Far more daring than any of the English writers before Milton is Martin Bucer, of Strassburg, whose doctrines of divorce comprised in the book dedicated to Edward VI. are almost as bold as those of Zwingli. According to this famous theologian, for two years professor at Cambridge, and greatly venerated by his contemporaries, divorce is a divine institution; and it ought to be granted not merely for unfaithfulness and desertion, but for many other reasons as well. It is curious, but thoroughly in keeping with the mental habits of his age, to see how he persuaded himself that the causes of divorce sanctioned by the decrees of the "pious emperors" from Constantine to Justinian are not "contrary to the word of God;" may therefore "be recalled into use by any Christian prince or commonwealth;" and are thus "by divine approbation" valid among Christians at the present hour.[225] Usually in his treatise he advocates equal liberty of divorce for both consorts; but, in contradiction to the spirit of his own teaching, in one chapter he sets forth a doctrine which would place the wife absolutely at the mercy of a licentious or despotic lord. A passage from the prophet Malachi Bucer renders: "'Take heed to your spirit, and let none deal injuriously against the wife of his youth. If he hate, let him put away, saith the Lord God of Israel. And he shall hide thy violence with his garment'--that marries her divorced by thee."[226] On this authority he concludes that "by these testimonies of the divine law ... the Lord did not only permit, but also expressly and earnestly commanded his people, by whom he would that all holiness and faith of marriage covenant should be observed, that he who could not induce his mind to love his wife with a true conjugal love, might dismiss her, that she might marry to another."[227] Verily this is naïve morality. Such singular care for the wife's happiness finds scarcely a parallel, unless indeed it be in the ethics of John Milton, to which we must presently recur. [Footnote 225: BUCER, in MILTON'S _Prose Works_, III, 302, 303, 292, 293, 306-8. By some of his brethren he was regarded as a fanatic on this subject as the following letter from JOHN BURCHER to HENRY BULLINGER shows: "Strasburgh, June 8, 1550: Bucer is more than licentious on the subject of marriage. I heard him once disputing at table upon this question, when he asserted that a divorce should be allowed for any reason, however trifling; so that he is considered, not without cause, by our bishop of Winchester as the author of the book published in defence of the Landgrave. I am ignorant as to what the hireling Bucer, who fled from this church before the wolf came in sight, is plotting in England."--_Original Letters rel. to the Eng. Ref._, 655, 656.