Henry Bullinger,
"Fifty Godly and Learned Sermons Divided into Five Decades"
(to view the footnotes, click on the highlighted numbers)
In
this sermon, the Puritan preacher Henry Bullinger cites
the example of Adam and Eve as evidence that marriage
is ordained by God. All of the holy men in the Bible,
he maintains, are married, and although Christ’s
life is remarkable as a virgin birth, he, too, came
from a married couple. If there is lust and sin in marriage,
it is because of the people in it, not the institution
itself.
The Decades of Henry Bullinger, Minister of the Church
of Zurich. Translated by H.I. The First and Second Decades.
Edited for The Parker Society by the Rev. Thomas Harding,
A.M., of Worcester College, Oxford, and Vigar of Bexley,
in Kent. Cambridge: The University Press, 1849-1852.
Fifty Sermons
Divided into
Five Decades.
Wedlock, which is also called matrimony, is an alliance
or holy joining together of man and woman, coupled and
brought into one by mutual consent of them both, to
the intent that they, using all things in common betwixt
themselves, may live in chastity, and train up their
children in fear of the Lord. The gospel verily calleth
wedlock a joining together which God hath made: for
Christ said, “What God hath joined together, let
no man separate.”1
Neither is it lawful to make any other the author of
matrimony than God himself. God did, by the mean and
ministery of his angels and chosen men, appoint other
good and necessary ordinances for mankind’s commodity;
but he himself did immediately, without the ministery
of any person, ordain matrimony; he himself did couple
the first married folks; and he, being the true high
priest indeed, did himself bless the couple then whom
he did join together.
By this we may easily gather the excellent dignity of
marriage and matrimony. For God did ordain it; yea,
he ordained it in paradise, when man as yet was free
from all kind of calamities. Adam, when he was in the
great felicity of paradise, seemed not yet to live commodiously
nor sweetly enough, except a wife were given to be joined
unto him. “It is not good,” saith God, “for
man to be alone; I will make him a helper to tarry or
dwell with him.”2
For God brought to Adam all living creatures, which
he had created, for him to name them: but among them
all there was nothing that Adam had lust unto; his mind
and nature did utterly abhor to be coupled with any
of them. God, therefore, casting Adam into a dead sleep,
doth out of his side, as he slept, frame up a woman;
which so soon as Adam set his eye upon, when she was
brought unto him by God who had made her, he straightway
crieth, that this was such a one as he desired, that
this was such a one as he could love, and wherewith
his nature could very well agree. “This now,”
saith he, “is bone of my bones, and flesh of my
flesh.” “I have found,” saith he,“ I have found an
help fit for me, which hath part of my flesh, of my
blood, and my very substance.” From hence riseth and
yet remaineth that natural proneness of men toward women.
. . .
The holy patriarchs kept the law of matrimony, and reverenced
wedlock very devoutly.3
For no small parcel of the first and most excellent
book of the bible, called Genesis, is spent in rehearsing
the marriages of holy men. Neither is Moses, the peerless
servant of God ashamed to make mention of the business
and works of wedlock as pure and excellent, which seem
to many at this day to be foul and filthy. Christ himself
(who, being the very natural Son of God, was himself
born in wedlock, although of a pure and uncorrupted
virgin) did honour and commend the knot of matrimony,
while he did vouchsafe to shew his first miracle at
a wedding; which was such a miracle, as did declare
that the Lord is able to make the bitterness of marriage
sweet, and the scarcity thereof abound with plenty.
As the apostles were married men, according to the examples
of the patriarchs, kings, princes, priests, and prophets;4
so Paul the chief of all the apostles, crieth out and
saith: “Wedlock is honourable among and the bed
undefiled: but whoremongers and adulterers God will
judge.”5
He saith, that wedlock is honourable among all men:
he meaneth, all nations; for very few people shall you
find that you do not greatly commend the state of marriage.
Xenophon thinketh, that among all God’s ordinances
scant any one can be found that is more commendable
or profitable than wedlock is. Musionius, Hierocles,
and other ancients sagas think marriage to be so necessary
to live well and conveniently, that the life of man
without marriage seemeth to be maimed. Even they (the
heathens I mean) do make the evils and discommodities
of marriage to consist in the married folks, and not
in marriage. For marriage of itself is good; but many
use not well the thing that is good, and therefore they
feel the smart of their foul abuse worthily. For who
knoweth not, that the fault of drunkenness is not to
be referred to wine, which is the good and wholesome
creature of God, but to the excessive bibbing and over-great
greediness of man, which abuseth God’s good creature?
“That which cometh out of the heart of man,”
saith the Lord in the gospel, “and not that which
goeth in by the mouth, defileth the man.”6
Hereunto belongeth that saying of Paul, the apostle
of Christ, where he attributeth sanctification to wedlock;
“for the bed,” saith he, “is undefiled:”
and in another place he testifieth, that “the unbelieving
husband is sanctified by the believing wife”:7
he affirmeth also, that children born in wedlock are
holy or clean. Moreover, the same Paul maketh Christ
an example of love betwixt man and wife, and shadoweth
the mysteries of Christ and the church by the colour
of wedlock: he figureth, I say, a heavenly thing by
an holy type that God doth allow.8
Whereupon in another place the same apostle doth say,
that their doctrine is a very “doctrine of devils,”
which forbid men to marry.9
And so, consequently, it followeth that that is an heavenly
doctrine, proceeding from God, which permitteth marriage
freely to all men, and doth commend and reverence it.
Contributing author: Michelle Ephraim,
Worcester Polytechnic Institute
1). Would it be possible to apply Bullinger’s arguments to contemporary standards of morality in marriage? Would his argument about personal fault (as opposed to that which is innate in the institution of marriage) gain support today?
2). How would Bullinger respond to Chrysostom’s condescending description of “serenity” in marriage?
