6. Look before you, and remember that you must live together until death, and must be the companions of each other's fortunes, and the comforts of each other's lives, and then you will see how absurd it is for you to disagree and vex each other. Anger is the principle of revenge, and falling out doth tend to separation. Therefore those that must not revenge, should not give way to anger; and those that know they must not part, should not fall out.
7. As far as you are able, avoid all occasions of wrath and falling out, about the matters of your families. Some by their slothfulness bring themselves into want; and then being unable to bear it, they contract a discontented, peevish habit, and in their impatiency they wrangle and disquiet one another. Some plunge themselves into a multitude of business, and have to do with so many things and persons, that one or other is still offending them, and then they are impatient with one another. Some have neither skill nor diligence to manage their businesses aright; and so things fall cross, and go out of order, and then their impatiency turneth itself against each other. Avoid these occasions, if you would avoid the sin, and see that you be not unfurnished of patience, to bear that which cannot be avoided.
8. If you cannot quickly quench your passion, yet at least refrain your tongues; speak not reproachful or provoking words: talking it out hotly doth blow the fire, and increase the flame; be but silent, and you will the sooner return to your serenity and peace. Foul words tend to more displeasure. As Socrates said when his wife first railed at him, and next threw a vessel of foul water upon him, "I thought when I heard the thunder, there would come rain;" so you may portend worse following, when foul, unseemly words begin. If you cannot easily allay your wrath, you may hold your tongues, if you are truly willing.
9. Let the sober party condescend to speak fair and to entreat the other (unless it be with a person so insolent as will be the worse). Usually a few sober, grave admonitions, will prove as water to the boiling pot. Say to your angry wife or husband, You know this should not be betwixt us; love must allay it, and it must be repented of. God doth not approve it, and we shall not approve it when this heat is over. This frame of mind is contrary to a praying frame, and this language contrary to a praying language; we must pray together anon; let us do nothing contrary to prayer now: sweet water and bitter come not from one spring, &c. Some calm and condescending words of reason, may stop the torrent, and revive the reason which passion had overcome.
10. Confess your fault to one another, when passion hath prevailed against you; and ask forgiveness of each other, and join in prayer to God for pardon; and this will lay a greater engagement on you the next time to forbear: you will sure be ashamed to do that which you have so confessed and asked forgiveness for of God and man. If you will but practise these ten directions, your conjugal and family peace may be preserved.
Direct. VI. A principal duty between husband and wife, is, with special care, and skill, and diligence, to help each other in the knowledge, and worship, and obedience of God, in order to their salvation. Because this is a duty in which you are the greatest helps and blessings to each other, if you perform it, I shall, 1. Endeavour to quicken you to make conscience of it; and then, 2. Direct you how to do it.
I. Consider, 1. How little it can stand with rational love, to neglect the souls of one another. I suppose you believe that you have immortal souls, and an endless life of joy or misery to live; and then you cannot choose but know that your great concernment and business is, to make sure provision for those souls, and for the endless life. Therefore if your love do not help one another in this which is your main concernment, it is little worth, and of little use. Every thing in this world is valuable as it is useful. A useless or unprofitable love, is a worthless love. It is a trifling, or a childish, or a beastly love, which helpeth you but in trifling, childish, or beastly things. Do you love your wife, and yet will leave her in the power of Satan, or will not help to save her soul? What! love her, and yet let her go to hell? and rather let her be damned than you will be at the pains to endeavour her salvation? If she were but in bodily pain or misery, and you refused to do your part to succour her, she would take it but for cold, unprofitable love, though you were never so kind to her in compliments and trifles. The devil himself maketh show of such a love as that; he can vouchsafe men pleasures, and wealth, and honour, so he may but see the perdition of their souls. And if your love to your wife or husband, do tend to no greater matters than the pleasures of this life, while the soul is left to perish in sin, bethink yourselves seriously how little more kindness you show them than the devil doth. O can you see the danger of one that you love so dearly, and do no more to save them from it? Can you think of the damnation of so dear a friend, and not do all that you are able to prevent it? Would you be separated from them in the world that you are going to? Would you not live with them in heaven for ever? Never say you love them, if you will not labour for their salvation. If ever they come to hell, or if ever you see them there, both they and you will then confess, that you behaved not yourselves like such as loved them. It doth not deserve the name of love, which can leave a soul to endless misery.
What then shall we say of them that do not only deny their help, but are hinderers of the holiness and salvation of each other![12] And yet (the Lord have mercy on the poor miserable world!) how common a thing is this among us! If the wife be ignorant and ungodly, she will do her worst to make or keep her husband such as she is herself; and if God put any holy inclinations into his heart, she will be to it as water to the fire, to quench it or to keep it under; and if he will not be as sinful and miserable as herself, he shall have little quietness or rest. And if God open the eyes of the wife of a bad man, and show her the amiableness and necessity of a holy life, and she do but resolve to obey the Lord, and save her soul, what an enemy and tyrant will her husband prove to her (if God restrain him not); so that the devil himself doth scarce do more against the saving of their souls, than ungodly husbands and wives do against each other.
2. Consider also that you live not up to the ends of marriage, nor of humanity, if you are not helpers to each other's souls. To help each other only for your bellies, is to live together but like beasts. You are appointed to live together as "heirs of the grace of life," 1 Pet. iii. 7. "And husbands must love their wives as Christ loved his church, who gave himself for it that he might sanctify it and cleanse it, that he might present it to himself a glorious church, without spot or wrinkle, holy and without blemish," Eph. v. 25-27. That which is the end of your very life and being, must be the end of your relations, and your daily converse.
3. Consider also, if you neglect each other's souls, what enemies you are to one another, and how you prepare for your everlasting sorrows: when you should be preparing for your joyful meeting in heaven, you are laying up for yourselves everlasting horror. What a dreadful meeting and greeting will you have at the bar of Christ, or in the flames of hell, when you shall find there how perversely you have done![13] Is it not better to be praising God together in glory, than to be raging against each other in the horror of your consciences, and flying in the faces of one another with such accusations as these?—"O cruel husband! O merciless, deceitful wife! It was long of you that I came to this miserable, woeful end! I might have lived with Christ and his saints in joy, and now I am tormented in these flames in desperation! You were commanded by God to have given me warning, and told me of my sin and misery, and never to let me rest in it, but to have instructed and entreated me, till I had come home by Christ, that I might not have come to this place of torment; but you never so much as spake to me of God, and my salvation, unless it were lightly in jest or in your common talk! If the house had been on fire, you would have been more earnest to have quenched it, than you were to save my soul from hell! You never told me seriously of the misery of a natural, unrenewed state! nor of the great necessity of regeneration and a holy life! nor ever talked to me of heaven and hell, as matters of such consequence should have been mentioned; but morning and night your talk was nothing but about the world and the things of the world.[14] Your idle talk, and jesting, and froward, and carnal, and unprofitable discourse, was it that filled up all the time; and we had not one sober word of our salvation. You never seriously foretold me of this day; you never prayed with me, nor read the Scripture and good books to me. You took no pains to help me to knowledge, nor to humble my hardened heart for my sins, nor to save me from them, nor to draw me to the love of God and holiness by faith in Christ: you did not go before me with the good example of a holy and heavenly conversation; but with the evil example of an ungodly, fleshly, worldly life. You neither cared for your own soul, nor mine; nor I for yours or mine own. And now we are justly condemned together, that would not live in holiness together!" O foolish, miserable souls, that by your ungodliness and negligence in this life, will prepare each other for such a life of endless woe and horror!