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their own Fortunes to settle on themselves before. Ask the Men why they marry, it is for the Money. How few Matches have any other Motive except such as I must mention hereafter, and indeed will hardly bear any mention at all, for many known Reasons. How little is regarded of that one essential and absolutely necessary Part of the Composition, called Love, without which the matrimonial State is, I think, hardly lawful, I am sure is not rational, and, I think, can never be happy.
Hence it follows, that we have such few happy and successful Matches. How much Matrimony, how little Love; how many Coupled, how few Join'd; in a word, how much Marriage, how little Friendship. O Friendship! thou exalted Felicity of Life, thou glorious Incorporation of Souls, thou heavenly Image, thou polisher and finisher of the brightest Part of Mankind, how much art thou talked of, how little understood, how much pretended to, how little endeavoured for! Where does the kind expecting Husband find a sincere Friend in his Bosom? How seldom does the tender affectionate Wife take a Friend into her Arms, even though she does take the Person, she takes the Man without the Husband, and the Husband without the Friend? Not Virtue, not Fidelity to the Marriage Bed, not Conscience of the Conjugal Duty, not Religion, will do it; no not RELIGION! How many Husbands and Wives will go to Heaven from the Arms of the Wives and Husbands they had no Friendship for?
How miserably do the Pious and the Devout, the Religious and the Consciencious live together! the Husbands here, the Wives there, by
