N07105:104
The well-ordered family
The well-ordered family: wherein the duties of it's [sic] various members are described and urged. A small, but very comprehensive piece, suitable to be in the hand of every householder [sic]; and may be especially seasonable in the present day. / By that eminently pious and learned divine, Mr. Isaac Ambrose, Minister of the Gospel at Preston. ; [Two lines from John]The well-ordered family: wherein the duties of it's [sic] various members are described and urged. A small, but very comprehensive piece, suitable to be in the hand of every housholder [sic]; and may be especially seasonable in the present day. / By that eminently pious and learned divine, Mr. Isaac Ambrose, Minister of the Gospel at Preston. ; [Two lines from John]
Boston: printed by S. Kneeland, 1762
The Well-Ordered Family. › Section 5: Of the Duties of the Husband and Wife.
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. Wives must be helpers to their Husbands. Now this Helpfulness consists in these Things:
1. That she be careful to preserve his Person, in Sickness or in Health, in Adversity, or Prosperity, in Youth or old Age.
A most memorable and famous Pattern for this Purpose, is recorded by ‡Vives: A young, tender, and beautiful Maid; was matched to a Man stricken in Years, whom after Marriage she found to have a very diseased Body, full ⟨p. 22⟩of loathful Diseases: yet notwithstanding, out of Sense and Conscience, that by God's Providence she was become his Wife, she most worthily digested all with incredible Patience: Friends and Physicians advised her by no Means to come near him; and for their Parts, they utterly forsook him; but she (passing by with a loving Disdain those unkind Dissuasions) becomes to him in their Stead, Friend, Physician, Nurse, Mother, Sister, Daughter, Servant, every Thing, any Thing to do him Good any manner of way. At last by extraordinary Expense, and excessive Charges about him, she came to some want of some Necessaries; whereupon she sold her Rings, Chains, richest Attire, Plate, and choicest Jewels: and when he was dead, and Friends came about her, rather to congratulate her happy Riddance, than to bewail her Widowhood; she not only abhorred all Speeches tending that Way, but protested, if it were possible, she would willingly redeem her Husband's Life with the loss of her five dearest Children. Whence it appears that this worthy Woman was wedded to her Husband's Soul, not to his Body; seeing no Infirmity or Deformity thereof, could cool or weaken the fervency of her Love.