Page:The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce - Milton (1644).djvu/70

 Canonist hath improperly usurpt into his Court-leet, and bescribbl'd with a thousand trifling impertinencies, which yet have fill'd the life of man with serious trouble and calamity. Yet grant it were of old a judicial Law, it need not be the lesse moral for that, being conversant, as it is, about vertue or vice. And our Saviour disputes not heer the judicature, for that was not his office, but the morality of divorce, whether it be adultery or no; if therfore he touch the law of Moses at all, he touches the moral part therof; which is absurd to imagine that the cov'nant of grace should reform the exact and perfect law of works, eternal and immutable; or if he touch not the Law at all, then is not the allowance therof disallow'd to us.

 

Thers are so ridiculous as to allege that this licence of divorcing was giv'n them because they were so accustom'd in Egypt. As if an ill custom were to be kept to all posterity; for the dispensation is both universal and of time unlimited, and so indeed no dispensation at all; for the over-dated dispensation of a thing unlawfull, serves for nothing but to encrease hardnes of heart, and makes men but wax more incorrigible, which were a great reproach to be said of any Law or allowance that God should give us. In these opinions it would be more Religion to advise well, lest we make our selves juster then God, by censuring rashly that for sin which his unspotted Law without rebuke allows, and his people without being conscious of displeasing him have us'd. And if we can think so of Moses, as that the Jewish obstinacy could compell him to write such impure permissions against the rule of God and his own judgement, doubtles it was his part to have protested publickly what straits he was driv'n to, and to have declar'd his conscience when he gave any Law against his mind; for the Law is the touch-stone of sin and of conscience, and must not be intermixt with corrupt indulgences; for then it looses the greatest praise it has, of being certain, and infallible, not leading into error, as all the Jews were led by this connivance of Moses if it were a connivence. But still they fly back to the primitive institution, and would have us re-enter Paradise against the sword that guards it. Whom I again thus reply to, that the place in Genesis contains the description of a fit and perfect mariage, with  an