Page:Colasterion - Milton (1645).djvu/16

 doult bee as obtuse and sad as any mallet, how the Licencer could sleep out all this, and suffer him to uphold his opinion by Canons, & Gregorical decretals, a Law which not only his adversary, but the whole reformation of this Church and state hath branded and rejected. As ignorantly, and too ignorantly to deceav any Reader but an unlerned, hee talks of Justin Martyrs Apology, not telling us which of the twain; for that passage in the beginning of his first, which I have cited els-where, plainly makes against him: So doth Tertullian, cited next, and next Erasmus, the one against Marcion, the other in his Annotations on Matthew, and to the Corinthians. And thus yee have the List of his choice Antiquities, as pleasantly chosen as yee would wish from a man of his handy Vocation, puft up with no luck at all, above the stint of his capacity.

Now he comes to the Position, which I sett down whole; and like an able text man, slits it into fowr, that hee may the better come at it with his Barbar Surgery, and his sleeves turn'd up. Wherin first, hee denies that any disposition, unfitness, or contrariety of minde, is unchangeable in nature, but that by the help of diet and physic, it may be alter'd.

I mean not to dispute Philosophy with this Pork, who never read any. But I appeal to all experience, though there bee many drugs to purge these redundant humours and circulations that commonly impair health, and are not natural, whether any man can with the safety of his life bring a healthy constitution into physic with this designe, to alter his natural temperament and disposition of minde. How much more vain, and ridiculous would it bee, by altering and rooting up the grounds of nature, which is most likely to produce death or madnes, to hope the reducing of a minde to this or that fitnes, or two disagreeing mindes to a mutual sympathy. Suppose they might, and that with great danger of thir lives and right senses, alter one temperature, how can they know that the succeeding disposition will not bee as farre from fitnes and agreement? They would perhaps change Melancholy into Sanguin, but what if fleam, and choler in as great a measure come instead, the unfitnes will be still as difficult and troublesom. But lastly, whether these things be changeable, or not, experience teacheth us, and our Position supposes that they seldom doe change in any time commensurable to the necessities of man, or convenient to the ends of mariage; and if the fault be in the one, shall the other live all his daies in bondage and misery for