[ 44 ]
How impossible do we make this to our selves, when we invert the great End and Design even of God himself, who instituted and appointed it; and when we make the sacred Ordinance a retreat for Crime, a cover for our Excesses, and a protection to the most abominable Practices.
This is what I call abusing the state of Matrimony as well as dishonouring the Contract. Matrimony is not a single Act, but it is a Condition of Life, and therefore when People are new-married, they are said to have altered their Condition; it is a Series of Unity contracted by, and should be made up of agreeing Habits; where the Harmony is broken, the state of Life is abused; when the Parties cease to be united, and to be united too in that which is right, the Life is no more matrimonial; 'tis a Jargon of Speech, a Word without signification, to call it a matrimonial Life.
In the Contract the Parties bind themselves to live in this Harmony and state of Union; what else is understood by living according to GOD's holy Ordinance. How do they live according to a holy Ordinance, whose Conversation even towards one another, and with one another, pollutes and defiles the state of Life, and would the very Ordinance too, if that were possible?
How the Conversation between a Man and his Wife may and does pollute and defile the matrimonial State, (however strange such a thing may be) is the Subject of the following Chapters, where the Affirmative will, I doubt not, be clearly made out.
