Liberal camps within American religions today generally embrace monogamy as the only acceptable framework for marriage and committed love relationships. This is so even though gay relationships, which have been more extensively condemned in the history of Western moral thought, are supported in some quarters of these camps. One of the great figures honored, rightly or wrongly, as a precursor to religious liberalism, John Milton (1608-1674), supported polygamy or, more precisely, the masculine form of it, polygyny. So how did the present intellectual construction against polygamy come about in liberal camps?
The answer, like most answers in the history of thought, is a complicated one. However, wouldn't it be fascinating to see how a pivotal figure in the history of American religious liberalism, who had little but praise for Milton, reacted to the first full revelation of Milton's support for polygamy?
We have just such a reaction in William Ellery Channing's review of Milton's Treatise on Christian Doctrine.1 Channing pastored the Federal Street Church in Boston from 1803 until his death in 1842. As a preacher, writer, and theologian, he -- in the words of D. M. Robinson -- defined "the liberal movement in New England Congregationalism that came to be known as Unitarianism," emerging in 1815 "as the key spokeman for the liberals."2
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WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING |
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Although written between 1645 and 1660, the Treatise was not discovered until 1823 or published until 1825. A year later, Channing published a review of it in the The Christian Examiner and Theological Review (Boston); v. 3, no. 1. Shortly thereafter, it came out in book form.3 Here's the Library of Congress catalog record (adapted to the present style) for the first edition:
There were subsequent American editions:
It is the last of these editions that I have used in transcribing the following excerpt on Milton's treatment of polygamy.4-5 Page numbers for that edition are given in square brackets, small square brackets when the page numbers themselves do not actually appear in the book.
The entire excerpt consists of but two paragraphs. However, in order to make the excerpt more readable for the online community, I have broken the first paragraph into several, hopefully without affecting the sense or flow at any point.
Milton's treatment of polygamy itself is posted separately.
[1]
[2, blank]
[3]
JOHN MILTON.
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A Treatise on Christian Doctrine, compiled from the Holy Scriptures alone. By JOHN MILTON. Translated from the Original by CHARLES R. SUMNER, M.A. Librarian and Historiographer to His Majesty, and Prebendary of Canterbury. From the London Edition. Boston. 1825. 2 vols. 8vo.
[snip, pages [3]-49]
[50] Milton next proceeds to the consideration of man's state in Paradise, and as marriage was the only social relation then subsisting, he introduces here his views of that institution, and of polygamy and divorce. These views show, if not the soundness, yet the characteristic independence of his mind.
No part of his book has given such offence as his doctrine of the lawfulness of polygamy, and yet nowhere is he less liable to reproach. It is plain that his error was founded on his reverence for scripture. He saw that polygamy was allowed to the best men in the Old Testament, to patriarchs before the law, who, he says, were the objects of God's special favor, and to eminent individuals in subsequent ages; and finding no prohibition of it in the New Testament, he believed, that not only holy men would be traduced, but scripture dishonored, by pronouncing it morally evil.
We are aware that some will say, that the practice is condemned in the New Testament; and we grant that it is censured by implication in these words of Christ, 'Whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery.'* But we believe it to be an indisputable fact, that although Christianity was first preached in Asia, which had been from the earliest ages the seat of polygamy, the apostles never denounced it as a crime, and never required their converts to put away all wives but one.
'What then?' some may say. 'Are you too the advocates of the lawfulness of polygamy?' We answer, No. We consider our religion as decidedly hostile to this practice; and we add, what seems to us of great importance, that this hostility is not the less decided, because no express prohibition of [51] polygamy is found in the New Testament; for Christianity is not a system of precise legislation, marking out with literal exactness everything to be done, and everything to be avoided; but an inculcation of broad principles, which it intrusts to individuals and to society to be applied according to their best discretion. It is through this generous peculiarity, that Christianity is fitted to be a universal religion. Through this, it can subsist and blend itself with all stages of society, and can live in the midst of abuses, which it silently and powerfully overcomes, but against which it would avail little, were it immediately to lift up the voice of denunciation.
We all know that long cherished corruptions, which have sent their roots through the whole frame of a community, cannot be torn up at once, without dissolving society. To Christianity is committed the sublime office of eradicating all the errors and evils of the world; but this it does by a process corresponding with man's nature, by working a gradual revolution in the mind, which, in its turn, works a safe and effectual revolution in manners and life.
No argument, therefore, in favor of a practice, can be adduced from the fact, that it is not explicitly reprobated in the New Testament. For example, Christianity went forth into communities, where multitudes were held in slavery, and all ranks were ground and oppressed by despotism; abuses on which the spirit of our religion frowns as sternly as on any which can be named. Yet Christianity did not command the master to free his slaves, or the despot to descend from his absolute throne; but satisfied itself with proclaiming sublime truths in regard to God's paternal character and administration, and broad and generous principles of action, leaving to these the work of breaking every chain, by a gradual, inward, [52] irresistible influence, and of asserting the essential equality and unalienable rights of the whole human race.
-- We cannot leave this topic, without adding, that not only Milton's error on polygamy, but many other noxious mistakes, have resulted from measuring Christianity by the condition of the primitive church, as if that were the standard of faith and practice, as if everything allowed then were wise and good, as if the religion were then unfolded in all its power and extent.
The truth is, that Christianity was then in its infancy. The apostles communicated its great truths to the rude minds of Jews and Heathens; but the primitive church did not, and could not, understand all that was involved in those principles, all the applications of which they are susceptible, all the influences they were to exert on the human mind, all the combinations they were to form with the new truths which time was to unfold, all the new lights in which they were to be placed, all the adaptations to human nature and to more advanced states of society, which they were progressively to manifest.
In the first age, the religion was administered with a wise and merciful conformity to the capacities of its recipients. With the progress of intelligence, and the development of the moral faculties, Christianity is freeing itself, and ought to be freed, from the local, temporary, and accidental associations of its childhood. Its great principles are coming forth more distinctly and brightly, and condemning abuses and errors, which have passed current for ages.
This great truth, for such we deem it, that Christianity is a growing light, and that it must be more or less expounded by every age for itself, was not sufficiently apprehended by Milton; nor is it now understood as it will be. For want of apprehending it, Christianity is [53] administered now, too much as it was in ages, when nothing of our literature, philosophy, and spirit of improvement existed; and consequently it does not, we fear, exert that entire and supreme sway over strong and cultivated minds, which is its due, and which it must one day obtain.
Milton has connected with polygamy the subject of divorce, on which he is known to have differed from many Christians. He strenuously maintains in the work under review, and more largely in other treatises, that the violation of the marriage bed is not the sole ground of divorce, but that 'the perpetual interruption of peace and affection by mutual differences and unkindness, is a sufficient reason' for dissolving the conjugal relation. On this topic we cannot enlarge.
[snip, pages 53-66]
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Begun, January 19, 2004; posted, January 19, 2004; new url, January 28, 2004; last modified, January 28, 2004
Channing's review is in the public domain
Special matter Copyright ©2004 by Norman E. Anderson
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