Page:Colasterion - Milton (1645).djvu/5

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FTER many rumors of confutations and convictions forth comming against The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, and now and then a by-blow from the Pulpit, featherd with a censure strict indeed, but how true, more beholding to the autority of that devout place which it borrowd to bee utterd in, then to any sound reason which it could oracle, while I still hop'd as for a blessing to see som peece of diligence, or lerned discretion come from them, it was my hap at length lighting on a certain parcel of Quæries, that seek and finde not, to finde not seeking, at the taile of Anabaptistical, Antinomian, Heretical, Atheistical epithets, a jolly slander, call'd Divorce at pleasure: I stood a while and wonder'd, what wee might doe to a mans heart, or what anatomie use, to finde in it sincerity; for all our wonted marks every day fail us, and where wee thought it was, wee see it is not, for alter and change residence it cannot sure. And yet I see no good of body or of minde secure to a man for all his past labours without perpetual watchfulnes and perseverance. When as one above others who hath suffer'd much and long in the defence of Truth, shall after all this, give her cause to leav him so destitute and so vacant of her defence, as to yeild his mouth to bee the common road of Truth and Falshood, and such falshood as is joyn'd with the rash and heedles calumny of his neighbour. For what book hath hee ever met with, as his complaint is, Printed in the City, maintaining either in the title, or in the whole persuance, Divorce at pleasure? Tis true, that to divorce upon extreme necessity, when through the perversnes, or the apparent unfitnes of either, the continuance can bee to both no good at all, but an Rh