Harlots, wives and celibacy in Paradise Lost

Book IV compares marital love and the love one can easily buy from women who sell their bodies for a short period of time in exchange of some money. Milton compares both types of love while he critizises the position of Catholicism in the issue of celibacy. His attack is straightforward and directed to "whatever hypocrites austerely talk / Of puritie and place and innocence, / Defaming as impure what God declares / Pure, and commands to som, leaves free to all./ Our Maker bids increase, who bids abstain / But our Destroyer, foe to God and Man?" (744-749). Basically, Milton´s logical idea is based upon the question: who said that priests cannot get married or cannot have sexual relationships? Milton knew well that the Bilble does not say anything about it. Actually, it would not come as a surprise that Milton knew that the Bible talks about the apostle Peter´s "mother-in-law" (Mattew 8:14). There one reads that " When Jesus came into Peter’s house, he saw Peter’s mother-in-law lying in bed with a fever" (Mattew 8:14). 

I have taken a look at quite a few Bible translations and this is what I have found out: The New International version 2011, the New American Standard bible, the New Living Translation, the English Standard version and countless list of other versions use the term "mother-in-law". However, I have found that some versions are even more specific. In this respect, the King James version says: "And when Jesus was come into Peter's house, he saw his wife's mother laid, and sick of a fever." 

Certainly, Milton knew that God had never ordered anybody not to get married and the poet mentions in Book IV that Adam and Eve enjoyed their sexuality. Hence he pens that the first couple were created "To fill the Earth ..." and they went "into thir inmost bowre [...] and eas'd the putting off / These troublesome disguises which wee wear, / Strait side by side were laid, nor turnd I weene / Adam from his fair Spouse, nor Eve the Rites / Mysterious of connubial Love refus'd" [732-742].

For Milton, who had married three times by the time he wrote those verses, the idea of celibacy was nonsense and was simply based on tradition. In this context, the Oxford Dictionary of Popes by Kelly mentions that there were 39 popes who were married. Tradition seems to be under the idea of modern celibacy.

If Milton describes marital love in romantic and pure terms such as being together " into thir inmost bowre", "fair Spouse" and "Mysterious of connubial Love", his description about having sexual relationships with prostitutes is much more different. A few verses later, and without using his well-known convoluted style, he writes: "[...] about not in the bought smile / Of Harlots, loveless, joyless, unindeard, / Casual fruition" [765-767].

If money buys a smile, a loveless and joyless short period of time with an unknown woman who sells her body for money in exchange of a "casual fruition" or copulation, marital love has God´s blessing.

Paradise Lost IV 765-767
by John Milton

not in the bought smile
Of Harlots, loveless, joyless, unindeard,
Casual fruition