Not the best source, I’m afraid. A few academic readers take me to task:
Your use of Milton here is absurd. Milton was practically burned at the stake for his stance on marriage. The obvious corollary to what you quote, which Milton seemed to endorse – that when the ‘conversation’ wasn’t going so well, divorce was a legitimate option – was regarded by almost everyone at the time as radical to the point of heresy. Milton’s views were not ordinary ’17th century Christian’ views. Even in the 19th century, they would have been radical.
I stand corrected. Milton also had a strange personal history:
He marginalized the importance of sex in marriage partially because he felt it to be especially sinful – he was a Puritan early. He was a virgin at the time of his marriage – at 36, when he married a girl twenty years his junior, who left him within a month. While she eventually returned to him, and they had children, his writings on marriage and divorce predate that event.
Milton: way ahead of his time.
The Dish 