Allow me to request a place for the following curious and quaint
exposition of the propriety of the selection of _the rib_ as the
material out of which our first mother Eve was formed; and the ingenious
illustration which it is made to afford of the relation between wife and
husband. {214}
"Thirdly, God so ordered the matter betwixt them, that this
adhæsion and agglutination of one to the other should be
perpetuall. For by taking a bone from the man (who was _nimium
osseus_, exceeded and was somewhat monstrous, by one bone too
much) to strengthen the woman, and by putting flesh in steede
thereof to mollifie the man, he made a sweete complexion and
temper betwixt them, like harmony in musicke, for their amiable
cohabitation.
"Fourthly, that bone which God tooke from the man, was from out
the midst of him. As Christ wrought saluation _in medio terræ_,
so God made the woman _è medio viri_, out of the very midst of
man. The _species_ of the bone is exprest to be _costa_, a rib,
a bone of the side, not of the head: a woman is not _domina_,
the ruler; nor of any anterior part; she is not _prælata_,
preferred before the man; nor a bone of the foote; she is not
_serva_, a handmaid; nor of any hinder part; she is not
_post-posita_, set behind the man: but a bone of the _side_, of
a middle and indifferent part, to show that she is _socia_, a
companion to the husband. For _qui junguntur lateribus, socii
sunt_, they that walke side to side and cheeke to cheeke, walke
as companions.
"Fifthly, I might adde, a bone from vnder the arme, to put the
man in remembrance of protection and defense to the woman.
"Sixthly, a bone not far from his heart to put him in minde of
dilection and loue to the woman. Lastly, a bone from the left
side, to put the woman in minde, that by reason of her frailty
and infirmity she standeth in need of both the one and the other
from her husband.
"To conclude my discourse, if these things be duely examined
when man taketh a woman to wife, _reparat latus suum_, what doth
he else but remember the maime that was sometimes made in his
side, and desireth to repaire it? _Repetit costam suam_, he
requireth and fetcheth back the rib that was taken from him,"
&c. &c.--From pp. 28, 30, of "_Vitis Palatina_, A sermon
appointed to be preached at Whitehall, upon Tuesday after the
marriage of the Ladie Elizabeth, her Grace, by the B. of London.
London: printed for John Bill, 1614."
The marriage actually took place on the 14th of February, 1612. In the
dedication to the Prince of Wales, afterwards Charles I., the Bishop
(Dr. John King) hints that he had delayed the publication till the full
meaning of his text, which is Psalm xxviii. ver. 3, should have been
accomplished by the birth of a son, an event which had been recently
announced, and that, too, on the very day when this Psalm occurred in
the course of the Church service.
The sermon is curious, and I may hereafter trouble you with some notices
of these "Wedding Sermons," which are evidently contemplated by the
framers of our Liturgy, as the concluding homily of the office for
matrimony is by the Rubric to be read "if there be no sermon." It is
observable that the first Rubric especially directs that the woman shall
stand on the man's left hand. Any notices on the subject from your
correspondents would be acceptable.
In the first series of Southey's _Common Place Book_, at page 226., a
passage is quoted from Henry Smith's _Sermons_, which dwells much upon
the formation of the woman from _the rib_ of man, but not in such detail
as Bishop King has done. Notices of the Bishop may be found in Keble's
edition of _Hooker_, vol. ii. pp. 24, 100, 103. It appears that after
his death it was alleged that he maintained Popish doctrines. This his
son, Henry King, canon of St. Paul's, and Archdeacon of Colchester,
satisfactorily disproved in a sermon at Paul's Cross, and again in the
dedication prefixed to his "_Exposition upon the Lord's Prayer_," 4to.,
London, 1634. See Wood's _Athenæ Oxon._, fol. edit. vol. ii. p. 294.
As for the marriage of the Princess Elizabeth, afterwards celebrated for
her misfortunes as Queen of Bohemia, it was celebrated in an
epithalamium by Dr. Donne, _Works_, 8vo. edit. vol. vi. p. 550. And in
the Somer's _Tracts_, vol. iii., pp. 35, 43., may be found descriptions
of the "_shewes_," and a poem of Taylor the Water Poet, entitled
"Heaven's Blessing and Earth's Joy," all tending to show the great
contemporary interest which the event occasioned.
Balliolensis.
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