Page:The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce - Milton (1644).djvu/68

 could not approve in their duty of their great command. Thus farre of civill prudence. But when we speak of sinne, let us look againe upon the old reverend Eli; who in his heavie punishment found no difference between the doing and permitting of what he did not approve. If hardnesse of heart in the people may be any excuse, why then is Pilat branded through all memory? Hee approv'd not what he did, he openly protested, he washt his hands and laboured not a little, ere he would yeeld to the hard hearts of a whole people, both Princes and plebeians, importuning & tumulting ev'n to the fear of a revolt. Yet is there any will undertake his cause? If therfore Pilat for suffering but one act of cruelty against law, though with much unwillingnesse testify'd, at the violent demand of a whole Nation, shall stand so black upon record to all posterity? Alas for Moses! what shall we say for him, while we are taught to beleeve he suffer'd not one act onely both of cruelty and uncleannesse in one divorce, but made it a plain and lasting law against law, whereby ten thousand acts accounted both cruell and unclean, might be daily committed, and this without the least suit or petition of the people that wee can read of.

And can we conceive without vile thoughts, that the majesty and holines of God could endure so many ages to gratifie a stubborn people in the practice of a foul polluting sin, and could he expect they should abstain, he not signifying his mind in a plain command, at such time especially when he was framing their laws and them to all possible perfection? But they were to look back to the first institution, nay rather why was not that individual institution brought out of Paradise, as was that of the Sabbath, and repeated in the body of the Law, that men might have understood it to be a command? for that any sentence that bears the resemblance of a precept, set there so out of place in another world at such a distance from the whole Law, and not once mention'd there, should be an obliging command to us, is very disputable, and perhaps it might be deny'd to be a command without further dispute: however, it commands not absolutely, as hath bin clear'd, but only with reference to that precedent promise of God, which is the very ground of his institution; if that appeare not in some tolerable sort, how can we affirm such a matrimony to be the same which God instituted! In such an accident it will best behove our sobernes to follow rather what moral Sinai prescribes equal to our strength, then fondly to think within our strength of all that lost Paradise relates.

CHAP.