When we consider church history and those giants of the faith which have gone on before, we can find almost no better example of biblically informed Christians than the Puritans. These believers sought to complete the work of the Reformation in the English church by seeking to bring everything back to scripture and the commands of God. This includes their theological understanding of marriage and the family. The Puritan focus on the good and nobility of marriage and the mutual comfort and joy that comes from it flew in the face of the centuries-long degradation of marriage that had dominated the medieval church.

During the Puritan Era, there was a reformation of family life according to scripture. This message, the biblical doctrine of marriage according to the Puritans, was delivered by Jeff Pollard at the Puritan Family Reformation Conference in Wake Forest, North Carolina in 2008. In 1552, the revised version of the Anglican Book of Common Prayer gave the following purposes for marriage. Duly considering the causes for which matrimony was ordained. One was the procreation of children to be brought up in the fear and nurture of the Lord and praise of God.

Secondly, it was ordained for a remedy against sin and to avoid fornication that such persons as have not the gift of continency might marry and keep themselves undefiled members of Christ's body. Thirdly, for the mutual society, help and comfort that the one ought to have of the other, both in prosperity and adversity into the which holy estate these two persons present come now to be joined. Now I want us to note the order of the purposes of marriage set before us here. One, procreation. Number two, a remedy against fornication, and number three, companionship.

Now later in 1646, the Puritan Westminster Confession of Faith gave these three purposes for marriage. Marriage was ordained for the mutual help of husband and wife, for the increase of mankind with a legitimate issue, and of the church with an holy seed, and for preventing of uncleanness. Now again, let's take notice of the order. This time, number one is companionship, number two is procreation, and number three is a remedy against fornication. Companionship was third in the Anglican prayer book.

It is first in the Puritan Westminster Confession. Procreation is first in the prayer book. It is second in the confession. Now on the surface this may appear insignificant, just a matter of order. Yet this difference represents a major change in the view of marriage.

Moreover, it represents years of careful exegesis, intense study, and theological debate. Now this one paragraph from the Westminster Confession represents radical reform of the doctrine of marriage and it overturns over a thousand years of Roman Catholic doctrine of marriage. So why is this significant? How did this happen? And why does it matter to us?

To answer these questions we need some definitions and a little bit of history. A study such as this faces many challenges. Before we can properly understand the Puritans and marriage, we need to define both concepts and put them into their historical context. First, what is a Puritan? Now the first thing to say is that historians of Puritanism do not agree among themselves about how to define the movement.

It's very frustrating to read the books and the contradictory views from one historian to the next. They disagree about when the movement started, about when it ended, and about who should be considered a genuine Puritan. Were the Puritans only in the Church of England? Or could Presbyterians and independents and Baptists be considered part of that number? Some historians say yes, some say no.

So defining Puritanism with accuracy can indeed be a daunting task. Nevertheless, there are things we can say with some measure of confidence. Puritanism began as a reform movement within the Church of England. The name Puritan was originally an insult aimed at those who wanted to purify Anglicanism. The roots of this movement extended back into the early 1500s.

Some historians include men such as William Tyndale, the Bible translator, as well as the Protestant exiles who fled to Europe because of Bloody Mary's persecution. Puritanism first appeared as an organized movement during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I in the 1560s. In 1559, Queen Elizabeth's Act of Uniformity authorized the Anglican prayer book for public worship and imposed penalties on those who refused to use it. Many ministers viewed Elizabeth's act as Catholic in its form of worship. Therefore, they attempted to rid the church of the remaining remnants of Roman Catholic ceremony and practice.

Now this constant, intense struggle to purify Anglicanism earned them the name Puritans. Puritan historian Patrick Collinson reports that during Elizabeth's reign, a pamphlet said, the hotter sort of Protestants are called Puritans. King James, on the other hand, had a slightly different view. He warned Prince Henry that the Puritans were very pests in the church and commonwealth. And for this reason, Margo Todd defines Puritans as a self-conscious community of Protestant zealots committed to purging the Church of England from within of its remaining Romish superstitions, ceremonies, vestments, and liturgy, and to establishing a biblical discipline on the larger society.

That's very important. A biblical discipline on the larger society, primarily through the preached word. Now this is a helpful definition, but J.I. Packer's definition will help us summarize what we've attempted to say thus far. He writes this, Puritanism was at its heart a spiritual movement passionately concerned with godliness.

Puritanism was essentially a movement for church reform, pastoral renewal and evangelism, and spiritual revival. And in addition, indeed as a direct expression of its zeal for God's honor, it was a worldview, a total Christian philosophy. The Puritan goal was to complete what England's Reformation began. In other words, the Puritans wanted a society ordained for God. And that's what they were attempting to do, first by reform of the church.

And that goal included the reformation of marriage. And that brings us to the next problem, what is marriage? I could spend a great deal of time reading different definitions of marriage to you. Once again, defining marriage can be as daunting a task as defining Puritanism. But we will let William Perkins, a Puritan, define it for us today.

He wrote, "...marriage is the lawful conjunction of the two married persons, that is, of one man and one woman into one flesh. So was the first institution of marriage which is expounded by our Savior, Jesus Christ. Therefore they are no more two but one flesh. For this cause shall a man leave father and mother and shall cleave unto his wife, as two boards are joined together with glue. And they which were two shall be one flesh." So we will live with Brother Perkins definition of marriage.

So I hope we have some notion of this reformation movement, this desire for godliness and a society ordained of God. Lying at the root of that society was marriage. So we need to look at a little more history before we come to the Puritans. Let's go back and look at the Church of Rome and its view of marriage for just a few moments. You cannot understand the Puritans' zeal or their actions unless you understand the background against which they were writing.

And that was, of course, the Church of Rome. Augustine said this, Marriage, therefore, is a good in all things which are proper to the married state. And there are three. It is the ordained means of procreation. It is the guarantee of chastity.

It is the bond of union. Now when he speaks of the bond of union, Augustine means that marriage is a sacrament. He's using the word in a slightly different way than later medieval Roman Catholic theologians will use it. Nevertheless, this is the source, ultimately, of viewing marriage as a sacrament. We have three things here.

The one that sticks out, or should stick out to us is, or perhaps two things should stick out. Number one is procreation is first, and that third is a sacrament. Augustine's view is crucial to our understanding of later Puritan reforms. All right, The first thing to say is that Augustine believed that celibacy was a higher spiritual state than marriage. Even though he said that marriage was good, celibacy and virginity were off the map in comparison to marriage.

It's important that we get a hold of that. He believed that marriage was a state filled with the danger of sin. He said consecrated virginity is rightly preferred to marriage. Therefore, marriage was a second-class spiritual state fraught with sin, dangers of sin. Moreover, because original sin stained everything that men and women did, physical relationships between a husband and wife were by default sinful.

Again, this is crucial. The only thing that legitimized the physical relationship between man and wife was having children. Therefore, for a husband to desire his wife without specifically having children in mind was a sin. With a little bit of thought, we can see the enormous amount of guilt this could and did produce. Marriage was not a happy institution in many ways.

Not only this, but it reduced woman's role basically to the task of either childbearing or just being a remedy against immorality. You lose the person in the task. This perspective fostered a very low view of women. However, Augustine did believe that a well-ordered family attributed to a well-ordered society. Order was crucial in his worldview.

He was painting the world as he understood the Scriptures. We think, however, he missed it very seriously in some of these matters. Now we shall see that this biblical understanding of a God of order and an ordered society was also the view of the Reformers and then the Puritans. The Puritans brought this idea to its fullest development. Let's go to Thomas Aquinas.

Now we hear the echoes of Augustine in Thomas Aquinas, who said, It is clear that offspring is the most essential thing in marriage. Secondly, faith. And thirdly, sacrament. By sacrament here, Aquinas did mean that marriage conferred grace, saving grace. He said, just as the baptism water, by virtue of its contact with Christ's body, is able to touch the body and cleanse the heart, so is matrimony able to do so through Christ.

So in a real sense, there was at least a redeeming feature to marriage, even though it was a second-class organization. And Not only this, he and the medieval schoolmen viewed celibate monks, nuns, and priests as more virtuous, more Christ-like, and especially more pleasing to God than married people. Another way of saying this is marriage is good, virginity and celibacy is better. You really want to be spiritual, marriage is not the way. In the name of Jesus Christ, Christ's own institution was being attacked.

Now, Aquinas went so far as to say that the birth of a girl was the result of a male embryo gone wrong. And while we may laugh at this, this was the voice of the church. This is what God's people were taught, or at least those who profess to be God's people. What kind of view would you have of marriage, of women, with these kinds of doctrines? While a wife helped in the good activity of bearing children and in preventing immorality, Aquinas taught that a man was a better friend to another man than a wife or a woman could ever be.

Now from the early church fathers to the time of the Reformation, Christendom then viewed marriage and the role of woman as second-class spirituality filled with guilt. And the role of a wife was especially low. You want a good friend? Go find a buddy. You want to avoid immorality, you have a wife.

It's a tragic view, but so it was. And that brings us to the Reformers. God, in his infinite mercy and grace, raised up the Reformers and then the Puritans to correct these tragic views. While building up the medieval understanding of marriage at certain points, the Reformers began to dismantle the Roman Catholic view. Martin Luther.

While we often think of Martin Luther as the man God used to recover the doctrine of justification by faith alone, the Lord also used him in the reformation of the family, especially marriage. Luther viewed marriage as a part of the temporal realm. We hear this in his writing. He says, Marriage is the divinely instituted and lawful union of a man and woman in the hope of offspring, or at least for the sake of avoiding fornication and sin, to the glory of God. Its ultimate purpose is to obey God and to be a remedy for sin, to call upon God, to desire love and bring up children to the glory of God, to live with one's wife in the fears of the Lord and to bear one's cross.

Now his studies of Scripture brought him to the conviction that marriage was good because It was divinely inspired. God gave marriage before the fall, and he concluded that it was a good thing. Even though sin stained marriage and those involved in it, it was still God's good institution, and he began major reform in the study of marriage. So much was he convinced of marriage goodness that the former priest, somewhat reluctantly, married a former nun. This was shocking.

Of course, this is what the Roman Catholic said is we knew that's what he was into all the time. We knew that he was just perverse. But The story of Catherine von Borra and Martin Luther is tremendous. I encourage you to do some reading regarding that. But we can call his view of marriage a fixed patriarchy with mutuality.

A fixed patriarchy with mutuality. In his study of the Word of God, he saw that there were roles for men and women. God ordained those roles, and therefore the roles are good. The husband is to lead. He's the head of his home, as Paul taught in 1 Corinthians 11 and Ephesians 5.

But he also saw mutuality. In Galatians chapter 3 Verse 28, Luther saw Paul's statement, there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female, for he are all one in Christ Jesus. And a holy spiritual mutuality between men and women became apparent in his thinking. Brethren, this is vital. This is slowly a turn toward a higher status for women.

He not only saw that there was in fact a hierarchical role, but in the grace of God men and women stood together. They stood on even footing. Now the feminists like to take this and pull it out of its context and simply say they build their egalitarian perspective from this. Luther was absolutely convinced that the grace of the gospel did not change our roles in life. But this notion that there was a mutuality of God's grace to men and women alike immediately raised the status of women.

Not only that, but he saw a mutuality in what Paul calls due benevolence. 1 Corinthians 7 verse 2, where it says, the wife hath not power of her own body, but the husband, and likewise also the husband, hath not power authority of his own body, but the wife. Now these are, we read these things, and maybe say, well yes, I've read that before, But to take this in and recognize that there's a verse in the Bible that actually talks about a wife's authority was earth-shaking. It was earth-shaking, and it was liberating. It was powerfully liberating because it put marriage in an entirely different light.

Men and women had a mutual responsibility in grace one toward the other. And even though there was a hierarchy, there was a gracious mutuality. This was Luther's view. Luther emphasized that it must be a loving headship. He said that each was to serve the other and that love must operate in the realm of forgiveness.

Love must operate in the realm of forgiveness. Now in these things, he elevated, as I said, the status of women. He believed that due benevolence between husband and wife was necessary for three reasons. Procreation, a remedy against sin, and a sign of companionship. Now brethren, again, we read that and it may just sound like part of a lecture to you.

This was thunder and lightning. This was world and paradigm shaping thinking. Luther says, you must, you must render, do benevolence. This is not an option, but people have been being taught for years, you may only have one thing in view. And Luther said, no, there's three.

And one of that is a mutual enjoyment of one another. This is literally earth shaking. It was nothing less than shocking for him to say that God blessed physical intimacy between husband and wife without children in view. And it is tragic that some who are involved in family reform are moving back closer to the Roman view than to the Puritan. If you read enough of the books, you will run across this.

John Calvin. John Calvin taught that marriage was a covenant and that it was crucial. It was a God-given institution. He held the same patriarchy with mutuality that Luther did. And he saw the same mutual grace.

Like Augustine and Luther before him, Calvin believed that sin disordered everything. And that grace and the new birth reorder everything. The gospel, the power of the Holy Spirit, the moving power of the world to come, invading history, changing men's hearts, minds, and then their behavior. Grace brought order, and lying at the heart of order was marriage, the fundamental relationship in all of life. Calvin said, among the offices pertaining to human society, this, meaning marriage, is the principle and as it were the most sacred that a man should cleave to his wife.

Again, when you put this against the background of marriage of second class, celibacy is the way to go, to hear that what is most sacred is a man and a wife in marriage is revolutionary. They were in fact fighting words. And this would be foundational to the Puritan view. That brings us to the Puritans. Now as we take up the Puritans, we must first realize that as a movement, Puritanism did begin in the Church of England.

Anglicanism had been Roman Catholicism until the reign of Henry VIII, for those of you that know your English history there. Thomas Cranmer, who studied Luther, brought partial reform to Anglicanism, But it was the burning desire to finish the reform that ignited the Puritan movement. Many of the ministers looked at the good things that had changed, but they saw a world of things that still need to be radicalized, that still need to be changed. And that burning in their heart became the Puritan movement. It gave us the hotter sort of Protestants.

Now from the Word of God and from Augustine, Luther, and Calvin whom they studied, the Puritans saw the vital need for order. Augustine had said it. Where did he get it? From the Word of God. Order.

There's an orderly God who's made the heavens and the earth. Everywhere we look, we see his order. The disorder comes from sin. So we want an ordered society. Luther, who had been an Augustinian monk, was filled with the same notion that society must be brought in harmony with the Word of God.

That will bring order. Calvin, same thing, and the Puritans were masters of this particular view. They saw marriage as the fundamental building block of world order. World order. Now, family, church, and state were all God's institutions, and the Puritans saw that they were all linked together at various levels.

All this was rooted in marriage. Heinrich Bullinger, the leader of the Reformation in Zurich after the death of Ulrich Zwingli, wrote an important book entitled, The Christian State of Matrimony. Miles Coverdale, who first gave England a complete and authorized version of the Bible in English, took Bullinger's work and translated it into English. It became the basis for Thomas Beacon's book, The Golden Book of Christian Matrimony. Now these books had great influence on other Puritan, well, on the Puritan writers.

Now many books began to appear, and let me just give you a partial list of these titles so that you can get kind of a flavor of this. It's truly wonderful. Robert Cleaver wrote, a godly form of household. Robert Cleaver and John Dodd wrote Bathsheba's instruction to her son, Lemuel, describing the duties of a great man and the virtues of a gracious woman, from Proverbs 31. Hannibal Gammon wrote, A Godly Woman's Praise.

Thomas Gadigar, who wrote a number of works, wrote A Good Wife, God's Gift. It's one of my favorite titles. I have a good gift at home. A wife indeed was another title he wrote. Marriage duties, a marriage prayer.

Alexander Nicholas wrote a discourse of marriage and wiving. Daniel Rogers wrote matrimonial honor. You see a name like this again stands in stark contrast to what Christendom had taught people for over a thousand years. Matrimonial honor! They were trumpeting the glory of marriage.

This was great. William Watley wrote a bride bush or a wedding sermon. A bride bush was a bush that was hung on the door of an ale house when you announced your marriage. We'll move on here. He also wrote a care cloth and a triatus of the cumbers and troubles of marriage.

They were realists. They knew that there was trouble in marriage, and they wrote about it, and they gave wonderful pastoral counsel. John Wing wrote, the crown conjugal. William Secker wrote, the wedding ring. And of course, William Gogue wrote, the massive of domestic duties.

And we hear that word duty a lot. And you know to us it doesn't sit very well. To the Puritans it was a crucial word. Duty, why? Because God who saves sinners gives them life by the power of His Spirit in regeneration.

And He brings them into eternal union with the Lord Jesus Christ. Because they're in union with Christ, they love the Lord and they want to do what He commands. Jesus is the Lord. He's the Lord of the church and He commands His people. And therefore, loving your wife is a duty.

And that's why you hear that language. They weren't simply hung up in constantly trying to give military-like orders to everyone. What they were saying is that heaven has called us to obey. And that's what we want to do. Here's the husband's duty to his wife.

Here's the wife's duty to her husband. Here are the parents' duties to their children. Before God, they've been commanded to live a particular way. Many more titles appeared, but this should give us a little sense of how important this subject was. Now, we're at a crucial point of our discussion.

As one writer says, eventually Puritanism focused on purification of both individuals and society through the reform of church and state according to biblical principles. I know you've probably forgotten some of the definitions we had earlier, but you can go back and check those, or you can have my notes. Either way, Again, what we hear is the idea of the preached word transforming the landscape, the preached word changing society. And at the heart of it, the very beginning, the building block was marriage, the original institution of God. Rome had denigrated it, and with it, along with the status of women.

When the Word of God began to be preached, women were brought up to a more wonderful status. They didn't look at husband and wife in their hierarchy as a master and slave, but as king and queen, both ruling in the house. That's a radical change, And it's a good change. Very often the husband had to be gone and the wife had to rule over the house including the servants in his absence. Again, this is just revolutionary.

We take it for granted. But brethren, the very fact that we know some of the blessings that we know in marriage in our day is because the Puritans fought for a biblical worldview. Fought for a biblical worldview. Now, as I said, we are at a crucial point. In God's sovereign purpose, the Puritans' desire to reform Anglicanism fully did not happen.

As several historians have pointed out, in many ways the Puritans failed in many of the reforms they attempted to bring to pass. But we shouldn't let that bother us our own beloved master died upon the cross in a shameful death that to the world looked like failure but in that death was the eternal life of all God's elect. And very often, God's people labor and appear to fail. But the power of God in His mercy through His servants goes on and changes the world. So it was with the Puritans.

Now, they saw the reform of families as crucial to the health of the church and of the nation, and they began to move in the direction that should be very interesting to those of us gathered here. Since the Anglican church was not considered reliable in many ways, especially in its mostly Roman Catholic view of the family, the Puritans decided that their families would be the testimonies of God's truth. So if the church won't do it, we're going to shine the glory and the light of God's transforming gospel and truth in our family. And that's why they wrote so many books. They purposed to order their families according to the Word of God and that would help bring reform to the society.

That would bring gospel witness to a culture encrusted in darkness and superstition. The obvious conclusion was that the gospel of Jesus Christ transforms men, women, children, bringing all of the family under the lordship of Christ led by faithful fathers would bear witness to the transforming power of God's grace. Anybody here want to live that? I want to live that. Now, if we can understand all that's been said thus far, we can see why Puritan Daniel Rogers could define marriage this way.

You don't want to try to write this down, just listen. Marriage is the preservative of chastity, the seminary of the Commonwealth, seed plot of the church, pillar under God of the world, right hand of Providence, supporter of laws, states, orders, offices, gifts and services, the glory of peace, the sinews of war, the maintenance of policy, the life of the dead, the solace of the living, the ambition of virginity, the foundation of countries, cities, universities, succession of families, crowns and kingdoms. Now to us, that might just be acres of verbiage, but this is their theology. This is what we've been talking about now. They saw the marriage union, a healthy, wholesome marriage union, as the very foundation of everything else.

We see something of this in William Gage's or Gudge, I've heard it both ways, his three points of marriage. Gudge says, number one, marriage is a kind of public action. The well or ill ordering thereof much tendeth to the good or hurt of family, church, and commonwealth." And now you'll see that this theme shows up everywhere. Now that you, I trust, are something aware of this, you realize why they say it over and over again. It's not being taught in the church.

More of the Romish type thought is what's being taught in the church when it's being taught. In their books, they hit over and over that marriage, solid marriage, healthy marriage, is the foundation of family, church, and commonwealth. For by marriage, families are erected and church and commonwealth increased and continued. Number two, marriage is honorable. Honorable.

They never got tired of quoting Hebrews 13. You won't read, at least I've not read any of their marriage treatises at this point without them trumpeting. Marriage is honorable. Marriage is honorable. And brethren, this would make chains, bands, bondage fall off.

Marriage is honorable. So says the Word of God, the most sacred and inviolable bond that kniteth any two persons together. And number three, marriage is God's covenant, wherein He Himself had a mane and principal stroke. That means influence. For God is the chiefest agent in joining man and woman in marriage.

Once again, the specter of God blessing a man and a woman coming together for any other reason than children, lurks in all of their writings. God blesses a healthy and holy, loving relationship. Now, William Perkins gave us the foundation for all of this in his book, Christian Economy. Christian economy, he says, is a doctrine of the right ordering of the family. See the significance now of that word.

The only rule of ordering the family is the written Word of God. But as the Puritans continued to preach and to teach on the subject, they began to change their views regarding the order of the purposes of marriage. If you read the early works, because the men were Anglicans, the hotter sort, they still gave the order that was in the Anglican prayer book. But as time continued, they began to shift what was finally brought to light in the Westminster Confession. Roman Catholicism had built its order of marriage on Genesis 1.28.

And God blessed them, and God said unto them, be fruitful and multiply. And so they would argue against the Protestants. They would argue against the Puritans, and they'd say, there it is! That's the first reason for marriage. First chapter of the Bible.

And the Puritans would reason thus. They would say, yes, we Understand that. But Genesis 2 18 says this, And the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone. I will make him and help meet for him. This took place before God created Eve, and it is Adam and Eve God blessed them and said unto them in chapter 1.

And they said, while the glorious purpose of bringing children into this world is announced in the first chapter. It is to be accomplished by a man and a woman who love themselves in a holy companionship. The Puritans reasoned that companionship was the first purpose of marriage. It is not good that man should be alone. And that a loving, God-blessed relationship brought forth children.

In other words, to make childbirth the primary focus, unfortunately, helped to lead to a lower view of women. We don't see those kinds of things at first, but brethren, that is exactly why painful, painstaking theological study and debate is vital for the health of any professing Christian people. It was their continued going back to the passages in Genesis 1, 1 Corinthians 7, Ephesians 5, Hebrews 13, 1 Peter 3, over and over and over, that began to shape their thinking and they realized, wait a minute, we've got the order wrong. And the more they began to extol the glory and the beauty of a companionship, the more the idea of love between a man and woman that you and I hold today began to emerge. Their thinking opened the door to a higher view of physical and spiritual love between husband and wife.

They were very earthy. I have so many quotes that I'm sure Scott would hang me if I read them to you. But they were not saying these things for wicked stirring up of the flesh. They were saying to people who had been repressed for centuries, God made man and woman and it's good for you to love one another. With this order, a holy love that begets, that bears fruit.

Ephesians chapter 5 became clearer for them. Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for it. Now instructed by the Word of God, empowered by the Holy Spirit, and freed from the shackles of false guilt, a husband and wife could show mutual affection and physical love to one another in ways that people had not for centuries. Now this was not to say that they dispelled the notion or denigrated the notion of childbearing in any way. They simply put it in the proper context.

Man, woman, they love one another, and that bears the wonderful fruit of children. They saw the biblical order. Now, they saw that having children was one of the fruits of a wholehearted affection, not the only goal of affection. Now listen to Robert Cleaver once again. Wedlock or matrimony is a lawful knot, and unto God an acceptable yoking and joining together of one man and one woman, with the good consent of them both, to the end that they may dwell together in friendship and honesty on helping and comforting one another, eschewing whoredom and all uncleanness, bringing up their children in the fear of God.

Or it is a coupling together of two persons into one flesh, not to be broken according unto the ordinance of God. So to continue during the life of either of them. There we see the rearranged order, the glorious love and the children that are fruit of that love. The books now begin to reflect a radical revolution in marriage. We see the same thing in Alexander Nicholas.

We give a lengthy quote here. It is not good for man to be alone. This is how he began his book, A Discourse of Marriage and Wiving. It's not good for man to be alone, sayeth the alone and absolute goodness of all goodness itself, meaning God. Let us therefore make him and help her meet for him.

So the creation of the woman was to be a helper to the man, not a hinderer, a companion for his comfort, not a beration to his sorrow. For company is comfortable, though never so small. And Adam took no little joy in this his single companion, being thereby freed from that solitude and silence which his loneness would else have been subject unto. Had there been no other end nor use in her more than this her bare presence and society alone." That's very sweet. There'd been no other.

Just the fact that she was there would have been a blessing to him. I hope you husbands think like that. But beside all that, he says, the earth is large and must be peopled. And therefore, they are now the crown of his workmanship, the last and best and perfectest piece of His handiwork, divided into genders as the rest of His creatures are, male and female, fit and enabled to bring forth their like, to accomplish His will, who thus blessed their fruitfulness in the end, increase and multiply and replenish the earth." Brethren, you can read that paragraph and not realize the history behind it, but He has set before you the Puritan revolution. It's right there.

Companionship and the fruit of it. A fervent, affectionate love for one another that ultimately produces children in the service of God. Words of tenderness began to flow from the pulpits instead of a male embryo gone bad. Women were now seen and exalted in a biblical way. We can describe marriage according to the Puritans as a godly, loving, affectionate patriarchy with holy mutuality.

Thomas Gadigar said, There is no society more near, more entire, more needful, more kindly, more delightful, more comfortable, more constant, more continual than the society of man and wife, the main root source and original of all other societies. Richard Steele said, the great duty of every husband is to love his own wife. The great duty of every husband is to love his own wife. And they meant that in every sense. In every sense.

Spiritual, physical, in every way that the Word lays out. Now, he goes on to say, this is the foundation of all the rest, meaning love. This must be mixed with all the rest. This is the epitome of all the rest of His duty. You've got to love your wife.

Everything must flow from that. Likewise, He said, He must prefer her in His affection before his children and rather love them for her sake than her for theirs. That's an overturning of the Roman doctrine. As a matter of fact, in several of the Puritan writings on marriage, they say, it's tough for women to submit, he said, but it's tougher to love like Christ. Over and over they say it.

And they urged men to be the kind of men that a wife would love to submit to because that's the picture of Christianity. We love those that have been saved by the grace of God, love to serve Jesus Christ. Now, let me just say a couple of more things. Richard Steele also said, they loved quoting Proverbs 5.19, over and over and over. Be thou ravished always with her love.

Be thou ravished always with her love. Again, it is a passage that shows up in virtually every treatise I have read thus far. He also said, Christ's love was real, for He died of it. Meaning He died because of His love for His people. The husband must write after this copy.

That's the image, That's the picture. The Lord Jesus Christ. The Lord Jesus Christ. He gave himself for his people. He shed his blood.

It was a sacrificial love for his people. Not to love his wife in word and tongue only, but in deed and in truth, that if his heart were opened, her name might be found written there." Henry Smith said, therefore first that they may love and keep love one with another. It is necessary that they both love God and as their love increases toward Him so it shall increase each to the other." The Word of God was to order the family. Love for Christ was to be the root, the fountain of love for one another and love for the rest from family to church to society. It's all in Christ.

This, of course, was the love of all loves. Because Christ loved His bride and shed His precious blood for her, she moved him with all, excuse me, she loves him, we love the Lord Jesus with all our hearts. So as husbands and wives grew in their love for Christ, they grew more and more in love with one another. That's a prescription for good marriage. Love Christ more.

Young men, looking for a woman, find a woman that loves Christ better than you. Vice versa. Young women, you're looking for a man, find a man that loves Christ more than anything in his life. That's a man who'll know how to love as he ought, or at least has a better likelihood of being such a man. For the Puritan's marriage was not second best, filled with guilt.

It was of the highest order, for it displayed to all the world the love Jesus Christ has for his people. Henry Smith added an extra little bit of tenderness. He said, her cheeks were made for your lips, not your fists. As the Puritan husband loved his wife, and as the Puritan wife loved her husband, they showed God's order. They produced children.

They helped the church, and they helped the state. May we as God's people live in the love of Christ, of our spouses and children, and one another for the glory of God. Amen. Thank you. Thank you.