Notes to Chapter 1ate Edenic loneliness with the man, Adam. Love is the son of “sinles Penury or Lonelines
of the soul” begotten in Paradise of the sociable aptitude intended in marriage. When
Penury “cannot lay it self down by the side of such a meet and acceptable union” Hate
is engendered – not sinful Hate, but “naturall dissatisfaction and the turning aside from
a mistaken object” (152).
48 Charles Hatten, “The Politics of Marital Reform and the Rationalization of Romance”
in The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce,” Milton Studies 27 (1991), 109–11.
49 Cf. 1 Corinthians 7:10–16. And see Cedric C. Brown, “Milton and the Idolatrous
Consort,” Criticism 35 (1993), 419–39.
50 For one thing, he cites Malachi 2:16 which he renders, “he who hates, let him divorce”
on the authority of “Calvin and the best translations,” though Calvin did not read that
corrupted text as warranting divorce. The AV renders it, “For the Lord... saith that he
hateth putting away.”
51 Jason Rosenblatt, Torah and Law in Paradise Lost (Princeton, NJ, 1993), 82–97, claims
that Milton could read the Hebrew Bible and the comparatively easy and widely avail-
able commentary of Rashi, but drew much of his knowledge of the tradition of rab-
binical commentary from the profound Hebraic scholarship of John Selden.
52 Milton cited Hugo Grotius’s Annotationes in Libros Evangeliorum (Amsterdam, 1641) on
the meaning of “uncleanness” in Judges 19:2, on the laws of the first Christian emperors
allowing for civil divorce for many causes (145, 180), on Christ’s specification of “adul-
tery” as only one example of other like cases, on marriage as ordained for mutual help
and comfort as well as for copulation, and on charity as the beginning and end of
Christ’s commands (178–9).
53 Rosenblatt (Torah and Law, 103) notes that the term “Charity” is used some 92 times in
the divorce tracts. This compares with 122 occurrences in all Milton’s prose.
54 See chapter 5, pp. 144–6.
55 Appeals to Charity as a basis for revising the abhorrent literal meaning of certain biblical
texts is an exegetical tradition reaching back to Augustine. But Augustine usually re-
sorted in such cases to allegorical interpretation, a mode of exegesis generally decried by
Protestants and avoided by Milton.
56 Milton also alludes to Romans 13:10, 1 Corinthians 13:1–13, and 1 Timothy 1:5,
which identify love or charity as the essence of the gospel and the fulfillment of the
Law.
57 The first edition has 48 small quarto pages; the second, 88. The additions sometimes
expand a single paragraph or passage into several pages, especially in the first seven
chapters of Book II. A copy at the Bodleian (Wood B 29) bears the name “Je. [or Jo.]
Hales” as owner – probably Milton’s learned friend John Hales of Eton. A third and
fourth edition appeared in 1645; neither shows evidence of Milton’s attention, and
neither was licensed or registered.
58 The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce Restor’d to the Good of Both Sexes, From the bondage of
Canon Law, and other mistakes, to the true meaning of Scripture in the Law and Gospel compar’d.
Wherin also are set down the bad consequences of abolishing or condemning of Sin, that which the
Law of God allowes, and Christ abolisht not. Now the second time revis’d and much augmented,
in Two Books (London, n.p., 1644). The revised edition reprints the epigraph from
Matthew 13:52 and adds a new epigraph from Proverbs 18:1, striking at detractors who
judge without reading: “He that answereth a matter before he heareth it, it is folly and
Notes to Chapter 6