dinance, the unremedied lowliness of this remedy. Advise ye well, supreme senate, if charity be thus excluded and expulst, how ye will defend the untainted honor of your own actions and proceedings. Whatever else ye can enact, will scarce concern a third part of the British name; but the benefit and good of this your magnanimous example, will easily spread far beyond the banks of Tweed, and the Norman isles. It would not be the first or the second time, since our ancient Druides, by whom this island was the cathedral of philosophy in France, left off their pagan rites, that England hath had this honour vouchsaft from heav'n, to give reformation to the world. Who was it but our English Constantine, that baptized the Roman Empire? Who was it but the Northumbrian Willibrode and Winfride, of Devon, with their followers, were the first apostles of Germany? Who but Alcuim and Wicklif, our countrymen, opened the eyes of Europe, the one in arts, the other in religion? Let not England forget her precedence of teaching nations how to live. For me, as far as my part leads me, I have already the greatest gain of assurance and inward satisfaction, to have done in this, nothing unworthy of an honest life, and studies well employed. With that event, among the wise and right-understanding of men I am secure: but how among the drove of custom and prejudice this

will be relisht-by such whose capacity, since their youth run ahead into the easie creek of a system or a medulla, sails there at will, under the blown phisiognomy of their unlaboured rudiments for them, whatever their taste will be, I have also surety sufficient, from the entire league there hath always been between formal ignorance and grave obstinacy.

"I seek not to seduce the simple and illiterate; my errand is to find out the choicest and the learnedest, who have this high gift of wisdom, to answer solidly, or to be convinc't. I crave it from the piety, the learning, and the prudence, which is housed in this place. It might, perhaps, have been more fitly written in another tongue; and I had done so, but that the esteem I have for my 'country's judgment, and the love I bear to my native language, to serve it first with what I endeavour, made me speak it thus, ere I assay the verdict of outlandish readers. And perhaps also here I might have ended nameless, but that the address of these lines, chiefly to the Parliament of England, might have seemed ungrateful, not to acknowledge by whose religious care, unwearied watchfulness, courageous and heroick resolutions, I enjoy the peace and studious leisure to remain, the Honourer and Attendant of their noble worth and virtues,-JOHN MILTON."

In the preface he thus fairly states his de

sign: "This therefore shall be the task and period of this discourse,-to prove, first, that other reasons of divorce, besides adultery, were, by the law of Moses, and are yet to be allowed by the christian magistrate, as a piece of justice; and that the words of Christ are not hereby contraried. Next, that to prohibit absolutely any divorce whatsoever, except those which Moses excepted, is against the reason of the law. Not that license and levity, and an unconsented breach of faith should herein be countenanc't; but that some conscionable and tender pitty might be had of those, who have, unwarily, and in a thing which they have never practised before, made themselves the bondmen of a luckless and helpless matrimony. This only is desired of them, who are minded to judge hardly of thus maintaining, that they would be still, and hear all out, nor think it equal to answer deliberate reason with sudden heat and noise; remembering this, that many truths, now of renowned esteem and credit, had their birth and beginning once from singular and private thoughts; while the most of men were otherwise possest, and had the fate, at first, to be generally exploded, and exclaimed on by many violent opposers.'

In the first chapter he lays down this position: "That indisposition, unfitness, or contrariety of mind, arising from a cause in nature unchange

able, hindering, and ever likely to hinder, the main benefits of conjugal society, which are solace and peace, is a greater reason of divorce than natural frigidity, especially if there be no children." In confirmation of this, he quotes, with approbation, "what learned Fagius" hath said upon this law:-'The law of God,' says he, 'permitted divorce for the help of humane weakness. For every one that of necessity separates cannot live single. That Christ denied divorce to his own, hinders us not; for what is that to the unregenerate, who hath not attained such perfection? Let not, the remedy be despised, that was given to weakness. And when Christ saith, who marries the divorc't commits adultery, it is to be understood, if he had any plot in the di

In the second chapter he says:-"And what this chief end was of creating woman, to be joined with man, his own instituting words declare, and are infallible to inform us what is marriage, and what is no marriage, unless we can think them set there to no purpose. It is not good,' said he, 'that man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him.' From which words, so plain, less cannot be concluded, than, that in God's intentions, a meet and happy conversation is the chiefest and noblest end of marriage." The inference which he draws from this, is, that the

want of a suitable disposition of mind in a wife, preventing her from being an "help meet," is a sufficient cause, according to the law of Moses, for giving her a bill of divorcement, and putting her away.

In chapter the third, he says:-"But some are ready to object, that the disposition ought seriously to be considered before. But let them know again, that, for all the wariness that can be used, it may befal a discreet man to be mistaken in his choice, and we have plenty of examples. Whereas the sober man may easily chance to meet with a mind, to all other due consideration inaccessible, and to all the more estimable and superior purposes of matrimony useless, and almost lifeless: and what a solace, what a fit help such a consort would be, through the whole life of a man, is more painful to conjecture than to have experienced."

In the fourth chapter he attempts to prove, that, if a man has, by mistake, taken for his wife "a mute and spiritless mate," who cannot, as "a speaking help," be such "a ready and reviving associate in marriage, as shall soothe all the sorsows and casualties of life," he is fully justified. in putting such an one away, and taking one who is suitable for "the note which now directs him, and the loneliness which leads him still powerfully to seek a fit help, hath not the least grain of a