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but, to repeat our Saviour's Words again, in the Beginning it was not so.
But I shall speak of that Part again in its Course. What I have now said is but a Digression made necessary as an Observation on the manner of the first Wedding; the Man and the Woman, as I have said, were single and separate, but God made them to associate together, so he brought the Woman to him, and gave her to be with him, that is, as above, GOD married them.
God having thus ordained Matrimony, and solemnized the first Nuptials in Paradise, it cannot be denied to be, as our Office of Matrimony declares it, GOD's holy Ordinance. How our Notions of it are degenerated, the Bonds of it disregarded, and the whole Institution abused, is the Subject of this whole Undertaking, but especially of this Chapter.
What the true intent and meaning of Matrimony, in its first Institution, was, and what the Nature of that Contract points at, I shall leave in better Hands; the learned Fathers of the Church have, in all Ages, taken Pains to explain those Things to you: Nor am I going about to Preach, as a Reverend Divine lately did to the surprize of his Auditory, on Gen. iv. ver. I. Adam knew his Wife Eve. But there are a great many Civil Views in the Institution of Matrimony, which the propagating of the kind has little or no Concern in, and the Ordinance of Matrimony suffers as much by our scandalous Notions of it, as a State of Life, as it does in any other Part.
Nor is the subordination any Part of the Case I am upon; I am so little a Friend to that which they call Government and Obedience
