[ 223 ]
And what are the Consequences? And how do these Consequences prove the thing? namely, that when the corrupted Gust is satiated, when the first Heats are over, and Souls begin to converse together, then they begin to Repent and Repine, they see an End of their Happiness just where other People find the Beginning of theirs. In a word, the Man and the Woman remains, but the Husband and Wife are loft; the Conjunction holds, but the Union is lost; the Marriage is fixed and fast, but the Matrimony is gone, in a word, there's the Whoredom without the Matrimony, the vitious Part without the virtuous, the humid without the sublime; there's the married Couple without their Souls; their Affections are no more united than the Poles, and like the living and the dead Body I mentioned just now, they are only Bound to one another, that at last they may Rot together.
Horrid Matrimony! horrid discording Tempers, raging Passions, outrageous Words, hot fiery Breakings out of ill-natured, bitter and scandalous Reflections; these sum up the Family Conversation between them: These form the Felicity that they have to expect: These are the Productions of hot-headed, unsuitable Wedlock; of marrying without Thought, taking a Woman purely for a Woman, or a Man meerly to have a Man; in a word, such marrying is, in my Sense, no better or worse than a Matrimonial Whoredom.
Now, as I said in the Beginning of this Chapter, the Obligations of the Marriage Covenant or Vow are mutual and reciprocal; the Band is equal, the Burthen is equally divided; And this is it that makes the discording Tempers, the unsuitable Circumstances of which Iam
