5. The same faithful helpfulness they owe, to the bodies of each other. They must shun all things that might cause sickness or pain to each other, and readily undergo any pains or cost, according to their power, to procure whatever is necessary either to keep or recover their health. They must comfort each other, in the days of sorrow, that worldly sorrow work not death. The wife must be health to her husband in his sickness: she must support his weakness, and he her’s. Sickness and weakness are things which of themselves are hard enough to be borne. There needs not the addition of unkindness to make the burden heavier. Let every husband and wife avoid or mend this fault, and be particularly careful of their behaviour, at that time above all, when either is visited with grief, or weakness, or sickness. When your wife is sick or pain’d, then comfort her with loving words, and chear her by a tender countenance. Then see that she want no looking too, no help which thou canst procure. When thy husband is sick or weak, then stay him with comfortable speech, revive him with diligent attendance. Do all thou canst, to ease his pain, and to recover his strength. Let thy love and care be his best physic, and thyself his best physician. This is to be faithful to thy husband’s body, and to “cherish him in sickness as in health.”
6. In the third place, man and wife must be faithfully helpful to each others names, and that in a double respect: in maintaining them both between themselves and also among others. First, they must hold fast a good opinion of each other, so far as it may possibly stand with truth. Yea, it is no blame for them to have somewhat too good an opinion of each other: for a man to think his wife not only more handsome, but more wise and good than she is; (making her virtues carry a greater show to the eye, by looking at them thro’ the glass of love:) and for her to think him not only more proper, but more kind and good than he really is, by taking things with that largeness of good interpretation, which much love naturally puts upon them. Certainly then they should be peremptory to give no place to ungrounded, unwarranted surmises. They must on no account suffer their hearts to grow mistrustful of each other. All rash, ill-built, hasty surmises, must be far from them. Otherwise love will go out at the same door, at which suspicion came in. He or she that has a suspicious head, has not a truly loving heart. Such may be lustful or fond; but an holy, virtuous, spiritual affection they cannot have. So long as they give way to evil surmisings, there is no place for this. *And therefore of all domestic makebates, of all that breeds quarrel between married people, nothing in the world is more pestilently effectual to this bad end than jealousy. Having leavened the heart, it makes the speech tart and sharp, the countenance sour, the whole behaviour distasteful. No good words, no good actions, or ♦gestures, or looks can proceed from a jealous heart. Jealousy will make one suck mischievous things out of his own fingers ends. Suffer not therefore this evil weed to grow up in the garden of matrimony. For no good herb will prosper by it; no praise-worthy thing will flourish. Let all then that are married, detest any thought of this kind that may arise. Let their hearts disdain to give the least credit, unless the proofs be more than manifest. Away then with this makebate jealousy, this quarreler suspicion, this breeder of brawls, this mother and nurse of contention, this underminer of love and of good husbandry, of all that should be profitable to an houshold. Away with it, I say, out of thy heart: chase it far from thy breast, from thy house. It is better to receive ten wrongs without suspecting, than to suspect one that is not received. Wherefore as thou wouldst stand for the good name of thy companion, against the tongue of a slanderer, so stand for it against the dreams of thy own heart, against thy own slanderous imagination. And if any person will suffer his lips to be so ill employed, as to become Satan’s bellows, by blowing these coals betwixt you, by telling thee this or that, rebuke such a person, reject his words with detestation, flee his company, nor defile thy ears and heart, by giving gentle audience to a whisperer and talebearer. In a word, wouldst thou love or be loved? Wouldst thou live otherwise in marriage, than as in a prison or dungeon? Then strengthen thy heart against all suspicion, and rather be any thing than jealous.
♦ ‘guestures’ replaced with ‘gestures’