Page:Wedding-ring, fit for the finger, or, The salve of divinity on the sore of humanity (5).pdf/18

18 nests. It is a great deal better you should fast, than feast yourselves upon their failings. Some husbands are never well, longer than they are holding their fingers in their wife's sores. Such are like crows, that fasten only upon carrion. Do not put out the candle because of the snuff. If the gold be good allow it grains. Husbands and wives should provoke one another to love; and they should love one another notwithstanding of provocation. Take heed of poisoning those springs from whence the streams of your pleasure flows.

4. By his delighting in her society. A wife takes sanctuary not only in her husband's house, but in his heart. The tree of love should grow up in the family, as the tree of life grew up in the garden. They that chuse their love, should love their choice. They that marry, where they effect not, will effect 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 creatures were too much below him: he could not step up to the former, nor could be 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