A Christian Directory, Part 2: Christian EconomicsBaxter, Richard
Religion
A Christian Directory, Part 2: Christian Economics
Baxter, Richard
Casuistry; Christian sociology
3. Remember still that you are both diseased persons, full of
infirmities; and therefore expect the fruit of those infirmities in
each other; and make not a strange matter of it, as if you had never
known of it before. If you had married one that is lame, would you be
angry with her for halting? Or if you had married one that had a
putrid ulcer, would you fall out with her because it stinketh? Did you
not know beforehand, that you married a person of such weaknesses, as
would yield you some matter of daily trial and offence? If you could
not bear this, you should not have married her; if you resolved that
you could bear it then, you are obliged to bear it now. Resolve
therefore to bear with one another; as remembering that you took one
another as sinful, frail, imperfect persons, and not as angels, or as
blameless and perfect.
4. Remember still that you are one flesh; and therefore be no more
offended with the words or failings of each other, than you would be
if they were your own. Fall out no more with your wife for her faults,
than you do with yourself for your own faults; and than you would do,
if hers had been your own. This will allow you such an anger and
displeasure against a fault, as tendeth to heal it; but not such as
tendeth but to fester and vex the diseased part. This will turn anger
into compassion, and speedy, tender diligence for the cure.
5. Agree together beforehand, that when one is in the diseased, angry
fit, the other shall silently and gently bear, till it be past and you
are come to yourselves again. Be not angry both at once; when the fire
is kindled, quench it with gentle words and carriage, and do not cast
on oil or fuel, by answering provokingly and sharply, or by
multiplying words, and by answering wrath with wrath. But remember
that now the work that you are called to is to mollify, and not to
exasperate, to help, and not to hurt, to cure another rather than to
right yourself; as if another fall and hurt him, your business is to
help him up, and not to tread upon him.
6. Look before you, and remember that you must live together until
death, and must be the companions of each other's fortunes, and the
comforts of each other's lives, and then you will see how absurd it is
for you to disagree and vex each other. Anger is the principle of
revenge, and falling out doth tend to separation. Therefore those that
must not revenge, should not give way to anger; and those that know
they must not part, should not fall out.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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