“Domestic or Personal Liberty” 1642–1645unmeetnes” – much more serious than adultery – which always dissolves marriage.
But a sounder meaning is provided in the Hebrew Bible and its commentaries,
where fornication means sometimes whoredom, often idolatry, and at times Miltonic
incompatibility: “a constant alienation and disaffection of mind... when to be a
tolerable wife is either naturally not in their power, or obstinatly not in their will”
(673). He explains that in the use of this word and often elsewhere the evangelist
“Hebraizes” – perhaps because God intended that expositors “acknowledge Gods
ancient people their betters” (671) and recognize that without the oriental dialects
they were liable to err. He admits, however, that he cannot explain why Christ calls
those who marry after divorce adulterers, but he is so persuaded every biblical
prescription must be measured in terms of human good, that he is prepared in hard
cases to give over the letter entirely: Christ may have meant to challenge good men
“to expound him in this place, as in all other his precepts, not by the written letter,
but by that unerring paraphrase of Christian love and Charity, which is the summe
of all commands, and the perfection” (677–8).
The last text, Paul’s dictum that a Christian may divorce a departing infidel (1
Corinthians 7:10–16), Milton reads as a blanket permission to Christians to divorce
a heretical or idolatrous or grossly profane spouse. Then, noting that expositors
often stretch this text to cover cases of marital desertion, he redefines it in his own
terms, to include “any hainous default against the main ends of matrimony... not
only a local absence but an intolerable society” (691).
Tetrachordon also clarifies the wife’s status in marriage and divorce. With the aid
of Paul, Milton interprets Genesis 1:27, “In the image of God created he him,” as
decisive evidence of gender hierarchy in the creation:
Had the Image of God bin equally common to them both, it had no doubt bin said, in
the image of God created he them. But St Paul ends the controversie by explaining
that the woman is not primarily and immediatly the image of God, but in reference to
the man.... Neverthelesse 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. (589)Now, however, he explicitly recognizes, as he did not before, the wife’s right to
divorce an unfit husband, locating it in her “proportional” share in the image of
God and her Christian liberty as one of Christ’s redeemed. She can claim that right
also by the Pauline permission to divorce an infidel, and so by extension any wicked
mate: “the wife also... being her self the redeem’d of Christ, is not still bound to
be the vassall of him, who is the bondslave of Satan... but hath recours to the wing
of charity and protection of the Church” (591). Then, by a radical redefinition of
the term “deserting infidel,” Milton extends to the wife the right to divorce any
unfit spouse: