The Puritans believed that godly marriages were foundational for the future life of families, churches, and nations. Therefore, they wrote prolifically on the subject of marriage, seeking to bring biblical reformation to this subject in a comprehensive way. Martin Luther, John Calvin, and other previous Reformers had begun this task, but the Puritans took it much further, writing a number of detailed treatises on how to live as godly spouses. Out of the wealth of material available to us from the seventeenth century, Joel R. Beeke and James A. La Belle have gathered together insights from the past and summarized them in a contemporary form in order to encourage modern day coupled to glorify God in marriage. Contents The Institution and Honor of Marriage - The Purposes and Benefits of Marriage - Securing a Good Entrance into Marriage - Preserving the Honor of Marriage - The Mutual Duties of Love and Chastity - The Mutual Duties of Help and Peace - The Wife’s Duties in Marriage - The Husband’s Duty of Love - The Husband’s Duty of Authority - Concluding Counsel Appendix: George Swinnock’s Prayers for Husbands and Wives It is an established, if little known, fact that the Puritans rescued marriage from the dreary ascetic grasp of the Roman Church and returned it to its full, biblical, Christ-centered estate overflowing with creational joys, pleasures, and duties. In this book, eminent Puritan scholars and pastors Joel Beeke and James La Belle provide us with a rich gift, as they have mined the writings of twenty-nine of the great Puritans and then arranged their wisdom into brilliantly organized user-friendly chapters and subheadings (complete with penetrating study questions) all done with a skill that only hands-on pastors could have. The Puritans were Word-centered wordsmiths, and the chapters are packed full of memorably stated theology and application. What a pleasure to commend this book! —R. Kent Hughes, senior pastor emeritus of College Church in Wheaton, Illinois, and visiting professor of practical theology at Westminster Seminary Philadelphia The reason for the resurgence of interest in the Puritans today is found in their extraordinary devotion to the things of God and the depth of their understanding and exposition of sacred Scripture. I welcome this series of books that make the Puritans even more accessible in our day on a variety of important but often neglected subjects. —R.C. Sproul, was founder and president of Ligonier Ministries and author of The Intimate Marriage The Puritans believed that godly marriages were foundational for the future life of families, churches, and nations. Therefore, they wrote prolifically on the subject of marriage, seeking to bring biblical reformation to this subject in a comprehensive way. Martin Luther, John Calvin, and other previous Reformers had begun this task, but the Puritans took it much further, writing a number of detailed treatises on how to live as godly spouses. Out of the wealth of material available to us from the seventeenth century, Joel R. Beeke and James A. La Belle have gathered together insights from the past and summarized them in a contemporary form in order to encourage modern day coupled to glorify God in marriage. Joel R. Beeke is a husband, a father, and a grandfather. He is also a pastor in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and a prolific author. His encouragements to Christian families have been enthusiastically received around the world.