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TETRACHORDON :

EXPOSITIONS UPON THE FOUR CHIEF PLACES IN SCRIPTURE WHICH TREAT OF MARRIAGE, OR NULLITIES IN MARRIAGE.

ON

GEN. I. 27, 28, COMPARED AND EXPLAINED BY GEN. II. 18, 23, 24. DEUT. XXIV. 1, 2.

MATT. v. 31, 32, with MATT. XIX. 3-11.

1 COR. VII. 10-16.

To the Parliament.

HE immediate cause of his writing this Treatise

THE was the clamour which was raised on the

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publication of his Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce; and a sermon appears to have been preached before the Lords and Commons on a day of humiliation, in which it was said that there was a wicked book abroad'' uncensured, and deserving to be burnt;' and inpudence' was charged upon the author, who durst 'set his name to it and dedicate it to Parliament.' To this Milton replies, but not very forcibly. He seems also to have had recourse to his Muse, and wrote his eleventh and twelfth sonnets, entitled, "On the Detraction which followed upon my writing certain Treatises." The one begins,

"A book was writ of late call'd Tetrachordon,
And woven close, both matter, form, and style;
The subject new it walk'd the town awhile,
Numb'ring good intellects; now seldom por❜d on."

The rest of this sonnet is poor, as he attempts humour, of which he was utterly destitute; the other is far more interesting, and we insert it entire, as illustrative of his unpopularity.

"I did but prompt the age to quit their clogs
By the known rules of ancient liberty,
When straight a barbarous noise environs me
Of owls, and cuckoos, asses, apes, and dogs:
As when those hinds that were transform'd to frogs
Rail'd at Latona's twin-born progeny,

Which after held the sun and moon in fee.
But this is got by casting pearls to hogs;
That bawl for freedom in their senseless mood,

And still revolt when truth would set them free.
Licence they mean when they cry Liberty;
For who loves that, must first be wise and good;
But from that mark how far they rove we see,
For all this waste of wealth, and loss of blood."

GEN. I. 27, 28.

"It is enough determined, that this image of God, wherein man was created, is meant wisdom, purity, justice, and rule over all creatures. All which, being lost in Adam, was recovered with gain by the merits of Christ."

"Man, the portraiture of God."

"Had the image of God been equally common to them both, it had no doubt been said, "In the image of God created He 'them." But St. Paul ends the controversy by explaining that the woman is not

primarily and immediately the image of God, but in reference to the man: "The head of the woman," saith he, 1 Cor. xi., "is the man"; he the image and glory of God, she the glory of the man; he not for her, but she for him. Therefore his precept is, "Wives, be subject to your husbands, as is fit in the Lord," Col. iii., 18; "in everything," Eph. v., 24. Nevertheless man is not to hold her as a servant, but receives her into a part of that empire which God proclaims him to, though not equally, yet largely, as his own image and glory for it is no small glory to him, that a creature so like him should be made subject to him. Not but that particular exceptions may have place, if she exceed her husband in prudence and dexterity, and he contentedly yield: for then a superior and more natural law comes in, that the wiser should govern the less wise, whether male or female."

"Moreover, if man be the image of God, which consists in holiness, and woman ought in the same respect to be the image and companion of man, in such wise to be loved as the church is beloved of Christ; and if, as God is the head of Christ, and Christ the head of man, so man is the head of woman; I cannot see, by this golden dependence of headship and subjection, but that piety and religion is the main tie of Christian matrimony."

GEN. II. 18, 23, 24.

"Hitherto all things that have been named were

approved of God to be very good: loneliness is the first thing which God's eye named not good. And here "alone" is meant alone without woman; otherwise Adam had the company of God himself, and angels to converse with; all creatures to delight him seriously, or to make him sport. God could have created him out of the same mould a thousand friends and brother Adams to have been his consorts; yet for all this, till Eve was given him, God reckoned him to be alone."

"Austin contests that manly friendship had been a more becoming solace for Adam, than to spend so many secret years in an empty world with one woman. But our writers deservedly reject this crabbed opinion; and defend that there is a peculiar comfort in the married state, which no other society affords. No mortal nature can endure, either in the actions of religion, or study of wisdom, without sometime slackening the cords of intense thought and labour, which, lest we should think faulty, God Himself conceals us not his own recreations before the world was built: "I was," saith the Eternal Wisdom, "daily his delight, playing always before Him." And to Him, indeed, wisdom is as a high tower of pleasure, but to us a steep hill, and we toiling ever about the bottom. He executes with ease the exploits of His omnipotence, as easy as with us it is to will, but no worthy enterprise can be done by us without continual plodding and

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wearisomeness to our faint and sensitive abilities. We cannot, therefore, always be contemplative, or pragmatical" (busy, we only employ the word in an ill sense) abroad, but have need of some delightful intermissions, wherein the enlarged soul may leave off awhile her severe schooling, and like a glad youth in wandering vacancy, may keep her holidays to joy and harmless pastime; which as she cannot well do without company, so in no company so well as where the different sex in most resembling unlikeness, and most unlike resemblance, cannot but please best, and be pleased in the aptitude of that variety."

"Here the heavenly institutor contents not Himself to say, I will make him a wife; but resolving to give us first the meaning before the name of a wife, saith, graciously, "I will make him a help-meet for him.” The original is more expressive than other languages word for word can render it; but all agree effectual conformity of disposition and affection to be hereby signified; which God, as it were, not satisfied with the naming of a help, goes on describing another self, a second self, a very self itself.”

"That there was a nearer alliance between Adam and Eve than could be ever after between man and wife, is visible to any. For no other woman was ever moulded out of her husband's rib, but of mere strangers for the most part they come to have that consanguinity which they have by wedlock. And if we

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