A14992:51
A care-cloth
A care-cloth: or a treatise of the cumbers and troubles of marriage intended to advise them that may, to shun them; that may not, well and patiently to bear them. By William Whately, preacher of the word of God in Banbury, in Oxfordshire.A care-cloth: or a treatise of the cumbers and troubles of marriage intended to aduise them that may, to shun them; that may not, well and patiently to beare them. By William Whately, preacher of the word of God in Banbury, in Oxfordshire.
London: printed by Felix Kyngston for Thomas Man, 1624
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
CHAP. V. Containing the first use of the point.
CHAP. V. Containing the first vse of the point.
Use. 1 Now from this point, we have something to infer for the use of the unmarried,1 and also of the married. To the unmarried we have a double instruction: the first is this; that he prefer not a sinful single life, before a sinless marriage, as some have (foolishly and filthily) done, either our of a covetous mind, or of a licentious mind, or both. Many a man looking with an over-carnal eye, upon the troubles that attend matrimony, & considering the many adversities which do commonly tread upon the heels of this estate (whereof also we shall speak at large anon) do choose rather to poison their souls with the deadly poison of whoredom, then to be a little encumbered in this present life. But I pray you my brethren, be not so over-wary for your carnal ease: Take not leave to your selves to live in frequent pollutions and impurities, rather then in honest matrimony, for scare forsooth, of those divers inconveniences, with which marriage, because of sin, is usually accompanied. Marriage is no sin, whoredom ⟨p. 25⟩is. He that takes a wife, offends not God, endangers not himself to hardness of heart, and eternal damnation: but he which takes an harlot, or defileth himself with other pollutions, both provokes Gods wrath against himself, and also casts himself into the very pit of hell, so much as in him lieth. Wherefore if any mans necessity be such, that he cannot restrain his desires, nor keep his wishes within compass, but that in spite of all his earnest endeavours to the contrary, they work and boil within him, let him pray unto God, to make convenient provision for him, and embrace marriage with some misery, rather then sweet sin, that is to say, deadly poison, because it pleaseth in the taste. None inconveniences, none incumbrances, are answerable to the grievousness of sin. It is Gods wonderful goodness, that (knowing the temper and disposition of men in this kind) he hath debarred no man from this ordinance, but hath allowed them a remedy against sin, which it self is no sin. Remember the Apostles saying in this place, He that marries, sinneth not; and compare it with other disorders, which men fall into for want of marriage. He that commits fornication, sinneth; he that commits adultery, sinneth; he that defileth himself with other more unnatural commixtures, sinneth;