Apostle points out when he says: " Such shall have tribulation of the flesh;" [1] and which render that intercourse, which with out marriage should be deservedly reprobated, an honourable union. [2] The first advantage, then, is that of legitimate offspring; an advantage so highly appreciated by the Apostle, that he says: " The woman shall be saved through child-bearing." [3] These words of the Apostle are not, however, to be understood to refer solely to the procreation of children: they also refer to the discipline and education by which children are reared to piety; for the Apostle immediately adds: " If she continue in faith." " Hast thou children," says Ecclesiasticus, " instruct them and bow down their neck from their childhood:" [4] the same important lesson is inculcated by the Apostle; and of such an education the Scripture affords the most beautiful illustrations in the persons of Tobias, Job, and of other characters eminent for sanctity. But the further development of the duties of parents and children we reserve for the exposition of the Fourth Commandment.
The next advantage is faith, not the habitual faith infused in baptism, but the fidelity which the husband plights to the wife and the wife to the husband, to deliver to each other the mutual dominion of their persons, and to preserve inviolate the sacred engagements of marriage. This is an obvious inference from the words of Adam on receiving his consort Eve, which, as the Gospel informs us, the Redeemer has sanctioned by his approbation: "Wherefore," says our protoparent, "a man shall leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife; and they shall be two in one flesh." [5] Nor are the words of the Apostle less explicit: " The wife," says he, " hath not power of her own body; but the husband." [6] Hence against adultery, be cause it violates this conjugal faith, the Almighty justly decreed in the Old Law the heaviest chastisements. [7] This matrimonial faith also demands, on the part of husband and wife, a singular, holy, and pure love, a love not such as that of adulterers, but such as that which Christ cherishes towards his Church. This is the model of conjugal love proposed by the Apostle when he says: " Men, love your wives, as Christ also loved the Church." [8] The love of Christ for his church was great, not an interested love, but a love which proposed to itself the sole happiness of his spouse.
The third advantage is called the sacrament, that is the indissoluble tie of marriage: " The Lord," says the Apostle, " hath commanded that the wife depart not from her husband, and if she depart, that she remain unmarried, or be reconciled to her husband; and that the husband dismiss not his wife." [9] If, as a sacrament, marriage is significant of the union of Christ with his Church, it follows that as Christ never separates himself
