Whatsoever things are taught in diverse places of the holy Scriptures of the original and beginning of the Church, and of the spiritual marriage thereof with the Son of God, those the Apostle fetches from the first creation of mankind, as out of the fountain of the mysteries of Christ, and expounds them in his epistle to the Ephesians, chapter 5, where he says, "Husband love you wives, even as Christ loved the Church, etc." as follows to the end of that chapter: for Moses showed how Eve was created and taken out of Adam being asleep and afterwards was given to him in matrimony: and how Adam when he saw her, said, "This is now bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh." And lastly he sets down a general proposition of the marriage of men and women, both between themselves and also with the Son of God, even to the end of the world. Which proposition is uttered in these words, "For this shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave to his wife, and they shall be two in one flesh. Which words the Apostle so understands, as that he also interprets them of Christ and his Church, in this manner: "This is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ, and concerning the Church." For we are flesh of the flesh of Christ, and bones of his bones, as Adam had said of Eve.

Being therefore to speak of the spiritual and heavenly marriage between Christ and the Church, and every faithful man, I must first examine that place of Moses touching the creation of Eve, and touching the first institution of carnal marriage, and must diligently consider how all and every thing may agree to the spiritual. For both the creation of Eve, framed of the rib of Adam being asleep, and also that carnal marriage contracted between Adam and Eve, was a manifest type and figure both of the spiritual creation of the Church, which should be taken out of the side of Christ, dead upon the cross, and also of the marriage to be contracted between Christ and the Church. Further, the whole doctrine of carnal marriage must be divided by a brief and plain method into certain chapters, that so every one may more easily see and know what to think of the heavenly marriage between Christ and his Church. Lastly, I must lay open and confirm the doctrine of the spiritual marriage, being examined by the several points of the doctrine touching carnal marriage. And all these things I will set down in certain short sentences or brief positions, that the reader may better both understand and remember them.

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