The first miracle that ever Jesus did, was to do honour to a wedding; marriage was in the world before sin, and is in all ages of the world the greatest and most effective antidote against sin, in which all the world had perished, if God had not made a remedy: and although sin hath soured marriage, and stuck the man's head with cares, and the woman's bed with sorrows in the production of children; yet these are but throes of life and glory, and "she shall be saved in child-bearing, if she be found in faith and righteousness." Marriage is a school and exercise of virtue; and though marriage hath cares, yet the single life hath desires, which are more troublesome and more dangerous, and often end in sin, while the cares are but instances of duty and exercises of piety: and therefore, if single life hath more privacy of devotion, yet marriage hath more necessities and more variety of it, and is an exercise of more graces. In two virtues, celibate or single life may have the advantage of degrees ordinarily and commonly,—that is, in chastity and devotion: but as in some persons this may fail, and it does in very many, and a married man may spend as much time in devotion as any virgins or widows do; yet as in marriage even those virtues of chastity and devotion are exercised; so in other instances, this state hath proper exercises and trials for those graces, for which single life can never be crowned; here is the proper scene of piety and patience, of the duty of parents and the charity of relatives"; here kindness is spread abroad, and love is united and made firm as a centre: marriage is the nursery of heaven; the virgin sends prayers to God, but she carries but one soul to him; but the state of marriage fills up the numbers of the elect, and hath in it the labour of love, and the delicacies of friendship, the blessing of society, and the union of hands and hearts; it hath in it less of beauty, but more of safety, than the single life; it hath more care, but less danger; it is more merry, and more sad; is fuller of sorrows, and fuller of joys; it lies under more burdens, but is supported by all the * Χρὴ τῆς ἀειγένεως φύσεως ἀντέχεσθαι τῷ παῖδας παίδων καταλείποντι ἀεὶ τῷ θεῷ ὑπηρέτας ἀνθ ̓ αὐτοῦ παραδιδόναι. Plato. Adde, quod Eunuchus nulla pietate movetur, Claudian. In Eutrop. i. 187. strengths of love and charity, and those burdens are delightful. Marriage is the mother of the world, and preserves kingdoms, and fills cities, and churches, and heaven itself. Celibate, like the fly in the heart of an apple, dwells in a perpetual sweetness, but sits alone, and is confined and dies in singularity; but marriage, like the useful bee, builds a house and gathers sweetness from every flower, and labours and unites into societies and republics, and sends out colonies, and feeds the world with delicacies, and obeys their king, and keeps order, and exercises many virtues, and promotes the interest of mankind, and is that state of good things to which God hath designed the present constitution of the world. Τοῦνεκεν ἐνθέσμως ἄλοχον λαβὲ, καί τινα κόσμῳ Δὸς βροτὸν ἀντὶ σέθεν. φεῦγε δὲ μαχλοσύνην. Br. An. 3. 93. Single life makes men in one instance to be like angels, but marriage in very many things makes the chaste pair to be like to Christ. "This is a great mystery," but it is the symbolical and sacramental representation of the greatest mysteries of our religion. Christ descended from his Father's bosom, and contracted his divinity with flesh and blood, and married our nature, and we became a church, the spouse of the Bridegroom, which he cleansed with his blood, and gave her his Holy Spirit for a dowry, and heaven for a jointure; begetting children unto God by the Gospel. This spouse he hath joined to himself by an excellent charity, he feeds her at his own table, and lodges her nigh his own heart, provides for all her necessities, relieves her sorrows, determines her doubts, guides her wanderings, he is become her head, and she as a signet upon his right hand; he first indeed was betrothed to the synagogue and had many children by her, but she forsook her love, and then he married the church of the Gentiles, and by her as by a second venter had a more numerous issue, " atque una domus est omnium filiorum ejus," "all the children dwell in the same house," and are heirs of the same promises, entitled to the same inheritance. Here is the eternal conjunction, the indissoluble knot, the exceed 2 Καλὰ τὰ παρθενίης κειμήλια· παρθενίη δὲ Τὸν βιὸν ὤλεσεν ἂν, πᾶσι φυλαττομένη. Brunck. An. 3. 93. Siquis patriam majorem parentem extinguit, in eo culpa est, quod facit pro sua parte qui se eunuchat aut aliqua liberos producit, i. e. differt eorum procreationem. Varro in lege Mænia.' ing love of Christ, the obedience of the spouse, the communicating of goods, the uniting of interests, the fruit of marriage, a celestial generation, a new creature; "Sacramentum hoc magnum est;""This is the sacramental mystery," represented by the holy rite of marriage; so that marriage is divine in its institution, sacred in its union, holy in the mystery, sacramental in its signification, honourable in its appellative, religious in its employments: it is advantage to the societies of men, and it is holiness to the Lord.' "Dico autem in Christo et ecclesia," "It must be in Christ and the church." If this be not observed, marriage loses its mysteriousness but because it is to effect much of that which it signifies, it concerns all that enter into those golden fetters to see that Christ and his church be in at every of its periods, and that it be entirely conducted and overruled by religion; for so the Apostle passes from the sacramental rite to the real duty; "Nevertheless," that is, although the former discourse were wholly to explicate the conjunction of Christ and his church by this similitude, yet it hath in it this real duty, "that the man love his wife, and the wife reverence her husband:" and this is the use we shall now make of it, the particulars of which precept I shall thus dispose: 1. I shall propound the duty as it generally relates to man and wife in conjunction. 2. The duty and power of the man. 3. The rights and privileges and the duty of the wife. 1. "In Christo et ecclesia;" that begins all, and there is great need it should be so for they that enter into a state of marriage, cast a die of the greatest contingency, and yet of the greatest interest in the world, next to the last throw for eternity. Νῦν γὰρ δὴ πάντεσσιν ἐπὶ ξυροῦ ἵσταται ἀκμῆς, Life or death, felicity or a lasting sorrow, are in the power of marriage. A woman indeed ventures most, for she hath no sanctuary to retire to from an evil husband; she must dwell upon her sorrow, and hatch the eggs which her own folly or infelicity hath produced; and she is more under it, because her tormentor hath a warrant of prerogative, and the woman may complain to God as subjects do of tyrant princes, but otherwise she hath no appeal in the causes of unkindness. b Il. K. 173. And though the man can run from many hours of his sadness, yet he must return to it again, and when he sits among his neighbours, he remembers the objection that lies in his bosom, and he sighs deeply. Ah tum te miserum, malique fati, Quem, attractis pedibus, patente porta, The boys, and the pedlars, and the fruiterers, shall tell of this man, when he is carried to his grave, that he lived and died a poor wretched person. The stags in the Greek epigram, whose knees were clogged with frozen snow upon the mountains, came down to the brooks of the valleys, xλižvai voteροῖς νάμασιν ὠκὺ γόνυ, " hoping to thaw their joints with the waters of the streamd;" but there the frost overtook them, and bound them fast in ice, till the young herdsmen took them in their stranger snare. It is the unhappy chance of many men, finding many inconveniences upon the mountains of single life, they descend into the valleys of marriage to refresh their troubles, and there they enter into fetters, and are bound to sorrow by the cords of a man's or woman's peevishness and the worst of the evil is, they are to thank their own follies; for they fell into the snare by entering an improper way: Christ and the church were no ingredients in their choice: but as the Indian women enter into folly for the price of an elephant, and think their crime warrantable; so do men and women change their liberty for a rich fortune (like Eriphyle the Argive, Ἡ χρυσὸν φίλου ἀνδρὸς idéaтоTunevтa, 'she preferred gold before a good man'), and shew themselves to be less than money, by overvaluing that to all the content and wise felicity of their lives: and when they have counted the money and their sorrows together, how willingly would they buy, with the loss of all that money, modesty, or sweet nature, to their relative! the odd thousand pounds would gladly be allowed in good nature and fair : e Catull. 15. 19. e d Brun. An. 2. 135. Αχεις ἂν ᾖς ἄγαμος, Νουμήνιε, πάντα δοκεῖ σοι Ἐν τῷ ζῆν εἶναι τἀγαθὰ τῶν ἀγαθῶν. Εἶθ ̓ ὅταν εἰσέλθῃ γαμετὴ, πάλιν εὐθὺ δοκεῖ σοι Ἐν τῷ ζῆν εἶναι πάντα κακῶν τὰ κακά. ̓Αλλὰ χάριν τέκνων, &c. f Non ego illam mihi dotem duco esse, quæ dos dicitur ; Sed pudicitiam, et pudorem, et sedatum cupidinem, Deum metum, parentum amorem, et cognatum concordiam. Plaut. in Amphit. 2. 2. 209. manners. As very a fool is he that chooses for beautyf principally; "cui sunt eruditi oculi, et stulta mens" (as one said), "whose eyes are witty, and their souls sensual;" it is an ill band of affections to tie two hearts together by a little thread of red and white. Οὐδεμίαν ησὶν ἡ τραγῳδία) * Ωνησε κάλλος εἰς πόσιν ξυνάορον. And they can love no longer but until the next ague comes; and they are fond of each other but at the chance of fancy, or the smallpox, or childbearing, or care, or time, or any thing that can destroy a pretty flowers. But it is the basest of all, when lust is the paranymph, and solicits the suit, and makes the contract, and joins the hands; for this is commonly the effect of the former, according to the Greek proverb; ̓Αλλ ἦτο πρώτιστα λέων γένετ' ηϋγένειος, Αὐτὰρ ἔπειτα δράκων, καὶ πάρδαλις, ἠδὲ μέγας σᾶς. At first for his fair cheeks and comely beard, the beast is taken for a lion, but at last he is turned to a dragon, or a leopard, or a swine.' That which is at first beauty on the face, may prove lust in the manners. Αὐτοῖς δὲ τοῖς θεοῖσι τὴν κέρκον μόνην Καὶ μηρὸν, ὥσπερ παιδερασταῖς, θύετε. So Eubulus wittily reprehended such impure contracts: they offer in their marital sacrifices nothing but the thigh, and that which the priests cut from the goats, when they were laid to bleed upon the altars. Ἐὰν εἰς κάλλος σώματος βλέψη τις (ὁ λόγος φησὶ, καὶ αὐτῷ ἡ σὰρξ εἶναι κατ ̓ ἐπιθυμίαν δόξῃ καλὴ, σαρκικῶς ἰδὼν, καὶ ἁμαρτηκὼς δι ̓ οὗ τεθαύμακε, κρίνεται, said St. Clement: "He or she that looks too curiously upon the beauty of the body, looks too low, and hath flesh and corruption in his heart, and is judged sensual and earthly in his affections and desires." Begin therefore with God, Christ is the president of marriage, and the Holy Ghost is the fountain of purities and chaste loves, and he joins the hearts; and therefore, let our first suit be in the court of heaven, and VOL. I. f Facies, non uxor amatur. 8 Tres rugæ subeant, et se cutis arida laxet, Fiant obscuri dentes, oculique minores, Collige sarcinulas (dicet libertus) et exi.' Juven. Sat. 6. h Od. 8. 456. S |