A14992:72
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.
Take notice then of the true cause of all the cumbers,1 which encumber married people; and secondly, let me inform you also, at least of some, and the chief troubles of marriage, which you must know, that you may expect them; and ⟨p. 43⟩expect them, that you may prepare for them; and prepare for them, that you may not be made impatient by them; and by impatience, make them much more cumbrous, then else they need to be. These do all arise from four main heads: The persons married, their children, their servants, and their estates; of all which a man might spend more then four days in speaking, it taking counsel of experience, he would borrow a little help of Rhetoric, to set out the matters to the full; but I will alone touch them, and away. Every man and woman have their faults: those will breed trouble: they may be sick, and that is another trouble: one of the two die first, and leave the other behind, and that is to some the worst of all troubles. In the souls of men there breed vices; in their bodies, diseases; and at last, death; and the fruit of all these must needs be grief and sorrow each to other. Some men are churlish, sour, & unkind; some, wrathful, passionate, and furious; some hard, miserable, and niggardly; some wasteful, riotous, and unthrifty; some unclean, unsatiable, and ranging after other women; some suspicious, mistrustful, and jealous of their own wives; some rash and hare-brained; some fond and giddy; some simple; some subtle; some idle; some toilsome; some carking; some careless; yea, twenty, and twice twenty sinful and offending dispositions, show themselves in all the sons of Adam; and what woman can meet with a man in all the world, in whom ⟨p. 44⟩some or other of these disorders do not dwell? Nature and education may hide them out of the way, that they shall not be seen; Grace and sanctification may in part subdue them, that they shall not reign: but neither nature, nor grace, shall quite and clean abolish them, that they shall not be; and to obtain an husband free from all of them (yea, not subject to more then one, two, or three of them,) it is altogether impossible;
Take notice then of the true cause of all the cumbers,1