turn it from himself, or no acceptance, how can hee mutually accept? what more equal, more pious then to untie a civil knot for a natural enmity held by violence from parting, to dissolv an accidental conjunction of this or that man & woman, for the most natural and most necessary disagreement of meet from unmeet, guilty from guiltles, contrary from contrary? It beeing certain that the mystical and blessed unity of mariage can bee no way more unhallow'd and profan'd, then by the forcible uniting of such disunions and separations. Which if wee see oftimes they cannot joyn or peece up to a common friendship, or to a willing conversation in the same house, how should they possibly agree to the most familiar and united amity of wedlock? Abraham and Lot, though dear friends and brethren in a strange Country, chose rather to part asunder, then to infect thir friendship with the strife of their servants: Paul and Barnabas joyn'd together by the Holy Ghost to a Spiritual work, thought it better to separate when once they grew at variance. If these great Saints, joynd by nature, friendship, religion, high providence, and revelation, could not so govern a casual difference, a sudden passion, but must in wisdom divide from the outward duties of a friendship, or a Collegueship in the same family, or in the same journey, lest it should grow to a wors division; can any thing bee more absurd and barbarous, then that they whom only error, casualty, art, or plot, hath joynd, should be compell'd, not against a sudden passion, but against the permanent and radical discords of nature, to the most intimat and incorporating duties of love and imbracement, therin only rational and human, as they are free and voluntary; beeing els an abject and servile yoke, scars not brutish? And that there is in man such a peculiar sway of liking or disliking in the affairs of Matrimony, is evidently seen before mariage among those who can be freindly, can respect each other, yet to marry each other would not for any perswasion. If then this unfitnes and disparity bee not till after mariage discover'd, through many causes, and colours, and concealements, that may overshadow; undoubtedly it will produce the same effects, and perhaps with more vehemence, that such a mistakn pair would give the world to bee unmarried again. And thir condition Solomon to the plain justification of divorce expresses, Prov. 30. 21. 23. Where hee tells us of his own accord, that a hated, or a hatefull woman, when shee is married, is a thing for which the earth is disquieted, and cannot
