Page:A Treatise concerning the Use and Abuse of the Marriage Bed.djvu/129

 quence of due Calmness and Serenity in their own Spirits; for it is certain, that Humour and Temper descend in the Line of Families as well as Diseases and Distemper; 'tis a just Encouragement to Virtue that it is so, and 'tis just to let such know it for the Encouragement of their good Conduct.

blest is the House where such a Couple inhabit? and all this Difference flows meerly from this one Branch, viz. Love before Marriage; Love is the constituting Quality of their Matrimony, the Reason of it, the Foundation on which it was built, and the Support of it after it was built. Such Families are happy by the meer natural Consequence of Life; their Tempers have nothing in them to form any Discord or Strife from; they cannot Differ, Contend, Rage, Quarrel, Reflect, Reproach, Provoke, it is not in them; Nature has no such thwart Lines drawn over their Constitution; they are united in Good, and can never be united in Evil too; these Contraries would not illustrate, but destroy one another; in a word, they are all Love, and because they are all Love, therefore their Behaviour is all Peace; the Calm is in the Soul, and when it is so, there can never be a Storm in the Mind; Love is not in them a Passion but a Quality; 'tis rooted and riveted in their very Beings, they have a Disposition to it in their very Nature.

being a settled Principle in them, both natural and habitual, it comes of course to exert it self in the Article of Matrimony. i. They resolve not to marry but where they are sure, and fully satisfy'd they can Love, that is to say, that as they resolve it to be a Duty, so they resolve to practice it. 2. In order to this,