It is the highest grace and gift of God to have an honest, a God-fearing, housewifely consort, &c. But God thrusteth many into the state of matrimony before they be aware and rightly bethink themselves.
The state of matrimony (said Luther) is the chiefest state in the world after religion, &c.
Alas! alas! this is the misery of it, that so many wed and so few are Christianly married! But even in this the analogy of matrimony to the religion of Christ holds good: for even such is the proportion of nominal to actual Christians;—all
christened
, how few baptized! But in true matrimony it is beautiful to consider, how peculiarly the marriage state harmonizes with the doctrine of justification by free grace through faith alone. The little quarrels, the imperfections on both sides, the occasional frailties, yield to the one thought,— there is love at the bottom. If sickness or other sorer calamity visit me, how would the love then blaze forth! The faults are there, but they are not imprinted. The prickles, the acrid rind, the bitterness or sourness, are transformed into the ripe fruit, and the foreknowledge of this gives the name and virtue of the ripe fruit to the fruit yet green on the bough.
Ib. p. 447.
The causers and founders of matrimony are chiefly God's commandments, &c. It is a state instituted by God himself, visited by Christ in person, and presented with a glorious present; for God said, It is not good that the man should be alone: therefore the wife should be a help to the husband, to the end that human generations may be increased, and children nurtured to God's honour, and to the profit of people and countries; also to keep our bodies in sanctification.
(Add) and in mutual reverence, our spirits in a state of love and tenderness; and our imaginations pure and tranquil.
In a word, matrimony not only preserveth human generations so that the same remain continually, but it preserveth the generations human.