Page:Wedding-ring, fit for the finger, or, The salve of divinity on the sore of humanity (2).pdf/18

 up in the garden. They that chuſe their love, ſhould love their choice. They that marry where they affect not will affect where they marry not. Two joined together without love are but tied together to make one-another miſerable. And ſo I paſs to the laſt ſtage of the text A help meet.

A help there is her fulneſs: A meet help, there is her fitneſs. The angels were too much above him, the inferior creatures too much below him: he could not ſtep up to the former, nor could he ſtoop down to the latter; the one was out of his reach, the other was out of his race; but the woman is a parallel line drawn equal with him. Meet ſhe muſt be in three things.

1. In the harmony of her diſpoſition.—Huſband and wife ſhould be like the image in a looking glaſs, that anſwers in all properties to the face that ſtands before it; or like an echo, that returneth the voice it receiveth. Many marriages are like putting new wine into old bottles. An old man is not a meet-help for a young woman: He that ſets a grey head upon green ſhoulders, hath one foot in the grave and another in the cradle. Yet how many times do you ſee the ſpring of youth wedded to the winter of old age? A young man is not a meet-help for an old woman; raw fleſh is but an ill plaiſter for rotten bones. He that in his none-age marries another in her dotage, his luſt hath one wife in poſſeſſion, but his love hath another in reverſion.

2. In heraldry of her condition. Some of our European nations are ſo ſtrict in their junctions, that it is again their laws for the com-