Book: THE OBEDIENCE OF A CHRISTIAN MAN & How Christian Rulers Ought to Govern

HUSBANDS, love your wives as Christ loved the congregation, and gave himself for it, to sanctify it and cleanse it. Men ought to love their wives as their own bodies. For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall continue with his wife, and shall be made both one flesh. See that every one of you love his wife even as his own body.” ( Ephesians 5) All this saith Paul, And he saith, “Husbands, love your wives, and be not bitter unto them.”

And Peter, in the third chapter of his first epistle, saith, “Men, dwell with your wives according to knowledge,” (that is, according to the doctrine of Christ,) “giving reverence unto the wife, as unto the weaker vessel,” (that is, help her to bear her infirmities;) “and as unto them that are heirs also of the grace of life, that your prayers be not let.” In many things God hath made the men stronger than the women; not to rage upon them, and to be tyrants unto them, but to help them, but to bear their weakness. Be courteous therefore unto them, and win them unto Christ, and overcome them with kindness, that of love they may obey the ordinance that God hath made between man and wife.