It bears every mark of a hasty composition, such as may well have been written and printed within the last days of July, following Mary Milton's departure.

It is short.
It deals with the most obvious aspects of the question.

It is meagre in references and citations; two authors only are somewhat vaguely alleged, Grotius and Beza.

It does not contain the least allusion to his domestic circumstances, nor anything unless the thesis itself, that could hinder his wife's return.

Everything betokens that it was composed in the bitterness of wounded feeling upon the incompatibility becoming manifest; but that he had not yet arrived at the point of demanding the application of his general principle to his own special case.