without this addition of a woman? Quanto congruentius, said St. Augustine; How much more conveniently might two friends live together, than a man and a woman? God doth not then say, non bonum homini, man got not so much by the bargain, (especially if we consider how that wife carried herself towards him) but that for his particular, he had been better alone: nor he does not say now, non bonum hunc hominem esse solum, it is not good for any man to be alone; for, Qui potest capere capiat, says Christ: He that is able to receive it, let him receive it. What? That some make themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven': that is, the better to unentangle themselves from those impediments, which hinder them in the way to heaven, they abstain from marriage; and let them that can receive it, receive it. Now certainly few try whether they can receive this, or no. Few strive, few fast, few pray for the gift of continency; few are content with that incontinency which they have, but are sorry they can express no more incontinency. There is a use of marriage now, which God never thought of in the first institution of marriage; that it is a remedy against burning. The two main uses of marriage, which are propagation of children, and mutual assistance, were intended by God, at the present, at first; but the third, is a remedy against that, which was not then; for then there was no inordinateness, no irregularity in the affections of man. And experience hath taught us now, that those climates which are in reputation, hottest, are not uninhabitable; they may be dwelt in for all their heat. Even now, in the corruption of our nature, the clime is not so hot, as that every one must of necessity, marry. There may be fire in the house, and yet the house not on fire: there may be a distemper of heat, and yet no necessity to let blood. The Roman church injures us, when they say, that we prefer marriage before virginity and they injure the whole state of Christianity, when they oppose marriage and chastity, as though they were incompatible, and might not consist together. They may; for marriage is honourable, and the bed undefiled; and therefore it may be so. St. Augustine observes in marriage, Bonum fidei, a trial of one another's truth; and that is good; and bonum prolis, a lawful : means of propagation; and that is good; and bonum sacramenti, a mystical representation of that union of two natures in Christ, and of him to us, and to his church, and that is good too. So that there are divers degrees of good in marriage. But yet for all these goodnesses, God does not say, non bonum, it is not good for any man to be alone, but qui capere potest capiat; according to Christ's comment upon his Father's text, He that can contain, and continue alone, let him do so. But though God do not say, non homini, it is not good for the man, that he be alone, nor quemvis hominem, it is not good for every man to be alone, yet, considering his general purpose upon all the world, by man, he says non bonum; for that end, it is not good, that man should be alone, because those purposes of God could not consist with that solitude of man. In that production, and in that survey, which God made of all that he had made, still he gives the testimony, that he saw all was good, excepting only in his second day's work, and in his making of man. He forbore it in the making of the firmament, because the firmament was to divide between waters and waters; it was an emblem of division, of disunion. He forbore it also in the making of man, because though man was to be an emblem of God's union to his church, yet because this emblem, and this representation, could not be in man alone, till the woman were made too, God does not pronounce upon the making of man, that the work was good: but upon God's contemplation, that it was not good, that man should be alone, there arose a goodness, in having a companion. And from that time, if we seek bonum, quia licitum, if we will call that good, which is lawful, marriage is that, if thou takest a wife thou sinnest not11, says God by the apostle. If we seek bonum quia bonus auctor, if we call that good whose author is good, marriage is that; adduxit ad Adam, God brought her to man. If we seek such a goodness, as hath good witness, good testimony, marriage is that; Christ was present at a marriage, and honoured it with his first miracle. If we seek such a goodness, as is a constant, and not a temporary, an occasional goodness, Christ hath put such a cement upon marriage, what God hath joined, let no man put asunder 12. If we 19 Matt. xix. 6. 11 1 Cor. vii. 28. seek such a goodness, as no man, (that is, no sort nor degree of men) is the worse for having accepted, we see the holiest of all, the high priest, in the Old Testament, is only limited, what woman he shall not marry, but not that he shall not marry; and the bishop in the New Testament what kind of husband he must have been, but not that he must have been no husband. To contract this, as marriage is good, in having the best author, God, the best witness, Christ, the longest term, life, the largest extent, even to the highest persons, priests, and bishops; as it is, all these ways, positively good, so it is good in comparison of that, which justly seems the best state, that is, virginity, in St. Augustine's opinion, Non impar meritum, et Johannis et Abrahæ: If we could consider merit in man, the merit of Abraham, the father of nations, and the merit of John, who was no father at all, is equal. But that wherein we consider the goodness of it here, is, that God proposed this way, to receive glory from the sons of men here upon earth, and to give glory to the sons of men in heaven. But what glory can God receive from man, that he should be so careful of his propagation? what glory more from man, than from the sun, and moon, and stars, which have no propagation? why this, that St. Augustine observes; Musca soli præferenda, quia vivit, A fly is a nobler creature than the sun, because a fly hath life, and the sun hath not; for the degrees of dignity in the creature, are esse, vivere, and intelligere: to have a being, to have life, and to have understanding: and therefore man, who hath all three, is much more able to glorify God, than any other creature is, because he only can choose whether he will glorify God or no; the glory that the others give, they must give, but man is able to offer to God a reasonable sacrifice. When ye were Gentiles, says the apostle, ye were carried away unto dumb idols, even as ye were led. This is reasonable service, out of reason to understand, and out of our willingness to do God service. Now, when God had spent infinite millions of millions of generations, from all unimaginable eternity, in contemplating one another in the Trinity, and then (to speak humanly of God, which God in his Scriptures abhors not) out of a satiety in that contemplation would create a world for his glory, and when he had wrought the first day, and created all the matter, and substance of the future creatures, and wrought four days after, and a great part of the sixth, and yet nothing produced, which could give him any glory (for glory is rationabile obsequium, reasonable service; and nothing could give that but a creature that understood it, and would give it,) at last, as the knot of all, created man; then, to perpetuate his glory, he must perpetuate man: and to that purpose, non bonum, it was not good for man to be alone; as without man, God could not have been glorified, so without woman man could not have been propagated. But, as there is a place cited by St. Paul out of David 15, which hath some perplexity in it, we cannot tell, whether Christ be said to have received gifts from men, or for men, or to have given gifts to men, (for so St. Paul hath it) so it is not easy for us to discern, whether God had a care to propagate man, that he might receive glory from man, or that he might give glory to man. When God had taken it into his purpose to people heaven again, depopulated in the fall of angels, by the substitution of man in their places, when God had a purpose to spend as much time with man in heaven after, as he had done with himself before, (for our perpetuity after the resurrection, shall no more have an end, than his eternity before the creation had a beginning:) and when God to prevent that time of the resurrection, as it were to make sure of man before, would send down his own Son to assume our nature here; and, as not sure enough so, would take us up to him, and set us, in his Son, at his own right hand, whereas he never did, nor shall say to any of the angels, sit thou there: that God might not be frustrated of this great, and gracious, and glorious purpose of his, non bonum, it was not good that man should be alone; for without man God could not give this glory, and without woman there could be no propagation of man. And so, though it might have been bonum homini, man might have done well enough alone; and bonum hunc hominem, some men may do better alone, yet God, who ever, for our example, prefers the public before the private, because it conduced not to his general end, of having, and of giving glory, saw, and said, non bonum Ephes, iv. 8. 15 Psalm Lxviii. 18. 16 hominem, it was not good that man should be alone. have done with the branches of our first part. And so we We are come now to our second general part: in which, as we saw in the former, that God studies man, and all things necessary for man, we shall also see, that whereinsoever man is defective, his only supply, and reparation is from God; faciam, I will do it. Saul wanted counsel, he was in a perplexity, and he sought to the witch of Endor, and not to God; and what is the issue? He hears of his own, and his son Jonathan's death the next day. Asa wants health, and he seeks to the physician, and not to God, and what is the issue? he dies. Do not say, says St. Chrysostom, Quaro necessaria, I desire nothing but that which is necessary for my birth, necessary for my place: quod non dat Deus, non est necessarium: God hath made himself thy steward, thy bailiff; and whatsover God provides not for thee, is not necessary to thee. It was the poor way that Mahomet found out in his Alcoran, that in the next life all women should have eyes of one bigness, and a stature of one size; he could find no means to avoid contention, but to make them all alike: but that is thy complexion, that is thy proportion which God hath given thee. It may be true that St. Hierome notes, who had so much conversation amongst women, that it did him harm, Multas in signis pudicitæ, quamvis nulli virorum, sibi simus ornari; I know, says he, as honest women as are in the world, that take a delight in making themselves handsomely ready, though for no other body's sake but for their own. That may be; but, manus Deo inferunt", they take the pencil out of God's hand, who go about to mend any thing of his making. Quod nascitur Dei est, quod mutatur diaboli, says the same father; God made us according to his image, and shall he be put to say to any of us, Non imago mea, This picture was not taken by the life, not by me, but is a copy of the present distemper of the time? All good remedies are of God; none but he would ever have conceived such an invention as the ark, without that model, for the reparation of the world; and he hath provided that means for the conservation of the world, marriage, the association of one to one: Plures costæ Ada, nec fatigata manus Dei: Adam had more ribs than one, |