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and periſh." Marriages do turn mutability into the image of eternity it fprings up new buds, when the old are withered. It is greater honour for a man be the father of one ſon, than to be the maſter of many ſervants.— Without a wife children cannot be had lawfully: without a good wife children cannot be had comfortably. Man and woman as the ſtock and the ſcion being grafted in marriage, are trees bearing fruit to the world. Auguſtine ſays, "they are the first link of humarn ſociety, to which all the reſt are joined," Mankind had long ago decayed and been like a taper fallen into the ſocket if thoſe breaches which are made by mortality, were not repaired by matrimony.
3. It is not good in regard of the church, which could not then have been expatiated.— Where there is no generation there can be no regeneration. Nature makes us creatures, before grace — makes us Chriſtians. If the loins of men had been leſs fruitful, the death of Chriſt would have been leſs ſuccesſful. It was a witty queſtion that one put to him that said, "Marriage fills the earth, but virginity fills the heavens. How can the heavens be full, if the earth be empty?
Had Adam lived in innecercy, without matimony, there would have been no ſervants of God in the church militant nor no ſaints with God, in the church triumphant. But I will not ſink this veſted by the over-burthen of it, nor preſs this truth to death, by laying too great a load upon its ſhoulders. There is one knot which I must untie, before I make farther progreſs. In 1 Cor. vii. 1. it is ſaid, " It is
