honour, and eat and drink in civil and fair measures, that themselves might not lose the reward of so much suffering, and of so good a relation, nor that which they value most be destroyed by drink. There are in the world a generation of men that are engaged in a cause which they glory in, and pride themselves in its relation and appellative but yet for that cause they will do nothing but talk and drink; they are valiant in wine, and witty in healths, and full of stratagem to promote debauchery; but such persons are not considerable in wise accounts. That which I deplore is, that some men prefer a cause before their life, and yet prefer wine before that cause, and by one drunken meeting set it more backward in its hopes and blessings than it can be set forward by the counsels and arms of a whole year. God hath ways enough to reward a truth without crowning it with success in the hands of such men. In the meantime they dishonour religion, and make truth be evil spoken of, and innocent persons to suffer by their very relation, and the cause of God to be reproached in the sentences of erring and abusing people; and themselves lose their health and their reason, their honour and their peace, the rewards of sober counsels, and the wholesome effects of wisdom. Arcanum neque tu scrutaberis illius unquam; Wine discovers more than the rack, and he that will be drunk is not a person fit to be trusted and though it cannot be expected men should be kinder to their friend or their prince or their honour, than to God and to their own souls and to their own bodies; yet when men are not moved by what is sensible and material, by that which smarts and shames presently, they are beyond the cure of religion and the hopes of reason; and therefore they must "lie in hell like sheep, death gnawing upon them, and the righteous shall have dominion over them in the morning"" of the resurrection. Seras tutior ibis ad lucernas: Hæc hora est tua, cum furit Lyæus, Cum regnat rosa, cum madent capilli▾. Much safer it is to go to the severities of a watchful and a sober life; for all that time of life is lost, when wine, and rage, and pleasure, and folly, steal away the heart of a man, and make him go singing to his grave. I end with the saying of a wise man*, 'He is fit to sit at the table of the Lord, and to feast with saints, who moderately uses the creatures which God hath given him; but he that despises even lawful pleasures, οὐ μόνον συμπότης τῶν θεῶν ἀλλὰ καὶ συνάρχων, shall not only sit and feast with God, but reign together with Him, and partake of His glorious kingdom.' SERMON XVII. THE MARRIAGE RING; OR, THE MYSTERIOUSNESS AND DUTIES OF MARRIAGE. 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. · Εξεις, Νουμήνιε, τέκνα, Χάλκον ἔχων· πτωχὸς δ ̓ οὐδὲ τὰ τέκνα φιλεῖ· 8 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 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 grandchildren 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 y Quemlibet hominem cui non est uxor minime esse hominem, cum etiam in scriptura dicatur, 'Masculum et fœminam creavit eos, et vocavit nomen eorum Adam, seu hominem,' R. Eliezer dixit in Gem. Bab. [Ad tit. Jabimoth, cap. 6. fol. 63 a; apud Selden. de Jur. natur., lib. v. cap. 3.] Quicunque negligit præceptum de multiplicatione humani generis, habendum esse veluti homicidam. -[Idem, ibid.] z [Lucil. num. cxxi. in Anthol. tom. iii. p. 53.] 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 grandmother 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 marriage 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 domestic 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, dià Tǹv éveotŵσav áváyKnub, for the present and then incumbent necessities,' and in order to the advantages which did accrue to the public ministries and private piety. "There are some," said our blessed Lord", "who make themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven," that is, for the advantages and the ministry of the gospel; non ad vitæ bona meritum, as St. Austin in the like case; not that it is a better service of God in itselff, but that it is useful to the first circumstances of the gospel and the infancy of the kingdom, because the unmarried person does μεριμνᾷν τὰ τοῦ κυρίους, is apt to spiritual and ecclesiastical employments:' first äytos, and then aytacóuevos, holy in his own person, and then sanctified to public ministries; and it was also of ease to the Christians themselves, because as then it was, when d [Matt. xix. 12.] Christiani; et apud Athenas TÈS TOÛ ἀγαμίου καὶ ὀψιγαμίου δίκας refert Julius Pollux, lib. iii. [cap. 3. segm. 48.] repl àyάuwv. Idem etiam Lacedæmone, et Romæ; vide Festum, verb. • Uxorium, [p. 305.] atque ibi Jos. Scal. [p. 200.] [1 Cor. vii. 26.] e Etiam Judæi, qui præceptum esse viris TaidoToLev aiunt, uno ore concedunt tamen dispensatum esse cum iis qui assiduo legis studio vacare volunt, alias etiam immunibus ab acriori carnis stimulo.-Maimon, cap. 15. Halach Ishoth. -[Apud Selden. ut in pag. præced.] [De bono conjug., cap. xviii. § 21. tom. vi. col. 332.] · Οὐ ψέγω δὲ τοὺς λοιποὺς μακαρίους, ὅτι γάμοις προσωμίλησαν, ὧν ἐμνήσθην ἄρτι εὔχομαι γὰρ ἄξιος Θεοῦ εὑρεθεὶς πρὸς τοῖς ἴχνεσιν αὐτῶν εὑρεθῆναι ἐν τῇ βασιλείᾳ ὡς ̓Αβραὰμ, καὶ Ἰσαὰκ, καὶ Ἰακώβ, ὡς Ἰωσὴφ, καὶ Ἰσαίου καὶ τῶν ἄλλων προφητῶν, ὡς Πέτρου καὶ Παύλου, καὶ τῶν ἄλλων ἀποOTÓλWV, &c.-[S. Ignat.] epist. [interp.] ad Philadelph. [§ 4.] [1 Cor. vii. 34.] they were to flee, and to flee for aught they 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, θλίψιν τῇ σαρκὶ ἕξουσιν οἱ τοιοῦτοι, 'such shall have 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 counsel, ἐγὼ δὲ ὑμῖν φείδομαι, 'I do this to spare you,' and, féλw vμâs àμepíμvovs eiva1: 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 exív év oapki, 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.' But in this first interval, the public necessity and the private zeal mingling together did sometimes overact 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. For when Flavia Domitillam 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 SusannaP 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 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 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 himselft 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 unactive 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 Túpwois, '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 • Ως Πέτρου καὶ Παύλου καὶ τῶν ἄλλων ἀποστόλων τῶν γάμοις προσομιλησάντων, οὐκ ὑπὸ προθυμίας δὲ τῆς περὶ τὸ πρᾶγμα, ἀλλ ̓ ἐπ' ἐννοίας ἑαυτῶν τοῦ γένους ἔσχον EKEívovs. Ignatius, epist. ad Philadelph. [§ 4.] Et Clemens idem ait apud Eusebium Hist. Eccl., lib. iii. [cap. 30. p. 124.] "Sed tamen eam non circumduxit sicut Petrus:" probat autem ex Philip. iv. u (Heb. xiii. 4.] [Tobit v. sqq.] [See Life of Christ, part i. sec. 1. § 6. vol. ii. p. 53.] |