A Christian Directory, Part 2: Christian EconomicsBaxter, Richard
Religion
A Christian Directory, Part 2: Christian Economics
Baxter, Richard
Casuistry; Christian sociology
stir up the worst, and then you shall find that even your faulty wives
will appear more amiable to you. 11. Overcome them with love; and then
whatever they are in themselves, they will be loving to you, and
consequently lovely. Love will cause love, as fire kindleth fire. A
good husband is the best means to make a good and loving wife. Make
them not froward by your froward carriage, and then say, we cannot
love them. 12. Give them examples of amiableness in yourselves; set
them the pattern of a prudent, lowly, loving, meek, self-denying,
patient, harmless, holy, heavenly life. Try this a while, and see
whether it will not shame them from their faults, and make them walk
more amiably themselves.
_Direct._ II. Another duty of husbands and wives is, cohabitation
and (where age prohibiteth not) a sober and modest conjunction for
procreation: avoiding lasciviousness, unseasonableness, and whatever
tendeth to corrupt the mind, and make it vain and filthy, and hinder
it from holy employment. And therefore lust must not be cherished in
the married; but the mind be brought to a moderate, chaste, and sober
frame; and the remedy must not be turned into an increase of the
disease, but used to extinguish it. For if the mind be left to the
power of lust, and only marriage trusted to for the cure, with many it
will be found an insufficient cure; and lust will rage still as it did
before, and will be so much the more desperate and your case the more
miserable, as your sin prevaileth against the remedy. Yet marriage
being appointed for a remedy against lust, for the avoiding all
unlawful congress, the apostle hath plainly described your duty;
1 Cor. vii. 2-5, "It is good for a man not to touch a woman:
nevertheless to avoid fornication, let every man have his own wife,
and let every woman have her own husband; let the husband render unto
the wife due benevolence; and likewise also the wife unto the husband.
The wife hath not power of her own body, but the husband; and likewise
also the husband hath not power of his own body, but the wife. Defraud
you not one the other, except it be with consent for a time, that you
may give yourselves to fasting and prayer, and come together again,
that Satan tempt you not for your incontinency." Therefore those
persons live contrary to the nature of their relation, who live a
great part of their lives asunder, as many do for worldly respects;
when they have several houses, possessions, or trades, and the husband
must live at one, and the wife at another, for their commodity sake;
and only come together once in a week, or in many weeks: when this is
done without great necessity, it is a constant violation of their
duties. And so it is for men to go trade or live beyond sea, or in
another land, and leave their wives behind them; yea, though they have
their wives' consent; it is an unlawful course, except in a case of
mere necessity, or public service, or when they are able on good
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