It is strange that should be a pollution which was instituted before corruption; or that impurity which was ordained in the state of innocency; or that they should make that to be a sin, which they make to be a sacrament; strange stupidity!--But a bastard may be laid at the door of chastity, and a leaden crown set upon a golden head. Bellarmine (that mighty atlas of the Papal power) blows his stinking breath upon it: “Better were it for a priest to defile himself with many harlots, than to be married to one wife.”--These children of the purple whore prefer monasteries before marriages, a concubine before a companion.--They use too many women for their lusts, to choose any for their love.--Their tables are so largely spread that they cannot feed upon one dish. As for their exalting of a virgin-state, it is like him that commanded fasting, when he had filled his belly. Who knows not, that virginity is a pearl of a sparkling lustre? but the one cannot be set up, without the other be thrown down: No oblation will pacify the former, but the demolishing of the latter. Though we find many enemies to the choice of marriage, yet it is rare to find any enemies to the use of marriage. They would pick the lock that wants the key, and pluck the fruit that do not plant the tree. The Hebrews have a saying, “that he is not a man that hath not a wife.” Though they climb too high a bough, yet it is to be feared that such flesh is full of imperfection, that is, not tending to propogation: though man alone may be good, yet, _It is not good that man should be alone_. Which leads me from the subject to the predicate, _It is not good_. Now, it is not good that man should be in a single condition on a threefold consideration. 1. In respect of sin, which would not else be prevented: Marriage is like water, to quench the sparks of lust’s fire, 1 Cor. vii. 2. _Nevertheless, to avoid fornication, let every man have his own wife, &c._ Man needed no such physic when he was in perfect health. Temptations may break nature’s best sense, and lay its Paradise waste; but a single life is a prison of unruly desires, which is daily attempted to be broken open. Some, indeed force themselves to a single life, merely to avoid the charges of a married state; they choose rather to live in their own sensuality, than to extinguish those flames with an allowed remedy: _It is better to marry than to burn_:--to be lawfully coupled, than to be lustfully scorched. It is best to feed these flames with ordinate fuel.