Page:Wedding-ring, fit for the finger, or, The salve of divinity on the sore of humanity (4).pdf/19

 19 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 im- age 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 gray head npon green shoulders, hath one foot in the grave and another in the cradle. Yet how many times do ye see the spring of youth wedded to the winter of old age? a young person is not a meet help for an old woman; raw flesh is but an ill plaister for rotten bones He that in his nonage marries another in her dotage, his lust hath one wife in possession, but his love another in reversion. 2. In the heraldry of her condition. Some of our European nations are so strict in their junctions, that it is against their laws for the commonalty to couple with the gentry. It was well said by one," If the wife be too much above her husband, she either ruins  him by her vast expenses, or reviles him  with her base reproaches: if she be too much  below her husband, either her former con-  dition makes her too generous, or her present  mutation makes her too imperious.    Marriages are styled matches; yet amongst  those many that are married, how few are  there that are matched? Husbands and wives  are like locks and keys, that rather break