SERMON XVII.

THE MARRIAGE RING;

OR,

THE MYSTERIOUSNESS AND DUTIES OF MARRIAGE.

PART I.

EPHES. V. 32, 33.

This is a great Mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the Church. Nevertheless, let every one of you in particular so love his Wife even as himself, and the Wife see that she reverence her Husband.

THE first blessing God gave to man, was society; and that society was a marriage, and that marriage was confederate by God himself, and hallowed by a blessing and at the same time, and for very many descending ages, not only by the instinct of nature, but by a superadded forwardness, (God himself inspiring the desire,)* the world was most desirous of children, impatient of barrenness, accounting single life a curse, and a childless person hated by God. The world was rich and empty, and able to provide for a more numerous posterity than it had.

* Quemlibet hominem cui non est uxor, minime esse hominem ; cum etiam in scriptura dicatur, masculum et foeminam creavit eos, et vocavit nomen eorum Adam, seu hominem. R. Eliezer dixit in Gem. Bab. quicunque negligit praeceptum de multiplicatione humani generis, habendum esse veluti homicidam.

You that are rich, Numenius, you may multiply your family; poor men are not so fond of children, but when a family could drive their herds, and set a their children upon camels, and lead them till they saw a fat soil watered with rivers, and there sit down without paying rent, they thought of nothing but to have great families, that their own relations might swell up to a patriarchate, and their children be enough to possess all the regions that they saw, and their grand-children become princes, and themselves build cities and call them by the name of a child, and become the fountain of a nation. This was the consequent of the first blessing, increase and multiply. The next blessing was, the promise of the Messias, and that also increased in men and women a wonderful desire of marriage: for as soon as God had chosen the family of Abraham to be the blessed line, from whence the world's Redeemer should descend according to the flesh, every of his daughters hoped to have the honour to be his mother, or his grand-mother, or something of his kindred and to be childless in Israel was a sorrow to the Hebrew women, great as the slavery of Egypt, or their dishonours in the land of their captivity.*

But when the Messias was come, and the doctrine was published, and his ministers but few, and his disciples were to suffer persecution, and to be of an unsettled dwelling, and the nation of the Jews, in the bosom and society of which the church especially did dwell, were to be scattered and broken all in pieces with fierce calamities, and the world was apt to calumniate and to suspect and dishonour Christians upon pretences and unreasonable jealousies, and that to all these purposes the state of mar

* Christiani et apud Athenas, τας του αγαμίου και οψιγαμιου δικας refert Julius Pollux, lib. iii. meg azaμav. Idem etiam Lacedaemoniae et Romae. Vide Festum, verb. uxorium, atque ibi Jos. Scal.

riage brought many inconveniences; it pleased God in this new creation to inspire into the hearts of his servants a disposition and strong desires to live a single life, lest the state of marriage should in that conjunction of things become an accidental impediment to the dissemination of the gospel, which called men from a confinement in their domestick charges, to travel, and flight, and poverty, and difficulty, and martyrdom: upon this necessity the Apostles and apostolical men published doctrines, declaring the advantages of single life, not by any commandment of the Lord, but by the spirit of prudence, δια την ενεστωσαν ανάγκην, for the present and then incumbent necessities, and in order to the advantages which did accrue to the publick ministeries and private piety. There are some (said our blessed Lord) who makes themselves eunuchs* for the kingdom of heaven; that is, for the advantages and the ministry of the gospel, non ad vitae bonae meritum, (as St. Austin in the like case;) not that it is a better service of God in itself, but that it is useful to the first circumstances of the gospel and the infancy of the kingdom,t because the unmarried person does μεριμναν τα του κυρίου, is apt to spiritual and ecclesiastical employments; first, and then ay, holy in his own person, and then sanctified to publick ministries; and it was also of ease to the Christians themselves, because as then it was, when they were to flee, and to flee, for aught they

* Etiam Judaei, qui praeceptum esse viris adorov aiunt, uno ore concedunt, tamen dispensa um esse cum iis qui assiduo legis studio

vacare volun., alias etiam immunibus ab acriori carnis stimulo.—Maimon. xv. Halach. Ishoth.

† Ου ψέγω δε τους λοιπούς μακαρίους ; ὅτι γαμοις προσωμίλησαν ὧν εμνήσθην αρτια ευχή και γαρ άξιος θεου ευρεθείς προς τοις ίχνεσιν αυτών ευρεθήναι εν τη βασι λεια, ὡς Αβρααμ, και Ισαακ, και Ιακωβ, ως "Ιωσιφ, και εσαίου και των άλλων προφήτων, ὡς Πετρου, και Παύλου, και των άλλων αποστολων, etc.-Epist. ad Philadelph.

knew, in winter, and they were persecuted to the four winds of heaven; and the nurses and the women with child were to suffer a heavier load of sorrow because of the imminent persecutions; and above all, because of the great fatality of ruin upon the whole nation of the Jews, well it might be said by St. Paul ter Ty cage iwon of rara, such shall have θλιψιν τη σαρκι έξουσιν τοιούτοι, trouble in the flesh; that is, they that are married shall, and so at that time they had: and therefore it was an act of charity to the Christians to give that council de iper oud was, I do this to spare you, εγω δε ύμιν φειδ μαί, and as ques: for when the case was altered, and that storm was over, and the first necessities of the gospel served, and the sound was gone out into all nations; in very many persons it was wholly changed, and not the married but the unmarried had og trouble in the flesh; and the state of marriage returned to its first blessing, et non erat bonum homini esse solitarium, and it was not good for man to be alone.

For

But in this first interval, the publick necessity and the private zeal mingling together, did sometimes over-act their love of single life, even to the disparagement of marriage, and to the scandal of religion; which was increased by the occasion of some pious persons renouncing their contract of marriage, not consummate, with unbelievers. 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 Hirtacus, and it is said to be done by the advice of St. Matthew. And Susanna the niece of Diocletian refused the love of Maximianus the emperour; and these all had been betrothed; and so did St. Agnes, and St. Felicula, and divers others then and afterwards; 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. Upon this occasion it grew necessary for the Apostle to state the question right, and to do honour to the holy right 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 misteriousness 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, is

Ως Πέτρου και Παύλου και των ̓Αποστολων των γαμοις προσομιλησαντων ουκ υπο προσθυμίας της περί το πράγμα αλλ' επ' έννοιας έαντων του γένους έσχον εκείνους. Ignatius epistol. ad Philadelph. Et Clemens idem ait apud Eusebium hist. eccles. lib. iii. sed tamen eam non circumduxit sicut Petrus : probat autem ex Philip. 4.