The work consists mostly of Milton's translations of pro-divorce arguments from Martin Bucer's De Regno Christi.
By finding support for his views among orthodox writers, Milton hoped to sway the members of Parliament Protestant ministers who had condemned him.
Milton married in spring 1642, and shortly after, his wife Marie Powell left him and returned to live with her mother.
[2] The work begins with a preface titled "To the Parlament", and the preface connects the history of Bucer and his reformist ideas with the history of Milton's previous tract on divorce:[3] For against these my adversaries, who before the examining of a propound truth in a fit time of reformation, have had the conscience to oppose naught els but their blind reproaches and surmises, that a single innocence (his own) might not be opprest and overborn by a crew of mouths for the restoring of a law and doctrin falsely and unlernedly reputed new and scandalous.
God... hath unexpectedly rais'd up as it were from the dead... one famous light of the first reformation to bear witnes with me[4]Milton believed that a translation of Bucer's words would convince Parliament of the truth behind his previous tract on divorce.