_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.
3. He may not leave her either without or with her own consent, when a greater hurt is like to come by it, than the gain will countervail. I shall say no more of this, because the rest may be gathered from what is said in the cases about duties to wives, where many other such are handled.
_Quest._ III. Is it lawful for young gentlemen to travel in other kingdoms, as part of their education?[160]
_Answ._ The many distinctions which were laid down for answer of the first question, must be here supposed, and the answer will be mostly the same as to that, and therefore need not be repeated.
1. It is lawful for them to travel that are necessarily driven out of their own country, by persecution, poverty, or any other necessitating cause.
2. It is lawful to them that are commanded by their parents (unless in former excepted cases, which I will not stay to name).
3. It is the more lawful when they travel into countries as good or better than their own, where they are like to get more good than they could have done at home.
4. It is more lawful to one that is prudent and firmly settled both in religion, and in sobriety and temperance, against all temptations which he is like to meet with, than to one that is unfurnished for a due resistance of the temptations of the place to which he goeth.
5. It is more lawful to one that goeth in sober, wise, and godly company, or is sent with a wise and faithful tutor and overseer, than to leave young, unsettled persons to themselves.
6. In a word, it is lawful when there is a rational probability, that they will not only get more good than hurt, (for that will not make it lawful,) but also more good than they could probably have other ways attained.