3. The dangers and losses of the soul are to be valued much above those of the body and estate, and cannot be weighed down by any mere corporal commodity.
4. It is less dangerous usually to go among Turks and heathens, (whose religion hath no tempting power to seduce men,) than among Socinians or papists, whose errors and sins are cunningly and learnedly promoted and defended.
5. It is not lawful for merchants or others for trade and love of wealth or money, to send poor raw, unsettled youths into such countries where their souls are like to be notably endangered, either by being deprived of such teaching and church helps which they need, or by being exposed to the dangerous temptations of the place; because their souls are of more worth than money.
6. It is not lawful therefore for master or servant to venture his own soul in such a case as this last mentioned; that is, so far as he is free, and without necessity doth it only for commodity sake.
7. We may not go where we cannot publicly worship God, without necessity, or some inducement from a greater good.
8. The more of these hinderances concur the greater is the sin: it is therefore a mere wilful casting away of their own souls, when unfurnished, unsettled youths (or others like them) shall for mere humour, fancy, or covetousness leave such a land as this, where they have both public and private helps for their salvation, and to go among papists, infidels, or heathens, where talk or ill example is like to endanger them, and no great good can be expected to countervail such a hazard, nor is there any true necessity to drive them, and where they cannot publicly worship God, no, nor openly own the truth, and where they have not so much as any private company to converse with, that is fit to further their preservation and salvation, and all this of their own accord, &c.
Quest. II. May a merchant or ambassador leave his wife, to live abroad?
Answ. 1. We must distinguish between what is necessitated, and what is voluntary. 2. Between what is done by the wife's consent, and what is done without. 3. Between a wife that can bear such absence, and one that cannot. 4. Between a short stay, and a long or continued stay.
1. The command of the king, or public necessities, may make it lawful, except in a case so rare as is not to be supposed (which therefore I shall not stand to describe). For though it be a very tender business to determine a difference between the public authority or interest, and family relations and interest, when they are contradictory and unreconcilable, yet here it seemeth to me, that the prince and public interest may dispose of a man contrary to the will and interest of his wife; yea, though it would occasion the loss, 1. Of her chastity. 2. Or her understanding. 3. Or her life: and though the conjugal bond do make man and wife to be as one flesh. For, 1. The king and public interest may oblige a man to hazard his own life, and therefore his wife's. In case of war, he may be sent to sea, or beyond sea, and so both leave his wife (as Uriah did) and venture himself. Who ever thought that no married man might go to foreign wars without his wife's consent? 2. Because as the whole is more noble than the part, so he that marrieth obligeth himself to his wife, but on supposition that he is a member of the commonwealth, to which he is still more obliged than to her.
2. A man may for the benefit of his family leave his wife for travel or merchandise, for a time, when they mutually consent upon good reason that it is like to be for their good.