Page:The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce - Milton (1644).djvu/93

 Clerks have doted on, ever since that unfortunat mother famously sinn'd thrice, and dy'd impenitent of her bringing into the world those two misbegott'n infants, & for ever infants Lombard & Gratian, him the compiler of Canon iniquity, tother the Tubalcain of scholastick Sophistry, whose overspreading barbarism hath not only infus'd their own bastardy upon the fruitfullest part of human learning; not only dissipated and dejected the clear light of nature in us, & of nations but hath tainted also the fountains of divine doctrine, & render'd the pure and solid Law of God unbeneficial to us by their calumnious dunceries. Yet this Law which their unskilfulnesse hath made liable to all ignominy, the purity and wisdom of this Law shall be the buckler of our dispute. Liberty of divorce we claim not, we think not but from this Law; the dignity, the faith, the authority therof is now grown among Christians, O astonishment! a labour of no mean difficulty and envy to defend. That it should not be counted a faltring dispence; a flattring permission of sin, the bil of adultery, a snare, is the expence of all this apology. And all that we solicite is, that it may be render'd to stand in the place where God set it amidst the firmament of his holy Laws to shine, as it was wont, upon the weaknesses and errors of men perishing els in the sincerity of their honest purposes: for certain there is no memory of whordoms and adulteries left among us now, when this warranted freedom of Gods own giving is made dangerous and discarded for a scrowle of licence. It must be your suffrages and Votes, O English men, that this exploded decree of God and Moses may scape, and come off fair without the censure of a shamefull abrogating: which, if yonder Sun ride sure, and mean not to break word with us to morrow, was never yet abrogated by our Saviour. Give sentence, if you please, that the frivolous Canon may reverse the infallible judgement of Moses and his great director. Or if it be the reformed writers, whose doctrine perswades this rather, their reasons I dare affirm are all silenc't, unlesse it be only this. Paræus on the Corinthians would prove that hardnes of heart in divorce is no more now to be permitted, but to be amerc't with fine and imprisonment. I am not willing to discover the forgettings of reverend men, yet here I must. What article or clause of the whole new Cov'nant can Paræus bring to exasperat the judicial Law, upon any infirmity under the Gospel? (I say infirmity, for if it were the high hand of sin, the Law as little would have endur'd it as the Gospel) it would not stretch to the dividing of an inheritance; it refus'd to condemn adultery, not that these things should not be don