Page:Wedding-ring, fit for the finger, or, The salve of divinity on the sore of humanity (5).pdf/9

Rh 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-burden 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 a further progress, 1 Cor. vii. 1. It is good for a man not to touch a woman.—Do all the scriptures proceed out of the same mouth, and do they not all speak the same truth? The God of unity will not indite discord; and the God of verity cannot assert falsehood; if good and evil be contraries, how contrary then are these scriptures? Either Moses mistakes GOD, or Paul mistakes Moses about the point of marriage—To which I shall give a double answer.

1. There is a public and private good. In respect of one man, it may be good not to touch a woman; but in respect of all, so It is not good that man should be alone.

Moses speaks of the state of man created; Paul of the state of man corrupted: Now that which by institution was a mercy, by corruption may become a misery; as pure water is tainted by running through a miry channel, or as the sun-beams receive a tincture by shining through a coloured glass. There is no print of evil in the world, but sin was the stamp that made it. They that seek nothing but weal in its commission, will find nothing but woe in the conclusion. Which leads me from