Page:Colasterion - Milton (1645).djvu/18

 that there is oft such a dislike in both, or either, to conjugal love, as hinders all the comfort of Matrimony, scars any can be so simple as not to apprehend. And what can be that favour, found or not found, in the eyes of the Husband, but a natural liking or disliking; wherof the Law of God, Deut. 24. beares witnes, as of an ordnary accident, and determins wisely and divinely therafter. And this disaffection happning to bee in the one, not without the unspeakable discomfort of the other, must hee bee left like a thing consecrated to calamity and despair without redemption?

Against the third branch of the position, hee denies that solace, and peace, which is contrary to discord and variance, is the main end of mariage. What then? Hee will have it the solace of male, and female. Came this doctrin out of som School or some stie? Who but one forsak'n of all sense and civil nature, and cheifly of Christianity, will deny that peace, contrary to discord, is the calling and the general end of every Christian, and of all his actions, and more especially of mariage, which is the dearest league of love, and the dearest resemblance of that love which in Christ is dearest to his Church; how then can peace and comfort, as it is contrary to discord, which God hates to dwell with, not bee the main end of mariage? Discord then wee ought to fly, and to pursue peace, farre above the observance of a civil covnant already brokn, and the breaking dayly iterated on the other side. And what better testimony then the words of the institution it self, to prove that a conversing solace, & peaceful society, is the prime end of mariage, without which no other help or office can bee mutual, beseeming the dignity of reasonable creatures, that such as they should be coupl'd in the rites of nature by the meer compulsion of lust, without love or peace, wors then wild beasts. Nor was it half so wisely spokn as some deem, though Austin spake it, that if God had intended other then copulation in Mariage, he would for Adam have created a Freind, rather then a wife, to convers with; and our own writers blame him for this opinion; for which and the like passages, concerning mariage, hee might bee justly taxed of rusticity in these affairs. For this cannot but bee with ease conceav'd, that there is one society of grave freindship, and another amiable and attractive society of conjugal love, besides the deed of procreation, which of itself soon cloies, and is despis'd, unless it be cherisht and re-incited with a pleasing conversation. Which if ignoble and swainish