Richard Steele

Nevertheless let every one of you in particular so love his wife even as himself (Ephesians 5:33a).

The great duty of every husband is to love his own wife. This is the foundation of all the rest, this must be mixed with all the rest, this is the epitome of all the rest of his duty…

I. For the first, the nature and property of this love:

It is conjugal, true, and genuine, such as is peculiar to this relation. [It is] not that fondness which is proper [towards] children, nor the brutish lust which is peculiar to beasts, but that which is right and true.

1. For the ground of it…

The ordinance of God hath made her one flesh with me, and the law of nature obligeth me to love my own flesh. Therefore, though her beauty be decayed, her portion spent, her weaknesses great, and her usefulness small, yet she is a piece of myself. Here the wise God hath determined my affection. When all is said, this is the only sure foundation and [it] holds perpetually.

2. This love must be right for the extent of it:

It reaches the whole person, both soul and of it body. Every man should choose such an one, whose outward features and proportion he can highly esteem and affect…True conjugal love to a wife reaches her soul, so as to see an amiableness in her mind and disposition, so as to study how to polish her soul more and more with wisdom and piety, and to endeavor that her soul may prosper as her body prospers.

3. Right for the degree of it:

It must be transcendent, above your love to of it parents: “Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife” (Gen 2:24). The husband must honor his parents, but he must love his wife as himself and must (yet with all prudence) prefer her in his respects, whenever they come in competition…He must prefer her in his affection before his children and rather love them for her sake, than her for theirs, and before all others in the world. In short, he must so love her as to delight in her company above all others: “Be thou ravished always with her love” (Pro 5:19).

4. The husband’s love must be right for the duration of it:

And the last named Scripture clears that: “Be thou ravished always with her love,” not only kind before other folk and then cold in private, but always—not for a week, or month, or the first year, but while life lasts. Yea, as he hath experience of her virtue and sweetness, his love should daily increase…You have had her beauty and strength; why should you not also have her wrinkles and infirmities, yea, and give the more respect to her tried fidelity?⁴¹…And if there be less comeliness in the body, yet usually there is more beauty in the mind, more wisdom, humility, and fear of the Lord, so that still there are sufficient arguments in her, or arguments in the Bible, to perpetuate your conjugal affection.

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41. tried fidelity – tested and proven faithfulness.

From “What Are the Duties of Husbands and Wives Towards Each Other?” in Puritan Sermons 1659-1689, Being the Morning Exercises at Cripplegate, Vol. 1, reprinted by Richard Owen Roberts, Publishers.

Richard Steele (1629-1692): Puritan preacher and author; remembered as “a good scholar, a hard student, and an excellent preacher”; author of The Character of the Upright Man and others. Born at Bartholmley, Cheshire, England.

Courtesy of Chapel Library