Page:The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce - Milton (1644).djvu/66

  for us to perform the strict imposition of this command: or if we strive beyond our strength, we shall strive to obay it otherwise then God commands it. And lamented experience daily teaches the bitter and vain fruits of this our presumption, forcing men in a thing wherin we are not able to judge either of their strength, or of their sufferance. Whom neither one vice nor other by natural addiction, but onely mariage ruins, which doubtlesse is not the fault of that ordinance, for God gave it as a blessing, nor alwayes of mans mis-choosing; it being an error above wisdom to prevent, as examples of wisest men so mistaken manifest: it is the fault therfore of a perverse opinion that will have it continu'd in despite of nature and reason, when indeed it was never truly joyn'd. All those expositers upon the fifth of Matthew confesse the Law of Moses to be the Law of the Lord wherin no addition or diminution hath place; yet coming to the point of divorce, as if they fear'd not to be call'd least in the kingdom of heav'n, any slight evasion will content them to reconcile those contradictions which they make between Christ and Moses, between Christ and Christ.

 

Ome will have it no Law, but the granted premises of another Law following, contrary to the words of Christ, Mark 10.5. and all other translations of gravest authority, who render it in form of a Law; agreeable to Malach. 2.16. as it is most anciently and modernly expounded. Besides the bill of divorce, and the particular occasion therein mention'd, declares it to bee orderly and legall. And what avails this to make the matter more righteous, if such an adulterous condition shal be mention'd to build a law upon without either punishment, or so much as forbidding; they pretend it is implicitly reprov'd in these words, Deut. 24.4. after she is defil'd; but who sees not that this defilement is onely in respect of returning to her former husband after an intermixt mariage; els why was not the defiling condition first forbidd'n, which would have sav'd the labour of this after law; nor is it seemly or piously attributed to the justice of God and his known hatred of sinne, that such a hainous fault as this through all the Law, should be onely wip't with an implicit and oblique touch (which yet is falsly suppos'd) and that his  peculiar