which every Christian whether married or single is bound to offer up unto God daily As for holiness Matrimony is not inconsistent with holiness witness Abraham Isaac and Jacob Aaron the servant of the Lord and Enoch that walked with God and yet did not forsake his wife and children and 't is observable that the Bosom of Abraham although a married person is used to set out Heaven by in the Scripture If Heaven had been set out by the Bosom of any Saint in Heaven that had always led a single life on earth what triumphs would Rome have made on that occasion And whereas 't is said Rev. 14.4 Those that follow the Lamb whithersoever he goeth these are they which are not defiled with women for they are Virgins Certainly Christ is followed whithersoever he goeth not only by the blessed Saints that have led a single life but also by married persons as Patriarchs Apostles Martyrs and innumerable others as the Scripture speaketh 2 Cor. 5.6 1 Thess 4.17 And the Apostle speaks of all kind of true Believers 2 Cor. 11.2 These are bought from among men to be first-fruits unto God and the Lamb these are dedicated as first-fruits used to be unto God They are called 't is thought Virgins because they adhered to Christ when the Whore of Babylon had made all the Kings and Nations of the earth drunk with the cup of her fornication It is conceived this place may have reference to those Israelites that were inticed to Idolatry by the Midianitish women and 't is frequent in Scripture to call or compare Idolatry to Adultery or Fornication because God's people are betrothed and married unto him he is their Husband and they his Spouse and when they go after Idols they are said to give God a Bill of divorce and to go a whoring after other gods Or as Dr. Hamond on the place These are they which had kept pure from all the heretical Gnostick corruptions of uncleanness Where there is neither spiritual nor carnal Fornication or Adultery there is no defiling with women for the marriage-bed in Scripture-Dialect is the bed undefiled and to the pure all things are pure The unbelieving husband is sanctified by the believing wife and the unbelieving wife by the believing husband and therefore are their children holy If marriage was filthiness or uncleanness or a vice or that married persons could not please God doubtless the H. Ghost would never have said Marriage is honorable amongst all and therefore amongst Clergy men nor would our blessed Saviour have been born of a Mother though a Virgin yet espoused and married to a husband namely to Joseph Marriage one saith fills earth and Virginity heaven but if there were no Saints in earth how should there be any in heaven if earth were empty how could heaven be full of Saints He did not commend his Sex that said a woman was a necessary evil for how evil then must man be deemed for whom such an evil is necessary and I take him to be a fool as well as mad that being asked whether he was married he answered He was never so mad yet for I dare say there are more made sober than mad by marriage I presume that Hypochondriacal Melancholy a species of madness doth more seise and distract single than married married persons And confident I am as one saith that the Patriarchs did converse with many wives more chastely than many do now adays with one so that many live now more holily and chastely in Wedlock than others in their Cloysters and Cells And if when a voyce from heaven calls to single persons whether man or woman whether Ecclesiastical or Temporal persons Let every man have his own wife c. Let them not say or reply I do not meddle with any state that is common or unclean If they should I reply to them again What God hath cleansed or rather always accounted a pure holy and undefiled estate that call not thou common or unclean CHAP. III. Qualifications requisite in them that marry AS for the Qualifications of a Husband or Wife I would advise all to look at true Religion in the first place that those that marry may be said to marry in the Lord. If I mistake not this was that King James advised Prince Henry unto v. B.Δ. 2 b.p. 72. c. When Solomon married the Daughters of a strange god then he fell to tolerate if not to worship their Idols Next to Religion I should commend a Suitable Disposition and a Conformity in Manners that man and wife may delight in the society and converse one of another And as I would not have a man or woman marry meerly o◠chiefly by their eyes or fancies so neither would I advise a marriage betwixt those that have an aversness or antipathy at first sight each to other I would have a natural free and unenforced affection before marriage When there is no other affection 'twixt parties than what is the fruit of Ratiocination or Syllogisms I would never perswade a marriage Syllogistical love such as is raised thus Every man must love his wife But this woman is my wife Therefore I ought to love her And so on the part of the woman in reference to her husband Every woman must love her own husband This man is my husband Therefore I must love him I say this love goes so far about that it is like to be long before it bring home affections Nature is always at hand and natural affections are up at first view but Reason Religion and Grace too are sometimes to seek or held off at distance by Passion 'T is true notwithstanding that those that match meerly by the eye many times meet with their match an eye-sore or a very thorn in their eye and that beauty which was a Loadstone to attract their love proves a snare to others and a torment to themselves whilst it draws others eyes to the same object and occasions jealousie And if neither of these happen as oftentimes both do yet a disease a sickness or at least old age changes the beautiful 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 into a Chaos and the most lovely countenance into an object in which thou wilt say I have no pleasure Next let me advise you not to marry by the ear not for honor or great parentage and noble Titles for these without virtue and money are of small value an empty sound a tinkling cymbal yea more discord than harmony for the most part in such matches and hence ordinarily is the worst sort of marriage-musick Imparity in birth and parentage makes odds where all should be even the one oft lords it in this case and the other is but a servant and a servant to to their fellow yoke-fellow a servant underling to all their high kindred and often despised by their own servants 'T is in such families oft as 't is in the Family of Hawks the males are the underlings and the females have the respect the glory
namely that younger widows should marry and guide the house and not be received into the Office of Deaconesses of being servants to the Church to relieve or look to the sick and to succour the poor because such persons if they should make such a promise to the Church to continue in that state all the days of their life would be apt to break it either by being wanton against Christ committing fornication or else would be under the power of their husband and so not be at liberty to serve the Church Now therefore the Apostle concludes that none should be received into the Church as Deaconesses under the age of threescore at which time saith one the Vow of not marrying would be ridiculous Therefore the Pope and his Clergy saith Dr. Fulk admitting other widows or virgins to profess or vow Continency do sin against the express Commandment of the H. Ghost Nor was the want of Monasteries and Monkish and Nunish Rules and Orders in the Apostles times the occasion of this Prohibition or restraint For saith my Author the Incontinency of Nuns and Monks in Cloysters and under all your Rules and Orders hath and doth daily give sufficient proof that Lust will not be kept out by the walls of your Monasteries nor by the Rules and Prescripts of your Orders So then as the experience of some younger widows that had followed after Satan was a sufficient reason to cause the Apostle to refuse all young widows to the Office of Deaconesses so the experience of so many Milch Nuns and filthy Monks and Friers teach us that no young persons are to be admitted to any Vow or Profession of perpetual Continency Let me add here what the said Doctor hath out of Wierus de Praestig Daemon l. 3. cap. 9 11. edit 3. That the Devil helpeth the Nuns in their abominable lusts in divers Nunneries in Germany namely in the Province of Colen where the Devil in the likeness of a Dog was seen to fall upon them in the day time in most beastly manner about the year of our Lord 1558. also in the Nunnery of Nazanth in Colen the Nuns in most filthy manner suffered the same illusion oftentimes in the sight and presence of many anno 1564. The state of the Church saith Gerson Chancellor of Paris is grown altogether bruitist and monstrous and should give an Item to the Overseers to enquire whether the Cloysters of Nuns be not become the Stews of Harlots and who would think saith the Author of the Triumph of Rome over despised Protestancy that so wise a man as Caesarius Branchedorus could so far over-reach as to say that the lusts of whoredom and gluttony and other shameful enormities had gotten such a head that young men did pati muliebria and Priests did facere virilia and that their Nuns did as it were openly profess unchastity and at last that whosoever was noted to be a shameless Adulterer or a wild Ruffian that had lavish'd out all his Patrimony anu pene ventre was sure to betake himself to the Court of Rome as his Sanctuary And again Who could have looked for such language to fall from so grave an Author as Espencaeus that our Ancestors wish'd that our Clerks should turn their wives into their sisters but now our age turns them into Lemmans and Whores and consequently their lawful issue into Bastards And again God hath taken away our sons and the Devil hath given us Nephews and could imagine that so learned and ingenious a â—â—n as Erasmus would so far wrong his neighbours as to say that a number of Monasteries are so degenerated that the Stews are more chaste and sober and modest then they The supplication of Beggars tender'd to King Henry VIII assured him that by virtue of the Sacred Votaries there were a hundred thousand Whores in this our Nation Fryar Menolem in the Pulpit cryed to the Clergy Ye my Masters of the Church do not damn your souls Ye have now Birds in the Cage that chirp to you by night yt know my meaning put them away So the Author of Romes Triumph over despised Protestancy which some say was Bishop Hall Our Church Historian tells us that King Stephen's fury fell most fiercely on the Dean and Canons of Pauls for crossing him in the choice of their Bishop for he sent and took their Focaria's that is Roger Hoveden being Interpreter their Concubines and cast them into the Tower of London where they continued many days not without much scorn and disgrace till at last those Canons ransom'd their liberty at a great rate F. Hist Book 3. p. 27. From these premises I hope we may safely draw this good and honest Conclusion That marriage is not to be prohibited to a whole Order of men within the pale of the Church neither directly nor by consequence and that 't is not expedient to suffer young men and young maids or women to vow Celibacy all their lives It was piously said of Pope Pius the second That for great causes Priests wives were taken from them but that for greater causes they ought to be restored to them again See Platina in the life of the said Pope It is better to marry than to burn saith St. Paul and the Canons of St. Paul's Church aforenamed had much better have had Wives than Focaria's Fire-makers or Concubines How horrible is it that the Church of Rome doth hold That 't is much better and less offence for a Priest to use another mans wife than to marry one of his own after that he hath once accepted and married our dear Mother the holy Church for his wife during life But leaving such Apocryphal Doctrine of the Romish Church I come to the Canon of the holy Scripture 1 Cor. 7.2 To avoid fornication let everyman and therefore Spiritual persons are not exempted have his own wife and every woman and therefore Nuns are not interdicted have her own husband and to avoid fornication it is enjoyned and therefore all persons of both Sexes who have not the gift of Continency are bound to marry nor can any Vow or Oath be vinculum iniquitatis i. e. a Bond of Iniquity and oblige against God's Law which saith Thou shalt not commit Adultery and It is better to marry than to burn Besides if two Oaths be taken and the one contradict the other the first is obligatory and not the second Now all Priests and Nuns in Baptism vowed to keep all God's Commandments and therefore the Seventh not to commit Adultery Those Scriptures Be ye holy for I am holy and Pray continually concern all Christians as well as Priests and Professed persons and therefore if they be interpreted to oblige from marriage they oblige the Laity as well as the Clergy to use the ordinary distinction Besides Aaron and his Sons though married persons were daily both morning and evening to attend upon the Sacrifice and to burn Incense every morning Exod. 30.7 and this Incense was a Type of Prayer
yet may they see God notwithstanding the opinion of the Father that Duras Infantum Pater and not withstanding the hard-heartedness of the pretended Mother-Church of Rome in this a Step-Mother rather than a true Mother to her Children The Hebrew Children that dyed before the eighth day and consequently before they were circumcised and those Bethlemitish Children that were baptized in their own blood and that child that being born was also baptized and buried in the flames being thrown into the fire again the arms of that Midwife that delivered the Martyred Mother of a live child doubtless were not excluded Heaven for want of a Sacrament which they did in no wise neglect or contemn but could not have these being comprehended in the Covenant made and sealed to and with their Parents had a right and title to the heavenly inheritance were of with God and co-heirs with Christ Again consider That God may have taken away your Children from the evil to come on the place where they lived When Storms Tempests and Troubles are abroad you Parents call home your Children and so doth God God saith by his Providence in these cases to his Children though your Children also Come my Children enter into your Chambers and shut the door till all these calamities be overpast 'T is a common saying Quem diligit Dous moritur Juvenis he whom God loves dyes young and sometime and in some cases God calls the sins of Parents to remembrance and slays their Children If so it be this is a Lamentation and ought to be for a lamentation But upon your Repentance God may give other Children in room of them he hath taken from you or himself be better than ten Sons than all Sons and Daughters could be unto you Learn of Aaron the Priest of the Lord who when he had lost Nadab and Abihu both in one day and after an extraordinary manner did not say If it be so why is it thus but saith the Text And Aaron held his peace Levit. 10.3 he was dumb and opened not his mouth because God had done it Jonah was angry because God had smitten and withered the Goard that came up in a night and perished in a night but Aaron acquiesced in Gods handy-work though he slew his two Sons by fire in an extraordinary manner in all this Aaron sinned not nor charged God foolishly Behold he taketh away who can hinder him Who will say unto him what dost thou If thou art either barren or by the death of thy child childless thou mayest do well to educate others Children you may adopt some Kinsman or Friend or Neighbours Child and cultivate them and sow the seeds of Virtue and Learning in them and make such your heirs else make the Church or Poor your heirs and do not prodigally therefore waste your Estates or live idly and wastefully Again If you have no Child be humbled under the want of this blessing for Children are so and then encrease and abound more in your Devotions towards God the less you are to care for the things of the world the more reason you have and the more care you should have how to serve and please God 1 Cor. 7. CHAP. VII Of Parents that have bad Children IF Parents have Children and they prove crosses to them how great is that cross If blessings prove curses if comforts turn to sorrows and your light be darkned in the Heavens thereof how great is that darkness And yet this may be the case of a good man or woman for Parents are Parents as men and women and not as Christians and Grace and Virtue is not Ex traducè is not propagated A righteous Noah had a prophane Cham a good David a rebellious Son Absolom Of some Children we may say Blessed is the womb that bare them and the paps that gave them suck of others It had been good for them and for their Parents too if such children had never been born 'T is more tolerable to have none than wicked Children It is the Speech and Protestation of King James in his Preface to his Book to the Prince I protest before that great God I had rather not be a Father and Childless than be a Father of wicked Children I charge you saith he as ever you think to deserve my fatherly blessing to follow and put in practise so far as lieth in you the Precepts hereafter following And if ye follow the contrary course I take the great God to record that this Book shall one day be a witness betwixt me and you and shall procure to be ratified in Heaven the Curse that in that case here I give unto you And I find in the life of Reverend Mr. Robert Bolton that he had told his Children so much both in the time of his sickness and before he verily believed that none of them durst think to meet him at that great Tribunal in an unregenerate estate I confess 't is a sad Meditation for a Parent to think of the life or death of a wicked Child David that was presently comforted for the death of the young Child he had by Bathsheba refused to be comforted for the death of Absolom sorely lamenting Oh Absosom my Son my Son I would to God I had dyed for thee Oh Absolom my Son my Son 2 Sam. 18.33 It is thought it was for the manner of his death the ill condition he dyed in and for his Soul that he pierced his heart so deeply and that he wept so sorely Let good Parents that have bad Children give them good counsel and good example and pray daily with all earnestness for the return of their Prodigals St. Austins Mother Monica her Prayers for her Son when a Manichee were heard at last and he was converted and became one of the greatest and best Lights of the Church since the Apostles times 'T is thought one cause why Hezekiah wept so sore at the tidings of death was because he was then Childless but could the Prophet have told him that he should have such a Son as Manasseth that should commit such abominations how needs must such tidings have made his ears to tingle and pierce his heart thorough with many sorrows Yet this may somewhat alleviate Parents grief that have bad Children Manasseth when he was in Chains sought the Lord and was found of him at the last and that out of his loyns by his Son Amon came the Mirror of Kings King Josiah And if thou hast matter of sorrow from thy own immediate Child thou mayest have abundant cause of rejoycing from thy Grandchild thy Childrens Children may praise the Lord and this may be part of thy happiness thus to see thy Childrens Children and peace upon Israel And sith so it is that sometimes godly Parents have ungodly Children this should moderate your desire of Children and your grief for the want of them Let none be so impatient or passionate as Rachel saying to God or their own Husbands Give me Children or
the King of Northumberland for not stooping to Austin the Monk upon the instigation as History tells us of Austin The Original of Monkery or the Pattern or Platform of it is not taken in the Mount viz. in or from the holy Scriptures although perhaps some would pretend that they imitate Jeptha's Daughter or Elijab and Elizeus or the Nazarites or St. John Baptist or the Children of Jonadab the Son of Rechab But who hath required these things at their hands now under the Gospel to tread in the steps of those before-mentioned and yet Jeptha's Daughter bewailed her Virginity and so 't is thought did yearly the Daughters of Israel lament on her account or for her sake As for our Nazarites they might marry and some were married as Sampson and Samuel Again the Monks and Anchorites of old were necessitated to that Solitary life these live so out of choice voluntarily obliging themselves to this course Elijah Elisha and John the Baptist were all extraordinary Persons and Prophets had extraordinary Calls and are not to be imitated by ordinary Christians It is noted by Mr. Perkins that Jerome saith in the life of Hilarion that there was no Monk in Syria See his Doctrine of the Problem before Hilarion who was the Founder of that Profession in that Province And Chrysostome in the 25 Hom. ad Hebraeos saith That in Pauls time there was no sign nor step of any Monk Monastical Profession began in the Church about 260 years after our Redemption by Paul a Thebane or rather saith my Author about the three hundredth year by Antony These Monks or Hermites lived alone in Fields or Desarts Basil 't is said first invented Monasteries and was head of the Monks Basil himself Ep. 65. saith That the Neo-Caesarians objected the Novelty of Monastical life against him Besides these Monks of old were Lay-men and not Clergy-men and Athanasius in his Epistle to Dracontius saith That he knew many both Monks and Bishops that were married and had Children There were no Nuns saith Mr. Perkins until about two hundred years after Christ and these lived continent and freely privately out of Monasteries In Rome Marcella was one of the Nuns about the year 400. vid. Hieron in Epitap Marcellae St. Austine doth not approve of the idle lives of Monks The Solitary life saith one is inferior to the common and ordinary life because it is full of importunate cogitations c. neither do we speak this out of bare conjecture but have learned it of those who have tried it to be true Ivo Carnotensis Ep 258. I shall now give some Answer to the Objections against the married lives of the Clergy or of men in holy Orders taken from the Scriptures The Scriptures that have been are or may most seemingly be alledged to the contrary are these Those that are in the flesh cannot please God Rom. 8.8 Be ye holy for I am holy 1 Pet. 1.16 Defraud not one another except it be by consent for a season that ye may give your selves to prayer and fasting 1 Cor. 7.5 'T is good for a man not to touch a woman 1 Cor. 7.1 He that is unmarried careth how to please the Lord but he that is married careth how to please his wife 1 Cor. 7.33 No man that is chosen to be a Souldier intangleth himself with the affairs of this life 2 Tim. 2.4 Whosoever hath left Father or Mother or Wife or House or Land for my sake or the Gospels shall receive a hundred-fold in this life Mat. 19.29 There are that make themselves Eunuchs for the Kingdom of Heaven he that can receive it let him receive it Mat. 19.12 Younger widows reject for when they wax wanton against Christ they will marry having damnation because they have forsaken their first faith 1 Tim. 5.11 12. The unmarried woman careth for the things of the Lord that she may be holy both in body and spirit but she that is married careth for the things of this world how she may please her husband 1 Cor. 7.34 To these Objections from Scripture I answer in general 1. That the Scripture directly and plainly allows Marriage to Ministers equally as to any sort of men 1. Saying That Marriage is honorable among all men and therefore amongst Clergy-men and the bed undefiled Hebr. 13.4.2 And again Let every man have his own wife 1 Cor. 7.2 and if every man then a Priest or Presbyter may lawfully have a wife 3. A Bishop must be the husband of one wife and one that hath his children in subjection with all gravity 1 Tim. 3.4 2. I say That the High Priest and Priests of the old Law had liberty to marry that Aaron the Saint of the Lord was married and had Children Nadab and Abihu c. that divers of the Apostles of our Lord and Saviour were actually married that St. Peter whose Successor the Pope or Bishop of Rome claims to be was married our Saviour healing S. Peters wives Mother of a Feaver Mat. 8.14 15. Nor doth it any where appear that they did wholly forsake society with their Wives any more than their Houses Trades Ships to which they certainly sometime after at least for a time returned 3. That Scotus Aquinas Bellarmine Franciscus à Sancta Clara divers in the Council of Trent and of the Romish Church hold that the Celibacy or single life of Priests is not de Jure Divino and therefore cannot be proved out of Scripture either by Precept Institution or Example To the particular Scriptures besides what hath been said before to several of them I answer That Rom. 8.8 Those that are in the flesh cannot please God must not be interpreted or understood those that are in Wedlock cannot please God because we know that many Patriarchs Prophets Apostles were married and yet pleased God and Enoch walked with God and God took him up to Heaven that he saw not death for before he was translated he had this Testimony that he pleased God Heb. 11.5 But by those that are in the flesh must be meant either those that adhere to the old Law and slight the Gospel or else those that are in a state of Nature in an unregenerate estate never as yet renewed in the Spirit of their minds but still remain carnally minded and drowned in the corruptions and sinful lusts of the flesh To that of Peter Be ye holy for I am holy it concerns all Christians and if Marriage and Holiness could not consist together neither Lay-men nor Clergy-men should marry and again Moses and Aaron and God's people of old to whom these words were spoken were married persons and not commanded thereby to put away their wives To the third 1 Cor. 7.5 Defraud not one another c. that it is said to all indifferently Lay-men as well as Clergy-men and that it forbids to separate the man from the society of the woman or his wife wholly and perpetually but only for a time and that too that they might give