of religion, which was increased by the occasion of some pious persons renouncing their contract of marriage, not consummate, with believers. For when Flavia Domitilla, being converted by Nereus and Achilleus, the eunuchs, refused to marry Aurelianus, to whom she was contracted, if there were not some little envy and too sharp hostility in the eunuchs to a married state, yet Aurelianus thought himself an injured person, and caused St Clemens, who veiled her, and his spouse both, to die in the quarrel. St Thecla, being converted by St Paul, grew so in love with virginity, that she leaped back from the marriage of Tamyris, where she was lately engaged. St Iphigenia denied to marry King Hyrtacus, and it is said to be done by the advice of St Matthew. And Susanna, the niece of Dioclesian, refused the love of Maximianus the emperor; and these all had been betrothed; and so did St Agnes and St Felicula, and divers others then and afterward; insomuch that it was reported among the Gentiles that the Christians did not only hate all that were not of their persuasion, but were enemies of the chaste laws of marriage; and, indeed, some that were called Christians were so, "forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from meats." On this occasion it grew necessary for the apostle to state the question right, and to do honour to the holy rite of marriage, and to snatch the mystery from the hands of zeal and folly, and to place it in Christ's right hand, that all its beauties might appear, and a present convenience might not bring in a false doctrine, and a perpetual sin, and an intolerable mischief. The apostle, therefore, who himself had been a married man, but was now a widower, does explicate the mysteriousness of it, and describes its honours, and adorns it with rules and provisions of religion, that, as it begins with honour, so it may proceed with piety, and end with glory.

For although single life hath in it privacy and simplicity of affairs, such solitariness and sorrow, such leisure and inactive circumstances of living, that there are more spaces for religion if men would use them to these purposes; and because it may have in it much religion and prayers, and must have in it a perfect mortification of our strongest appetites, it is therefore a state of great excellency; yet concerning the state of marriage we are taught from Scripture and the sayings of wise men, great things and honourable. "Marriage is honourable in all men;" so is not single life, for in some it is a snare and a πúpwois, "a trouble in the flesh," a prison of unruly desires, which is attempted daily to be broken. Celibate or single life is never commanded, but, in some cases, marriage is, and he that burns sins often if he marries not; he that cannot contain must marry, and he that can contain is not tied to a single life, but may marry and not sin. Marriage was ordained by God, instituted in Paradise, was the relief of a natural necessity,

and the first blessing from the Lord. He gave to man not a friend, but a wife; that is, a friend and a wife too; for a good woman is in her soul the same that a man is, and she is a woman only in her body, that she may have the excellency of the one, and the usefulness of the other, and become amiable in both. It is the seminary of the Church, and daily brings forth sons and daughters unto God; it was ministered to by angels, and Raphael waited upon a young man that he might have a blessed marriage, and that that marriage might repair two sad families, and bless all their relatives. Our blessed Lord, though He was born of a maiden, yet she was veiled under the cover of marriage, and she was married to a widower; for Joseph, the supposed father of our Lord, had children by a former wife. 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 it is supported by all the 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 its 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.

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; "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 exceeding 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. "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 employment; it is advantage to the societies of men, and it is "holiness to the Lord." "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. 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 from an evil husband, she must dwell on 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. 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 objec tion that lies in his bosom, and he sighs deeply.

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 in the mountains, came down to the brooks of the valleys, "hoping to thaw their joints with the waters of the stream;" but there the frost overtook them, and bound them fast in ice, till the young herdsmen took them in their stronger 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, "she preferred gold before a good man"), and show 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 manners. As very a fool is he

that chooses for beauty 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 by a little thread of red and white, 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, anything that can destroy a pretty flower. 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, "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; 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. "He or she that looks too curiously on 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 with designs of piety, or safety, or charity; let no impure spirit defile the virgin purities and "castifications of the soul," as St Peter's phrase is; let all such contracts begin with religious affections. "We sometimes beg of God for a wife or a child; and He alone knows what the wife shall prove, and by what dispositions and manners, and into what fortune that child shall enter;" but we shall not need to fear concerning the event of it, if religion, and fair intentions, and prudence, manage and conduct it all the way. The preservation of a family, the production of children, the avoiding fornication, the refreshment of our sorrows by the comforts of society; all these are fair ends of marriage and hallow the entrance: but in these there is a special order; society was the first designed, "It is not good for man to be alone;" children was the next, "Increase and multiply;" but the avoiding fornication came in by the superfotation of the evil accidents of the world. The first makes marriage delectable, the second necessary to the public, the third necessary to the particular. This is for safety, for life, and Heaven itself, the other have in them joy and a portion of immortality. The first makes the man's heart glad; the second is the friend of kingdoms, and cities, and families; and the third is the enemy to hell, and an antidote of the chiefest inlet to damnation. But of all these the noblest end is the multiplying of children. "It is religion," said Varro, "to marry for children." And therefore St Ignatius, when

he had spoken of Elias, and Titus, and Clement, with an honourable mention of their virgin state, lest he might seem to have lessened the married apostles, at whose feet in Christ's kingdom he thought himself unworthy to sit, he gives this testimony; they were secured "by not marrying to satisfy their lower appetites, but out of desire of children." Other considerations, if they be incident and by way of appendage, are also considerable in the accounts of prudence; but when they become principals, they defile the mystery, and make the blessing doubtful. "Love is a fair inducement," said Afranius, "but desire and appetite are rude, and the characterisms of a sensual person; to love belongs to a just and a good man, but to lust, or furiously and passionately to desire, is the sign of impotency and an unruly mind."

2. Man and wife are equally concerned to avoid all offences of each other in the beginning of their conversation: every little thing can blast an infant blossom; and the breath of the south can shake the little rings of the vine when first they begin to curl like the locks of a newweaned boy; but when by age and consolidation they stiffen into the hardness of a stem, and have by the warm embraces of the sun and the kisses of heaven brought forth their clusters, they can endure the storms of the north and the loud noises of a tempest, and yet never be broken; so are the early unions of an unfixed marriage; watchful and observant, jealous and busy, inquisitive and careful, and apt to take alarm at every unkind word. For infirmities do not manifest themselves in the first scenes, but in the succession of a long society; and it is not chance or weakness when it appears at first, but it is want of love or prudence, or it will be so expounded; and that which appears ill at first usually affrights the inexperienced man or woman, who makes unequal conjectures, and fancies mighty sorrows by the proportions of the new and early unkindness. It is a very great passion, or a huge folly, or a certain want of love, that cannot preserve the colours and beauties of kindness so long as public honesty requires man to wear their sorrows for the death of a friend. Plutarch compares a new marriage to a vessel before the hoops are on: "everything dissolves their tender compaginations ;" but "when the joints are stiffened and are tied by a firm compliance and proportioned bending, scarcely can it be dissolved without fire or the violence of iron." After the hearts of the man and the wife are endeared and hardened by a mutual confidence, and an experience longer than artifice and pretence can last, there are a great many remembrances, and some things present, that dash all little unkindnesses in pieces. The little boy in the Greek epigram that was creeping down a precipice, was invited to his safety by the sight of his mother's pap when nothing else could entice him to return; and the

bond of common children, and the sight of her that nurses what is most dear to him, and the endearments of each other in the course of a long society, and the same relation, is an excellent security to redintegrate and to call that love back which folly and trifling accidents would disturb. When it is come thus far, it is hard untwisting the knot; but be careful in its first coalition that there be no rudeness done, for if there be, it will for ever after be apt to start and to be diseased.

3. Let man and wife be careful to stifle little things, that as fast as they spring they be cut down and trod on; for if they be suffered to grow by numbers, they make the spirit peevish, and the society troublesome, and the affections loose and easy by an habitual aversation. Some men are more vexed with a fly than with a wound; and when the gnats disturb our sleep, and the reason is disquieted, but not perfectly awakened, it is often seen that he is fuller of trouble than if in the daylight of his reason he were to contest with a potent enemy. In the frequent little accidents of a family, a man's reason cannot always be awake; and when his discourses are imperfect, and a trifling trouble makes him yet more restless, he is soon betrayed to the violence of passion. It is certain that the man or woman are in a state of weakness and folly then when they can be troubled with a trifling accident, and therefore it is not good to tempt their affections when they are in that state of danger. In this case, the caution is to subtract fuel from the sudden flame; for stubble, though it be quickly kindled, yet it is as soon extinguished if it be not blown by a pertinacious breath, or fed with new materials. Add no new provocations to the accident, and do not inflame this, and peace will soon return, and the discontent will pass away soon as the sparks from the collision of a flint: ever remembering that discontents proceeding from daily little things do breed a secret undiscernible disease which is more dangerous than a fever proceeding from a discerned notorious surfeit.

4. Let them be sure to abstain from all those things which by experience and observation they find to be contrary to each other. They that govern elephants never appear before them in white, and the masters of bulls keep from them all garments of blood and scarlet, as knowing that they will be impatient of civil usages and discipline when their natures are provoked by their proper antipathies. The ancients in their marital hieroglyphics used to depict Mercury standing by Venus, to signify that by fair language and sweet entreaties the minds of each other should be united; and hard by them Suadam et Gratias descripserunt, they would have all deliciousness of manners, compliance and mutual observance to abide.

5. Let the husband and wife infinitely avoid a curious distinction of mine and thine, for this

hath caused all the laws, and all the suits, and all the wars in the world; let them who have but one person have also but one interest. The husband and wife are heirs to each other, as Dionysius Halicarnasseus relates from Romulus, if they die without children; but if there be children, the wife is Toîs Taiol lobμoipos, "a partner in the inheritance;" but during their life the use and employment is common to both their necessities, and in this there is no other difference of right but that the man hath the dispensation of all, and may keep it from his wife, just as the governor of a town may keep it from the right owner-he hath the power, but no right to do so. And when either of them begins to impropriate, it is like a tumour in the flesh, it draws more than its share, but what it feeds on turns to a boil. And therefore the Romans forbade any donations to be made between man and wife, because neither of them could transfer a new right of those things which already they had in common; but this is to be understood only concerning the uses of necessity and personal conveniences, for so all may be the woman's and all may be the man's, in several regards. Corvinus dwells in a farm and receives all its profits, and reaps and sows as he pleases, and eats of the corn and drinks of the wine; it is his own, but all that also is his lord's, and for it Corvinus pays acknowledgment, and his patron hath such powers and uses of it as are proper to the lords; and yet for all this it may be the king's too, to all the purposes that he can need, and is all to be accounted in the census, and for certain services and times of danger; so are the riches of a family, they are a woman's as well as a man's; they are hers for need, and hers for ornament, and hers for modest delight, and for the uses of religion and prudent charity; but the disposing them into portions of inheritance, the assignation of charges and governments, stipends and rewards, annuities and greater donatives, are the reserves of the superior right, and not to be invaded by the under-possessors. But in those things where they ought to be common, if the spleen or the belly swells, and draws into its capacity much of that which should be spent on those parts which have an equal right to be maintained, it is a dropsy or a consumption of the whole, something that is evil because it is unnatural and monstrous. Macarius, in his thirty-second homily, speaks fully in this parti cular; a woman betrothed to a man bears all her portion, and with a mighty love pours it into the hands of her husband, and says, "I have nothing of my own;" my goods, my portion, my body, and my mind are yours. "All that a woman hath is reckoned to the right of her husband; not her wealth and her person only, but her reputation and her praise;" so Lucian. But as the earth, the mother of all creatures here below, sends up all its vapours and proper emissions at the command of the sun, and yet requires them