Complete. From the “Holy State.”
SOME men have too much decried marriage. Give this holy estate her due, and then we shall find,
Though bachelors be the strongest stakes, married men are the best binders in the hedge of the commonwealth. ’Tis the policy of the Londoners, when they send a ship into the Levant or Mediterranean Sea, to make every mariner therein a merchant, each seaman adventuring somewhat of his own, which will make him more wary to avoid and more valiant to undergo dangers. Thus married men, especially if having posterity, are the deeper sharers in that state wherein they live, which engageth their affections to the greater loyalty.
It is the worst clandestine marriage when God is not invited to it. Wherefore beforehand beg his gracious assistance. Marriage shall prove no lottery to thee, when the hand of Providence chooseth for thee, who, if drawing a blank, can turn it into a prize, by sanctifying a bad wife unto thee.
Deceive not thyself by over-expecting happiness in the married state. Look not therein for contentment greater than God will give, or a creature in this world can receive, namely, to be free from all inconveniences. Marriage is not like the hill Olympus, δλος λαμπρός, wholly clear, without clouds. Yea, expect both wind and storm sometimes, which, when blown over, the air is the clearer and wholesomer for it. Make account of certain cares and troubles which will attend thee.
Remember the nightingales, which sing only some months in the spring, but commonly are silent when they have hatched their eggs, as if their mirth were turned into care for their young ones. Yet all the molestations of marriage are abundantly recompensed with other comforts which God bestoweth on them who make a wise choice of a wife, and observe the following rules:—
| Let grace and goodness be the principal loadstone of thy affections. For love which hath ends will have an end, whereas that which is founded in true virtue will always continue. Some hold it unhappy to be married with a diamond ring; perchance (if there be so much reason in their folly), because the diamond hinders the roundness of the ring, ending the infiniteness thereof, and seems to presage some termination in their love, which ought ever to endure, and so it will, when it is founded in religion. | |
| Neither choose all, nor not at all for beauty. A cried-up beauty makes more for her own praise than her husband’s profit. They tell us of a floating island in Scotland; but sure no wise pilot will cast anchor there, lest the land swim away with his ship. So are they served, and justly enough, who only fasten their love on fading beauty, and both fail together. | |
| Let there be no great disproportion in age. They that marry ancient people merely in expectation to bury them hang themselves in hope that one will come and cut the halter. | |
| Let wealth in its due distance be regarded. There be two towns in the land of Liego, called Bovins and Dinant, the inhabitants whereof bear almost an incredible hatred one to another, and yet, notwithstanding, their children usually marry together; and the reason is, because there is none other good town or wealthy place near them. Thus parents for a little pelf often marry their children to those whose persons they hate; and thus union betwixt families is not made, but the breach rather widened the more. |
