Page:Wedding-ring, fit for the finger, or, The salve of divinity on the sore of humanity (5).pdf/7

Rh to the choice of marriage, yet it is rare to find any enemies to the use of marriage. They would pick the lock that want the key, and pluck the fruit that do not plant the tree.

The Hebrews have a saying that, He is not a man that hath not a wife. Though they climb too high a bough, yet it is to be feared that such flesh is full of imperfection that is not tending to propagation: Though man alone may be good, yet, It is not good that man should be alone: which leads me from the subject to the predicate, It is not good, &c.

Non bonum, is not in this place as, but bonum est honestum, utile jocundum.

Now it is not good that man should be in a single condition upon a threefold consideration

1. In respect of sin, which would not else be prevented. Marriage is like water to quench the sparks of lust's fire, 1 Cor. vii. 2. Nevertheless, to avoid fornication, let every one have his own wife, &c. Man needed no such physic when he was in perfect health. Temptations may break nature's best fence, and lay its paradise waste; but a single life is a prison of unruly desires, which is daily attempted to be broken open.

Some, indeed, force themselves to a single life, merely to avoid the charges of a marriage-state; they had rather fry in the grease of their own sensuality, than extinguish those flames with an allowed remedy: It is better to marry than to burn; to be lawfully coupled, than to be lustfully scorched. It is best feeding these flames with ordinate fuel.