Selected quad for the lemma: heart_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
heart_n	bear_v	law_n	nature_n	2,347	5	6.1756	4	false

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

our choisest home-blessings and coin them into crosses for want wherby to hold commerce with patience If any therfore who shall hap to read this discours hath bin through misadventure ill ingag'd in this contracted evill heer complain'd of and finds the fits and workings of a high impatience frequently upon him of all those wild words which men in misery think to ease themselves by uttering let him not op'n his lips against the providence of heav'n or tax the waies of God and his divine Truth for they are equal easy and not burdensome nor do they ever crosse the just and reasonable desires of men nor involve this our portion of mortall life into a necessity of sadnes and malecontent by Laws commanding over the unreducible antipathies of nature sooner or later found but allow us to remedy and shake off those evills into which human error hath led us through the middest of our best intentions and to support our incident extremities by that authentick precept of sovran charity whose grand Commission is to doe and to dispose over all the ordinances of God to man that love truth may advance each other to everlasting While we literally superstitious through customary faintnes of heart not venturing to peirce with our free thoughts into the full latitude of nature and religion abandon our selvs to serv under the tyranny of usurpt opinions suffering those ordinances which were allotted to our solace and reviving to trample over us and hale us into a multitude of sorrows which God never meant us And where he set us in a fair allowance of way with honest liberty and prudence to our guard wee never leave subtilizing and casuisting till wee have straitn'd and par'd that liberal path into a razors edge to walk on between a precipice of unnecessary mischief on either side and starting at every fals alarum wee doe not know which way to set a foot forward with manly confidence and Christian resolution through the confused ringing in our ears of panick scruples and amazements Another act of papal encroachment it was to pluck the power arbitrement of divorce from the master of family into whose hands God the law of all Nations had put it Christ so left it preaching only to the conscience and not authorizing a judiciall Court to tosse about and divulge the unaccountable and secret reasons of disaffection between man wife as a thing most improperly answerable to any such kind of trial But the Popes of Rome perceaving the great revenu and high autority it would give them ev'n over Princes to have the judging and deciding of such a main consequence in the life of man as was divorce wrought so upon the superstition of those ages as to devest them of that right which God from the beginning had entrusted to the husband by which means they subjected that ancient and naturally domestick prerogative to an external unbefitting judicature For although differences in divorce about dowries jointures and the like besides the punishing of adultery ought not to passe without referring if need be to the Magistrate yet for him to interpose his jurisdictive power upon the inward and irremediable disposition of man to command love and sympathy to forbid dislike against the guiltles instinct of nature is not within the province of any law to reach were indeed an uncommodious rudenes not a just power For if natures resistles sway in love or hate be once compell'd it grows careles of it self vitious useles to friend unserviceable and spiritles to the Common-wealth Wch Moses rightly foresaw and all wise Lawgivers that ever knew man what kind of creature he was The Parliament also and Clergy of England were not ignorant of this when they consented that Harry the 8th might put away his Q. Anne of Cleve whom he could not like after he had bin wedded half a year unles it were that contrary to the Proverb they made a necessity of that which might have bin a vertu in them to do For ev'n the freedom and eminence of mans creation gives him to be a Law in this matter to himself beeing the head of the other sex which was made for him whom therfore though he ought not to injure yet neither should he be forc't to retain in society to his own overthrow nor to hear any judge therin above himself It being also an unseemly affront to the sequester'd vail'd modesty of that sex to have her unpleasingnes and other concealements bandied up and down and aggravated in open Court by those hir'd maisters of tongue-fence Such uncomely exigences it befell no lesse a Majesty then Henry th 8th to be reduc't to who finding just reason in his conscience to forgoe his brothers wife after many indignities of beeing deluded and made a boy of by those his two cardinal Judges was constrain'd at last for want of other prooff that shee had bin carnally known by Prince Arthur ev'n to uncover the nakednes of that vertuous Lady to recite openly the obscene evidence of his brothers chāberlain Yet it pleas'd God to make him see all the tyranny of Rome by discovering this which they exercis'd over divorce and to make him the beginner of a reformation to this whole Kingdom by first asserting into his familiary power the right of just divorce T is true an adultres cannot be sham'd anough by any publick proceeding but that woman whose honour is not appeach't is lesse injur'd by a silent dismission being otherwise not illiberally dealth with then to endure a clamouring debate of utterles things in a busines of that civil secrecy and difficult discerning as not to be over-much question'd by neerest friends Which drew that answer from the greatest and worthiest Roman of his time Paulus Emilius beeing demanded why he would put away his wife for no visible reason This Shoo saith he and held it out on his foot is a neat shoo a new shoo and yet none of yee know where it wrings me much lesse by the unfamiliar cognisance of a fee'd gamester can such a private difference be examin'd neither ought it Lastly All law is for some good that may be frequently attain'd without the admixture of a wors inconvenience but the Law forbidding divorce never attains to any good end of such prohibition but rather multiplies evil If it aim at the establishment of matrimony wee know that cannot thrive under a loathed and forc't yoke but is daily violated if it seek to prevent the sin of divorcing that lies not in the law to prevent for he that would divorce and marry again but for the law hath in the sight of God don it already Civil or political sin it never was neither to Jew nor Gentile nor by any judicial intendment of Christ only culpable as it transgresses the allowance of Moses in the inward man which not any law but conscience only can evince The law can only look whether it be an injury to the divorc't which