Conjugial Love (Rogers) n. 299

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299. An altogether different situation eventuates if a daughter consents to a petitioning suitor on her own without consulting her parents or guardians. For she cannot weigh in the balance such a matter that affects her future welfare and be guided by judgment, knowledge and love. Not by judgment, because her judgment is still in ignorance in regard to married life and in no position to balance considerations for and against or to perceive the ways of men from their native character. Not by knowledge or observation, because she observes little beyond the domestic relations in her parents' home and in the homes of some companions, and she is not equipped to investigate such matters as are private and personal to her suitor. Neither by love, because when daughters first reach a marriageable age, and also the age that follows, their love is governed by infatuations of the senses and not as yet by the desires of a mature mind. [2] Nevertheless, a daughter ought to deliberate on such a matter in herself before giving consent, and this in order not to be swept against her will into wedlock with a man she does not love. For in such a case, consent on her part is lacking, and yet it is consent which makes a marriage and which initiates her spirit into conjugial love. Consent that is unwillingly given or coerced does not initiate her spirit, though it may the body, and in that case it turns any chastity residing in the spirit into lust, by which conjugial love is corrupted at its first warmth.


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