Omitted pa. 24. lin. 22.

Uncertain good.] This only text not to be match't again through∣out the whole Scripture, wherby God in his perfet Law should seem to have granted to the hard hearts of his holy people under his own hand a civil immunity and free charter to live and die in a long successive adultery, under a covnant of works, till the Messiah, and then that indulgent permission to be strictly deny'd by a cov∣nant of grace, besides the incoherence of such a doctrin, cannot, must not be thus interpreted, to the raising of a paradox never known till then, only hanging by the twin'd thred of one doubt∣full Scripture, against so many other rules and leading principles of religion, of justice, and purity of life. For what could be granted more either to the fear, or to the lust of any tyrant, or politician, then this autority of Moses thus expounded; which opens him a way at will to damme up justice, and not only to admit of any Ro∣mish, or Austrian dispences, but to enact a Statute of that which he dares not seem to approve, ev'n to legitimate vice, to make sin it self a free Citizen of the Common-wealth, pretending only these or these plausible reasons. And well he might, all the while that Moses shall be alleg'd to have don as much without shewing any reason at all. Yet this could not enter into the heart of David, Psal 94. 20. how any such autority as endeavours to fashion wicked∣nes by law, should derive it self from God. And Isaiah lays woe upon them that decree unrighteous decrees, 10. 1. Now which of these two is the better Lawgiver, and which deservs most a woe he that gives out an Edict singly unjust, or he that confirms to generations a fixt Page  [unnumbered] and unmolested impunity of that which is not only held to be un∣just, but also unclean, and both in a high degree, not only as they themselvs affirm, an injurious expulsion of one wife, but also an un∣clean freedom by more then a patent to wed another adulterously? How can wee therfore with safety thus dangerously confine the free simplicity of our Saviours meaning to that which meerly a∣mounts from so many letters, whenas it can consist neither with his former and cautionary words, nor with other more pure and holy principles, nor finally with the scope of charity, &c.