high enterprise, lords and commons! a high enterprise and a hard, and fuch as every seventh fon of a feventh fon does not venture on. Nor have I amidst the clamour of fo much envy and impertinence whither to appeal, but to the concourfe of fo much piety and wifdom here affembled. Bringing in my hands an ancient and most neceffary, most charitable, and yet most injured ftatute of Mofes; not repealed ever by him who only had the authority, but thrown afide with much inconfiderate neglect, under the rubbish of canonical ignorance; as once the whole law was by fome fuch like conveyance in Jofiah's time. And he who fhall endeavour the amendment of any old neglected grievance in church or ftate, or in the daily course of life, if he be gifted with abilities of mind, that may raise him to fo high an undertaking, I grant he hath already much whereof not to repent him; yet let me aread him, not to be the foreman of any mifjudged opinion, unless his refolutions be firmly feated in a square and conftant mind, not confcious to itself of any deserved blame, and regardless of ungrounded fufpicions. For this let him be fure he fhall be boarded presently by the ruder fort, but not by discreet and wellnurtured men, with a thoufand idle defcants and furmises. Who when they cannot confute the leaft joint or finew of any paffage in the book; yet God forbid that truth fhould be truth, because they have a boisterous conceit of some pretences in the writer. But were they not more bufy and inquifitive than the Apoftle commends, they would hear him at least, " rejoicing fo the truth be preached, whether of envy or other pretence whatfoever:" for truth is as impoffible to be foiled by any outward touch, as the funbeam; though this ill hap wait on her nativity, that she never comes into the world, but like a bastard, to the ignominy of him that brought her forth; till time, the midwife rather than the mother of truth, have washed and falted the infant, declared her legitimate, and churched the father of his young Minerva, from the needlefs caufes of his purgation. Yourselves can best witness this, worthy patriots! and better will, no doubt, hereafter: for who among ye of the foremost that have travailed in her behalf to the good of church or ftate, ftate, hath not been often traduced to be the agent of his own by-ends, under pretext of reformation? So much the more Í fhall not be unjust to hope, that however infamy or envy may work in other men to do her fretful will against this difcourfe, yet that the experience of your own uprightness mifinterpreted will put ye in mind, to give it free audience and generous conftruction. What though the brood of Belial the draff of men, to whom no liberty is pleafing, but unbridled and vagabond luft without pale or partition, will laugh broad perhaps, to fee so great a ftrength of fcripture muftering up in favour, as they fuppofe, of their debaucheries; they will know better when they shall hence learn, that honeft liberty is the greatest foe to dishoneft licence. And what though others, out of a waterish and queafy confcience, because ever crazy and never yet found, will rail and fancy to themselves that injury and licence is the beft of this book? Did not the diftemper of their own ftomachs affect them with a dizzy megrim, they would foon tie up their tongues, and difcern themselves like that Affyrian blafphemer, all this while reproaching not man, but the Almighty, the Holy One of Ifrael, whom they do not deny to have belawgiven his own facred people with this very allowance, which they now call injury and licence, and dare cry fhame on, and will do yet a while, till they get a little cordial fobriety to fettle their qualming zeal. But this queftion concerns not us perhaps : indeed man's difpofition, though prone to fearch after vain curiofities, yet when points of difficulty are to be difcuffed, appertaining to the removal of unreasonable wrong and burden from the perplexed life of our brother, it is incredible how cold, how dull, and far from all fellow-feeling we are, without the fpur of felf concernment. Yet if the wifdom, the juftice, the purity of God be to be cleared from fouleft imputations, which are not yet avoided; if charity be not to be degraded and trodden down under a civil ordinance; if matrimony be not to be advanced like that exalted perdition written of to the Theffalonians," above all that is called God," or goodnefs, nay against them both; then I dare affirm, there will be found in the contents of this book that which may may concern us all. You it concerns chiefly, worthies in parliament! on whom as on our deliverers, all our grievances and cares, by the merit of your eminence and fortitude, are devolved. Me it concerns next, having with much labour and faithful diligence firft found out, or at least with a fearless and communicative candour first published to the manifeft good of christendom, that which, calling to witnefs every thing mortal and immortal, I believe unfeignedly to be true. Let not other men think their confcience bound to fearch continually after truth, to pray for enlightening from above, to publish what they think they have fo obtained, and debar me from conceiving myself tied by the same duties. Ye have now, doubtless, by the favour and appointment of God, ye have now in your hands a great and populous nation to reform; from what corruption, what blindness in religion, ye know well; in what a degenerate and fallen spirit from the apprehenfion of native liberty, and true manliness, I am fure ye find; with what unbounded licence rufhing to whoredoms and adulteries, needs not long inquiry: infomuch that the fears, which men have of too ftrict a discipline, perhaps exceed the hopes, that can be in others, of ever introducing it with any great fuccefs. What if I fhould tell ye now of difpenfations and indulgences, to give a little the reins, to let them play and nibble with the bait a while; a people as hard of heart as that Egyptian colony that went to Canaan. This is the common doctrine that adulterous and injurious divorces were not cònnived only, but with eye open allowed of old for hardness of heart. But that opinion, I truft, by then this following argument hath been well read, will be left for one of the myfteries of an indulgent Antichrift, to farm out inceft by, and those his other tributary pollutions. What middle way can be taken then, may fome interrupt, if we muft neither turn to the right, nor to the left, and that the people hate to be reformed? Mark then, judges and lawgivers, and ye whose office it is to be our teachers, for I will utter now a doctrine, if ever any other, though neglected or not understood, yet of great and powerful importance to the governing of mankind. He who wifely would reftrain the reafon able able foul of man within due bounds, must first himself know perfectly, how far the territory and dominion extends of juft and honeft liberty. As little muft he offer to bind that which God hath loofened, as to loosen that which he hath bound. The ignorance and mistake of this high point hath heaped up one huge half of all the mifery, that hath been fince Adam. In the gospel we fhall read a fupercilious crew of mafters, whofe holiness, or rather whole evil eye, grieving that God fhould be fo facil to man, was to fet ftraiter limits to obedience, than God hath fet, to enflave the dignity of man, to put a garrifon upon his neck of empty and over dignified precepts: and we fhall read our Saviour never more grieved and troubled, than to meet with fuch a peevish madness among men against their own freedom. How can we expect him to be lefs offended with us, when much of the fame folly fhall be found yet remaining where it leaft ought, to the perishing of thousands? The greatest burden in the world is fuperftition, not only of ceremonies in the church, but of imaginary and scarecrow fins at home. What greater weakening, what more fubtle ftratagem againft our chriftian warfare, when befides the grofs body of real' tranfgreffions to encounter, we fhall be terrified by a vain and fhadowy menacing of faults that are not: When things indifferent fhall be fet to overfront us under the banners of fin, what wonder if we be routed, and by this art of our adversary, fall into the fubjection of worft and deadlieft offences? The fuperftition of the papift is, "touch not, tafte not," when God bids both; and ours is, "part not, feparate not,' when God and charity both permits and commands. "Let all your things be done with charity," faith St. Paul; and his mafter faith, "She is the fulfilling of the law." Yet now a civil, an indifferent, a fometime diffuaded law of marriage, muft be forced upon us to fulfil, not only without charity, but against her. No place in Heaven or earth, except Hell, where charity may not enter: yet marriage, the ordinance of our folace and contentment, the remedy of our loneliness, will not admit now either of charity or mercy, to come in and mediate, or pacify the fierceness of this gentle ordinance, VOL. I, the the unremedied lonelilefs of this remedy. Advise ye well, fupreme fenate, if charity be thus excluded and expulfed, how ye will defend the untainted honour of your own actions and proceedings. He who marries, intends as little to confpire his own ruin, as he that fwears allegiance: and as a whole people is in proportion to an ill government, fo is one man to an ill marriage. If they, against any authority, covenant, or ftatute, may by the fovereign edict of charity, fave not only their lives, but honeft liberties. from unworthy bondage, as well may he against any private covenant, which he never entered to his mifchief, redeem himself from unfupportable disturbances to honeft peace, and juft contentment And much the rather, for that to refift the highest magiftrate though tyrannizing, God never gave us exprefs allowance, only he gave us reason, charity, nature, and good example to bear us out; but in this economical misfortune thus to demean ourselves, befides the warrant of those four great directors, which doth as juftly belong hither, we have an exprefs law of God, and fuch a law, as whereof our Saviour with a folemn threat forbid the abrogating. For no effect of tyranny can fit more heavy on the commonwealth, than this household unhappiness on the family. And farewell all hope of true reformation in the ftate, while fuch an evil as this Jies undifcerned or unregarded in the house: on the redrefs whereof depends not only the fpiritful and orderly life of our grown men, but the willing and careful education of our children. Let this therefore be new examined, this tenure and freehold of mankind, this native and domeftic charter given us by a greater lord than that Saxon king the confeffor. Let the ftatutes of God be turned over, be fcanned anew, and confidered not altogether by the narrow intellectuals of quotationists and common places, but (as was the ancient right of councils) by men of what liberal profeffion foever, of eminent fpirit and breeding, joined with a diffuse and various knowledge of divine and human things; able to balance and define good and evil, right and wrong, throughout every ftate of life; able to fhow us the ways of the Lord traight and faithful as they are, not full of cranks and contradictions, |