Page:The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce - Milton (1644).djvu/88

we doe not know which way to set a foot forward with manly confidence and Christian resolution, through the confused ringing in our eares of panick scruples and amazements.

 

CHAP. XXI.

 

That the matter of divorce is not to be try'd by law, but by conscience; as many other sins are. The Magistrate can only see that the condition of divorce be just and equall. The opinion of Fagius, and the reasons of this assertion.

 

ANother act of papall encroachment it was, to pluck the power and arbitrament of divorce from the master of family, into whose hands God and the law of all Nations had put it, and Christ so left it, preaching onely to the conscience, and not authorizing a judiciall Court to tosse about and divulge the unaccountable and secret reasons of disaffection between man and wife, as a thing most improperly answerable to any such kind of triall. But the Popes of Rome perceiving the great revenue and high authority it would give them ev'n over Princes, to have the iudging and deciding of such a main consequence in the life of man as was divorce, wrought so upon the superstition of those ages, as to divest them of that right which God from the beginning had entrusted to the husband: by which meanes they subiected that ancient and naturally domestick prerogative to an externall and unbefitting Judicature. For although differences in divorce about Dowries, Jointures, and the like, besides the punishing of adultery, ought not to passe without referring, if need be, to the Magistrate, yet that the absolute and final hindring of divorce cannot belong to any civil or earthly power, against the will and consent of both parties, or of the husband alone, some reasons will be here urg'd as shall not need to decline the touch. But first I shall recite what hath bin already yeilded by others in favour of this opinion. Grotius and many more agree, that notwithstanding what Christ spake therin to the conscience, the Magistrate is not therby enjoyn'd ought against the preservation of civil peace, of equity, and of convenience. Among these Fagius is most remarkable, and gives the same liberty of pronouncing divorce to the Christian Magistrate as the Mosaick had. For whatever saith he, Christ spake to the regenerat, the Iudge hath to deal with the vulgar: if therfore any through hardnesse of heart will not be a tolerable wife or husband, it will be lawfull as well now as of old to passe the bill of divorce, not by privat, but by publicke authority. Nor doth Man separate

them