A68840:154
Most fruitful [and] learned co[m]mentaries of Doctor Peter Martyr Vermil Florentine, professor of divinity,…Most fruitfull [and] learned co[m]mentaries of Doctor Peter Martir Vermil Florentine, professor of deuinitie,…
Most fruitful [and] learned co[m]mentaries of Doctor Peter Martyr Vermil Florentine, professor of divinity, in the University of Tygure with a very profitable tract of the matter and places. Herein is also added [and] contained two most ample tables, aswell of the matter, as of the words: with an index of the places in the holy scripture. Set forth & allowed, according to the order appointed in the Queens majesties injunctions.Most fruitfull [and] learned co[m]mentaries of Doctor Peter Martir Vermil Florentine, professor of deuinitie, in the Vniuersitye of Tygure with a very profitable tract of the matter and places. Herein is also added [and] contained two most ample tables, aswel of the matter, as of the wordes: wyth an index of the places in the holy scripture. Set forth & allowed, accordyng to thorder appointed in the Quenes maiesties iniunctions.
London: printed by John Day, 1564London: printed by Iohn Day, 1564
Title page typeset from the transcription.
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
The Romans decreed also,1 that no president of any province should take to wife either to himself or to any of his, any out of the same province wherein he governed. For they knew right well, that it might so happen, that the Praetor Proconsul, or President in a province cleaving to his families and kinsfolk coming to him by his wife, might make new tumults, and at length be alienated from the public wealth. They saw also a great danger to hang thereon, least he should not be just and severe in giving judgement, because he would gratify his kinsfolk more than others. Lastly marriages should not have remained at liberty in provinces, because Magistrates might in a manner compel them of the province to contract matrimonies either with themselves,2 or with their friends. We see also this most honest law violated. For Faelix which governed Jewry under Nero, as it is written in the xxiiii. chap. of the acts of the Apostles, had Drusilla a Jew to wife. But what need I rehearse that these laws of a small weight were not observed, when as that people had shaken of, even those laws which we called moral and are known by the law of nature?3 Cicero declareth in his oration for Cluentius, ye one Sassia a most wicked woman, was so provoked with filthy lust, that she instigated her son in law Aurius Melinus, to whom she had before married her daughter, to repudiate his wife, whereby he should marry her self in stead of her daughter: which thing at the length she got him to do. And when the deed was counted full of dishonesty, yet was it not punished by the laws, neither do we read that the matrimony, which Cicero contendeth to be contracted by no good grounds, by no authors, & altogether unluckily, was dissolved by the power & commandment of the magistrates. Wherefore hereof cometh a good reason also, why god would again inculcate by a law those things which by the light of nature were judged honest. For the bonds, bars, & windows of nature, were broken by the impotent lust of men, therefore it was necessary they should be bound with an other bond ⟨image 28⟩For the Israelites were no more shamefast in keeping of natural honesty, than were the Romans. Neither is this to be left out, ye god had certain proper things in his law, which may be called peculiar things: for all men were not bound unto them by the law of nature, but the Hebrews only.