A Treatise fit for them who are conversant
in the reading
of Romane histories and antiquities, giving
a light
to many places otherwise obscure and hard
to be understood.
ROMANE QVESTIONS.
1.
What is the reason that new wedded wives are bidden to touch fire and water?
s it because that among the elements and principles, whereof are composed naturall bodies, the one of these twaine, to wit, fire is the male, and water the female, of which, that infuseth the beginning of motion, and this affoordeth the propertie of the subject and matter?
2. Or rather, for that, as the fire purgeth, and water washeth; so a wife ought to continue pure, chaste and cleane all her life.
3. Or is it in this regard, that as fire without humidity, yeeldeth no nourishment, but is dry; and moisture without heat is idle, fruitlesse and barren; even so the male is feeble, and the female likewise, when they be apart and severed a sunder: but the conjunction of two maried folke yeeldeth unto both, their cohabitation and perfection of living together.
4. Or last of all, because man and wife ought not to forsake and abandon one another, but to take part of all fortunes; though they had no other good in the world common betweene them, but fire and water onely.
2.