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ID Title Author Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication) STC Words Pages
A27966 The Bachelor's directory being a treatise of the excellence of marriage, of its necessity, and the means to live happy in it : together with an apology for the women against the calumnies of the men. 1696 (1696) Wing B261; ESTC R40746 88,169 301

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see a hundreth part of those disgraces that we do They are owing to the want of this common wisdom of Men and Women at least generally speaking From this principle arise those evil humours and cruel jealousies which cause to them both such smart vexations But it is not only in this that Incontinence is fatal to the World It is likewise in this respect viz. That it aims at nothing but its ruine in averting Men from Marriage which is the true principle of its preservation Would you know the difference between Marriage and Fornication Marriage proposes nothing to itself but the propagation of Mankind whereas the other aims at its destruction Adulter non prolem sed voluptatem quaerit Marriage glories in the production of Children Fornication is ashamed of it and tends only to obstruct their generation What horrors what infamies are practis'd for that end 'T is easie to conceive them But it would be indecent to express them So that the world receives from this vice a prejudice proportioned to all those great advantages which it draws from Marriage whereof I have discoursed in my first Part. Will you not confess after all this that it is the greatest of all crimes and that Cicero could not have hit better when he said that all evils put together were not equal to this Si unum in locoum collata sint ommia mala cum turpitudinis malo non erunt comparanda As to what remains I distinguish not between Fornication Adultery and keeping of Concubines Yet I know one might observe difference for all Concubine-keeping is a Fornication but all Fornication and Adultery is not keeping of Concubines However all this is but one and the same species of Sin It is one in it self and is only diversisived by the State of those who commit it But why do you so severely prohibit you 'll say perhaps a thing that Moses himself permitted to the Jews and which was practised by the Patriarchs and the ancient Kings of Israel Abraham and Jacob had many Wives and various Concubines Solomon had even to the number of a thousand and Polygamy keeping of Concubines and Letters of Divorce have been of use and are at this time amongst divers People of the earth This objection is natural to the matter I treat of and it immediately seems so favourable to the inclinations of the flesh that it is no wonder it falls into the minds of all men and that Fornicators make use of it to flatter themselves in their irregularity It is long since that these sort of Persons and several ancient Heriticks have prevailed thereby to authorise their evil conduct and pernicious sentiments upon the subject of intemperance To which I answer first that God from the beginning of the World established Marriage between two Persons only Man says he shall leave his Father and Mother Gen. 2.24 and joyn himself not to several Wives but to one Wife Not to Harlots and Concubines but to his wife not to the wife of his Neighbour but to his own they shall be adds the Creator not three four five and six but they shall be two in one flesh Could he Condemn more expressly Fornication and Adultery Polygamy and keeping of Concubines Secondly The example of the Patriarchs and Kings of Israel makes no consequence against a Law so express as that is because according to several Fathers of the Church if they did not confine themselves to it it was through a very particular and mysterious permission of God Not to say that as good Men as they were they were still men capable of sinning like the rest David himself assures us that there is not one just person and Solomon says that the most perfect falls seven times a day Nomo mortalium omnibus horis sapit No Man is wise at all times It must be confessed that herein they were seduced by their temper and that the force of custom and example of Idolatrous Nations in the midst of which they lived contributed much thereto But at the same time we ought to be persuaded that God bestowed on them the Grace of Repentance and to admire the ways of his eternal Wisdom which has often times made use of the proper sins of its own Servants to make us apprehend exceeding miseries Which made St. Ambrose say that the very faults of the Patriarchs were advantagious to us Instruunt Patriarchae non solum docentes sed etiam errantes In effect St. Paul discovers to the Gallatians a great mystery in the Concubinary Union of Abraham and Hagar and in the birth of Ismael his Son Are not we acquainted likewise that the very incestious Fornication of Judah with Thamer his Daughter in Law has served Providence to make thereof one of the Characters of the humiliation of Jesus Christ who according to the flesh was derived from Pharez one of those Children that sprung from this unlawful copulation And it is in this consideration that a holy Man has ventured to call even the Sin of Adam happy because without it we had been deprived of this Great Redeemer who makes all the glory of our Nature and all the comfort of our Souls O! felix culpa Greg. quae talem meruisti habere Redemptorem Moreover the faults of the ancient Patriachs ought to advantage us by way of precaution Besides we live under a dispensation infinitely more than that of the Patriarchs and Jews Moses for the hardness of their hearts allowed them divers things that Jesus Christ has prohibited us But do not we know that the Church was in its Infancy under the Law and that it is in its Manhood under the Gospel It would be shameful for us to be no wiser than they and to practice in this perfect age of grace where we are arrived the same actions they practised under the imperfect age of the Law If your Justice doth not exceed that of the Scribes and Pharisees Mat. 5. ye shall not enter into the Kingdom of Heaven said the Master to his Disciples That which is in some sort supportable by the Law of the Jews and also by the Law of the Mahometans can never be so by the Law of Christians They have engagements to a purity of manners which other men have not Aliis silicet tibi non licet Ter. in Heaut The blindness of Pagans and Infidels excuses a part of their crime They may say with one of their Poets Sed partem nostri criminis error habet Ovid. Trist L. 3. El. 5. Part of my crime was caused by mistake But nothing can excuse us Christians and we should be so much the more faulty to live with the same remission as we have a perfect knowledge of the will of God of vertues and vices of what is necessary to be done and what to be avoided in order to attain to salvation The Jews of the first Christian Penticost after having been convicted of infidelity and felony against Jesus Christ by