Page:The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce - Milton (1644).djvu/41

 of life? how can it be usefull either to private or publick employment? shall it therfore be quite dejected, though never so valuable, and left to moulder away in heavines for the superstitious and impossible performance of an ill driv'n bargain? Nothing more inviolable then vowes made to God: yet we read in Numbers, that if a wife had made such a vow, the meer will and authority of her husband might break it: how much more may he breake the error of his own bonds with an unfit and mistak'n wife, to the saving of his welfare, his life, yea his faith and vertue from the hazard of over-strong temptations; for if man be Lord of the Sabbath, to the curing of a Fevor, can he be lesse then Lord of mariage in such important causes as these?

 

Eighthly, It is most sure that some ev'n of those who are not plainly defective in body, yet are destitut of all other mariageable gifts; and consequently have not the calling to marry; unlesse nothing be requisite therto but a meer instrumentall body; which to affirm, is to that unanimous Covenant a reproach: yet it is as sure that many such, not of their own desire, but by the perswasion of friends, or not knowing themselves doe often enter into wedlock; where finding the difference at length between the duties of a married life, and the gifts of a single life; what unfitnes of mind, what wearisomnesse, what scruples and doubts to an incredible offence and displeasure are like to follow between, may be soon imagin'd: whom thus to immure and shut up together, the one with a mischosen mate, the other in a mistak'n calling, is not a cours that Christian "wisedome" and tendernesse ought to use. As for the custome that some parents and guardians have of forcing mariages, it will be better to say nothing of such a savage inhumanity, but only this, that the Law which gives not all freedom of divorce to any creature endu'd with reason so assassinated, is next in cruelty.

 

''The ninth reason, Because mariage is not a meer carnall coition, but a human Society, where that cannot reasonably be had, there can be no true matrimony. Mariage compar'd with all other cov'nants and vowes warrantably''  ken