The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce/Bk2 Chapter 19

by John Milton

CHAP. XIX.

 

Christs manner of teaching. S. Paul adds to this matter of divorce without command, to shew the matter to be of equity, not of rigor. That the bondage of a Christian may be as much, and his peace as little in some other mariages besides idolatrous: If those arguments therfore be good in that one case, why not in those other: therfore the apostle himselfe adds εν τοις τοιουτοις.

 

THus at length wee see both by this and by other places, that there is scarce any one saying in the Gospel, but must bee read with limitations and distinctions, to bee rightly understood; for Christ gives no full comments or continued discourses, but as Demetrius the Rhetorician phrases it, speaks oft in Monosyllables, like a maister, scattering the heavenly grain of his doctrine like pearl heer and there, which requires a skilfull and laborious gatherer, who must compare the words he findes, with other precepts, with the end of every ordinance, and with the generall analogie of Evangelick doctrine: otherwise many particular sayings would bee but strange repugnant riddles; and the Church would offend in granting divorce for frigidity, which is not here excepted with adultery, but by them added. And this was it undoubtedly which gave reason to S. Paul of his own authority, as hee professes, and without command from the Lord, to enlarge the seeming construction of those places in the Gospel; by adding a case wherin a person deserted, which is somthing less then divorc't, may lawfully marry again. And having declar'd his opinion in one case, he leaves a furder liberty for Christian prudence to determine in cases of like importance; using words so plain as are not to be shifted off, that a brother or a sister is not under bondage in such cases, adding also, that God hath call'd us to peace in mariage.

Now if it be plain that a Christian may be brought into unworthy bondage, and his religious peace not onely interrupted now and then, but perpetually and finally hinder'd in wedlock by mix-yoking with a diversity of nature as well as of religion, the reasons of S. Paul cannot be made speciall to that one case of infidelity, but are of equal moment to a divorce, wherever Christian liberty and peace are without fault equally obstructed. That the ordinance which God gave to our comfort, may not be pinn'd upon us to our undeserved thraldom; to be coopt up as it were in mockery of wedlock, to a perpetual betrothed lonelines and discontent, if nothing worse ensue. There being nought els of mariage left between such, but a displeasing and forc't remedy against the sting of a bruit desire: which fleshly accustoming without the souls union and commixture of intellectuall delight, as it is rather a soiling then a fulfilling of mariage-rites, so it is anough to imbase the mettle of a generous spirit, and sinks him to a low and vulgar pitch of endeavour in all his actions, or, which is wors, leavs him in a dispairing plight of abject & hardn'd thoughts: which condition rather then a good man should fal into, a man usefull in the service of God and mankind, Christ himself hath taught us to dispence with the most sacred ordinances of his worship, even for a bodily healing to dispence with that holy and speculative rest of Sabbath, much more then with the erroneous observance of an ill-knotted mariage, for the sustaining of an overcharg'd faith and perseverance.