Page:Wedding-ring, fit for the finger, or, The salve of divinity on the sore of humanity (5).pdf/8

8 2. It is not good in respect of mankind which then would not be propagated.—The Roman historian relating the ravishing of the Sabine women, excused it thus: Res erit univætatis populous virorum: Without them mankind would fall from the earth and perish.—Marriage turns mutability into the image of eternity: It springs up new buds when the old are withered: It is a 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, as trees, bearing fruit to the world.

Augustine says, this pair is primum par et fundamentum omnium, &c.—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 those breaches which are made by mortality, were not repaired by matrimony.

3. It is not good, in regard of the church, which would then have been extirpated. Where there is no generation, there can be no regeneration. Nature makes us creatures, before grace makes us Christians.

If the loins of men 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?