Love and Sexuality in the Human Experience
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The Privilege of the Marriage Relation—They [Christians who
have married] should duly consider the result of every privilege of the
marriage relation, and sanctified principle should be the basis of every
action.—
Testimonies for the Church 2:380
(1870).
[She wrote of] “the fortifications preserving sacred the privacy
and privileges of the family relation.”—
Testimonies for the Church
2:90
(1868).
A Time When Affections May Be Unfettered—The young af-
fections should be restrained until the period arrives when sufficient
age and experience will make it honorable and safe to unfetter them.—
AM 8, 1864. (
Messages to Young People, 452
.)
The Danger of Carrying the Lawful to Excess—There is in it-
self no sin in eating and drinking or in marrying and giving in marriage.
It was lawful to marry in the time of Noah, and it is lawful to marry
now, if that which is lawful is properly treated and not carried to sinful
excess....
In Noah’s day it was the inordinate, excessive love of that which
in itself was lawful, when properly used, that made marriage sinful
before God. There are many who are losing their souls in this age of
the world by becoming absorbed in the thoughts of marriage and in
the marriage relation itself....
God has placed men in the world, and it is their privilege to eat, to
drink, to trade, to marry, and to be given in marriage; but it is safe to do
these things only in the fear of God. We should live in this world with
reference to the eternal world.—
The Review and Herald, September
25, 1888
.
Marriage No License for Giving Loose Rein to Lustful Pas-
sions—Very few feel it to be a religious duty to govern their passions.
They have united themselves in marriage to the object of their choice
and therefore reason that marriage sanctifies the indulgence of the
baser passions. Even men and women professing godliness give loose
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rein to their lustful passions and have no thought that God holds them
accountable for the expenditure of vital energy, which weakens their
hold on life and enervates the entire system.
The marriage covenant covers sins of the darkest hue. Men and
women professing godliness debase their own bodies through the
indulgence of the corrupt passions and thus lower themselves beneath
the brute creation. They abuse the powers which God has given them to