A25478:1825
A supplement to The Morning-exercise at Cripple-Gate, or, Several more cases of conscience practically…
A supplement to The Morning-exercise at Cripple-Gate, or, Several more cases of conscience practically resolved by sundry ministers
London: printed for Thomas Cockerill, 1676
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.
2. This Love must be right for the Extent of it; I mean it reaches the whole Person, both Soul and Body. Every man should choose such an one, whose outward features and proportion he can highly esteem and affect; and it speaks the admirable Wisdom of God to frame such variety of fancies to answer the variety of persons, and there being such choice, it is sottish folly to choose where a man cannot love, and the greatest Injury possible to the wife, to ensnare her heart, and bind her to one that shall afterwards say, he cannot love her. But besides this, true Conjugal Love to a Wife reaches her Soul; So as to see an amiableness in her mind and disposition, so as to study how to polish her Soul more and more with wisdom and piety, and to endeavour that her Soul may prosper as her body prospers.
2. This Love must be right for the Extent of it; I mean it reaches the whole Person, both Soul and Body. Every man should choose such an one, whose outward features and proportion he can highly esteem and affect; and it speaks the admirable Wisdom of God to frame such variety of fancies to answer the variety of persons, and there being such choice, it is sottish folly to choose where a man cannot love, and the greatest Injury possible to the wife, to insnare her heart, and bind her to one that shall afterwards say, he cannot love her. But besides this, true Conjugal Love to a Wife reaches her Soul; So as to see an amiableness in her mind and disposition, so as to study how to polish her Soul more and more with wisdom and piety, and to indeavour that her Soul may prosper as her body prospers.
3. Right for the Degree of it. It must be transcendent, above your Love to Parents: For this cause shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave to his Wife, Gen. 2.24. The Husband must honour his Parents, but he must love his Wife as himself, and must (yet with all prudence) prefer her in his respects, when ever they come in Competition; and those Parents have forgotten the Relation and Duty of an husband that expect other from their Children, when they are married: And so he must prefer her in his affection before his Children, and