Selected quad for the lemma: cause_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
cause_n	civil_a	law_n	matter_n	2,103	5	5.8530	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A70591	The doctrine and discipline of divorce restor'd to the good of both sexes from the bondage of canon law and other mistakes to Christian freedom, guided by the rule of charity : wherein also many places of Scripture have recover'd their long-lost meaning : seasonable to be now thought on in the reformation intended.	Milton, John, 1608-1674.	1643 (1643)	Wing M2108; ESTC R12932	44,446	52

the law were unjust giving grace of pardon without the Gospel or if it give allowance without pardon it would be dissolute and deceitfull saying in general do this and live and yet deceaving and damning with obscure and hollow permissions Wee find also by experience that the Spirit of God in the Gospel hath been alwaies more effectual in the illumination of our minds to the gift of faith then in the moving of our wills to any excellence of vertue either above the Iews or the Heathen Hence those indulgences in the Gospel All cannot receive this saying Every man hath his proper gift with strict charges not to lay on yokes which our Fathers could not bear But this that Moses suffer'd for the hardnes of thir hearts he suffer'd not by that enacted dispensation farre be it but by a meer accidental sufferance of undiscover'd hypocrites who made ill use of that Law for that God should enact a dispensation for hard hearts to do that wherby they must live in priviledg'd adultery however it go for the receav'd opinion I shall ever disswade my self from so much hardihood as to beleeve Certainly this is not the manner of God whose pure eyes cannot behold much lesse his perfect Laws dispence with such impurity and if we consider well we shall finde that all dispensations are either to avoid wors inconveniences or to support infirm consciences for a time but that a dispensatiō should be as long liv'd as a Law to tolerate adultery for hardnes of heart both sins perhaps of like degree and yet this obdurate disease cannot be conceav'd how it is the more amended by this unclean remedy is a notion of that extravagance from the sage principles of piety that who considers throughly cannot but admire how this hath been digested all this while What may we doe then to salve this seeming inconsistence I must not dissemble that I am confident it can be don no other way then this Moses Deut. 24 1. establisht a grave and prudent Law full of moral equity full of due consideration towards nature that cannot be resisted a Law consenting with the Laws of wisest men and civilest nations That when a man hath maried a wife if it come to passe he cannot love her by reason of some displeasing natural quality or unfitnes in her let him write her a bill of divorce The intent of which Law undoubtedly was this that if any good and peaceable man should discover some helples disagreement or dislike either of mind or body wherby he could not cherfully perform the duty of a husband without the perpetual dissembling of offence and disturbance to his spirit rather then to live uncomfortably and unhappily both to himself and to his wife rather then to continue undertaking a duty which he could not possibly discharge he might dismisse her whom he could not tolerably and so not conscionably retain And this Law the Spirit of God by the mouth of Salomon Pro. 30. 21. 23. testifies to be a good and a necessary Law by granting it that to dwell with a hated woman for hated the hebrew word signifies is a thing that nature cannot endure What follows then but that Law must remedy what nature cannot undergoe Now that many licentious and hard hearted men took hold of this Law to cloak thir bad purposes is nothing strange to beleeve And these were they not for whom Moses made the Law God forbid but whose hardnes of heart taking ill advantage by this Law he held it better to suffer as by accident where it could not be detected rather then good men should loose their just and lawfull privilege of remedy Christ therfore having to answer these tempting Pharises according as his custom was not meaning to inform their proud ignorance what Moses did in the true intent of the Law which they had ill cited suppressing the true cause for which Moses gave it and extending it to every slight matter tells them thir own what Moses was forc't to suffer by their abuse of his Law Which is yet more plain if wee mark that our Saviour in the fi●th of Matth. cites not the Law of Moses but the Pharisaical tradition falsly grounded upon that law And in those other places Chap. 19. Mark 10. the Pharises cite the Law but conceale the wise and human reason there exprest which our Saviour corrects not in them whose pride deserv'd not his instruction only returns them what is proper to them Moses for the hardnes of your hearts sufferd you that is such as you to put away your wives and to you he wrote this precept for that cause which to you must be read with an impression and understood limitedly of such as cover'd ill purposes under that Law for it was seasonable that they should hear their own unbounded licence rebuk't but not seasonable for them to hear a good mans requisit liberty explain'd And to amaze them the more because the Pharises thought it no hard matter to fulfill the Law he draws them up to that unseparable institution which God ordaind in the beginning before the fall when man and woman were both perfect and could have no cause to separate just as in the same Chap. he stands not to contend with the arrogant young man who boasted his observance of the whole Law whether he had indeed kept it or not but skrues him up higher to a task of that perfection which no man is bound to imitate And in like manner that pattern of the first institution he set before the opinionative Pharises to dazle them and not to bind us For this is a solid rule that every command giv'n with a reason binds our obedience no otherwise then that reason holds Of this sort was that command in Eden Therfore shall a man cleave to his wife and they shall be one flesh which we see is no absolute command but with an inference Therfore the reason then must be first consider'd that our obedience be not mis-obedience The first is for it is not single because the wife is to the husband flesh of his flesh as in the verse going before But this reason cannot be sufficient of it self for why then should he for his wife leave his father and mother with whom he is farre more flesh of flesh and bone of bone as being made of their substance And besides it can be but a sorry and ignoble society of life whose unseparable injunction depends meerly upon flesh bones Therfore we must look higher since Christ himself recalls us to the beginning and we shall finde that the primitive reason of never divorcing was that sacred and not vain promise of God to remedy mans lonelines by making him a help meet for him though not now in perfection as at first yet still in proportion as things now are And this is repeated ver. 20. when all other creatures were fitly associated brought to Adam as if the divine power had bin in some care and deep

another body will remove lonelines but the uniting of another compliable mind and that it is no blessing but a torment nay a base and brutish condition to be one flesh unlesse where nature can in some measure fix a unity of disposition Lastly Christ himself tells us who should not be put asunder namely those whom God hath joyn'd A plain solutiō of this great controversie if men would but use their eyes for when is it that God may be said to joyn when the parties and their friends consent No surely for that may concurre to leudest ends or is it when Church-rites are finisht Neither for the efficacy of those depends upon the presupposed fitnes of either party Perhaps after carnal knowledge lest of all for that may joyn persons whom neither law nor nature dares joyn t is left that only then when the minds are fitly dispos'd and enabl'd to maintain a cherfull conversation to the solace and love of each other according as God intended and promis'd in the very first foundation of matrimony I will make him a help meet for him for surely what God intended and promis'd that only can be thought to be of his joyning and not the contrary So likewise the Apostle witnesseth 1 Cor. 7. 15. that in mariage God hath call'd us to peace And doubtles in what respect he hath call'd us to mariage in that also he hath joyn'd us The rest whom either disproportion or deadnes of spirit or somthing distastfull avers in the immutable bent of nature renders uncōjugal error may have joyn'd but God never joyn'd against the meaning of his own ordinance And if he joynd them not then is there no power above their own consent to hinder them from unjoyning when they cannot reap the soberest ends of beeing together in any tolerable sort Neither can it be said properly that such twain were ever divorc't but onely parted from each other as two persons unconjunctive and unmariable together But if whom God hath made a fit help frowardnes or private injuries have made unfit that beeing the secret of mariage God can better judge then man neither is man indeed fit or able to decide this matter however it be undoubtedly a peacefull divorce is a lesse evil and lesse in scandal then a hatefull hard hearted and destructive continuance of mariage in the judgement of Moses and of Christ that justifies him in choosing the lesse evil which if it were an honest civil prudence in the law what is there in the Gospel forbidding such a kind of legal wisdom though wee should admit the common Expositers Having thus unfoulded those ambiguous reasōs wherwith Christ as his wont was gave to the Pharises that came to sound him such an answer as they deserv'd it will not be uneasie to explain the sentence it self that now follows Whosoever shall put away his wife except it be for fornication and shall marry another committeth adultery First therfore I will set down what is observ'd by Grotius upon this point a man of general learning Next I produce what mine own thoughts gave me before I had seen his annotations Origen saith he notes that Christ nam'd adultery rather as one example of other like cases then as one only exception And that it is frequent not only in human but in divine Laws to expresse one kind of fact wherby other causes of like nature may have the like plea as Exod. 21. 18 19 20. 26. Deut. 19. 5. And from the maxims of civil Law he shews that ev'n in sharpest penal laws the same reason hath the same right and in gentler laws that from like causes to like the Law interprets rightly But it may be objected saith he that nothing destroys the end of wedlock so much as adultery To which he answers that mariage was not ordain'd only for copulation but for mutual help and comfort of life and if we mark diligently the nature of our Saviours commands wee shall finde that both their beginning and their end consists in charity whose will is that wee should so be good to others as that wee be not cruel to our selves And hence it appears why Mark and Luke and St. Paul to the Cor. mentioning this precept of Christ adde no exception because exceptions that arise from natural equity are included silently under general terms it would be consider'd therfore whether the same equity may not have place in other cases lesse frequent Thus farre he From hence is what I adde first that this saying of Christ as it is usually expounded can be no law at all that man for no cause should separate but for adultery except it be a supernatural law not binding us as wee now are had it bin the law of nature either the Iews or some other wise and civil Nation would have pres't it or let it be so yet that law Deut. 24. 1. wherby a man hath leave to part whenas for just and natural cause discover'd he cannot love is a law ancienter and deeper ingrav'n in blameles nature then the other therfore the inspired Law-giver Moses took care that this should be specify'd and allow'd the other he let vanish in silence not once repeated in the volume of his law ev'n as the reason of it vanisht with Paradise Secondly this can be no new command for the Gospel enjoyns no new morality save only the infinit enlargement of charity which in this respect is call'd the new Commandement by St. Iohn as being the accomplishment of every command Thirdly It is no command of perfection further then it partakes of charity which is the bond of perfection Those commands therfore which compell us to self-cruelty above our strength so hardly will help forward to perfection that they hinder set backward in all the common rudiments of Christianity as was prov'd It being thus clear that the words of Christ can be no kind of command as they are vulgarly tak'n wee shall now see in what sense they may be a command and that an excellent one the same with that of Moses and no other Moses had granted that only for a natural annoyance defect or dislike whether in body or mind for so the Hebrew words plainly note which a man could not force himself to live with he might give a bill of divorce therby forbidding any other cause wherin amendment or reconciliation might have place This law the Pharises depraving extended to any slight contentious cause whatsoever Christ therfore seeing where they halted urges the negative part of that law which is necessarily understood for the determinate permission of Moses binds them from further licence and checking their supercilious drift declares that no accidental temporary or reconciliable offence except fornication can justifie a divorce he touches not heer those natural and perpetual hindrances of society which are not to be remov'd for such as they are aptest to cause an unchangeable offence so are they not capable of reconcilement because not of amendment Thus is