Page:The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce - Milton (1644).djvu/95

mountain of Sinai upon him, with the weight of the whole Law to boot, flat against the liberty and essence of the Gospel, and yet nothing available either to the sanctity of mariage, the good of husband, wife, or children, nothing profitable either to Church or Common-wealth, but hurtfull and pernicious to all these respects. But this will bring in confusion. Yet these cautious mistrusters might consider, that what they thus object, lights not upon this book, but upon that which I engage against them, the book of God, and of Moses, with all the wisdome and providence which had forecast the worst of confusion that could succeed, and yet thought fit of such a permission. But let them be of good cheer, it wrought so little disorder among the Jews, that from Moses till after the captivity, not one of the Prophets thought it worth rebuking; for that of Malachy well lookt into, will appeare to be, not against divorcing, but rather against keeping strange Concubines, to the vexation of their Hebrew wives. If therefore we Christians may be thought as good and tractable as the Jews were, and certainly the prohibiters of divorce presume us to be better, then lesse confusion is to bee fear'd for this among us, then was among them. If wee bee worse, or but as bad, which lamentable examples confirm we are, then have we more, or at least as much need of this permitted law, as they to whom God therfore gave it (as they say) under a harsher covnant. Let not therfore the frailty of man goe on thus inventing needlesse troubles to it self, to groan under the fals imagination of a strictnes never impos'd from above; enjoyning that for duty which is an impossible & vain supererogating. Be not righteous overmuch, is the counsell of Ecclesiastes, why shouldst thou destroy thy selfe? Let us not be thus over-curious to strain at atoms, and yet to stop every vent and cranny of permissive liberty; lest nature wanting those needful pores, and breathing places which God hath not debar'd our weaknesse, either suddenly break out into some wide rupture of open vice, and frantick heresie, or else inwardly fester with repining and blasphemous thoughts, under an unreasonable and fruitlesse rigor of unwarranted law. Against which evills nothing can more beseem the religion of the Church, or the wisedom of the State, then to consider timely and provide. And in so doing let them not doubt but they shall vindicate the misreputed honour of God and his great Lawgiver, by suffering him to give his own laws according to the condition of mans nature best known to him, without the unsufferable imputation of dispencing legally with many ages of ratify'd adul-