bravery and luxury, they were no longer useful to her, she knew not what to do with them; but on wise Ulysses she was continually enamoured. Indeed, the outward ornament is fit to take fools, but they are not worth the taking; but she that hath a wise husband, must entice him to an eternal dearness by the veil of modesty, and the grave robes of chastity, the ornament of meekness, and the jewels of faith and charity; she must have no fucus but blushings, her brightness must be purity, and she must shine round about with sweetnesses and friendship; and she shall be pleasant while she lives, and desired when she dies. If not,

Κατθανοῦσα δὲ κείσεαι,

Οὐδέ τις μνημοσύνα σέθεν ἔσσεται,

Οὐ γὰρ μετέχεις ῥόδων τῶν ἐκ πιερίης.

Her grave shall be full of rottenness and dishonour, and her memory shall be worse after she is dead: "after she is dead:" for that will be the end of all merry meetings; and I choose this to be the last advice to both.

3. "Remember the days of darkness, for they are many;" the joys of the bribal chambers are quickly past, and the remaining portion of the state is a dull progress without variety of joys, but not without the change of sorrows; but that portion that shall enter into the grave must be eternal. It is fit that I should infuse a bunch of myrrh into the festival goblet, and, after the Egyptian manner, serve up a dead man's bones at a feast. I will only show it, and take it away again; it will make the wine bitter, but wholesome. But those married pairs that live, as remembering that they

must part again, and give an account how they treat themselves and each other, shall at that day of their dearth be admitted to glorious espousals; and, when they shall live again, be married to their Lord, and partake of his glories, with Abraham and Joseph, St. Peter and St. Paul, and all the married saints,

Θνητὰ τὰ τῶν θνητῶν, καὶ πάντα παρέρχεται ἡμᾶς·

Ἂν δὲ μὴ, ἀλλ' ἡμεῖς αὐτὰ παρερχόμεθα.

All those things that now please us shall pass from us, or we from them; but those things that concern the other life are permanent as the numbers of eternity: and although, at the resurrection, there shall be no relation of husband and wife, and no marriage shall be celebrated but the marriage of the Lamb, yet then shall be remembered how men and women passed through this state, which is a type of that; and from this sacramental union all holy pairs shall pass to the spiritual and eternal, where love shall be their portion, and joys shall crown their heads, and they shall lie in the bosom, of Jesus, and in the heart of God, to eternal ages, Amen.

161

SERMON PREACHED AT A MARRIAGE.

[JOHN DONNE, D.D.]

HOSEA, ii. 19.

And I will marry thee unto me for ever.

THE word which is the hinge upon which all this text turns, is erash, and erash signifies not only a betrothing, as our later translation hath it, but a marriage; and so is it used by David: "Deliver me my wife Michal, whom I married a ;" and so our former translation had it, and so we accept it, and so shall handle it: "I will thee unto me for ever."

marry

The first marriage that was made, God made, and he made it in paradise: and of that marriage I have had the like occasion as this to speak before, in the presence of many honourable persons in this company. The last marriage which shall be made, God shall make too, and in paradise too; in the kingdom of heaven : and at that marriage, I hope in Him that shall make it, to meet, not some, but all this company. The marriage in this text hath relation to both those marriages: it is itself the spiritual and mystical marriage of Christ Jesus to the Church, and to every marriageable soul

in the Church and it hath a retrospect, it looks back to the first marriage; for to that the first word carries us, because from thence God takes his metaphor and comparison, sponsabo, "I will marry ;" and then it hath a prospect to the last marriage, for to that we are carried in the last word, in æternum, "I will marry thee unto me for ever." Be pleased, therefore, to give me leave in this exercise, to shift the scene thrice, and to present to your religious considerations three objects, three subjects: first, a secular marriage in paradise ; secondly, a spiritual marriage in the Church; and thirdly, an eternal marriage in heaven. And in each of these three we shall present three circumstances: first, the persons, me and tibi, "I will marry thee;" and then the action, sponsabo, "I will marry thee; and, lastly, the term, in æternum, "I will marry thee to me for ever."

In the first acceptation then, in the first, the secular marriage in paradise, the persons were Adam and Eve: ever since they are he and she, man and woman: at first, by reason of necessity, without any such limitation as now and now, without any other limitation than such as are expressed in the law of God; as the Apostles say in the first general council, "We lay nothing upon you but things necessary "," so we call nothing "necessary" but that which is commanded by God. If in heaven I may have the place of a man that hath performed the commandments of God, I will not change with him that thinks he hath done more than the commandments of God enjoined him. The

a Acts, xv. 28.

a

rule of marriage for degrees and distances in blood, is the law of God; but for conditions of men, there is no rule given at all. When God had made Adam and Eve in paradise, God did not place Adam in a monastery on one side, and Eve in a nunnery on the other, and so a river between them. They that built walls and cloisters to frustrate God's institution of marriage, advance the doctrine of devils in forbidding marriage. The devil hath advantages enough against us, in bringing men and women together: it was a strange and super-devilish invention, to give him a new advantage against us, by keeping men and women asunder, by forbidding marriage. Between the heresy of the Nicolaitans, that induced a community of women, any might take any, and the heresy of the Tatians that forbad all, none might take any, was a fair latitude. Between the opinion of the Manichean heretics, that thought women to be made by the devil, and your Collyridian heretics that sacrified to a woman, as to God, there is a fair distance. Between the denying of them souls, which St. Ambrose is charged to have done, and giving them such souls, as that they may be priests, as your Peputian heretics did, is a fair way for a moderate man to walk in. To make them gods is ungodly, and to make them devils is devilish; to make them mistresses is unmanly, and to make them servants is unnoble; to make them as God made them, wives, is godly and manly too. When in your Roman Church they dissolved marriage in natural kindred, in degrees where God forbids it not, when they dissolve marriage upon