24. Ephes.

6.

4.) namely that there may be in holy marriage certaine seminaries of Gods Church, and exercises of all pietie and honestie according to the excellent saying of the Poet -

God will haue each family, A little Church to be,

Also,

Of humane life or mans societie, A Schole or College is holy matrimonie

That it may be manifest, that among Christians their sonnes are more to be accompted of and regarded, then their dogges: and if any doe no otherwise esteeme of them, that they are no Christians.

But this naturall affection towarde our most deare of-spring is plainely seene in the heathen themselues: that whomsoeuer you totally depriue of this, you denie them also to bee men. The mothers of Carthage testifie this to be true, when as in the third Punic warre the most choyse and gallant young men in all the Citie were sent as pledges into Sicilia, whom they followed vnto the shippes with most miserable weeping and lamentation, and some of them being with griefe separated from their deare sonnes, when they sawe the saules hoysed, and the shippes departing out of the hauen, for very anguish cast themselues headlong into the water: as Sabellicus witnesseth. Egaus doth testifie this, who when he sawe the shippe of his sonne Theseus, returning out of Creete with blacke sayles, thinking that his sonne had perished, ended his life in the next waters: Sabell lib. 3. cap 4. Gordianus the elder, Proconsul of Affrica, doth testifie this, who likewise, vpon rumours of the death of his sonne, hanged himselfe. Campoful lib 5. cap. 7. Also, Iocasta the daughter of Creon, Auctolia daughter of Simon, Anius King of the Thuscans, Orodes King of the Parthians, and an infinite number of others. Concerning whom reade Plutarch stat. lib. 2. and other authors, &c. To these may be added that sentence, Loue descendeth, &c. So that you see, it is no lesse proper to a man entirely to loue his children, then for a bird to flie: that if our writers at any time haue confessed the Islanders to be men (muche lesse to be Christians,) they must, will they nill they, ascribe vnto them this loue and affection towardes their children: if not, they doe not onely take from them the title and dignitie of men, but also they debase them vnder euery brute beast, which euen by the instinct of nature are bound with exceeding great loue, and tender affection towards their young ones.

I will not adde against this shamelesse vntruth most notable examples of our owen countreymen: I will omit our lawes of man-stealing, more ancient then the Islanders themselues, being receiued from the Noruagians, and are extant in our booke of lawes vnder the title Manhelge cap. 5, Whosoeuer selleth a free man (any man much more a sonne) vnto strangers, &c.

Now if any man be driuen to that hard fortune, that he must needs commit his own sonne into the hands of some inhabitant or stranger, being vrged thereunto by famine, or any other extreame necessity, that he may not be constrained to see him hunger-starued for want of sustenance, but keepeth his dogge still for his owne eating, this man is not to be sayd, that he esteemeth equally or more basely of his sonne then of his dogge:

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