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JEREMY TAYLOR.

JEREMY TAYLOR was born at Cambridge, where his father was a barber, August 15, 1613. At thirteen he entered Caius College, took the degree of B.A. in 1631, was chosen fellow of his college, and at twenty-one he was ordained. On removing to London, Archbishop Laud assisted him in obtaining a fellowship at All Souls College, Oxford. Bishop Juxon appointed him to the living of Uppingham in 1637. During the Commonwealth he fared badly, as he was attached to the cause and fortunes of Charles I. He was made Bishop of Down and Connor at the Restoration, and in his office laboured unceasingly, until his death at Lisburne in 1667. His best known works are his Manual of Devotion, Holy Living and Dying, and his Sermons. These sermons display great learning, fine fancy, and a powerful imagination. They bristle with classical allusion, and display a spirituality of mind which was able to transfuse his great learning into the mould or shape which best suited his purpose at the time.

MARRIAGE,

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

He first indeed was

she has a signet upon His right hand. 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 ventor, 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:

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 infeli

city 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 objection 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.