Page:The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce - Milton (1644).djvu/76

 and good the carnal act, which els might seem to have somthing of pollution in it: And infers thus much over, that the fit union of their souls be such as may even incorporate them to love and amity; but that can never be where no correspondence is of the minde; nay instead of being one flesh, they will be rather two carkasses chain'd unnaturally together; or as it may happ'n, a living soule bound to a dead corps, a punishment too like that inflicted by the tyrant Mezentius; so little worthy to be receiv'd as that remedy of lonelinesse which God meant us. Since we know it is not the joyning of another body will remove lonelines, but the uniting of another compliable mind, and that it is no blessing but a torment, nay a base and brutish condition to be one flesh, unles wher nature can in some measure fix a unity of disposition. The meaning therefore of these words, For this cause shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave to his wife, was first to shew us the deer affection which naturally & most commonly grows in every not unnatural mariage, ev'n to the leaving of parents, or other familiarity whatsoever: next, it justifies a man in so doing, that nothing is done undutifully to father or mother. But he that should be here sternly commanded to cleave to his error, a disposition which to his he finds will never ciment, a quotidian of sorrow and discontentment in his house, let us be excus'd to pause a little and bethinke us every way round, ere wee lay such a flat solecisme upon the gracious, and certainly not inexorable, not ruthlesse and flinty ordinance of marriage. For if the meaning of these words must be thus blockt up within their owne letters from all equity and fair deduction, they will serve then well indeed their turn, who affirme divorce to have been granted onely for wives; whenas we see no word of this text that bindes women, but men only, what it binds. No marvell then if Salomith sister to Herod, sent a writ of ease to Costobarus her husband; which, as Josephus there attests, was lawfull onely to men. No marvell though Placidia the sister of Honorius threat'n'd the like to Earle Constantius, for a triviall cause, as Photius relates from Olympiodorus. No marvell any thing if letters must be turn'd into palisadoes to stake out all requisite sense from entring to their due enlargement.

Lastly, Christ himselfe tells who should not bee put asunder, namely those whom God hath joyn'd. A plain solution of this great controversie, if men would but use their eyes; for when is it that God may bee said to joyn, when the parties and their friends consent? No surely, for that may concurre to lewdest ends. Or is it when