Cyrus: Often overlooked in our increasingly sinful world is the issue of religious disparity- take care to find a mate whom you can agree upon in your ideas of how to raise children and conduct yourself as a proper human being.
If any body should object, that too much is put here upon the women’s part, and that a lady cannot be supported in the midst of her lover’s addresses, to take upon her to demand such an account of himself as is here suggested, that few men will stoop to such an examination, and few women venture the loss of their lovers upon such a subject; let such consider how small the satisfaction here proposed on the lady’s part is, and that no gentleman can think hard a women should be satisfied, whether he is a Christian or a heathen; a man of any tolerable share of sense, will address himself to a lady for marriage, but he will take care to anticipate her inquiries of that kind, but showing some concern for knowing what she is herself.
From Defoe:
“It appears here how essential a share of religion and a harmony of principles in religion, are to the felicity of a conjugal life.
But it is all our own faults; we recommend sluts, and thieves, and rones,
and saucy insolent fellows and wenches-- we recommend them to one another,
without any concern for our neighbor’s safety or peace; in a word,
ot pay the debt of charity of those creatures which have abused us, we
forget the debt of justice to one another, and betray the confidence which
one housekeeper and neighbor owes to another, in one of the most essential
articles of their family quest.”