Note 1340 — Chapter X · RISE OF CIVIL MARRIAGE

Milton, Prose Works (Bohn, 1848), III, 21, 22. This volume contains a series of discussions on marriage and divorce, which together embody all the learning which the Puritan could produce in support of his theories: The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce; The Judgment of Martin Bucer; Tetrachordon; Colasterion, etc.

Milton does not anywhere discuss the form of solemnization (cf. Friedberg, op. cit., 327, note). In his "Exposition on Places of Scripture which treat of Marriage" (Works, III, 341-46), after considering the definitions given by many writers, he produces one of his own. "Marriage," he says, "is a divine institution, joining man and woman in a love fitly disposed to the helps and comforts of domestic life." But he rejects the doctrine of the Fathers and canonists that marriage is a "remedy." The "internal Form and soul of this relation is conjugal love arising from a mutual fitness to the final causes of wedlock, help and society in religious, civil, and domestic conversation, which includes as an inferior end the fulfilling of natural desire, and specifical increase."—Ibid., 342.