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

We indeed live in an age wherein there is much complaint by many wealthy Parents, that though they like well of this grand rule, yet they know not where to have suitable matches ⟨p. 425⟩for their children, especially of the female sex. I confess there is too much ground for this lamentation: The Lord remove it! Yet I may with submission, not being solicitous to please man, but my Lord and Master ^(r)put these complainants in mind of what hath been observed by another before me: That Persons of quality and estate, likely have in one respect a greater advantage than others, in that they have a greater latitude of choice amongst those who are in estate below them: So that of religious, prudent, and suitable persons, they may choose almost whom they please. But the truth is, many Parents who sit at the upper end of the world, though they profess Religion, they are too often so biassed with the love of this world, that marrying to the very height of their estate, hath the casting vote, and so they bestow their pious, hopeful children, upon persons in whom they have no probable positive evidence of real godliness and sobriety; or on such who are not comparably so virtuous, as others they might have more religious, prudent, and desirable, who upon conjuncture of Estates, would be abundantly well accommodated for a comfortable and cheerful livelihood: When alas! some of them are so swayed by carnal motives, that (as one saith^†) they marry (their children to) a swine, for a golden trough; they prefer temporals to spirituals and eternals; riches and honour, or comeliness, to virtue and godliness, and take one that is at enmity with God^(s), into the nearest and strictest league of amity with those they are obliged to love best. And thence it comes to pass that in succeeding generations, by unequal mixture of the holy seed with the profane^(t), there is such a decay of piety (as at this day) amongst those sprung (on one side) from worthy Progenitors; being much like those of the old world, who defiled the face of the earth with an unblest generation, which so grieved the Almighty, that after he had given the inhabitants fair warning by the preacher of righteousness