could I have wanted more testimonies, had the cause needed a more solicitous inquiry. But herein the satisfaction of others hath been studied, not the gaining of more assurance to mine own persuasion: although authorities contributing reason withal be a good confirmation and a welcome. But God (I solemnly attest him!) withheld from my knowledge the consenting judgment of these men so late, until they could not be my instructors, but only my unexpected witnesses to partial men, that in this work I had not given the worst experiment of an industry joined with integrity, and the free utterance, though of an unpopular truth. Which yet to the people of England may, if God so please, prove a memorable informing; certainly a benefit which was intended them long since by men of highest repute for wisdom and piety, Bucer and Erasmus. Only this one authority more, whether in place or out of place, I am not to omit; which if any can think a small one, I must be patient, it is no smaller than the whole assembled authority of England both church and state; and in those times which are on record for the purest and sincerest that ever shone yet on the reformation of this island, the time of Edward the Sixth. That worthy prince, having utterly abolished the canon law out of his dominions, as his father did before him, appointed by full vote of parliament a com COLASTERION: A REPLY TO A NAMELESS ANSWER AGAINST THE DOCTRINE AND DISCIPLINE OF DIVORCE. WHEREIN THE TRIVIAL AUTHOR OF THAT ANSWER IS DISCOVERED, the LICENSER CONFERRED WITH, AND THE OPINION, WHICH THEY TRADUCE, DEFENDED. Prov. xxvi. 5. "Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own conceit." [FIRST PUBLISHED 1615.] AFTER many rumours of confutations and convictions, | be entered a bold and impious accusation against God forthcoming against the Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, and now and then a by-blow from the pulpit, feathered with a censure strict indeed, but how true, more beholden to the authority of that devout place, which it borrowed to be uttered in, than to any sound reason which it could oracle; while I still hoped as for a blessing to see some piece of diligence, or learned discretion, come from them, it was my hap at length, lighting on a certain parcel of queries, that seek and find not, to find not seeking, at the tail of anabaptistical, antinomian, heretical, atheistical epithets, a jolly slander, called “ Divorce at Pleasure. I stood awhile and | wondered, what we might do to a man's heart, or what anatomy use, to find in it sincerity; for all our wonted marks every day fail us, and where we thought it was, we see it is not, for alter and change residence it cannot sure. And yet I see no good of body or of mind secure to a man for all his past labours, without perpetual watchfulness and perseverance: whenas one above others, who hath suffered much and long in the defence of truth, shall after all this give her cause to leave him so destitute and so vacant of her defence, as to yield his mouth to be the common road of truth and falsehood, and such falsehood as is joined with a rash and heedless calumny of his neighbour. For what book hath he ever met with, as his complaint is, " printed in the city," maintaining either in the title, or in the whole pursuance, "Divorce at Pleasure ?" It is true, that to divorce upon extreme necessity, when through the perverseness, or the apparent unfitness of either, the continuance can be to both no good at all, but an intolerable injury and temptation to the wronged and the defrauded; to divorce then, there is a book that writes it lawful. And that this law is a pure and wholesome national law, not to be withheld from good men, because others likely enough may abuse it to their pleasure, cannot be charged upon that book, but must himself; who did not for this abuse withhold it from his own people. It will be just therefore, and best for the reputation of him who in his Subitanes hath thus censured, to recall his sentence. And if, out of the abundance of his volumes, and the readiness of his quill, and the vastness of his other employments, especially in the great audit for accounts, he can spare us aught to the better understanding of this point, he shall be thanked in public; and what hath offended in the book shall willingly submit to his correction. Provided he be sure not to come with those old and stale suppositions, unless he can take away clearly what that discourse hath urged against them, by one who will expect other arguments to be persuaded the good health of a sound answer, than the gout and dropsy of a big margin, littered and overlaid with crude and huddled quotations. But as I still was waiting, when these lightarmed refuters would have done pelting at their three lines uttered with a sage delivery of no reason, but an impotent and worse than Bonnerlike censure, to burn that which provokes them to a fair dispute; at length a book was brought to my hands, intitled "An Answer to the Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce." Gladly I received it, and very attentively composed myself to read; hoping that now some good man had vouchsafed the pains to instruct me better, than I could yet learn out of all the volumes, which for this purpose I had visited. Only this I marvelled, and other men have since, whenas I, in a subject so new to this age, and so hazardous to please, concealed not my name, why this author, defending that part which is so creeded by the people, would conceal his. But ere I could enter three leaves into the pamphlet, (for I defer the peasantly rudeness, which by the licenser's leave I met with afterwards,) my satisfaction came in abundantly, that it could be nothing why he durst not name himself, but the guilt of his own wretchedness. For first, not to speak of his abrupt and bald beginning, his very first page notoriously bewrays him an illiterate and arrogant presumer in that which he understands not, bearing us in hand as if he knew both Greek and Hebrew, and is not able to spell it; which had he been, it had been either written as it ought, or scored upon the printer. If it be excused as the carelessness of his deputy, be it known, the learned author himself is inventoried, and summoned up to the utmost value of his livery-cloak. Whoever he be, though this to some may seem a slight contest, I shall yet continue to think that man full of other secret injustice, and deceitful pride, who shall offer in public to assume the skill though it be but of a tongue which he hath not, and would catch his readers to believe of his ability, that which is not in him. The licenser indeed, as his authority now stands, may license much; but if these Greek orthographies were of his licensing, the boys at school might reckon with him at his grammar. Nor did I find this his want of the pretended languages alone, but accompanied with such a low and homespun expression of his mother English all along, without joint or frame, as made me, ere I knew further of him, often stop and conclude, that this author could for certain be no other than some mechanic. Nor was the style flat and rude, and the matter grave and solid, for then there had been pardon; but so shallow and so unwary was that also, as gave sufficiently the character of a gross and sluggish, yet a contentious and overweening, pretender. For first, it behoving him to shew, as he promises, what divorce is, and what the true doctrine and discipline thereof, and this being to do by such principles and proofs as are received on both sides, he performs neither of these; but shews it first from the judaical practice, which he himself disallows, and next from the practice of canon law, which the book he would confute utterly rejects, and all laws depending thereon; which this puny clerk calls "the Laws of England," and yet pronounceth them by an ecclesiastical judge: as if that were to be accounted the law of England which dependeth on the popery of England; or if it were, this parliament he might know hath now damned that judicature. So that whether his meaning were to inform his own party, or to confute his adversary, instead of shewing us the true doctrine and discipline of divorce, he shews us nothing but his own contemptible ignorance. For what is the Mosaic law to his opinion? And what is the canon, now utterly antiquated, either to that, or to mine? Ye see already what a faithful definer we have him. From such a wind-egg of definition as this, they who expect any of his other arguments to be well hatched, let them enjoy the virtue of their worthy champion. But one thing more I observed, a singular note of his stupidity, and that his trade is not to meddle with books, much less with confutations; whenas the "Doctrine of Divorce" had now a whole year been published the second time, with many arguments added, and the former ones bettered and confirmed, this idle pamphlet comes reeling forth against the first edition only; as may appear to any by the pages quoted: which put me in mind of what by chance I had notice of to this purpose the last summer, as nothing so serious but happens ofttimes to be attended with a ridiculous accident: it was then told me, that the "Doctrine of Divorce" was; answered, and the answer half printed against the first edition, not by one, but by a pack of heads; of whorn the chief, by circumstance, was intimated to me, and since ratified to be no other, if any can hold laughter, and I am sure none will guess him lower, than an actual se rving-man. This creature, for the story must on, (and what though he be the lowest person of an interlude, he may deserve a canvassing,) transplanted himself, and to the improvement of his wages, and your better notice of his capacity, turned solicitor. And having con versed much with a stripling divine or two of those newly-fledged probationers, that usually come scouting from the university, and lie here no lame legers to pop into the Bethesda of some knight's chaplainship, where they bring grace to his good cheer, but no peace or benediction else to his house; these made the cham-party, he contributed the law, and both joined in the divinity. Which made me intend following the advice also of friends, to lay aside the thought of mispending a reply to the buz of such a drone's nest. But finding that it lay, whatever was the matter, half a year after unfinished in the press, and hearing for certain that a divine of note, out of his good will to the opinion, had taken it into his revise, and something had put out, something put in, and stuck it here and there with a clove of his own calligraphy, to keep it from tainting: and further, when I saw the stuff, though very coarse and threadbare, garnished and trimly faced with the commendations of a licenser, I resolved, so soon as leisure granted me the recreation, that my man of law should not altogether lose his soliciting. Although I impute a share of the making to him whose name I find in the approbation, who may take, as his mind serves him, this reply. In the mean while it shall be seen, I refuse no occasion, and avoid no adversary, either to maintain what I have begun, or to give it up for better reason. To begin then with the licenser and his censure. For a licenser is not contented now to give his single Imprimatur, but brings his chair into the title-leaf;; there sits and judges up, or judges down, what book he pleases: if this be suffered, what worthless author, or what cunning printer, will not be ambitious of such a stale to put off the heaviest gear; which may in time bring in round fees to the licenser, and wretched misleading to the people? But to the matter. he “ approves the publishing of this book, to preserve the strength and honour of marriage against those sad breaches and dangerous abuses of it." Belike then the wrongful suffering of all those sad breaches and abuses in marriage to a remediless thraldom is the strength and honour of marriage; a boisterous and bestial strength, a dishonourable honour, an infatuated doctrine, whose than the Salvo jure of tyrannizing, which we all fight against. Next he saith, that " common discontents make these breaches in unstaid minds, and men given to change." His words may be apprehended, as if they disallowed only to divorce for com mon discontents, in unstaid minds, having no cause, but a desire of change, and then we agree. But if he take all discontents on this side adultery, to be common, that is to say, not difficult to endure, and to affect only unstaid minds, it might administer just cause to think him the unfittest man that could be, to offer at a comment upon Job ;* as seeming by this to have no more true sense of a good man in his afflictions, than those Edomitish friends had, of whom Job complains, and against whom God testifies his anger. Shall a man of your own coat, who hath espoused his flock, and represents Christ more in being the true husband of his congregation, than an ordinary man doth in being the husband of his wife, (and yet this representment is thought a chief cause why marriage must be inseparable,) shall this spiritual man ordinarily for the increase of his maintenances or any slight cause, forsake that wedded cure of souls, that should be dearest to him, and marry another and another? And shall not a person wrongfully afflicted, and persecuted even to extremity, forsake an unfit, injurious, and pestilent mate, tied only by a civil and fleshly covenant? If you be a man so much hating change, hate that other change; if yourself be not guilty, counsel your brethren to hate it; and leave to be the supercilious judge of other men's miseries and changes, that your own be not judged. "The reasons of your licensed pamphlet," you say, are good;" they must be better than your own then; I shall wonder else how such a trivial fellow was accepted and commended, to be the confuter of so dangerous an opinion as ye give out mine. Now therefore to your attorney, since no worthier an adversary makes his appearance, nor this neither his appearance, but lurking under the safety of his nameless obscurity; such as ye turn him forth at the postern, I must accept him; and in a better temper than Ajax do mean to scourge this ram for ye, till I meet with his Ulysses. 66 He begins with law, and we have it of him as good cheap as any huckster at law, newly set up, can possibly afford, and as impertinent; but for that he hath received his handsel. He presumes also to cite the civil law, which I perceive, by his citing, never came within his dormitory yet what he cites, makes but against himself. His second thing therefore is to refute the adverse position, and very methodically, three pages before he sets it down; and sets his own in the place," that disagreement of mind or disposition, though shewing itself in much sharpness, is not by the law of God or man a just cause of divorce." To this position I answer; That it lays no battery against mine, no nor so much as faces it, but tacks about, long ere it come near, like a harmless and respectful confutement. For I confess that disagreement of mind or disposition, though in much sharpness, is not always a just cause of divorce; for much may be endured. But what if the sharpness be much more than his much? To that point it is our mishap we have not here his grave decision. He that will contra dict the position which I alleged, must hold that no disagreement of mind or disposition can divorce, though shewn in most sharpness; otherwise he leaves a place for equity to appoint limits, and so his following arguments will either not prove his own position, or not disprove mine. His first argument, all but what hobbles to no purpose, is this; "Where the Scripture commands a thing to be done, it appoints when, how, and for what, as in the case of death, or excommunication. But the Scripture directs not what measure of disagreement or contrariety may divorce: therefore the Scripture allows not any divorce for disagreement."-Answer. First, I deny your major; the Scripture appoints many things, and yet leaves the circumstance to man's discretion, particularly in your own examples: excommunication is not taught when and for what to be, but left to the church. How could the licenser let pass this childish ignorance, and call it “good?" Next, in matters of death, the laws of England, whereof you have intruded to be an opiniastrous subadvocate, and are bound to defend them, conceive it not enjoined in Scripture, when or for what cause they shall put to death, as in adultery, theft, and the like. Your minor also is false, for the Scripture plainly sets down for what measure of disagreement a man may divorce, Deut. xxiv. 1. Learn better what that phrase means, "if she find no favour in his eyes." Your second argument, without more tedious fumbling, is briefly thus: "If diversity in religion, which breeds a greater dislike than any natural disagreement, may not cause a divorce, then may not the lesser disagreement: But diversity of religion may not; Ergo." Answ. First, I deny in the major, that diversity of religion breeds a greater dislike to marriage-duties than natural disagreement. For between Israelite, or Christian, and infidel, more often hath been seen too much love: but between them who perpetually clash in natural contrarieties, it is repugnant that there should be ever any married love or concord. Next, I deny your minor, that it is commanded not to divorce in diversity of religion, if the infidel will stay for that place in St. Paul commands nothing, as that book at large affirmed, though you overskipped it. Secondly, If it do command, it is but with condition that the infidel be content, and well-pleased to stay, which cuts off the supposal of any great hatred or disquiet between them, seeing the infidel had liberty to depart at pleasure; and so this comparison avails nothing. Your third argument is from Deut. xxii. "If a man hate his wife, and raise an ill report, that he found her no virgin;" if this were false, " he might not put her away," though hated never so much. Ans. This was a malicious hatred, bent against her life, or to send her out of doors without her portion. Such a hater loses by due punishment that privilege, Deut. xxiv. 1, to divorce for a natural dislike; which, though it could not love conjugally, yet sent away civilly, and with just conditions. But doubtless the | universal words of Christ, another will do as much with as good authority; and affirm, that neither did he check the law, Deut. xxiv. 1, nor forbid the causes that make marriage void actually; which if any thing in the world doth, unfitness doth, and contrariety of mind; yea, more than adultery, for that makes not the marriage void, nor much more unfit, but for the time, if the offended party forgive: but unfitness and contrariety frustrates and nullifies for ever, unless it be a rare chance, all the good and peace of wedded conversation; and leaves nothing between them enjoyable, but a prone and savage necessity, not worth the name of marriage, unaccompanied with love. Thus much his own objection hath done against himself. Your fourth argument is; "One Christian ought to bear the infirmities of another, but chiefly of his wife.” Ans. I grant infirmities, but not outrages, not perpetual defraudments of truest conjugal society, not injuries and vexations as importunate as fire. Yet to endure very much, might do well an exhortation, but not a compulsive law. For the Spirit of God himself, by Solomon, declares that such a consort "the earth cannot bear, and better dwell in a corner of the house-top, or in the wilderness." Burdens may be borne, but still with consideration to the strength of an honest man complaining. Charity indeed bids us forgive our enemies, yet doth not force us to continue friendship and familiarity with those friends who have been false or unworthy towards us; but is contented in our peace with them, at a fair distance. Charity commands not the husband to receive again into his bosom the adulterous wife, but thinks it enough, if he dismiss her with a beneficent and peaceful dismission. No more doth charity command, nor can her rule compel, to retain in nearest union of wedlock one whose other gross-tarily can add other exceptions that dissolve that union, est faults, or disabilities to perform what was covenanted, are the just causes of as much grievance and dissension in a family, as the private act of adultery. Let not therefore, under the name of fulfilling charity, such an unmerciful and more than legal yoke be padlocked upon the neck of any Christian. Your fifth argument: "If the husband ought to love his wife, as Christ his church, then ought she not to be put away for contrariety of mind." Answ. This similitude turns against him: for if the husband must be as Christ to the wife, then must the wife be as the church to her husband. If there be a perpetual contrariety of mind in the church toward Christ, Christ himself threatens to divorce such a spouse, and hath often done it. If they urge, this was no true church, I urge again that was no true wife. His sixth argument is from Matth. v. 32, which he expounds after the old fashion, and never takes notice of what I brought against that exposition; let him therefore seek his answer there. Yet can he not leave this argument, but he must needs first shew us a curvet of his madness, holding out an objection, and running himself upon the point. "For," saith he, "if Christ except no cause but adultery, then all other causes, as frigidity, incestuous marriage, &c. are no cause of divorce;" and answers, " that the speech of Christ holds universally, as he intended it; namely, to condemn such divorce as was groundlessly practised among the Jews, for every cause which they thought sufficient; not checking the law of consanguinities or affinities, or forbidding other cause which makes marriage void, ipso facto." Answ. Look to it now, you be not found taking fees on both sides; for if you once bring limitations to the First Edition. Argument 7th. He insists, "that man and wife are one flesh, therefore must not separate." But must be sent to look again upon the* 35th page of that book, where he might read an answer, which he stirs not. Yet can he not abstain, but he must do us another pleasure ere he goes; although I call the common pleas to witness, I have not hired his tongue, whatever men may think by his arguing. For besides adultery, he excepts other causes which dissolve the union of being one flesh, either directly, or by consequence. If only adultery be excepted by our Saviour, and he volun both directly and by consequence; these words of Christ, the main obstacle of divorce, are open to us by his own invitation, to include whatever causes dissolve that union of flesh, either directly or by consequence. Which, till he name other causes more likely, I affirm to be done soonest by unfitness and contrariety of mind; for that induces hatred, which is the greatest dissolver both of spiritual and corporal union, turning the mind, and consequently the body, to other objects. Thus our doughty adversary, either directly or by consequence, yields us the question with his own mouth; and the next thing he does, recants it again. His 8th argument shivers in the uttering, and he confesseth to be "not over-confident of it :" but of the rest it may be sworn he is. St. Paul, 1 Cor. vii. saith, that the "married have trouble in the flesh," therefore we must bear it, though never so intolerable. I answer, if this be a true consequence, why are not all troubles to be borne alike? Why are we suffered to divorce adulteries, desertions, or frigidities? Who knows not that trouble and affliction is the decree of God upon every state of life? Follows it therefore, that, though they grow excessive and insupportable, we must not avoid them? If we may in all other conditions, and not in marriage, the doom of our suffering ties us not by the trouble, but by the bond of marriage: and that must be proved inseparable from other reasons, not from this place. And his own confession declares the weakness of this argument, yet his ungoverned arrogance could not be dissuaded from venting it. His 9th argument is, "that a husband must love his wife as himself; therefore he may not divorce for any disagreement, no more than he may separate his soul |