The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 75
Milton'S View the Loftiest
Milton'S View the Loftiest.
Let us contrast with this grossly physical ecclesiastical view of marriage that of Milton—the highest and noblest conception at which the world has yet arrived; a conception which appeals to all that is most noble and most beautiful in life, and is more in consonance with that spiritual view of marriage which finds expression in our noblest literature, according to which marriage is the closest form of friendship between man and woman, having for its primary end the "completion of man's being by some fitting, some ennobling, some lasting companionship and affection." According to the sacerdotalist view as embodied in our law, union in the name of the law is all-important, and union by affection is less important. According to Milton's view, union by affection is the most important, and union in the name of the law the least important. "The internal form and soul of this relation," says Milton, "is conjugal eve arising from a mutual fitness to the dual causes of wedlock." "Law cannot command love, without which matrimony hath no true being, no good, no solace, nothing of God's instituting, nothing but so sordid and so low as to be disdained of any generous parson." "Christ Himself tells," he says, "why should not be put asunder—namely, those whom God bath joined." But, "when is it that God may be said to join ? When the parties and their friends consent? No surely, . . . . Or is it when church rites are finished ? Neither, for the efficacy of those depends upon the presupposed fitness of either party. Undoubtedly a peaceful divorce is a Less evil, and Less in scandal than hateful, hardhearted, and destructive continuance in marriage in the judgment of Moses and of Christ." "What thing more instituted to the delight and solace of man than marriage ? And yet the misinterpreting of some Scripture hath changed the blessing of matrimony into a drooping and disconsolate household captivity, without refuge or redemption. What a sore evil is this under the sun ! What a calamity is this! . . . Not that licence and levity should therein be countenanced, but that some couscunable and tender pity might be had for those who have unwarily, in a thing they never practised before, made themselves the bondmen of a luckless and, helpless matrimony." "Who sees not," he exclaims, "how much more Christianity it would page 4 be to break by divorce that which is broken by undue and forcible keeping" "It is a less bremch of wedlock to put with wise and quiet cousent betimes, than still to foil and profane that mystery of joy and union with a polluting sadness and perpetual distemper; for it is not the outward continuing of marriage that keeps whole that covenant."
Friendship love, and peace combine
To stamp the marriage bond [unclear: divin],—
then in follows that where affection has never existed, or is dead, true marriage does not exist.,
'When love," Milton says, "finds its If utterly nmatched, and justly vanishes—nay, rather cannot but vanish,—the fleshly [unclear: relation] indeed continue, but not holy, not [unclear: pure] beseeming the sacred bond of marriage; [unclear: be] truly gross and more ignob'e than the [unclear: m] kindliness between herds and flocks, [unclear: W] then, shall divorce bs granted for [unclear: was] bodily fidelity and not for want of fitness intimate conversation, whereaa corporal [unclear: be] lence cannot in any human fashion be [unclear: with] this."