Husbands love your wives, Audiant episcopi, audiant presbyteri, audiant doctores, subjectis suis se esse subjectos, Let bishops, and priests, and doctors learn in this, that when they have married themselves to a charge, they are become subject to their subjects. For, by being a husband, I become a subject, to that sex which is naturally subject to man, though this subjection be no more in this place, but to love that one woman.

Love then, when it is limited by a law, is a subjection, but it is a subjection commanded by God; Nihil majus à te subjecti animo factum est, quam quod imperare cœpisti; A prince doth nothing so like a subject as when he puts himself to the pain to consider the profit, and the safety of his subjects; and such a subjection is that of a husband, who is bound to study his wife, and rectify all her infirmities; her infirmities he must bear; but not her sins; if he bear them they become his own. The pattern, the example goes not so far; Christ married himself to our nature, and he bare all our infirmities, hunger, and weariness, and sadness, and death, actually in his own person; but so, he contracted no sin in himself, nor encouraged us to proceed in sin. Christ was salvator corporis, a saviour of his body, of the church, to which he married himself, but it is a tyranny, and a devastation of the body, to whom we marry ourselves, if we love them so much, as that we love their sin too, suffer them to go on in that, or if we love them so little, as to make their sin our way to profit, or preferment, by prostituting them, and abandoning them to the solicitation of others, still we must love them so, as that this love be a subjection; not a neglecting, to let them do what they will; nor a tyrannizing, to make them do what we will.

You must love them then, first, quia vestræ, because they are yours; as we said at first, God loves couples; he suffers not our body to be alone, nor our soul alone, but he marries them together; when that is done, to remedy the va soli, lest this man should be alone, he marries him to a help meet for him; and to avoid fornification, (that is, if fornication cannot be avoided otherwise) every man is to have his wife, and every woman her own husband. When the love comes to exceed these bounds, that it departs à vestris, from a man's own wife, and settles upon

• Plinius Trajano.

7 Gen. ii. 20.

81 Cor. vii. 1.

another, though he may think he discharges himself of some of his subjection which he was in before, yet he becomes much more subject; subject to household and foreign jealousies, subject to ill-grounded quarrels, subject to blasphemous protestations, to treacherous misuse of a confident friend, to ignoble and unworthy disguises, to base satisfactions; subject, lastly, either to a clamorous conscience, or that which is worse slavery, to a seared and obdurate, and stupified conscience, and to that curse, which is the heavier because it hath a kind of scorn in it, be not deceived, (as though we were cozened of our souls) be not deceived, for no adulterer shall enter into the kingdom of heaven. All other things, that are ours, we may be the better for leaving; cade et vende, which Christ said to the young man, that seemed to desire perfection, reached to all his goods; Go and sell them, says Christ, and thou shalt follow me the better. But there is no selling, nor giving, nor lending, nor borrowing of wives; we must love them quia nostra, because they are ours; and if that be not a tie, and obligation strong enough, that they are nostra, ours, we must love them quia nos, because they are ourselves; for no man ever yet hated his own flesh.

We must love them then, quia nostra, because they are ours, those whom God hath given us, and quia uxores, because they are our wives. St. Paul does not bid us love them here, quanquam uxores, but quia, not though they be, but because they are our wives; St. Paul never thought of that indisposition, of that disaffection, of that impotency, that a man should come to hate her, whom he could love well enough, but that she is his wife. Were it not a strange distemper, if upon consideration of my soul, finding it to have some seeds of good dispositions in it, some compassion of the miseries of others, some inclination to the glory of God, some possibility, some interest in the kingdom of heaven, I should say of this soul, that I would fast, and pray, and give, and suffer anything for the salvation of this soul if it were not mine own soul, anybody's else, and now abandon it to eternal destruction, because it is mine own? If no man have felt this barbarous inhumanity towards his own soul, I pray God no man have felt it towards his own wife neither, that he loves her the less, for being his own wife. For we must love them, not quanquam, says

St. Paul, though she be so; that was a caution, which the apostle never thought he needed, but quia, because in the sight of God, and all the triumphant church, we have bound ourselves, that we would do so. Here marriages are sometimes clandestine, and witnesses die, and in that case no man can bind me to love her quia uxor, because she is my wife, because it lies not in proof, that she is so; here sometimes things come to light, which were concealed before, and a marriage proves no marriage, Decepta est ecclesia, The church was deceived, and the poor woman loses her plea, quia uxor, because she is his wife, for it falls out that she is not so; but, if thou have married her, in the presence of God, and all the court, and choir of heaven, what wilt thou do to make away all these witnesses? who shall be of thy council to assign an error in God's judgment? whom wilt thou bribe to embezzle the records of heaven? It is much that thou art able to do in heaven; thou art able, by thy sins, to blot thy name out of the Book of Life, but thou art not able to blot thy wife's name out of the records of heaven, but there remains still the quia uxor, because she is thy wife. And this quia uxor is quamdiu uxor; since thou art bound to love her because she is thy wife, it must be as long as she is so. You may have heard of that quinquennium Neronis; the worst tyrant that ever was, was the best emperor that ever was for five years; the most corrupt husbands may have been good at first: but that love may have been for other respects: satisfaction of parents, establishing of hopes, and sometimes ignorance of evil; that ill company had not taught them ill conditions; it comes not to be quia uxor, because she is thy wife, to be the love which is commanded in this text, till it bring some subjection, some burden. Till we love her then, when we would not love her, except she were our wife, we are not sure, that we love her quia uxor, that is, for that, and for no other respect. How long that is, how long she is thy wife, never ask wrangling controverters, that make gipsyknots of marriages; ask thy conscience, and that will tell thee that thou wast married till death should depart you. If thy marriage were made by the devil (upon dishonest conditions) the devil may break it by sin; if it were made by God, God's way of breaking of marriages, is only by death.

It is then a subjection, and it is such a subjection, as is a love; and such a love, as is upon a reason, (for love is not always so). This is, quia uxor, because our wife, and that implies these three uses; God hath given man a wife, ad adjutorium, ad sobolem, ad medicinam; for a help, for children, and for a remedy, and physic. Now the first, society, and increase, we love naturally; we would not be banished, we would not be robbed, we would not be alone, we would not be poor; society and increase, every man loves; but doth any man love physic? he takes it for necessity; but does he love it? Husbands therefore are to love wives ad sobolem, as the mothers of their children; ad adjutorium, as the comforters of their lives; but for that, which is ad medicinam, for physic, to avoid burning, to avoid fornication, that is not the subject of our love, our love is not to be placed upon that; for so it is a love, quia mulier, because she is a woman, and not quia uxor, because she is my wife. A man may be a drunkard at home, with his own wine, and never go out to taverns; a man may be an adulterer in his wife's bosom, though he seek not strange women.

We come now to the other part, the pattern of this love, which is Christ Jesus: we are commanded to be holy, and pure, as our Father is holy, and pure; but that is a proportion of which we are incapable; and therefore we have another commandment, from Christ, discite à me, learn of me; there is no more looked for, but that we should still be scholars, and learners how to love; we can never love so much as he hath loved: it is still discite; still something to be learnt, and added; and this something is, quia mitis, learn of me, make me your pattern, because I am meek, and gentle; not suspicious, not froward, not hard to be reconciled; not apt to discomfort my spouse, my church; not with a sullen silence, for I speak to her always in my word; not apt to leave her unprovided of apparel, and decent ornaments, for I have allowed her such ceremonies, as conduce to edification; not apt to pinch her in her diet; she hath her two courses, the first, and the second sacrament: and whensoever she comes to a spiritual hunger and thirst under the heat, and weight of sin, she knows how, and where there is plentiful refreshing and satisfaction to be had, in the absolution of sin. Herein consists the

substance of the comparison, Husbands love your wives, as Christ did his church: that is, express your loves in a gentle behaviour towards them, and in a careful providence of conveniences for them. The comparison goes no farther, but the love of Christ to his church goes farther. In which we consider first, quid factum, what Christ did for his spouse, for his church.

It were pity to make too much haste, in considering so delightful a thing, as the expressing of the love of Christ Jesus to his church. It were pity to ride away so fast from so pleasant, so various a prospect, where we may behold our Saviour, in the act of his liberality, giving; in the matter of his liberality, giving himself; and in the poor exchange that he took, a few contrite hearts, a few broken spirits, a few lame, and blind, and leprous sinners, to make to himself and his Spirit a church, a house to dwell in; no more but these, and glad if he can get these.

First then, Ille dedit, He gave, it was his own act; as it was he, that gave up the ghost, he that laid down his soul, and he that took it again; for no power of man had the power, or disposition of his life. It was an insolent, and arrogant question in Pilate to Christ, Nescis, quia potestatem habeo, Knowest not thou that I have power to crucify thee, and have power to loose thee? If Pilate thought that his power extended to Christ yet Tua damnaris sententia; qui potestate latronem absolvis, autorem vitæ interficis 10. His own words and actions condemned him, when having power to condemn and absolve, he would condemn the innocent, and absolve the guilty. A good judge does nothing, says he, domestica proposito voluntatis, according to a resolution taken at home; nihil meditatum domo defert, he brings not his judgment from his chamber to the bench, but he takes it there according to the evidence. If Pilate thought he had power, his conscience told him he misused that power; but Christ tells him he could have none, nisi datum desuper, Except it had been given him from above; that is, except Christ had given him power over himself: for Christ speaks not in that place of Pilate's general power and jurisdiction, (for so, also, all power is desuper, from above) but for this particular power that Pilate boasts to have over him, Christ tells him that he could have none over

John xix. 10.

10 Ambrose, Sermon xx., in Psalm cxix. 4.