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riage, (so a wise Favourer of those prudential Matches was pleased to call it) in it to contract Affection? I have seen enough of it, to make me venture saying, there is not One in Ten of those Kinds of Marriages that succeeds.
Nor is the Surface-Love, which takes so much in the World at this time, any part of the pure, the solid, the rivetted Affection, which, I insist, is so essential to the Felicity of a married Life. Where is the Union of the whole Desire, or even of the Soul of Desire, that which Mr. Milton so very nobly expatiates upon from Adam's Words, They shall be one Flesh, Gen.xi. 24.
Is this to be obtained after Marriage, and that Marriage made perhaps by the choice and at the imperious arbitrary Command cf Superiors? If not, as indeed I think it not rational to imagine, is it so slight a Matter, and of so little Consequence, as that Matrimony should be ventured on without a due Provision for such a Union? Certainly, if any Action of Life is of Consequence, 'tis that which determines the Man for Happiness or Misery: And such is this of Matrimony; for I think I may affirm. Marriage without Love, is the compleatest Misery in Life. Besides, I must say, it is to me utterly unlawful, and entails a Curse upon the Persons, as being wilfully perjured, invoking the Name of God to a Falshood, which is one of the most provoking Crimes that Mankind can commit. He or she who, with that slight and superficial Affection, ventures into the matrimonial Vow, are to me little more than legalProsti-
