# The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce/Bk2 Chapter 16

CHAP. XVI.
NExt he saith, they must be one flesh, which, when all conjecturing is don, will be found to import no more but to make legitimate ​and good the carnal act, which els might seem to have somthing of pollution in it: And infers thus much over, that the fit union of their souls be such as may even incorporate them to love and amity; but that can never be where no correspondence is of the minde; nay instead of being one flesh, they will be rather two carkasses chain'd unnaturally together; or as it may happ'n, a living soule bound to a dead corps, a punishment too like that inflicted by the tyrant Mezentius; so little worthy to be receiv'd as that remedy of lonelinesse which God meant us. Since we know it is not the joyning of 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, unles wher nature can in some measure fix a unity of disposition. The meaning therefore of these words, For this cause shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave to his wife, was first to shew us the deer affection which naturally & most commonly grows in every not unnatural mariage, ev'n to the leaving of parents, or other familiarity whatsoever: next, it justifies a man in so doing, that nothing is done undutifully to father or mother. But he that should be here sternly commanded to cleave to his error, a disposition which to his he finds will never ciment, a quotidian of sorrow and discontentment in his house, let us be excus'd to pause a little and bethinke us every way round, ere wee lay such a flat solecisme upon the gracious, and certainly not inexorable, not ruthlesse and flinty ordinance of marriage. For if the meaning of these words must be thus blockt up within their owne letters from all equity and fair deduction, they will serve then well indeed their turn, who affirme divorce to have been granted onely for wives; whenas we see no word of this text that bindes women, but men only, what it binds. No marvell then if Salomith sister to Herod, sent a writ of ease to Costobarus her husband; which, as Josephus there attests, was lawfull onely to men. No marvell though Placidia the sister of Honorius threat'n'd the like to Earle Constantius, for a triviall cause, as Photius relates from Olympiodorus. No marvell any thing if letters must be turn'd into palisadoes to stake out all requisite sense from entring to their due enlargement.
Lastly, Christ himselfe tells who should not bee put asunder, namely those whom God hath joyn'd. A plain solution of this great controversie, if men would but use their eyes; for when is it that God may bee said to joyn, when the parties and their friends consent? No surely, for that may concurre to lewdest ends. Or is it ​when Church rites are finisht? Neither; for the efficacie of those depends upon the presupposed fitnesse of either party. Perhaps, after carnall knowledge? Least of all; for that may joyn persons whom neither law nor nature dares joyn: tis left, that only then, when the minds are fitly dispos'd, and enabl'd to maintain a cheerfull 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 onely 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 doubtlesse in what respect he hath call'd us to mariage, in that also hee hath joyn'd us. The rest whom either disproportion or deadnesse of spirit, or something distastfull & averse in the immutable bent of nature renders unconiugall, error may have ioyn'd, but God never ioyn'd against the meaning of his own ordinance. And if he ioynd them not, then is there no power above their own consent to hinder them from unioyning, when they cannot reap the sobrest ends of being 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, frowardnesse or private injuries hath made unfit, that being 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 evill, and lesse in scandall then a hatefull hardhearted and destructive continuance of mariage, in the iudgement of Moses and of Christ, that iustifies him in choosing the lesse evill, which if it were an honest and civill prudence in the law, what is there in the Gospell forbidding such a kind of legall wisdom, though wee should admit the common Expositers?