Directives
for avoiding dissension in the home
It is a great duty of husbands and wives to live in quietness
and peace, and avoid all occasions of wrath and discord. Because
this is a duty of so great importance, I shall first open to you
the great NECESSITY of it, and then give you more particular
directions to perform it.
(1) Your discord will be your pain, and the vexation of our
lives. Like a disease, or wound, or fracture in your own bodies,
which will pain you until it is cured; you will hardly keep
peace in your minds, when peace is broken so near you in your
family. As you would take heed of hurting yourselves, and as you
would hasten the cure when you are hurt; so should you take heed
of any breach of peace, and quickly seek to heal it when it is
broken.
(2) Dissension tends to cool your love; frequent dissension
tends to leave a habit of distaste and averseness on the mind.
Wounding is separating; and to be tied together by any outward
bonds, when your hearts are separated, is but to be tormented;
and to have the insides of adversaries, while you have marital
outsides. As the difference between my 'home' and my 'prison' is
that I willingly and with delight dwell in the one, but am
unwillingly confined to the other; such will be the difference
between a quiet and an unquiet life, in your married state; it
turns your dwelling and delight into a prison, where you are
chained to those calamities, which in a free condition you might
flee.
(3) Dissension between the husband and the wife, disorders all
other family affairs. They are like oxen unequally yoked--which
can perform no work, because they are always striving with one
another.
(4) It exceedingly unfits you for the worship of God; you are
not fit to pray together, nor to confer together of heavenly
things, nor to be helpers to each other's souls. I need not tell
you this, you feel it by experience. Wrath and bitterness will
not allow you so much exercise of love and holy composedness of
mind, as every one of those duties requires.
(5) Dissension disables you to govern your families aright. Your
children will take example by you; or think they are at liberty
to do what they desire, when they find you taken up with such
animosity between yourselves. They will think you unfit to
reprove them for their faults--when they see you guilty of such
faults and folly of your own. Nay, you will become the shame and
secret derision of your children, and bring yourselves into
contempt.
(6) Your dissensions will expose you to the malice of Satan, and
give him advantage for manifold temptations. A house divided
cannot stand; an army divided is easily conquered, and made a
prey to the enemy. You cannot foresee what abundance of sin you
put yourselves in danger of.
By all these reasons, you may see what dissensions between
husband and wife do tend to.
DIRECTIVES for avoiding dissension in the
home
(1) Keep up your marital love in a constant heat and vigor. Love
will suppress wrath. You cannot become bitter upon small
provocations, against those whom you dearly love; much less can
you proceed to reviling words, or to averseness and
estrangedness, or any abuse of one another. Or if a breach and
wound be unhappily made, the balsamic quality of love will heal
it. But when love once cools, small matters exasperate and breed
antipathy.
(2) Both husband and wife must mortify their pride and passion,
which are the causes of impatience; and must pray and labor for
a humble, meek, and quiet spirit. A proud heart is troubled and
provoked by every word or action that seems to tend to their
undervaluing. A peevish, proud mind is like a sore and ulcerated
member--which will be pained if it be touched. He that must live
near such a sore, diseased, impatient, proud mind--must live
even as the nurse does with the child, that makes it her
business to rock it, and lull, and sing it quiet when it cries;
for to be angry with it, will do no good. And if you have
married one of such a sick or childish temper, you must resolve
to bear and use them accordingly. But no Christian should bear
with such a malady in themselves; nor be patient with such
impatience, pride and haughtiness in themselves. Once get the
victory over yourselves, and the cure of your own impatience,
and you will easily keep peace with one another.
(3) Agree together beforehand, that when one is in a
tempestuous, angry fit, the other shall silently and gently bear
it--until it be past and you have come to your senses again. Do
not both be angry at the same time. When the fire is kindled,
quench it with gentle words and demeanor, and do not cast on
more fuel, by answering provokingly and sharply, or by
multiplying words, and by answering wrath with wrath.
(4) If you cannot quickly quench the anger in your heart--yet at
least refrain your tongues! Speak no reproachful or provoking
words. Talking hotly and angrily does blow the fire, and
increase the flame. Be but silent, and you will the sooner
return to your serenity and peace. Foul words tend to more
displeasure. As Socrates said when his wife first railed at him,
and next threw a vessel of foul water upon him, "I thought when
I heard the thunder, there would come rain"; so you may foretell
worse following, when foul, unseeming words begin. If you cannot
easily allay your wrath, you may hold your tongues, if you are
truly willing.
(5) Let the sober party condescend to speak gently and to
entreat the other. Say to your angry wife or husband, 'You know
this should not be between us; love must allay it, and it must
be repented of. God does not approve it, and we shall not
approve it when this heated argument is over. This frame of mind
is contrary to a praying frame, and this language contrary to a
praying language; we must pray together soon; let us do nothing
contrary to prayer now. Sweet water and bitter come not from one
spring,' etc. Some calm and humble words of reason, may stop the
torrent, and revive the reason which passion had overcome.
(6) Confess your fault to one another, when angry passion has
prevailed against you; and ask forgiveness of each other, and
join in prayer to God for pardon. This will lay a greater
engagement on you the next time, to refrain from argument. You
will surely be ashamed to do that which you have so confessed
and asked forgiveness for--of God and each other.
If you will but practice these directives,
your family peace may be preserved.
- Richard Baxter, Baxter's Practical Works
