Page:Colasterion - Milton (1645).djvu/6

 injury and temptation to the wronged and the defrauded, to divorce then, there is a book that writes it lawfull. And that this Law is a pure and wholsom national Law, not to be with-held from good men, because others likely anough may abuse it to thir pleasure, can not bee charg'd upon that book, but must bee enterd a bold and impious accusation against God himself; who did not for this abuse withhold it from his own people. It will bee just therfore, and best for the reputation of him who in his Subitanes hath thus censur'd, to recall his sentence. And if, out of the abundance of his volumes, and the readiness of his quill, and the vastness of his other imploiments, especially in the great audit for accounts, hee can spare us ought to the better understanding of this point, hee shall bee thankt in public, and what hath offended in the book, shall willingly submitt to his correction. Provided he bee sure not to come with those old and stale suppositions, unless hee can take away cleerly what that discours hath urg'd against them, by one who will expect other arguments to bee perswaded the good health of a sound answer, then the gout and dropsy of a big margent, litter'd and overlaid with crude and huddl'd quotations. But as I still was waiting, when these light arm'd refuters would have don pelting at thir three lines utterd with a sage delivery of no reason, but an impotent and wors then Bonner-like censure to burn that which provokes them to a fair dispute, at length a book was brought to my hands, entitl'd An Answer to the Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce. Gladly I receiv'd it, and very attentively compos'd myself to read; hoping that now som good man had voutsaft the pains to instruct mee better, then I could yet learn out of all the volumes which for this purpos I had visited. Only this I marvel'd, and other men have since, when as I, in a Subject so new to this age, and so hazardous to please, conceal'd not my name, why this Author defending that part which is so creeded by the people, would conceal his? But ere I could enter three leaves into the Pamflet, (for I deferr the peasantly rudenes, which by the Licencers leav I met with afterwards) my satisfaction came in abundantly, that it could bee nothing why hee durst not name himself, but the guilt of his own wretchednes. For first, not to speak of his abrupt and bald beginning, his very first page notoriously bewraies him an illiterat, and arrogant presumer in that which hee understands not; bearing us in hand as if hee knew both Greek and Ebrew, and is not able to spell