Reasons For and Against Matrimony.
though obstinate and suspicious, I am persuaded he has a true desire to know the will and live the life of God. I reply in the same words you quoted to me in one of your letters, “Do not be afraid of a wreck, for Jesus is in the ship.” After the most violent storm, the Lord will perhaps all at once bring our ship into the desired haven.
You ask me a very singular question with respect to women; I shall however answer it with a smile, as I suppose you asked it. You might have remarked that for some days before I set off for Madeley, I considered matrimony with a different eye to what I had done: and the person who then presented herself to my imagination, was Miss Bosanquet. Her image pursued me for some hours the last day, and that so warmly, that I should perhaps have lost my peace, if a suspicion of the truth of Juvenal’s proverb, Veniunt a dote sagittae, had not made me blush, fight, and flee to Jesus, who delivered me at the same moment from her image and the idea o f marriage. Since that time I have been more than ever on my guard against admitting the idea of matrimony, sometimes by the consideration of the love of Jesus, which ought to be my whole felicity, and at others by the following reflections: - It is true that the Scripture says, that a good wife is a gift of the Lord; and it is also true that there may be one in a thousand; but who would put in a lottery where are 999 blanks to one prize? and suppose I could discover this phoenix, this woman of a thousand, what should I gain by it? A distressing refusal. How could she choose such a man as me? If, notwithstanding all my self love, I am compelled cordially to despise myself, could I be so wanting in generosity as to expect another to do that for me which I cannot do for myself - to engage to love, to esteem, and honour me?
I will throw on my paper some reflections, which the last paragraph of your letter gave rise to, and I beg you will weigh them with me in the balances of the sanctuary.
REASONS FOR AND AGAINST MATRIMONY.
1. A tender friendship is, after the love of Christ, the greatest felicity of life; and a happy marriage is nothing but such a friendship between two persons of different sexes.
2. A wife might deliver me from the difficulties of housekeeping, &c.
3. Some objections and scandals may be avoided by marriage.
4. A pious and zealous wife might be as useful as myself; nay, she might be much more so among my female parishioners, who greatly want an inspectress.
1. Death will shortly end all particular friendships. The happier the state of marriage, the more afflicting is widowhood; beside, we may try a friend and reject him after trial; but we can’t know a wife till it is too late to part with her.
2. Marriage brings after it a hundred cares and expenses; children, a family, &c.
3. If matrimony be not happy, it is the most fertile source of scandals.
4. I have 1000 to 1 to fear that a wife, instead of being a help, may be indolent, and consequently useless; or humoursome, haughty, capricious, and consequently a heavy curse.
Farewell. Yours, J. FLETCHER.
19. - TO MISS PATTON.
MADELEY, Sept. 3, 1764.
MADAM, - I think the estate your soul is in, is not uncommon. The only advice I can at present give you, is not to look to self, except it be to believe it away. Be generously determined not to live easy without the thoughts of Jesus on your mind, and his love, or at least endeavours after it in your heart. Then get that love or the increase of it, by obstinately believing the love of Christ to you, till you are ashamed into some return of it. A passage I have found much relief from, when my soul has been in the state you describe, is, “Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord,” Romans 6:11. This reckoning by faith I find is not reckoning without one’s host: but Christ is always ready to set his hand to the bill which faith draws.