Page:Wedding-ring, fit for the finger, or, The salve of divinity on the sore of humanity (2).pdf/8

 and periſh." Marriages do turn mutability into the image of eternity; it ſprings up new buds, when the old are withered. It is greater honour for a man to be the father of one ſon, than to be the maſter of many ſervants.—— Without a wife, children cannot be had lawfully: without a good wife children cannot be had comfortably. Man and woman, as the ſtock and the ſcion, being grafted in marriage, are trees bearing fruit to the world. Auguſtine ſays, "They are the firſt link of human ſociety, to which all the reſt are joined." Mankind had long ago decayed, and been like a taper fallen into the ſocket, if theſe breaches which are made by mortality, were not repaired by matrimony.

3. It is not good in regard of the church, which could not then have been expatiated.— Where there is no generation, there can be no regeneration. Nature makes us creatures, before grace makes us Chriſtians. If the loins of man had been leſs fruitful, the death of Chriſt would have been leſs ſucceſsful. It was a witty queſtion that one put to him that ſaid, "Marriage fills the earth but virginity fills the heavens." How can the heavens be full, if the earth be empty?

Had Adam lived in innocency, without matrimony, there would have been no ſervants of God in the church militant, nor no ſaints with God, in the church triumphant. But I will not ſink this veſſel by the over-burthen of it, nor preſs this truth to death, by laying too great a load upon its ſhoulders. There is one knot which I muſt untie, before I make farther progreſs. In 1 Cor. vii. 1. it is ſaid, "It is good