Essay: The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce

Overview
John Milton's 1643 pamphlet "The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce" mounts a forceful case for loosening the strictures around marital dissolution in seventeenth-century England. Written amid personal misfortune and public upheaval, the pamphlet blends moral philosophy, scriptural exegesis, and sharp polemic to challenge prevailing religious and civil doctrines that made divorce rare and difficult. Milton frames marital harmony as a spiritual and intellectual companionship; where that union fails, he contends, legal relief should follow.
The argument is framed both personally and philosophically. Milton insists that marriage exists to join minds as much as bodies, and that a union devoid of mutual affection, understanding, or conjugal compatibility becomes a moral injury rather than a sacred permanence. The pamphlet shifts the debate from purely sacramental permanence toward human welfare and reasoned judgment.

Main Arguments
Milton rejects the idea that adultery must be the sole ground for ending a marriage. He argues that incompatibility of minds, inability to perform conjugal duties, and the absence of reciprocal affection are legitimate reasons for dissolution. Marriage, he claims, is ordained for mutual solace and intellectual fellowship; where those ends are impossible, the marital bond becomes oppressive rather than benevolent.
Reason and conscience are central to Milton's rhetoric. He appeals to natural law and the practical realities of married life, insisting that laws and church practices which force people to cohabit in hostility or cold indifference do violence to Christian charity. Far from advocating licentiousness, his plea is for honest remedies to human misery and for legal mechanisms that acknowledge difference and failure within marriage.

Biblical and Theological Reasoning
Milton conducts close readings of scriptural texts to undermine the claim of absolute indissolubility promoted by the church hierarchy. He interprets Genesis, the Mosaic allowance of divorce, and New Testament teachings in ways that permit separation where marriage's intended purposes cannot be fulfilled. Paul's and Christ's words, he argues, do not rigidly ban all remarriage or separation but must be read alongside the broader ends of marriage.
He mounts a pointed critique of ecclesiastical authority that clings to canon law and tradition to deny compassionate remedies. Catholic and High Church doctrines that sacralize marriage into an inviolable mystery are challenged as legalistic and destructive when they ignore the lived realities of incompatible spouses.

Practical Proposals and Legal Reform
Milton presses for procedural reforms to make divorce accessible and equitable. He envisions civil adjudication that recognizes incompatibility and nonconsummation as grounds, seeks to prevent coercion by assuring voluntary consent, and demands clarity and speed so that lives are not needlessly ruined by protracted ecclesiastical obstruction. He also supports the right of both spouses to seek separation, challenging gendered legal presumptions that favored male prerogative.
The pamphlet balances theoretical defenses with pragmatic suggestions: removal of prohibitive hurdles, an appeal to magistrates to act with discretion, and a call for public recognition that marriage's moral purpose includes the happiness and virtue of both partners.

Reception and Legacy
The pamphlet provoked immediate controversy, attracting vehement rebuttals from churchmen and conservative writers who feared social destabilization. Milton responded with further tracts and appeals to reformers and critics, deepening the pamphlet war of the 1640s. Although immediate legal change did not follow, the work contributed to longer-term debates about sexual morality, individual conscience, and the limits of ecclesiastical power.
Historically notable for its boldness and its fusion of personal grievance with political theology, the tract stands as an early and influential argument for considering marriage through the lens of companionship and rational consent rather than mere sacrament or social contract.