A supplement to The Morning-exercise at Cripple-Gate, or, Several more cases of conscience practically…

4. The Husbands love must be right for the Duration of it. And the last named Scripture clears that; be thou always ravished with her love. Not only kind before other folk, and then cold in private, but always: not for a week or month or the first year, but while life lasts. Yea, as he hath experience of her virtue and sweetness, his love should daily^(m) increase: as you know we love any creature the more, by how much the longer we have had them; and nothing more betrays the baseness of a mans spirit, then to neglect his Wife, when his sensual appetite is once cloyed. For you have had her beauty and strength, why should you not also have her wrinkles and infirmities, yea and give the more respect to her tried fidelity? However this is certain, still you are one Flesh, and every man continues kind to his own flesh, how infirm ⟨p. 372⟩and noisome soever it be. And if there be less comeliness in the body, yet usually there is more beauty in the mind, more wisdom, humility, and fear of the Lord; so that still there are sufficient Arguments in her, or Arguments in the Bible to perpetuate your conjugal Affection.

4. The Husbands love must be right for the Duration of it. And the last named Scripture clears that; be thou always ravisht with her love. Not only kind before other folk, and then cold in private, but always: not for a week or moneth or the first year, but while life lasts. Yea, as he hath experience of her vertue and sweetness, his love should daily^(m) increase: as you know we love any creature the more, by how much the longer we have had them; and nothing more betrays the baseness of a mans spirit, then to neglect his Wife, when his sensual appetite is once cloyed. For you have had her beauty and strength, why should you not also have her wrinkles and infirmities, yea and give the more respect to her tryed fidelity? However this is certain, still you are one Flesh, and every man continues kind to his own flesh, how infirm ⟨p. 372⟩and noysom soever it be. And if there be less comliness in the body, yet usually there is more beauty in the mind, more wisdom, humility, and fear of the Lord; so that still there are sufficient Arguments in her, or Arguments in the Bible to perpetuate your conjugal Affection.