the ordinance of marriage should be ob- sincerity. This is the first thing in the comserved. mandment implied, that the ordinance of II. Something expressly forbidden, viz. marriage should be purely observed. The infecting ourselves with bodily pollu-) tions, "Thou shalt not commit adultery." I. Something implied,—that the ordinance of marriage should be observed, 1 Cor. vii. 2, "Let every man have his own wife, and let every woman have her own husband." "Marriage is honourable in all, and the bed undefiled," Heb. xiii. 4. God did institute marriage in paradise; he brought the woman to the man, Gen. ii. 22. He did as it were give them in marriage. And Jesus Christ did honour marriage with his presence, John ii. 2. The first miracle he wrought was at a marriage, when he turned the water into wine. Marriage is a type and resemblance of the mystical union between Christ and his church, Eph. v. 32. Concerning marriage, V. II. The thing forbidden in the command. ment, i. e. infecting ourselves with bodily pollution and uncleanness. "Thou shalt not commit adultery." The fountain of this sin is lust. Since the fall, holy love is degene rated to lust. Lust is the fever of the soul. There is a two-fold adultery: 1. Mental, Matt. v. 28, "Whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her, hath committed adultery with her already in his heart." As a man may die of an inward bleeding, so he may be damned for the inward boilings of lust, if they be not mortified.-2. Corporal adultery, when sin hath conceived, and brought forth in the act. This is expressly forbidden under a sub pœna, "Thou shalt not commit adul tery." This commandment is set as a hedge to keep out uncleanness; and they that break this hedge a serpent shall bite them. Job calls adultery a heinous crime, Job. xxxi. 11. Every failing is not a crime; and every crime is not a heinous crime; but adultery is flagitium,—a heinous crime. The Lord calls it villany, Jer. xxix. 23, They have committed villany in Israel, and have committed adultery with their neighbours' wives." 1st. There are general duties.-1. The general duty of the husband is to rule, Eph. 23, "The husband is the head of the wife." The head is the seat of rule and government; but he must rule with discretion. He is head, therefore must not rule without reason. -2. The general duty on the wife's part is submission. Eph. v. 22, "Wives submit" yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord." It is observable the Holy Ghost passed by Sarah's failings, he doth not mention her unbelief, but he takes notice of that which was good in her, her reverence and obedience to her husband, 1 Pet. iii. 6, "Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him lord." 2d. Special duties belonging to marriage are love and fidelity.-1. Love, Eph. v. 25, Love is the marriage of the affections. There is as it were but one heart in two bodies; love lines the yoke and makes it easy; love perfumes the marriage relation, without which it is not conjugium but conjurgium; it is like two poisons in one stomach, one is ever sick of the other.-2. Fidelity. In marriage there is mutual promise of living together faithfully according to God's holy ordinance. Among the Romans, on the day of marriage, the woman presented to her husband fire and water: fire refines metal, water cleanseth,―hereby signifying, that she would live with her husband in chastity and QUEST. Wherein appears the heinousness of this sin of adultery? ANS. 1. In that adultery is the breach of the marriage-oath. When persons come to gether in a matrimonial way they bind themselves by covenant each to other, in the presence of God, to be true and faithful in the conjugal relation. Unchastity is a falsifying this solemn oath; and herein adultery is worse than fornication, because it is a breach of the conjugal bond. God's com A. 2. The heinousness of adultery lies in this, That it is such a high dishonour done to God. God saith, "Thou shalt not commit adultery." The adulterer sets his will above God's law, tramples upon mand, affronts him to his face; as if a subject should tear his prince's proclamation. The adulterer is highly injurious to all the persons in the Trinity. 1. To God the Father. Sinner, God hath given thee thy don! Many of the papists judge fornication venial. God condemns the very lusting, Matt. v. 28. If God condemns the thought, how dare they allow the fact of fornication? You see what a cage of unclean birds the church of Rome is; they call themselves the Holy Catholic Church, but, how can they be holy, who are so steeped and parboiled in fornication, incest, sodomy, and all manner of uncleanness ? life, and thou dost waste the lamp of thy life, | to commit uncleanness; and, if the patent the flower of thy age in lewdness; he hath were not enough, he would give them a parbestowed on thee many mercies, health and estate, and thou spendest all on harlots. Did God give thee wages to serve the devil? 2. Injurious to God the Son, two ways. First, As he hath purchased thee with his blood, 1 Cor. vi. 20, " Ye are bought with a price." Now, he who is bought is not his own; it is a sin for him to go to another, without consent from Christ, who hath 'bought him with a price.' Secondly, By virtue of baptism thou art a Christian, and professest that Christ is thy head, and thou árt a member of Christ; therefore, what an injury is it to Christ, to take the members of Christ, and make them the "members of a harlot?" 1 Cor. vi. 15. 3. It is injurious to God the Holy Ghost; for the body is his temple, 1 Cor. vi. 19, "Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you?" And what a sin is it to defile his temple! Use 2d. It is matter of lamentation to see this commandment so slighted and violated among us. Adultery is the reigning sin of the times, Hos. vii. 4, "They are all adulterers, as an oven heated by the baker." The time of King Henry VIII. was called the golden age, but this may be called the unclean age, wherein whore-hunting is common : Ezek. xxiv. 13, "In thy filthiness is lewdness.' Luther tells of one who said, if he might but satisfy his lust, and be carried from one whore-house to another, he would desire no other heaven; afterwards he breathed out his soul betwixt two notorious strumpets. This is to be the right seed of Adam, to love the forbidden fruit, to love to drink of stolen waters: Ezek. viii. 8, 9, “Son of man, dig now in the wall; and when I had digged,, behold a door; and he said unto me, Go in A. 3. The heinousness of adultery lies in this, that it is committed with mature deliberation. First, there is the contriving the sin in the mind, then consent in the will, and then the sin is put forth into act. To sin against the light of nature, and to sin deliberately, is like the dye to the wool, it gives sin a tincture, and dyes it of a crimson colour. A. 4. That which makes adultery so hei-and behold the wicked abominations that they nous, is, that it is a sin after remedy. God hath provided a remedy to prevent this sin, 1 Cor. vii. 2, "To avoid fornication let every man have his own wife." Therefore after this remedy prescribed, to be guilty of fornication or adultery, is inexcusable; it is like a rich thief, that steals when he hath no need. This doth enhance and accent the sin, and make it heinous. Use 1st. It condemns the church of Rome, who allow the sin of fornication and adultery. They suffer not their priests to marry, but they may have their courtesans. The worst kind of uncleanness, incest with the nearest of kin, is dispensed with for money. It was once said of Rome, Urbs est jam toot lupanar,-Rome is become a common stew. And no wonder, when the pope could for a sum of money give them a license and patent do here." Could we, as the prophet, dig in signify that lust brings death. Venus is lust. Fifthly, Adultery is a purgatory to the purse: as it wastes the body, so the estate, Prov. vi. 26, "By means of a whorish wo man, a man is brought to a piece of bread." Whores are the devil's horse-leeches, money. First, It is a thievish sin. Adultery is the highest sort of theft; the adulterer steals from his neighbour that which is more than his goods and estate, he steals away his wife from him, who is flesh of his flesh.' Secondly, Adultery debaseth a person; it makes him resemble the beasts; therefore the adulterer is described like a horse neigh-sponges that will soon suck in all one's ing, Jer. v. 8, "Every one neighed after his The prodigal had soon spent his neighbour's wife." Nay, this is worse than portion when once he fell among harlots, brutish; for some creatures that are void of Luke xv. 30. King Edward III. his concu. reason, yet, by the instinct of nature, observe bine, when he lay a-dying, got all she could a kind of decorum of chastity. The turtle- from him, and plucked the rings off his findove is a chaste creature, and keeps to its gers, and so left him. He that lives in mate; the stork, wherever he flies, comes luxury, dies in beggary. into no nest but his own. Naturalists write, if a stork, leaving his own mate, joineth with any other, all the rest of the storks fall upon him, and pull his feathers from him. Adultery is worse than brutish, it degrades a person of his honour. Sixthly, Adultery blots and eclipseth the name, Prov. vi. 32, 33, "Whoso committeth adultery with a woman, a wound and dishonour shall he get, and his reproach shall not be wiped away." Some while they get wounds, get honour. The soldier's wounds are full of honour; the martyr's wounds for Christ are full of honour; these get honour while they get wounds: but the adulterer gets reproach shall not be wiped away." The wounds of the name no physician can heal. The adulterer, when he is dead, his shame lives. When his body rots under ground, his name rots above ground. His base-born children will be the living monuments of his shame. Thirdly, Adultery doth pollute and befilthy Fourthly, Adultery is destructive to the Eighthly, This sin of adultery ushers in temporal judgments. The Mosaical law made adultery death, Lev. xx. 10, "The adulterer and adulteress shall surely be put to death;" and the usual death was stoning, Deut. xxii. 24. The Saxons commanded the persons taken in this sin to be burnt. The Romans caused their heads to be stricken off. This sin like a scorpion carries a sting in the tail of it. The adultery of Paris and Helena, a beautiful strumpet, ended in the ruin of Troy, and was the death both of Paris and Helena. "Jealousy is the and damnable to the soul, Prov. vii. 26, "She hath cast down many wounded, yea, many strong men have been slain by her." Tenthly, The adulterer doth not only wrong his own soul, but doth what in him lies to destroy the soul of another, and so kill two at once. And thus the adulterer is worse than the thief; for, suppose a thief rob a man, yea, take away his life, yet that man's soul may be happy, he may go to heaven as well as if he had died in his bed. But he who commits adultery endangers the soul of another, and deprives her of salvation so far as in him lies. Now, what a fearful thing is it to be an instrument to draw another to hell! Eleventhly, The adulterer is abhorred of God, Prov. xxii. 14, "The mouth of strange women is a deep pit: he that is abhorred of the Lord shall fall therein." What can be worse than to be abhorred of God? God may be angry with his own children; but for God to abhor a man, is the highest degree of hatred. QUEST. But how doth the Lord show his abhorrence of the adulterer? Ninthly, Adultery, (without repentance) damns the soul, 1 Cor. vi. 9, "Neither fornicators, nor adulterers, nor effeminate," shall enter into the kingdom of God. The fire of lust brings to the fire of hell, Heb. xiii. 4, "Whoremongers and adulterers God will judge." Though men may neglect to judge them, yet God will judge them. But will not God judge all other sinners? Yes. Why then doth the apostle say, 'Whoremongers and adulterers God will judge? The meaning is, 1. He will judge them assuredly; they shall not escape the hand of justice. 2. He will punish them severely, 2 Pet. ii. 9, "The Lord knoweth how to reserve the unjust to the day ANS. In giving him up to a reprobate mind, of judgment to be punished, but chiefly them and a seared conscience, Rom. i. 28. And that walk in the lust of uncleanness." The now he is in such a condition that he cannot harlot's breast keeps from Abraham's bosom, repent. This is to be abhorred of God; such Momentaneum est quod delectat, æternum | a person stands upon the threshhold of hell, quod cruciat. Who would, for a cup of plea- and when death gives him a jog, he tumbles sure, drink a sea of wrath? Prov. ix. 18, "Her guests are in the depths of hell." A wise traveller, when he comes to his inn, though many pleasant dishes are set before him, yet he forbears to taste, because of the reckoning which will be brought in: we are here all travellers to Jerusalem above, and though many baits of temptation are set before us, yet we should forbear, and think of the reckoning which will be brought in at death. With what stomach could Dionysius eat his dainties, when he imagined there was a naked sword hung over his head as he sat at meat? While the adulterer feeds on strange flesh, the sword of God's justice hangs over his head. Causinus speaks of a tree that grows in Spain, that is of a sweet smell, and pleasant to the taste, but the juice of it is poisonous: the emblem of a harlot,-she is perfumed with powders, and fair to look on, but poisonous in. All which may sound a retreat in our ears, and call us off from the pursuit of so damnable a sin as uncleanness. I will conclude with two scriptures, Prov. v. 8, “Come not nigh the door of her house;" Prov. vii. 27, "Her house is the way to hell.” Twelfthly, Adultery is a sower of discord; it destroys peace and love, the two best flowers which grow in a family. Adultery sets husband against wife, and wife against husband; and so it causeth the 'joints of the same body to smite one against another.' And this division in a family works confusion; for "A house divided against a house falleth," Luke xi. 17, Omne divisibile est corruptibile. QUEST. How may we abstain from this sin of adultery? ANS. I shall lay down some directions, by way of antidote, to keep you from being infected with this sin.-1. Come not into the company of a whorish woman: avoid her house, as a seaman doth a rock, Prov. v. 8, "Come not near the door of her house." He who would not have the plague, must not come near houses infected; every whorehouse hath the plague in it. Not to beware of the occasion of sin, and yet pray, "Lead us not into temptation," is, as if one should put his finger into the candle, and yet pray that it may not be burnt.-2. Look to your eyes. Much sin comes in by the eye, 2 Pet. ii. 14, "Having eyes full of adultery." The eye tempts the fancy, and the fancy works upon the heart. A wanton amorous eye may usher in sin. Eve first saw the tree of knowledge, and then she took, Gen. iii. 6. First she looked and then she loved. The eye oft sets the heart on fire; therefore Job laid a law upon his eyes, Job xxxi. 1, "I made a covenant with my eyes, why then should I think upon a maid?" Democritus the philosopher plucked out his eyes because he would not be tempted with vain objects: the scripture doth not bid us do so, but set a watch before our eyes.-3. Look to your lips. Take heed of any unseemly word that may enkindle unclean thoughts in yourselves or others, 1 Cor. xv. 33, "Evil communications corrupt good manners." Impure discourse is the bellows to blow up the fire of lust. Much evil is conveyed to the heart by the tongue, Ps. cxli. 3, "Set a watch, O Lord, before my mouth."-4. Look in a special manner to your heart, Prov. iv. 23, "Keep thy heart with all diligence." Every one hath a tempter in his own bosom, Matt. xv. 19, "Out of the heart proceed evil thoughts." And thinking of sin makes way for the act of sin. Suppress the first risings of sin in your heart. As the serpent, when danger is near, keeps his head; so keep your heart, which is the spring from whence all lustful motions do proceed.-5. Look to your attire. We read of "the attire of a harlot," Prov. vii. 10. A wanton dress is a provocation to lust. Curlings and towerings of the hair, a painted face, naked breasts, are allurements to vanity. Where the bush is hung out, people will go in and taste of the liquor. Hierom saith, such as by their lascivious attire endeavour to draw others to lust, though no evil follow, yet these tempters shall be punished, because they offered poison to others though they would not drink.6. Take heed of evil company. Serpunt vitia et en proximum quemque transiliunt, SEN. Sin is a disease very catching: one man tempts another to sin, and hardens him in sin. There are three cords to draw men to adultery: the inclination of the heart,-the persuasion of evil company, and the embraces of the harlot; and this three-fold cord is not easily broken, Ps. cvi. 18, "A fire was kindled in their company." I may allude to it, the fire of lust is kindled in bad company. -7. Beware of going to plays. A play-house is oft a preface to a whore-house,-Ludi præbent semina nequitiæ. We are bid to avoid all appearance of evil: are not plays the appearance of evil? Such sights are there as are not fit to be beheld with chaste eyes. Both Fathers and Councils have shown their dislike of going to plays. A learned divine observes, that many have on their death-beds, confessed with tears, that the pollution of their bodies hath been occasioned by going to plays.-8. Take heed of mixed dancing. Instrumenta luxuria tripudia. From dancing, people come to dalliance one with another, and from dalliance to uncleanness. There is, saith Calvin, for the most part, some unchaste behaviour in dancing. Dances draw the heart to folly by wanton gestures, by unchaste touches, by lustful looks. St Chrysostom did inveigh against mixed dancing in his time. "We read (saith he) of a marriage-feast, and of virgins going before with lamps," Matt. xxv. 10, but of dancing there we read not.' Many have been ensnared by dancing; the duke of Normandy and others. Salta tio ad adulteras non pudicas pertinet, AMB. Chrysostom saith, where dancing is, there the devil is: I speak chiefly of mixed dancing. And, whereas we read of dances in scripture, Exod. xv, those were sober and modest. They were not mixed dances, but pious and religious, being usually accompanied with singing praises to God.-9. Take heed of lascivious books, and those pictures that provoke to lust. (1). Books. As the reading of the scripture doth stir up as |