The second edition is far more satisfactory as regards that class of arguments which alone were likely to impress the men of his generation, those derived from the authority of the Scriptures and of divines.

In one of his principal points all Protestants and philosophers will confess him to be right, his reference of the matter to Scripture and reason, and repudiation of the mediaeval canon law.

It is not here, nevertheless, that Milton is most at home.

The strength of his position is his lofty idealism, his magnificent conception of the institution he discusses, and his disdain for whatever degrades it to conventionality or mere expediency.

"His ideal of true and perfect marriage," says Mr.
Ernest Myers, "appeared to him so sacred that he could not admit that considerations of expediency might justify the law in maintaining sacred any meaner kind, or at least any kind in which the vital element of spiritual harmony was not." Here he is impregnable and above criticism, but his handling of the more sublunary departments of the subject must be unsatisfactory to legislators, who have usually deemed his sublime idealism fitter for the societies of the blest than for the imperfect communities of mankind.