The Doctrine of the Sacrament of Matrimony.
THE first Parent of Mankind, by the instinct of the Holy Spirit, pro∣nounced the perpetual and indissoluble Tye of Matrimony, when he said, This is now Bone of my Bones, and Flesh of my Flesh: Therefore shall a Man leave his Father and his Mother, and shall cleave to his Wife, and they twain shall be one Flesh. Now that by this Bond two only are coupled and joyn∣ed together, the Lord Christ hath plainly taught, when rehearsing those last Words, as it were uttered by God; Therefore now they are no more two, but one flesh; and immediately confirmed the soundness of that Tye, pronounced so long before by Adam, in these Words; What therefore God hath joyned together, let no Man put asunder.
But the Grace, which should perfect that natural Love, and confirm the in∣dissoluble Union, and sanctifie those that are joyned, Christ himself, the In∣stitutor and compleator of venerable Sacraments, hath by his Passion merited for us, which Paul the Apostle intimateth, saying, Husbands, Love your Wives, as Christ loved his Church, and gave himself for it; immediately adding, This is the great Sacrament; but I say in Christ and in the Church.
Seeing therefore Matrimony in the Evangelical Law doth excel the anci∣ent Marriages by Grace through Christ, that it is deservedly to be reckon∣ed among the Sacraments of the New Law, has ever been the doctrine of our Holy Fathers, Councils, and the Universal Tradition of the Church; against which the wicked men of this Age raging madly have not only thought amiss of this venerable Sacrament, but after their usual manner, under a pre∣tence of the Gospel, introducing the Liberty of the Flesh, have by Writing and by Word asserted many things quite different from the sense of the Ca∣tholick Church, and the approved usage from the times of the Apostles, not without great damage to Christian Believers; whose rashness the Holy Gene∣ral Synod desiring to stop, hath thought good to extirpate the more notorious Heresies and Errors of the aforesaid Schismaticks, lest the pernicious contagion draw more after them, decreeing against these Hereticks, and their Errors these following Anathematisms.