ous, actively hateful, and injurious even to hostility, especially in a conjugal respect, wherein antipathies are invincible, and where the forced abiding of the one can be no true good, no real comfort to the other? For if he find no contentment from the other, how can he return it from himself? or no acceptance, how can he mutually accept? What more equal, more pious, than to untie a civil knot for a natural enmity held by violence from parting, to dissolve an accidental conjunction of this or that man and woman, for the most natural and most necessary disagreement of meet from unmeet, guilty from guiltless, contrary from contrary? It being certain, that the mystical and blessed unity of marriage can be no way more unhallowed and profaned, than by the forcible uniting of such disunions and separations. Which if we see oftimes they cannot join or piece up 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? It is unjust that any ordinance, ordained to the good and comfort of man, where that end is missing, without his fault, should be forced upon him to an unsufferable misery and discomfort; if not commonly ruin. All ordinances are established in their end; the end of law is the virtue, is the righteousness of law: and, therefore, him we count an ill-expounder, who urges law against the intention thereof. The general end of every ordinance, of every severest, every divinist, is the good of man; yea, temporal good not excluded. But marriage is one of the benignest ordinances of God to man, whereof both the general and particular end is the peace and contentment of man's mind, as the institution declares. Contentment of body they grant, which if it be defrauded, the plea of frigidity shall divorce: but here lies the fathomless absurdity, that granting this for bodily defects, they will not grant it for any defect of the mind, any violation of religious or civil society. As no ordinance, so no covenant, no not between God and man, much less between man and man, being, as all are, intended to the good of both parties, can hold to the deluding or making miserable of them both. For equity is understood in every covenant, even between enemies, though the terms be not expressed. If equity therefore made it, extremity may dissolve it. But in marriage, a league of love and willingness, if faith be not willingly kept, it scarce is worth the keeping; nor can be any delight to a generous mind with whom it is forcibly kept and the question still supposes the one brought to an impossibility of keeping it as he ought by the other's default; and to keep it formally, not only with a thousand shifts and dissimulations, but with open anguish, perpetual sadness and disturbance, no willingness, no cheerfulness, no contentment, cannot be any good to a mind basely poor and shallow, with whom the contract of love is so kept. A covenant, therefore, brought to that pass, is on the unfaulty side without injury dissolved. I cannot therefore be so diffident, as not securely to conclude, that he who can receive nothing of the most important helps in marriage, being thereby disenabled to return that duty which is his, with a clear and hearty countenance, and thus continues to grieve whom he would not, and is not less grieved; that man ought even for love's sake and peace to move divorce upon good and liberal conditions to the divorced. : But marriage, they use to say, is the covenant of God. Undoubted and so is any covenant frequently called in Scripture, wherein God is called to witness. So that this denomination adds nothing to the covenant of marriage, above any other civil and solemn contract: nor is it more indissoluble for this reason than any other against the end of its own ordination; nor is any vow or oath to God exacted with such a rigour, where superstition reigns not. For look how much divine the covenant is, so much the more equal, so much the more to be expected that every article thereof should be fairly made good; no false dealing or unperforming should be thrust upon men without redress, if the covenant be so divine. JOHN LOCKE'S HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Since the precepts of Natural religion are plain, and very intelligible to all mankind, and seldom come to be converted; and other revealed truths, which are conveyed to us by books and languages, are liable to the common and natural obscurities and difficulties incident to words; methinks it would become us to be more careful and diligent in observing the former, and less magisterial, positive, and imperious, in opposing our own sense and interpretation of the latter. How many men have no other ground for their tenets than the supposed honesty, or learning, or number of those of the same profession? As if honest or bookish men could not err, or truth were to be established by the vote of the multitude; yet this with most men serves the turn. The tenet has had the attestation of reverend antiquity, it comes to me with the passport of former ages, and therefore I am secure in the reception I give it: other men have been, and are of the same opinion (for that is all is said) and therefore it is reasonable for me to embrace it. A man may more justifiably throw up cross and pile for his opinions, than take them up by such measures. There are not so many men in errors and wrong opinlons, as is commonly supposed. Not that I think they embrace the truth; but indeed, because concerning those doctrines they keep such a stir about, they have no thought, no opinion at all. For if any one should a little catechise the greatest part of the partizans of most of the sects in the world, he would not find, concerning those matters they are so zealous for, that they have any opinions of their own; much less would he have reason to think, that they took them upon the examination of arguments, and appearance of probability. They are resolved to stick to a party, that education or interest has engaged them in; and there, like the common soldiers of an army, show their courage and warmth as their leaders direct without ever examining or so much as knowing the cause they contend for. If a man's life shows that he has no serious regard for religion; for what reason should we think that he beats his head about the opinions of his church, and troubles himself to examine the grounds of this or that doctrine? It is enough for him to obey his leaders, to have his hand and his tongue ready for the support of the common cause, and thereby approve himself to those who can give him credit, preferment, or protection, in that society. Thus men become professors of, and combatants for, those opinions they were never convinced of, nor proselytes to; no, nor even had so much as floating in their heads and though one cannot say there are fewer improbable or erroneous opinions in the world than there are; yet it is certain, there are fewer that actually assent to them, and mistake them for truths, than is imagined. : EDUCATION.-If the happiness of all mankind, as much as in each lies, were every one's persuasion, as indeed it is every one's duty, and the true principle to regulate our religion, politics and morality by, the world would be much quieter and better natured than it is. Some children, when they have possession of any poor creature, are apt to use it ill; they often torment and treat very roughly, young birds, butterflies, and such other poor animals as fall into their hands, and that with a seeming kind of pleasure. This should be watched in them, and if they incline to any such cruelty, they should be taught the contrary usage, for the custom of tormenting and killing of beasts will by degrees harden their minds even towards men, and they who delight in the suffering and destruction of inferior creatures, will not be apt to be very complacent or benign to those of their own kind. Our [English laws] practice takes notice of this, in the exclusion of butchers from juries of life and death. Children should from the beginning be bred up in an abhorrence of killing [needlessly,] and of tormenting any living creature, and be taught not to spoil or destroy any thing, unless it be for the preservation or advantage of some other that is nobler. I cannot but commend both the kindness and the prudence of a mother I knew, who was wont always to indulge her children, when any of them desired dogs, squirrels, birds, or any such things young children use to be delighted with; but then, when they had them, they must be sure to keep them well, and look diligently after them, that they wanted nothing, or were not ill used, for if they were negligent in their care of the animals, it was accounted a great fault, which often forfeited their possession, or at least they failed not to be rebuked for it, whereby they were really taught diligence and good nature. Indeed, people should be accustomed from their cradles, to be tender to all sensible creatures, and to spoil or waste nothing. Mischief means the spoiling of any thing to no purpose, but more especially the pleasure of putting any thing to pain that is capable of it; the delight they take in doing this, I cannot persuade myself to be any other than a foreign and acquired disposition; a habit bred from custom and conversation. People teach children to strike and laugh when they hurt, or see harm come to others; and they have the examples of most about them to confirm them in it. The entertainment of talk and history, consists principally of fighting and killing, and the honor and renown that is bestowed on conquerors, (who for the most part are the great butchers of mankind,) further mislead growing youths, who by this means come to think slaughter the laudable business of mankind, and the most heroic of virtues. By these steps, unnatural cruelty is planted in us, and what humanity abhors, custom reconciles and recommends to us by laying it in the way to honor. Thus by fashion and opinion, that comes to be a pleasure which in itself, neither is nor can be any. This ought carefully to be watched and early to be remedied, so as to instil and cherish the contrary and more natural temper of benignity and compassion in the room of it, but still by the same gentle method. We ought not to encroach upon truth in any conversation, but least of all with children, since if we play false with them, we not only deceive their expectations and hinder their knowledge, but corrupt their innocence, and by example, teach them the worst of vices. They easi ly perceive when they are slighted or deceived, and quickly learn the trick of neglect, dissimulation and falsehood, which they observe made use of by others. |