The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce/Bk2 Chapter 3
CHAP. III.
BUT let us yet further examin upon what consideration a Law of licence could be thus giv'n to a holy people for the hardnesse of heart. I suppose all wil answer, that for some good end or other. But here the contrary shall be prov'd. First, that many ill effects, but no good end of such a sufferance can be shewn; next, that a thing unlawful can for no good end whatever be either don or allow'd by a positive law. If there were any good end aim'd at, that end was then good, either as to the Law, or to the lawgiver licencing; or as to the person licenc't. That it could not be the end of the Law, whether Moral or Judiciall, to licence a sin, I prove easily out of Rom. 5. 20. The Law enter'd, that the offence might abound, that is, that sin might be made abundantly manifest to be hainous and displeasing to God, that so his offer'd grace might be the more esteem'd. Now if the Law in stead of aggravating and terrifying sin, shall give out licence, it foils it selfe, and turns recreant from its own end: it forestalls the pure grace of Christ which is through righteousnesse, with impure indulgences which are through sin. And instead of discovering sin, for by the Law is the knowledge therof saith S. Paul, and that by certain and true light for men to walk in safely, it holds out fals and dazling fires to stumble men: or like those miserable flies to run into with delight and be burnt: for how many soules might easily think that to be lawfull, which the Law and Magistrate allow'd them? Again we read, 1 Tim. 1.5. The end of the Commandment is charity, out of a pure heart, and of a good conscience, and of faith unfained. But never could that be charity to allow a people what they could not use with a pure heart, but with conscience and faith both deceiv'd, or els despis'd. The more particular end of the Judicial Law is set forth to us clearly, Rom. 13. that God hath giv'n to that Law a Sword not in vain, but to be a terror to evil works, a revenge to execute wrath upon him that doth evil. If this terrible commission should but forbeare to punish wickednes, were it other to be accounted then partial and unjust? but if it begin to write indulgence to vulgar uncleannes, can it doe more to corrupt and shame the end of its own being? Lastly, if the Law allow sin, it enters into a kind of covnant with sin, and if it doe, there is not a greater sinner in the world then the Law it selfe. The Law, to use an allegory somthing different from that in Philo Judæus concerning Amaleck, though haply more significant, the Law is the Israelite, and hath this absolute charge given it, Deut. 25. To blot out the memory of sin, the Amalekite, from under heav'n, not to forget it. Again, the Law is the Israelite, and hath this expresse repeated command to make no cov'nant with sin, the Canaanite, but to expell him, lest he prove a snare. And to say truth it were too rigid and reasonlesse to proclaime such an enmity between man and man, were it not the type of a greater enmity between law and sin. I spake ev'n now, as if sin were condemn'd in a perpetual villenage never to be free by law, never to be manumitted: but sure sin can have no tenure by law at all, but is rather an eternal outlaw, and in hostility with law past all attonement: both diagonial contraries, as much allowing one another, as day and night together in one hemisphere. Or if it be possible, that sin with his darknes may come to composition, it cannot be without a foul eclipse and twylight to the law, whose brightnesse ought to surpasse the noon. Thus we see how this unclean permittance defeats the sacred and glorious end both of the Moral and Judicial Law.
As little good can the lawgiver propose to equity by such a lavish remisnes as this: if to remedy hardnes of heart, Paræus and other divines confesse, it more encreases by this liberty, then is lessn'd: and how is it probable that their hearts were more hard in this that it should be yeelded to, then in any other crime? Their hearts were set upon usury, and are to this day, no Nation more; yet that which was the endammaging only of their estates, was narrowly forbid; this which is thought the extreme injury and dishonour of their Wives and daughters, with the defilement also of themselves, is bounteously allow'd. Their hearts were as hard under their best Kings to offer in high places, though to the true God; yet that but a small thing is strictly forwarn'd; this accounted a high offence against one of the greatest moral duties, is calmely permitted and establisht. How can it be evaded but that the heavy censure of Christ should fall worse upon this lawgiver of theirs, then upon all the Scribes and Pharises? For they did but omit Judgement and Mercy to trifle in Mint and Cummin, yet all according to Law; but this their Law-giver, altogether as punctuall in such niceties, goes marching on to adulteries, through the violence of divorce by Law against Law. If it were such a cursed act of Pilat a subordinate Judge to Cæsar, over-swayd by those hard hearts with much a doe to suffer one transgression of Law but once, what is it then with lesse a doe to publish a Law of transgression for many ages? Did God for this come down and cover the Mount of Sinai with his glory, uttering in thunder those his sacred Ordinances out of the bottomlesse treasures of his wisdome and infinit purenes to patch up an ulcerous and rott'n common-wealth with strict and stern injunctions, to wash the skin and garments for every unclean touch, and such easie permission giv'n to pollute the soule with adulteries by publick authority, without disgrace, or question? No, it had bin better that man had never known Law or matrimony, then that such foul iniquity should be fast'nd upon the holy One of Israel, the Judge of all the earth, and such a peece of folly as Belzebub would not commit, to divide against himself and pervert his own ends; or if he to compasse more certain mischief, might yeild perhaps to fain some good deed, yet that God should enact a licence of certain evill for uncertain good against His own glory and purenes, is abominable to conceive. And as it is destructive to the end of Law, and blasphemous to the honour of the lawgiver licencing, so is it as pernicious to the person licenc't. If a private friend admonish not, the Scripture saith he hates his brother, and lets him perish; but if he sooth him, and allow him in his faults, the Proverbs teach us he spreads a net for his neighbours feet, and worketh ruin. If the Magistrate or Prince forget to administer due justice and restrain not sin, Eli himself could say, it made the Lords people to transgresse. But if he count'nance them against law by his own example, what havock it makes both in Religion and vertue among the people, may be guest by the anger it brought upon Hophni and Phineas, not to be appeas'd with sacrifice nor offring for ever. If the Law be silent to declare sin, the people must needs generally goe astray, for the Apostle himselfe saith, he had not known lust but by the Law: and surely such a Nation seems not to be under the illuminating guidance of Gods law, but under the horrible doom rather of such as despise the Gospel, he that is filthy let him be filthy still. But where the Law it selfe gives a warrant for sin, I know not what condition of misery to imagin miserable anough for such a people, unlesse that portion of the wicked, or rather of the damned, on whom God threatens in 11. Psalm, to rain snares: but that questionlesse cannot be by any Law, which the Apostle saith is a ministery ordain'd of God unto our good, and not so many waies and in so high a degree to our destruction, as we have now bin graduating. And this is all the good can come to the person licenc't in his hardnesse of heart.
I am next to mention that which because it is a ground in divinity, Rom.3. will save the labour of demonstrating, unlesse her giv'n axioms be more doubted then in other Arts (although it be no lesse firm in the precepts of Philosophy) that a thing unlawfull can for no good whatsoever be done, much lesse allow'd by a positive law. And this is the matter why Interpreters upon that passage in Hosea will not consent it to be a true story, that the Prophet took a Harlot to wife, because God being a pure Spirit could not command a thing repugnant to his own nature, no not for so good an end as to exhibit more to the life a wholsom and perhaps a converting parable to many an Israelite. Yet that he commanded the allowance of adulterous and injurious divorses for hardnes of heart, a reason obscure and in a wrong sense, they can very savourily perswade themselves; so tenacious is the leven of an old conceit. But they shift it, he permitted only. Yet silence in the Law is consent, and consent is accessory; why then is not the Law being silent, or not active against a crime, accessory to its own conviction, it self judging? For though we should grant, that it approvs not, yet it wills; and the Lawyers maxim is, that the will compell'd is yet the will. And though Aristotle in his Ethicks call this a mixt action, yet he concludes it to be voluntary and inexcusable, if it be evill. How justly then might human law and Philosophy rise up against the righteousnesse of Moses, if this be true which our vulgar Divinity Fathers upon him, yea upon God himselfe; not silently and only negatively to permit, but in his law to divulge a written and generall priviledge to commit and persist in unlawfull divorces with a high hand, with security and no ill fame: for this is more then permitting or conniving, this is maintaining; this is warranting, this is protecting, yea this is doing evill, and such an evil as that reprobat lawgiver did, whose lasting infamy is ingrav'n upon him like a surname, he who made Israel to sin. This is the lowest pitch cantrary to God that publick fraud and injustice can descend.
If it be affirm'd that God as being Lord may doe what he will; yet we must know that God hath not two wills, but one will, much lesse two contrary. If he once will'd adultery should be sinfull, and to be punisht by death, all his omnipotence will not allow him to will the allowance that his holiest people might as it were by his own Antinomie, or counter-statute, live unreprov'd in the same fact, as he himselfe esteem'd it, according to our common explainers. The hidden wayes of his providence we adore & search not; but the law is his reveled wil, his complete, his evident, and certain will; herein he appears to us as it were in human shape, enters into cov'nant with us, swears to keep it, binds himself like a just lawgiver to his own prescriptions, gives himself to be understood by men, judges and is judg'd, measures and is commensurat to right reason; cannot require lesse of us in one cantle of his Law then in another, his legall justice cannot be so fickle and so variable, sometimes like a devouring fire and by and by connivent in the embers, or, if I may so say, oscitant and supine. The vigor of his Law could no more remit, then the hallowed fire on his altar could be let goe out. The Lamps that burnt before him might need snuffing, but the light of his Law never. Of this also more beneath, is discussing a solution of Rivetus.
The Jesuits, and that sect among us which is nam'd of Arminius, are wont to charge us of making God the author of sinne in two degrees especially, not to speak of his permissions. 1. Because we hold that he hath decreed some to damnation, and consequently to sinne, say they: Next, because those means which are of saving knowledge to others, he makes to them an occasion of greater sinne. Yet considering the perfection wherin man was created, and might have stood, no decree necessitating his free will, but subsequent though not in time yet in order to causes which were in his owne power, they might, methinks be perswaded to absolve both God and us. Whenas the doctrine of Plato and Chrysippus with their followers the Academics and the Stoics, who knew not what a consummat and most adorned Pandora was bestow'd upon Adam to be the nurse and guide of his arbitrary happinesse and perseverance, I mean his native innocence and perfection, which might have kept him from being our true Epimetheus, and though they taught of vertue and vice to be both the gift of divine destiny, they could yet find[errata 1] reasons not invalid, to justifie the counsels of God and Fate from the insulsity of mortall tongues: That mans own freewill[errata 2] self-corrupted is the adequat and sufficient cause of his disobedience besides fate; as Homer also wanted not to expresse both in his Iliad and Odyssei. And Manilius the Poet, although in his fourth book he tells of some created both to sinne and punishment; yet without murmuring, and with an industrious cheerfulnes he acquitts[errata 3] the Deity. They were not ignorant in their heathen lore, that it is most God-like to punish those who of his creatures became his enemies with the greatest punishment; and they could attain also to think that the greatest, when God himselfe throws a man furthest from him; which then they held hee did, when he blinded, hard'n'd, and stirr'd up his offendors, to finish, and pile up their disperat work since they had undertak'n it. To banish for ever into a locall hell, whether in the aire or in the center, or in that uttermost and bottomlesse gulph of Chaos, deeper from holy blisse then the worlds diameter multiply'd, they thought not a punishing so proper and proportionat for God to inflict, as to punish sinne with sinne. Thus were the common sort of Gentiles wont to think, without any wry thoughts cast upon divine governance. And therefore Cicero not in his Tusculan or Campanian retirements among the learned wits of that age; but ev'n in the Senat to a mixt auditory (though he were sparing otherwise to broach his Philosophy among Statists and Lawyers) yet as to this point both in his oration against Piso, and in that which is about the answers of the Soothsayers against Clodius, he declares it publikly as no paradox to common ears, that God cannot punish man more, nor make him more miserable, then still by making him more sinnfull. Thus we see how in this controversie the justice of God stood upright ev'n among heathen disputers. But if any one be truly, and not pretendedly zealous for Gods honour, here I call him forth before men and Angels, to use his best and most advised skill, lest God more unavoidably then ever yet, and in the guiltiest manner be made the author of sin: if he shall not onely deliver over and incite his enemies by rebuks to sin as a punishment, but shall by patent under his own broad seal allow his friends whom he would sanctify and save, whom he would unite to himselfe, and not dis-joyne, whom he would correct by wholsome chastning, and not punish as hee doth the damned by lewd sinning, if he shall allow these in his Law the perfect rule of his own purest wil, and our most edify'd conscience, the perpetrating of an odious and manifold sin without the lest contesting. Tis wonder'd how there can be in God a secret, and a reveal'd will; and yet what wonder, if there be in man two answerable causes. But here there must be two revealed wills grappling in a fraternall warre with one another without any reasonable cause apprehended. This cannot be lesse then to ingraft sin into the substance of the law, which law is to provoke sin by crossing and forbidding, not by complying with it. Nay this is, which I tremble in uttering, to incarnat sin into the unpunishing, and well-pleas'd will of God. To avoid these dreadfull consequences that tread upon the heels of those allowances to sin, will be a task of farre more difficulty then to appease those minds which perhaps out of a vigilant and wary conscience except against predestination. Thus finally we may conclude, that a Law wholly giving licence cannot upon any good consideration be giv'n to a holy people, for hardnesse of heart in the vulgar sense.
Errata