Rules for Married Persons.

1. Husbands must give to their wives love, maintenance, duty, and the sweetnesses of ; and wives must pay to them all they have or can, with the interest of obedience and reverence: and they must be complicated in affections and interest, that there must be no distinction between them of mine and thine. And if the title be the man’s or the woman’s, yet the use is to be common; only the wisdom of the man is a regulate all extravagances and indiscretions. In other things no question is to be made; and their goods should be as their children, not to be divided, but of one possession and provision: whatsoever is otherwise is not marriage but merchandise. And upon this ground I suppose it was, that St. Basil commended that woman who took part of her husband’s good to do good works withal: for supposing him to be unwilling, and that the work was his duty or here alone, or both theirs in conjunction, or of great advantage to either of their souls, and no violence to the support of their families, she had right to all that: and Abigail, of her own right, made a costly present to David when her husband Nabal had refused it. The husband must rule over his wife, as the soul does over the body, obnoxious to the same sufferings, and bound by the same affections, and doing or suffering by the permissions and interest of each other: that (as the old philosopher said) as the humours of the body are mingled with each other in the whole substances, so marriage may be a mixture of interests, of bodies, of minds, of friends, a conjunction of the whole life, and the noblest of friendships. But if, after all the fair deportments and innocent chaste compliances, the husband be morose and ungentle, let the wife discourse thus: “If while I do my duty, my husband neglects me, what will he do if I neglect him?” And if she things to be separated by reason of her husband’s unchaste life, let her consider, that then the man will be incurable ruined, and her rivals could wish nothing more than that they might possess him alone.