Page:The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce - Milton (1644).djvu/63

institution which God ordain'd in the beginning before the fall, when man and woman were both perfect, and could have no cause to separate: just as in the same Chap. he stands not to contend with the arrogant young man who boasted his observance of the whole Law, whether he had indeed kept it or not, but skrues him up higher, to a task of that perfection, which no man is bound to imitate. And in like manner that pattern of the first institution he set before the opinionative Pharises to dazle them and not to bind us. For this is a solid rule, that every command giv'n with a reason, binds our obedience no otherwise then that reason holds. Of this sort was that command in Eden; Therfore shall a man cleave to his wife, and they shall be one flesh: which we see is no absolute command, but with an inference, Therfore: the reason then must be first consider'd, that our obedience be not mis-obedience. The first is, for it is not single, because the wife is to the husband flesh of his flesh, as in the verse going before. But this reason cannot be sufficient of it self: for why then should he for his wife leave his father and mother, with whom he is farre more flesh of flesh and bone of bone, as being made of their substance. And besides it can be but a sorry and ignoble society of life, whose unseparable injunction depends meerly upon flesh and bones. Therfore we must look higher, since Christ himself recalls us to the beginning, and we shall finde that the primitive reason of never divorcing, was that sacred and not vain promise of God to remedy mans lonelines by making him a meet help for him, though not now in perfection, as at first, yet still in proportion as things now are. And this is repeated vers. 20 when all other creatures were fitly associated and brought to Adam, as if the divine power had bin in some care and deep thought, because there was not yet found an help meet for man. And can we so slightly depresse the all-wise purpose of a deliberating God, as if his consultation had produc't no other good for man but to joyn him with an accidentall companion of propagation, which his sudden word had already made for every beast? nay a farre lesse good to man it will be found, if she must at all aventures be fasten'd upon him individually. And therefore even plain sense and equity, and, which is above them both, the all-interpreting voice of Charity her self cries loud that this primitive reason, this consulted promise of God to make a meet help, is the onely cause that gives authority to this command of not divorcing, to be a command. And it might be further added, that if the true definition of a wife were askt in good earnest, this clause of being a meet help would shew it self