299. The case would be altogether different, if the daughter consents of
herself to her urgent suitor, without consulting her parents, or those
who are in their place; for she cannot from judgement, knowledge, and
love, make a right estimate of the matter which so deeply concerns her
future welfare: she cannot from _judgement_, because she is as yet in
ignorance as to conjugial life, and not in a state of comparing reasons,
and discovering the morals of men from their particular tempers; nor
from _knowledge_, because she knows few things beyond the domestic
concerns of her parents and of some of her companions; and is
unqualified to examine into such things as relate to the family and
property of her suitor: nor from _love_, because with daughters in their
first marriageable age, and also afterwards, this is led by the
concupiscences originating in the senses, and not as yet by the desires
originating in a refined mind. The daughter ought nevertheless to
deliberate on the matter with herself, before she consents, lest she
should be led against her will to form a connection with a man whom she
does not love; for by so doing, consent on her part would be wanting;
and yet it is consent that constitutes marriage, and initiates the
spirit into conjugial love; and consent against the will, or extorted,
does not initiate the spirit, although it may the body; and thus it
converts chastity, which resides in the spirit, into lust; whereby
conjugial love in its first warmth is vitiated.
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