Page:A Treatise concerning the Use and Abuse of the Marriage Bed.djvu/112

 of Princes and Persons of Rank, are rather Leagues and Treaties of Alliance and Confederacy than Weddings, and they are transacted accordingly; the Lady is courted at a Distance, viewed in Effigy by her Picture set with Diamonds, contracted by Envoys Extraordinary, married by Proxy, and then travels a thousand Miles perhaps, or something less, to find out her Husband,

indeed Abraham sent the Steward of his Houshold to fetch his Son Isaac a Wife, about three or four hundred Miles off, and she came with the Messenger: But the Case was plain there; Rebecca saw the visible Finger of in it, and the Words of Laban her Brother, though himself an Idolater, confessed it, Gen xxiv. 50. then Laban and Bethuel answered, and said, the thing proceedeth from the, we cannot speak unto thee bad or good; and upon this Foundation the Lady ventured to go with the Messenger.

yet even Rebeccah herself, when she acted the like Part for her Son, and desired to take a Wife for Jacob from the same Country; she sent no Servant of the Errand, but made him go in Person, and choose for himself, and he did so, and pitched upon his well-favoured beautiful Rachel, had not Laban cheated him, and laid a blear-eyed Leah in her Place.

Marriage is a state of Life in which so much of humane Felicity is really placed, and in which Men may be so compleatly happy or miserable, it seems to me the most rational thing in the World, that the Parties themselves, and them alone, should give the last Strokes to its Conclusion; that they only should be left to determine it, and that with all possible Freedom,