Page:The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce - Milton (1644).djvu/52

 waies and in so high a degree to our destruction, as we have now bin graduating. And this is all the good can come to the person licenc't in his hardnesse of heart.

I am next to mention that which because it is a ground in divinity, Rom.3. will save the labour of demonstrating, unlesse her giv'n axioms be more doubted then in other Arts (although it be no lesse firm in the precepts of Philosophy) that a thing unlawfull can for no good whatsoever be done, much lesse allow'd by a positive law. And this is the matter why Interpreters upon that passage in Hosea will not consent it to be a true story, that the Prophet took a Harlot to wife, because God being a pure Spirit could not command a thing repugnant to his own nature, no not for so good an end as to exhibit more to the life a wholsom and perhaps a converting parable to many an Israelite. Yet that he commanded the allowance of adulterous and injurious divorses for hardnes of heart, a reason obscure and in a wrong sense, they can very savourily perswade themselves; so tenacious is the leven of an old conceit. But they shift it, he permitted only. Yet silence in the Law is consent, and consent is accessory; why then is not the Law being silent, or not active against a crime, accessory to its own conviction, it self judging? For though we should grant, that it approvs not, yet it wills; and the Lawyers maxim is, that the will compell'd is yet the will. And though Aristotle in his Ethicks call this a mixt action, yet he concludes it to be voluntary and inexcusable, if it be evill. How justly then might human law and Philosophy rise up against the righteousnesse of Moses, if this be true which our vulgar Divinity Fathers upon him, yea upon God himselfe; not silently and only negatively to permit, but in his law to divulge a written and generall priviledge to commit and persist in unlawfull divorces with a high hand, with security and no ill fame: for this is more then permitting or conniving, this is maintaining; this is warranting, this is protecting, yea this is doing evill, and such an evil as that reprobat lawgiver did, whose lasting infamy is ingrav'n upon him like a surname, he who made Israel to sin. This is the lowest pitch cantrary to God that publick fraud and injustice can descend.

If it be affirm'd that God as being Lord may doe what he will; yet we must know that God hath not two wills, but one will, much lesse two contrary. If he once will'd adultery should be sinfull, and to be punisht by death, all his omnipotence will not allow him to will the allowance that his holiest people might as it were by his own