The Divorce Tracts of John Milton: Texts and Contexts

Colasterion (1645)

361 Colasterion1 A Reply to a nameless2 answer against The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce. wherein The trivial Author of that Answer is discovered, the Licenser conferred with, and the Opinion which they traduce defended By the former Author, J. M. Prov. 26:5. Answer a Fool according to his folly, lest he bee wise in his own conceit. Printed in the Year, 1645. TS Colasterion: A Reply to a nameless Answer against The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce. After many rumours of confutations and convictions forthcoming against The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, and now and then a by-blow from the pulpit, feathered with a censure strict indeed, but how true, more beholden to the authority of that devout place which it borrowed to be uttered in, than to any sound reason which it could oracle, while I still hoped as for a blessing to some piece of diligence, or learned discretion come from them, it was my hap at length, lighting on a certain parcel of queries,3 that seek and find not, to find not seeking, at the tail of Anabaptist, Antinomian, Heretical, Atheistic Epithets, a jolly4 slander called Divorce at pleasure. I stood awhile and wondered, what we might do to a man’s heart, or what anatomy use, to find in it sincerity; for all our wonted marks every day fail us, and 362 The Divorce Tracts of John Milton where we thought it was, we see it is not, for alter and change residence it cannot sure. And yet I see no good of body or of mind secure to a man for all his past labours, without perpetual watchfulness and perseverance. Whenas one above others, who hath suffered much and long in the defence of truth, shall after all this give her cause to leave him so destitute and so vacant of her defence as to yield his mouth to be the common road of truth and falsehood, and such falsehood as is joined with a rash and heedless calumny of his neighbour.5 For what book hath he ever met with, as his complaint is, Printed in the City, maintaining either in the title, or in the whole pursuance, Divorce at pleasure? It is true, that to divorce upon extreme necessity, when through the perverseness or the apparent unfitness of either, the continuance can be to both no good at all but an intolerable injury and temptation to the wronged and the defrauded, to divorce then there is a book that writes it lawful. And that this law is a pure and wholesome national law, not to be withheld from good men because others likely enough may abuse it to their pleasure, cannot be charged upon that book, but must be entered a bold and impious accusation against God himself; who did not for this abuse withhold it from his own people. It will be just, therefore, and best for the reputation of him who in his Subitanes6 hath thus censured, to recall his sentence. And if out of the abundance of his volumes, and the readiness of his quill, and the vastness of his other employments, especially in the great audit for accounts, he can spare us aught to the better understanding of this point, he shall be thanked in public ; and what hath offended in the book shall willingly submit to his correction. Provided he be sure not to come with those old and stale suppositions, unless he can take away clearly what that discourse hath urged against them, by one who will expect other arguments to be persuaded the good health of a sound answer than the gout and dropsy of a big margent, littered and overlaid with crude and huddled quotations.7 But as I still was waiting, when these light-armed refuters would have done pelting at their three lines uttered with a sage delivery of no reason but an impotent and worse than Bonner-like8 censure to burn that which provokes them to a fair dispute, at length a book was brought to my hands, Colasterion 363 entitled An Answer to The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce. Gladly I received it, and very attentively composed myself to read; hoping that now some good man had vouchsafed the pains to instruct me better than I could yet learn out of all the volumes which for this purpose I had visited. Only this I...