“Domestic or Personal Liberty” 1642–1645intended, not as a directive for Christians, but as a deliberately misleading statement
to baffle the Pharisees who had abused the Mosaic permission by divorcing for light
causes (168–70).
His primary interpretative touchstone is the essential spirit of the gospel, charity,
which must be “the interpreter and guide of our faith” (145): he states flatly that
“wee cannot safely assent to any precept writt’n in the Bible, but as charity commends
it to us” (183).^53 Milton heaps scorn on those who rest “in the meere element of the
Text” (145) with an “obstinate literality” and an “alphabeticall servility” (164).
That stance is at odds with the core Protestant belief in a single sense of scripture
easily understood by the elect, which was Milton’s basic assumption in the
antiprelatical tracts, though even there he described the qualities that should mark a
gospel church, rather than explicating the usual scripture proof texts for a Presbyte-
rian form of government.^54 Now he argues explicitly that “the supreme dictate of
charitie” demands reinterpretation of the Matthew text in the light of reason and
human experience, since its literal terms endanger human good, religious faith, and
even life itself (151).^55 The tract concludes with a reference to Matthew 22:40,
which subsumes “all the law and the Profets” in two commandments, to love God
and neighbor.^56
As for the “discipline” or ordering of divorce, Milton removes jurisdiction over
it from the ecclesiastical courts and vests the power to divorce entirely in the hus-
band. Ministers and elders may question him as to whether the incompatibility is
grave and irreconcilable (188), and the civil courts may rule on “dowries, jointures,
and the like,” to set just conditions (186–8), but neither church nor state may
forbid the parties to divorce and remarry if they choose. Dismissing objections
stemming from the danger of social dislocation or injustice to the wife, he insists
that the wife would be harmed more by living with an unjust man, or in a loveless
marriage, or permanently separated like a married widow. He resorts to gender
stereotypes in assuming that the wife would be glad to avoid a trial, “It being also an
unseemly affront to the sequestr’d and vail’d modesty of that sex, to have her
unpleasingnes and other concealements bandied up and down, and aggravated in
open Court by those hir’d maisters of tongue-fence” (186–7). But the determining
consideration for him is the man’s hierarchical right:
For ev’n the freedom and eminence of mans creation gives him to be a Law in this
matter to himself, beeing the head of the other sex which was made for him: whom
therfore though he ought not to injure, yet neither should he be forc’t to retain in
society to his own overthrow, nor to hear any judge therin above himself. (186)The logic of Milton’s arguments from contract and incompatibility would allow
the woman as well as the man to institute divorce procedures, but in this first tract
his concept of gender hierarchy, and his still intense hurt and anger, prevent him
from raising that issue.