N00500:151
Ornaments for the daughters of Zion. Or The character and happiness of a virtuous…Ornaments for the daughters of Zion. Or The character and happiness of a vertuous…
Ornaments for the daughters of Zion. Or The character and happiness of a virtuous woman: in a discourse which directs the female-sex how to express, the fear of God, in every age and state of their life; and obtain both temporal and eternal blessedness. / Written by Cotton Mather ; [Four lines in Latin from Tertullian, followed by a six line translation into English]Ornaments for the daughters of Zion. Or The character and happiness of a vertuous woman: in a discourse which directs the female-sex how to express, the fear of God, in every age and state of their life; and obtain both temporal and eternal blessedness. / Written by Cotton Mather ; [Four lines in Latin from Tertullian, followed by a six line translation into English]
printed by S.G. & B.G. i.e for Samuel Phillips, 1692
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.
IV. She is not Forward and Hasty now to Take the Liberty, which the Scripture does Give unto Younger Widows; that is, to Marry. While she has one Eye Weeping for her Departed Husband, she has not the other open to see, Who comes next? nor will she think an Ephesian Matron, a fit Copy for her. She counts it no ha•d Law, which even the Ancient Pagans kept with great Severity▪ That no Widow should Marry within Ten or Twelve Months after the Death of her Husband; and she wonders ⟨p. 102⟩that any Christians ordinarily can, Marry sooner. If she had a Good Husband, his Memory has been so Embalmed with her, that •he cannot presently make a Room in her Affections for another. If she had a Bad Husband, the Cross felt so heavy, that she will be Slow to be Sure, that it been't Renewed upon her▪ But if after a convenient stay she do Marry, it shall be, Only in the Lord, Unto a Man that shall be neither Heretical in his principles, nor Exorbitant in his practices; and unto one that may be proper f•r her. Wherefore also if she be very Old, She will not without special Causes, marry one that is very Young; suspecting that such a pretended Lover m•y Count Hers more than H•r, and that if there be too much (as perhaps a s•o•• of Years) Inequality in Age ▪ i• may otherwise Prove as Temptations▪ as it Looks indecent. Indeed Jerome •ells us, of an Old man at Rome, who had Buried Twenty Wives, which he took one after the Death of t'other; and that he then took the Twenty first, who also had Buried Nineteen Husbands; but methinks, They were an, Ugly Couple. And the Woman whereof Baxtorf […] his Talmudic Lexicon, that she Bu•ied Eleven Husbands, and had then an Epitaph of Eleven V•rss bestowed upon her self deserved sure the lst stroke of her Epitaph, which was to this purpose, A Woman fit to have No B but a Cld Grave.