Page:The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce - Milton (1644).djvu/75

 injur'd law of Moses from the unwarranted and guilty name of a dispensation, to be again a most equall and requisite law, we have the word of Christ himself, that he came not to alter the least tittle of it; and signifies no small displeasure against him that shall teach to do so. On which relying, I shall not much waver to affirm, that those words which are made to intimate, as if they forbad all divorce but for adultery (though Moses have constituted otherwise) those words tak'n circumscriptly, without regard to any precedent law of Moses or attestation of Christ himself, or without care to preserve those his fundamental and superior laws of nature and charity, to which all other ordinances give up their seals, are as much against plain equity, and the mercy of religion, as those words of Take, eat, this is my body, elementally understood, are against nature and sense.

And surely the restoring of this degraded law, hath well recompenc't the diligence was us'd, by enlightning us further to find out wherfore Christ took off the Pharises from alleging the law, and referr'd them to the first institution, not condemning, altering, or abolishing this precept of divorce, which is plainly moral, for that were against his truth, his promise, and his prophetick office; but knowing how fallaciously they had cited, and conceal'd the particular and natural reason of the Law, that they might justifie any froward reason of their own, he lets goe that sophistry unconvinc't, for that had bin to teach them else, which his purpose was not. And since they had tak'n a liberty which the law gave not, he amuses and repells their tempting pride with a perfection of Paradise, which the law requir'd not; not therby to oblige our performance to that wherto the law never enjoyn'd the fal'n estate of man; for if the first institution must make wedlock, what ever happen, inseparable to us, it must make it also as perfect, as meetly helpfull, and as comfortable, as God promis'd it should be, at least in some degree; otherwise it is not equal or proportionable to the strength of man, that he should be reduc't into such indissoluble bonds to his assured misery, if all the other conditions of that cov'nant be manifestly alter'd.

 

Ext he saith, they must be one flesh, which, when all conjecturing is don, will be found to import no more but to make legitimate  Rh