T H E   P R E F A C E.

I AM so sensible of the nicety of the following subject, and the ill nature of the age, that though I have introduced it with all the protestations of a resolved caution, and of tying myself down to all possible modesty in the whole work; and though I have concluded it with due explanations, and a free appeal to the most impartial judges, yet I cannot but add a word of preface.

The justness of the satire, the loud calls which the crimes (here reproved) make for justice and a due censure, the dreadful ruin of the people's morals, and the apparent contempt of modesty and decency, which grows so visibly upon us by the shameless practice of what is here reproved, join all together to vindicate this undertaking, and to show not the usefulness only, but the necessity of it.

It is almost thirty years since the author began this piece. He has all that time heard, with a just concern, the complaints of good men upon the hateful subject. The grave and the sober, the lovers of virtue and of religion, have, with grief, expressed themselves upon the growing scandal; and they have often pressed him to finish and bring out this reproof, and have joined with his opinion of the justice of it.

Hitherto he has been reluctant as to the publishing it, and partly on account of his years, for it was long since finished, and partly in hopes of reformation; but now, despairing of amendment, grown old, and out of the reach of scandal, and of all the pretences to it; sincerely aiming at the reformation of the guilty, and despising all unjust reproaches from a vicious age, he closes his days with this satire; which he is so far from seeing cause to be ashamed of, that he hopes he shall not, where he is going to, account for it.

At least, he can appeal to that judge, who he is soon to come before, that as he has done it with an upright intention, for the good of mankind, so he has used his utmost endeavour to perform it in a manner the least liable to reflection, and, in his judgment, the most likely to answer the true end of it, viz., the reformation of the crime; and with this satisfaction, he comfortably prays for its success.

T H E   C O N T E N T S.

The Introduction.

CHAPTER I.

Of matrimony, the nature of it, its sacred original, and the true intent and meaning of its institution; as, also, how our notions of it are degenerated, the obligations of it disregarded, and the thing itself, as a state of life, grossly abused.

CHAPTER II.

Of matrimonial chastity, what is to be understood by the word; a proof of its being required by the laws of God and nature, and that wrong notions of it have possessed the world. Dr Taylor's authority quoted about it.

CHAPTER III.

Of the end and reason of matrimony, and that there is a needful modesty and decency requisite, even between a man and his wife, after marriage, the breaches of which make the first branch of matrimonial whoredom.

CHAPTER IV.

Of the absolute necessity of a mutual affection before matrimony, in order to the happiness of a married state, and of the scandal of marrying without it.

CHAPTER V.

Of marrying and then publicly professing to desire they may have no children, and of using means physical or diabolical, to prevent conception.

CHAPTER VI.

Of being overruled by persuasion, interest, influence of friends, force, and the like, to take the person they have no love for, and forsake the person they really loved.

CHAPTER VII.

Of marrying one person, and at the same time owning themselves to be in love with another.

CHAPTER VIII.

Of unequal, unsuitable, and preposterous marriages, and the unhappy consequences of them. Of the effects they have upon the family conversation. How they occasion a matrimonial whoredom many ways. Also something of the marriage covenant and oath; and how all the breaches of it are a political and matrimonial whoredom, if not a literal whoredom; with several examples.

CHAPTER IX.

Of marrying at unsuitable years.

CHAPTER X.

Of marrying with inequality of blood.

CHAPTER XI.

Of going to bed under solemn promises of marriage, and although those promises are afterwards performed; and of the scandal of a man's making a whore of his own wife.

CHAPTER XII.

Of the husband knowing his wife after conception, or after it appears she is with child. Of the reasonableness and lawfulness of it; and whether this may not come under the just denomination of matrimonial whoredom.

CHAPTER XIII.

Of indecent and untimely marriages, whether as to the years of the persons, marrying infants and children, or marrying immediately after the death of the husband or wife that went before.

CHAPTER XIV.

Of clandestine, forcible, and treacherous marriages.

THE CONCLUSION.

I N T R O D U C T I O N

IT is certainly true that modesty is no natural virtue; what the Latins called pudor, or shamefacedness, is the effect of crime, and is always occasioned by a consciousness of guilt, whether it be actual guilt or intentional, guilt of a fact already committed, or guilt of a crime resolved on, 'tis much the same.

Before Adam and Eve knew evil as well as good, before they were conscious of offence, they went naked, and blushed not, and 'tis most significantly expressed, "They knew not that they were naked;" they knew not that nakedness was a turpitude, an indecency, and therefore, when Adam gives that poor, foolish excuse for hiding himself from the eyes of the infinite author of sight, and says, "because he was naked," Gen. iii, 10, 11, God asks him, "Who told thee that thou wast naked ?"

Doubtless before the fall innocence was given to man for a covering, and he not only knew not that he was naked, but he really was not naked, though he was not clothed; he knew not how to blush at being naked, much less why.

The same innocence is the protection of virtue to this day in the untaught savages in many parts of the known world, where nakedness is no offence on one side, no snare, no incentive on the other; but custom being the judge of decency to them, takes away all sense of indecency in going uncovered, whether in whole or in part. See Mr Milton upon that head :

God-like erect, with native honour clad
In naked majesty
So pass'd they naked on, nor shunn'd the sight
Of God or angel, for they thought no ill.

MILTON, Par. fol. 95.

Now the same custom in these northern parts having concurred with the necessity of the climate on one hand, and the laws of religion on the other, to clothe and cover the body; the breach of that custom would be a breach of decency, and a breach of the laws both of God and man.

Hence modesty succeeds, whether as a virtue in itself or as an appendix to virtue, we will not dispute; but where the rules of decency are broken, a sense of shame comes in, with as much force as if all the laws of God and man were broken at once.

It may be true, that if man had continued in a state of unspotted innocence, unshaken virtue had been part of it; that as his soul had been untainted with so much as a thought of crime, so no covering had been wanted to any part of his body, other than the severities of climate might make necessary; but to justify what has been done since, that I may take notice of the manner, and put you in mind of the authority of it too, we may observe that as his guilt, made him naked, God himself covered him with his own hand, Gen. iii, 21, it is said positively, that God clothed them with the skins (we suppose) of beasts: "Unto Adam also and to his wife did the Lord God make coats of skins, and clothed them." So soon were the creatures dedicated to the convenience as well as life of man.

Hence, though nakedness in a state of innocence had been no offence at that time, it is otherwise now; and we have the sanction of heaven to enforce the decency, as we have the force of the seasons to urge the necessity of clothing. It were to be wished we had nothing to say of the indecency even of the clothing, and how we study to go naked in our very clothes, and that after God himself put them on to cover us too. But of that by itself.

God having then appointed, and nature compelled mankind to seek covering, all the pretences for going naked on that account are at an end; a mere chimera, an enthusiastic dream, seldom attempted but by a sect of madmen, worse than lunatic, who, heated with a religious phrensy (the worst of all possessions), pretend to nakedness as the effect of their innocence, at the same time making it a screen to all manner of lewdness and debauchery.

Nature and religion having thus introduced decency, the strict and religious regard paid to that decency is become a virtue, essential virtue, and is so in all the requisite parts of virtue; I mean those which are understood as commanded by the laws of God, or by the laws of nature; and this is modesty, as it is the subject of our present discourse.

We say that modesty is the guard of virtue; and in some respects it is so; and were modesty universal, virtue would need no other defence: but as the world now stands she is fain to fly to other succours, such as laws of men, the command of religion, the power of reason, and, at last, the protection of governors, so hard is she pursued by vice and the degenerate passions of men.

Modesty then, as I am to understand it here, and to discourse about it, is nothing but a strict regard to decency, as decency is a strict regard to virtue, and virtue is a strict regard to religion; indeed they seem all, in some sense, to be synonymous, and to mean the same thing. It is true, honour and virtue may (speaking strictly) be said in some cases to be preserved, though decency is not so much, or equally regarded. But let all that plead the possibility of that distinction know that however possible it may be, it is so far from being probable (that where decency is given up honour should or can be preserved) that they will find it very hard to have it be believed; as they that give up their modesty cannot be said to preserve decency, so they that give up decency will be hardly believed to preserve their virtue.

Hence modesty is become a virtue in itself, and, if it be not literally and expressly all that is understood by the word virtue, 'tis virtue's complete representative, its true image, and they are as inseparable as the gold and the glistering.

The object of modesty respects three things.

1. Modesty in discourse.
2. Modesty in behaviour.
3. Modesty in regard to sexes.

1. By modesty in discourse I think I must of necessity be understood, a decency of expression; particularly as our discourse relates to actions or things (whether necessary or accidental) that are and ought to be matters of secrecy, things which are to be spoken of with reserve, and in terms that may give no offence to the chaste ears and minds of others, and yet perhaps are of necessity to be spoken to. Indeed such things, with respect to decency, ought never to be spoken of at all, but when necessity urges; and it were to be wished, that in a Christian and modest nation, where the laws of decency are expressly admitted as rules of life, all immodest discourses were decried by universal custom; and especially that printing and publishing such things as are not to be read with the like decency, were effectually suppressed. But as I have made that subject a part of this work, I say no more of it here.

2. By modesty in behaviour, I understand that which we call decorum, distance and deference in conversation, chiefly as it respects the distinction of qualities in the persons conversing; but that part is not at all concerned in this discourse, our present design looking quite another way.

The last of these, viz. modesty with respect to sexes, is the subject intended in this tract, especially as it is confined to this one branch of it, namely, the conjugal part of life; the intercourse between the sexes, or the freedom of conversing between a man and his wife; in which many think all the rules and laws of modesty are finished and at an end; a mistake so gross, so full of fatal mischiefs to the public virtue, and to the intent and meaning of decency in general, that it is much in a nation so every way virtuous as this, and where the rules of virtue are enforced by wholesome laws, such a corrupt notion should spread so far, and so many absurdities break out into practice upon that subject.

The notion is, that there is no more such a thing as modesty to be named between a man and his wife; that as they are but one flesh, and indeed but one body, there's no nakedness between them; that were they alone, covering would be not only needless but nonsense, if the climate did not require it; that nothing can be indecent, nothing improper; that there's no restraint, and that no law can be broken by them, but everything is handsome, everything honest, and everything modest; that 'tis a full answer to all reproach in any case that may be charged, to say it was my own wife, or it was none but my own husband; this is made the covering to all manner of surfeiting indecencies and excesses; of which I am to speak at large in their order.

It is high time to combat this error of life, and the more, because it is grown up to a height not only scandalous, but criminal and offensive, and in some things unnatural, and still the more, because 'tis a mistake that is increasing, and 'tis feared may go higher, till at last it may break out into yet greater abominations.

The difficulty before me is, to know how to reprove with decency offences against decency; how to expose modestly things which 'tis hardly modest so much as to mention, and which must require abundance of clean linen to wrap them up in; how to speak of nauseous and offensive things in terms which shall not give offence, and scourge immodest actions with an unblamable modesty; that is, without running out into expressions which shall offend the modest ears of those that read them; this, I say, is the only difficulty.

I am insulted already on this head by the rude and self-guilty world; my very title, and the bare advertising my book, they say, is a breach upon modesty, and it offends their ears even before it is published. They not only tell me it will be an obscene and immodest book, but that it is I impossible it should be otherwise. They say, I may pretend to as much reservedness and darkness of expression as I please, and may skulk I behind a crowd, or indeed a cloud of words; but my meaning will be reached, and the lewd age will make plain English of it; nay, that I shall make plain English of it myself, before I have gone half through the work.

Others, armed with the same ill-nature, have their tongues poisoned with another kind of venom, and they tell me it is an immodest subject; that as it cannot be handled decently, and cannot be discoursed of modestly, so it is not intended to be so, but that 'tis a mere bait to the curiosity of that part of the reading world, whose vices are prompted as much by a pretended reproving them as by the plainest, expressions; that it forms the same ideas in their minds, and they receive the notions of vice in as lively a form by the very methods taken to expose and condemn the facts, as if those facts were represented to the optics in all their shameless nudities, with the most vicious and corrupt dress that could be put upon them on a stage or in a masquerade.

I shall answer these people best by a silence in my introduction, and a speaking performance. It is my business to let them see they are mistaken, and that a truly modest design may be pursued with the utmost decency, even in treating of a subject, in which all the vilest breaches made upon decency by a wicked and hitherto unreproved behaviour are to be censured and exposed. As to a vicious mind forming corrupt ideas from the most modest expressions, I have only this to say, the crime of that part is wholly their own, I am no way concerned in it. The healing, fructifying dews, and the gentle, sweet, refreshing showers, which are God's blessing upon the earth, when they fall into the sea are all turned salt as the ocean, tinged with the gross particles of salt which the sea-water is so full of. The same warm, cherishing beams of the sun which raise those sweet dews from the earth, shining upon the stagnant waters of an unwholesome lake or marsh, or upon a corrupted jakes or dunghill, exhale noxious vapours and poisons, which infect the air, breeding contagion and diseases in those that breathe in it. But the fault is not in the showers of refreshing rain, or in the wholesome beams of the sun, but in the salt, and in the filth and corruption of the places where they fall. And thus it shall be here; words modestly expressed can give no immodest ideas, where the minds of those that read are chaste and uncorrupted. But if a vicious mind hears the vice reproved, and forms pleasing ideas of the crime, without taking notice of the just reproof, the fault is in the depravity of the mind, not in the needful and just reprover. I shall therefore take no notice of that suggestion, as what I think does not deserve the least regard, but go on to a just censure of the crime, in such a manner as I hope shall neither lessen the reproof nor expose the reprover.

In order to this, I may indeed lie under some restraints, be confined to a narrow compass of words, and the story may want in some places the illustration of apposite similies, useful arguments, and, above all, of flagrant examples, to set off and set home the arguments that are made use of; and this, to the great loss of the author, in taking away those ornaments of his discourse; but where it cannot be otherwise the reader must be content to abate it.

However, I pretend to say you will not find it a dry, a dull, or a barren subject, for all that; and though something may be lost, and much left out, to preserve the rules of modesty, which I could not reprove the breaches of with justice, if the work was criminal itself, yet I doubt not to find you subject of diversion enough, mixed with the gravity of the story, so as, I hope, not to tire you with the reading; at the same time preserving the chastity of the subject, the authority of a reprover, and binding myself down with all possible severity to the laws of decency, modesty and virtue, which I write in the defence of.

But now, while I am making these provisos, pray let me be understood too with that just and necessary liberty of speech which shall render my discourse intelligible. I am neither going to write in an unknown tongue, nor in an unintelligible style; I am to speak so as to be understood, and I will not doubt but I shall be understood; and those whose vicious appetites are under government, so as to give them leave to relish decent reproof for indecent things, may understand me without large explications, especially on occasions where they know the cases will not bear it.

The scripture is the pattern of decency, and as the learned annotator, Mr Pool, in his Synopsis Criticorum, and in his annotations also, observes) speaks of all the indecencies of men with the utmost modesty; yet neither does the scripture forbear to command virtue, gives laws and rules of chastity and modest behaviour, and that in very many places, and on all needful occasions; nor does the scripture fail to reprove the breach of those laws in the most vehement manner, condemning the facts and censuring and judging the guilty persons with the utmost rigour and severity, as I shall on many occasions be led to observe as I go on. Let none, therefore, flatter themselves that their crimes shall avoid the lash of a just satire in this work, for want of expressions suited to the nature of the reproof, and the vileness of the offence. We shall find words to expose them, without giving a blow to decency in the reproof; we shall find ways and means to dress up surfeiting crimes in softening language; so that none but the guilty need to blush, none but the criminals be offended.

But the crime must be reproved; there is a necessity for the reproof as there is a necessity of a cure in a violent distemper. Do we reckon it a breach of modesty for the body to be exposed in anatomies, and published with learned lectures on every part by the anatomists? Are not the vilest and most unnatural of all crimes necessarily brought before courts of justice, that the criminals may be punished as they deserve? And though it maybe true, that sometimes judicial proceedings are not managed with such decency in those cases as others think they might, and which, however, I allow to be sometimes unavoidable; yet, notwithstanding all that can be pretended of immodesty in those proceedings, the punishment of the criminal, or his being sentenced, must not be omitted, for the preserving the modesty of the trial; an offender would come well off in many offences, besides this I am treating of, if he must not be brought to justice, because the very mention of his crime would put criminal ideas into the minds of those that hear of it.

Let it suffice, then, in the case before us. I am entering upon a just and needful censure of preposterous and immodest actions; I shall perform it in as decent and reserved terms as I am able to do, and as a man meaning to correct, not encourage, vice, is able to do. If a lewd fancy will entertain itself with the mere ideas of crime, where it is only with the utmost severity condemned, be the crime to the criminal, I see no reason to be afraid of doing justice on that account. A man is to be executed for sodomy; nature and the laws of God require it; must not the criminal die because all that see or hear of it must immediately form ideas of the crime in their thoughts, nay, and perhaps may think criminally of it? This would give a loose to wickedness indeed, and men might sin with most freedom where their crimes were too vile to be punished, because they were too gross to be named.

So when a cloud its hasty showers sends down, They're meant to fructify and not to drown; And in a torrent if a drunkard sink, 'Tis not the flood that drowns him, but the drink. But 'twould be hard because a sinner's slain, For fear of drowning we should have no rain.

Besides, it would be a light escape; and some of our first readers would triumph another way over the author, if they could be satisfied that they had sinned in a manner so gross that he could not find words to reprove them in; I mean, such words as were fit for modest ears to hear the hearing of. Our well-known friend G------ A------, with his three brother (as they call them in the north), who think themselves beyond the reach of reproof, as they are out of the reach of conscience, may find themselves mistaken here; and that if they will venture for once to think and look in, they may see themselves touched to the quick, and yet the readers hardly able to guess at their crime, and not at all at their persons; which last they ought to acknowledge is a special favour to them, whether they deserve; it or no.

So kind have I been to their fame, and so careful to leave room for their amendment, which I would hope for in spite of their solemn vows to the contrary.

Nor shall that eminent brute of quality pass untouched here, whose name or titles need no other mention than what are to be summed up in this short character :

A life of crime, with this peculiar fame,
Without sense of guilt, and past sense of shame.

I say, he shall see his most inimitable way of sinning stabbed to the heart, and damned with an unanswerable and unexceptionable reproof; and yet without any description either of his person or his offence, other than as may be read by himself and those that know him; though I must allow him to be the weakest and wickedest thing; alive; vain of being the first in a crime, and the last that will leave it; that blushes at nothing but the thoughts of blushing, and thinks a man of wit can be ashamed of nothing but repentance; that sins for the sake of crime, without the pleasure of it, and is got seven degrees in sin beyond the devil, in that he not only boasts of sins which he never committed, but tells the world he fibs, by boasting of sins which all the town knows he cannot commit.

If such a wretch on earth, ye Gods, there be,
I'll die if our Sir -------- be not he.

Nor let another flagrant example of married lewdness trouble himself, or express his concern, least he should be omitted in this work for fear of our offending the chaste ears of our readers with his vile story.

A city sinner, as his crime. Let him not doubt but he may find himself suitably reproved, seeing he is so fond of it; and since he desires the fame of being superlatively wicked, he may hear of it in a manner that shall make others blush for him, though he cannot blush for himself.

But to pass these and some more, for in this age of preposterous crime we should never find our way out, should we enter into the labyrinth of characters, and bring on regiments of example. Our present business is with the offence, not with the offenders; with the crime, not with the Criminals. If a just satire on the wicked part will not reclaim us, I doubt the list of the guilty of both sexes, though it would indeed be as numerous as our city trained bands, would be us useless a muster as that at the artillery ground, and find as little reformation among them.

As it is in ordinary crimes, that men sin on because they scorn and are ashamed to repent, so in the case before me, when they are launched into the most flagrant of all crimes, things so odious that, it is offensive to modest ears so much as to hear of them, and difficult to a modest pen so much as to write of them; they take hold of the hellish advantage, and make the greatness, the superlative blackness of their offences, be their protection in the committing them; as if they were out of the reach of reproof, because no modest pen can dip in the dirt, or rake in the dung-hill of their vices, without being sullied and daubed by them; that it would be scandalous for any modest man so much as to mention what they do not think it scandalous to do. Thus the hardened and fearless A------ C------, who defies God and man, laughs at reproach, and threatens every reprover, impudently said to his parish minister that modestly spoke of his crimes, "You may talk to me here, doctor, at home, but you dare not speak a word of it in the pulpit: I am out of your reach there. Why, all the women would run out of the church, and they'd throw stones at you as you go along the street if you did but mention it."

Happy criminal! that hugs himself in being too vile to be reproved, or so much as modestly mentioned; that his crimes cannot be exposed because modest ears cannot bear to hear them spoken of. Let the offender, who is famed for being revengeful, and who is not so far off as not to hear of it, resent it if he thinks fit. I am told he will soon hear more of it, where it may be spoken of without fear of his anger.

This very case runs parallel with what I am now engaged in; but the age shall see the effect shall not answer their end. Shall it be criminal to reprove the offence which they think it is not criminal to commit? Must we blush to speak of what they will not blush to do? And must the most detestable things go on in practice, because we dare not go on to cry them down? God for bid we should by silence seem to approve that wickedness, while that silence is occasioned only because the wickedness is too gross to be reproved.

Sure our language is not so barren of words as that we cannot find out proper expressions to reprehend an impudent generation, without breach of decency in the diction, or that immodest actions may not be modestly exposed.

If corrupt imaginations will rise up, and men will please themselves with the difficulty I am put to for words; if they will turn my most reserved terms into lewd and vicious ideas, and debauch their thoughts while I expose their debaucheries, let them go on their own way; let them think as wickedly as they please, they shall owe it to themselves, not to me; both the fire and the tinder are all their own. Here shall be no materials to work upon, no combustibles to kindle, but what they bring with them.

But the work must be done in spite of the difficulty. Shall they watch for a slip of my pen, and take advantage, if possible, from any misplaced word, to reprove me of indecency in the necessary work of reproving their shameless immodestly? Must I be ashamed to expose the crime which they are not ashamed to be guilty of, and blush to mention the things they boast of doing? The truth is, I know not why I should not freely name the men who, in the open coffee houses, and in their common wicked discourses, publicly brag of the most immodest and shameless behaviour, and vilely name themselves to be guilty of if, make sport of the crimes, and value themselves in being the criminals, but it shall not be long before I may speak of it much plainer.

However, as the offence is flagrant, is grown scandalous and notorious, and that we find the age ripening up by it to the highest and most unnatural of all crimes, to the shame of society, and to the scandal even of the Protestant profession, I have undertaken to begin the war against it as a vice, and hope to make good the charge, though I know I do make the attempt at the risk of all that a modest writer has to hazard.

He that undertakes a satire against an universal custom shall be sure to raise upon himself an universal clamour. My Lord Rochester is plain in that case :

Nor shall weak truth your reputation save,
The knaves will all agree to call you knave.

It must be acknowledged the age is ripened up in crime to a dreadful height, and it is not a light, a gentle touch, that will bring them to blush. The learned and reverend ministers, the good, the pious, who would reprove them, are forced to content themselves to sit still, and pray for them; and, as the Scripture says, "To mourn in secret for their abominations;" they cannot foul their solemn discourses with the crimes which they have to combat with; the pulpit is sacred to the venerable office of a preacher of God's word; and the gravity of the place, a decent regard to the work, and especially to the assembly, forbids them polluting their mouths with the filthy behaviour of those they see cause to reprove; and this makes many a lewd and vicious wretch go unexposed, at least as he deserves; and many a scandalous crime, as well as the rich and powerful criminals, go unreproved.

The auxiliary press therefore must come in to supply the deficiency: they may read, I hope, what they could not hear. Nor am I afraid of the faces of men, that, eminent in wickedness, flagrant in lewdness, and abominable in tongue as well as in practice, the famous and infamous in the worst of vices, Sir ------ P------, shall here see himself marked out for his odious behaviour, in defiance of his quality or power. He who by office and authority punishes every day less crimes than he commits, who sins out of the reach of reproof from the pulpit, because too vile (as well as too powerful) to be spoken of by a modest divine, who perhaps thinks it his duty rather to pray for him, which he laughs at, than to reprove him, which he would storm and swear at; I say, he shall find what was said in another case :

The Press may reach him who the Pulpit scorns,
And he whose flagrant vice the B------ adorns:
The fearless satire shall to rage give vent,
And teach him how to blush, though not repent.

In short, it is a strange world! and we are grown up to a strange height in our notions of things! we have brought ourselves to a condition very particular to the day, and singular, as I may say, to ourselves; the policy of our vices has got the better of virtue, and the criminals have managed themselves so artfully, that it seems they may sin with less hazard of reputation than the innocent may reprove them. For example,

The crime is now less scandal than repentance, and, as the proverb says, it is a shame to steal, but it is a double shame to carry home again; so it is a shame to sin, but it is a double shame to repent; nay, we go beyond all that, it is no shame to be wicked, but to whine and repent is intolerable; and, as the late Colonel H------ said, in the flagrance of his wit, that it might be a fault to whore, and drink, and swear, and some worse sins of his, which he reckoned up; but to repent! to repent! says he (repeating the words), nothing of a gentleman can come into that; to be wicked, adds he, is wicked, that's true; but to repent, that's the devil.

Blush to repent, but never blush to sin.

But the Rubicon's past, it must be put to the venture; and let rage and exasperated lust do its worst, the lewd age shall hear their shameless behaviour as well exposed as it will bear, and that without any shameless doings in the reproof; they will find no levity here; no cleansing blurs with blotted fingers; they shall have nothing to blush for but that they give occasion for such a reproof, which being engaged with them on the occasion of their filthy conduct, may be forced to speak of it in terms necessary to express our detestation of it, but not at all adapted to encourage or recommend it.

C O N J U G A L   L E W D N E S S.

CHAPTER I.

Of matrimony, the nature of it, its sacred original, and the true intent and meaning of its institution; as, also, how our notions of it are degenerated, the obligations of it disregarded, and the thing itself, as a state of life, grossly abused.

BEING to discourse in a particular and extraordinary manner of the breaches of the matrimonial relation, with the disorders which are committed under the protection of matrimony; and being to exhibit a charge of very high crimes and misdemeanours against some people who think themselves very virtuous and modest, and yet give themselves all those matrimonial liberties: it is highly needful to explain to such seemingly ignorant what the true intent and meaning of that ill-understood state of life is, what it imports, and how Christians ought to rate and esteem the obligation of it in the conduct of a regular life.

For as I find my judgment of things is like to differ from others, that what they think lawful I shall condemn as criminal, and censure what they think moderate and sober, the preliminaries ought to be settled as we go; that we may begin upon right principles, leaving no room to cavil at terms and dispute upon construction of words, nicety of expression, double entendres, and such trifles. I resolve to speak plainly, and would be understood distinctly.

Matrimony is, according to the words in the office appointed in our Liturgy, God's ordinance, that I shall prove to you presently; but it is moreover God's holy ordinance. Now if it be a holy ordinance, the married life has a sanction too, and ought to be preserved sacred, not be debauched with criminal excesses of any kind, much less should it be made a cover and screen for those matrimonial intemperances which I now speak of, and which I shall prove to be not only scandalous to, but unworthy of, matrimony, as a sacred state of life.

As it is God's ordinance, and a holy ordinance, so it is an honourable state; the apostle says, "Marriage is honourable," Heb. xiii, 4. But then you are to observe also, that it is immediately added, and the "bed undefiled." Now this nice term of the bed undefiled requires some explanation, and in that perhaps we may differ. They that think the marriage-bed cannot be defiled but by adultery will greatly differ from me; and it is my business to prove they are mistaken, which, if I do not, I do nothing.

But that I may do it with the more clearness, and leave no room for dispute, I therefore set apart this first chapter to consider matrimony in general, what it is, how we ought to understand it, and what the end and design of God's appointment in it was, and still is; and by this I think I may make way for a more exact observation of those duties which the matrimonial vow is said to bind us to, and expose the scandalous mistakes of those who make it a cloak to all licentiousness.

As soon as our mother Eve was first formed, had just found herself in being, and though she had seen nothing about her, yet had a soul as capacious of knowledge as the man she was made for. The text says, "God brought her to the man," Gen. ii, 22; that is, in short, God married them. Adam himself expresses it, cap. iii, 12, "The woman whom thou gavest me." N.B. God gave the bride.

Hence I observe by the way, though with all possible brevity, that they are certainly wrong who challenge the clergy for engrossing the office of marrying, as if it did not belong to them, but was a mere civil contract, and therefore was no perquisite of the church, but the business of the magistrate.

I say it is a mistake, for as it was instituted immediately from the Divine authority, so it was solemnized by him who, having alone instituted it, had a right to perform the ceremony; for this reason it is called God's holy ordinance; and though I do not think it ought to be called a sacrament, yet without doubt God himself put a sacred character upon it as he honoured it with a particular law, the second law given in Paradise, namely, that the man should " leave his father and his mother, and cleave unto his wife," Gen. ii, 24; after which, as God, who was the father of Eve, gave her in marriage, so the paternal authority preserved the right of marriage ever after, as they did the priesthood (for the patriarch was the priest), and had it by the same authority; hence the parent giving the bride is to this day a remainder of that authority. The ceremony then being truly religious, and an ordinance of God, it goes with God's other ordinances away to the priest, whose business it is to exercise all religious offices, and this among the rest.

Also here, if you will allow me to preach, it shall be against the plurality of wives: from this pattern in Paradise polygamy seems to be utterly condemned; and though in the times of after ignorance many things were practised, which, as the text says, God winked at, yet in the beginning it was not so; and we may as well argue for marrying two sisters, as Jacob, and perhaps several others did, till it was especially prohibited, as for marrying many wives at once, which it is evident our Saviour forbids, and the argument against them is alike, as I said above, viz., that in the beginning it was not so.

I know it is alleged that the increase of mankind in those early ages of time made it necessary; but might it not be much more a reason in Adam's case, when he was alone? And why did not God, for the immediate propagation of the kind and increase of the world, make his rib into half a dozen wives for Adam, or as many as he had pleased.

But it is evident one wife to one husband was thought best by his Maker, who knew what was best and most calculated for his temporal felicity. As to the increase of people, it was evident the race soon multiplied; and after the interruption of the first growth and the disaster of Abel's death, the long life of the antediluvians also considered, the numbers of people soon increased, and that in a prodigious manner; for, if you will believe the learned author of the 'Theory of the Earth,' it is probable there were much greater numbers of people alive at the deluge than ever were in the world at any one time since, or than are now; though the world is thought to be more populous now than ever it has been since the deluge.

The argument for the increase of people could not be greater since than it was in Paradise; and had God approved of it, or thought it reasonable, he would certainly have given Adam more wives than one at first. Besides, one wife was given him as a help meet; by which it is evident the Original understands it a help sufficient to him, intimating that they were in everything sufficient to one another; and not to enter into that part of it which respects their sexes, which my lewder readers will perhaps look for, it is evident that a single-handed matrimony is many ways adapted to the felicity of human life more than a state of polygamy, the effect of a plurality of wives having always been family strife, envying, and quarrelling, between the women especially, no part of which could much add to the felicity of the husband, and often did embark the husband in the breach, as in the examples of Sarah and Hagar Leah and Rachel, Hannah and Penninah, and many others.

On the other hand, we see the most eminent of the patriarchs had but one wife, at least we read of no more; even Abraham, except in the case of Hagar, who was but a concubine at most, had but one wife at a time; Isaac had never any but Rebecca; Joseph, Moses, Aaron, and several others; the grosser use of women came in with David, as the setting up a seraglio of whores did with King Solomon; but, to repeat our Saviour's words again, in the beginning it was not so.

But I shall speak of that part again in its course. What I have now said is but a digression made necessary as an observation on the manner of the first wedding; the man and the woman, as I have said, were single and separate, but God made them to associate together, to he brought the woman to him, and gave her to be with him, that is, as above, God married them.

God having thus ordained matrimony, and solemnized the first nuptials in Paradise, it cannot be denied to be, as our office of matrimony declares it, God's holy ordinance. How our notions of it are degenerated, the bonds of it disregarded, and the whole institution abused, is the subject of this whole undertaking, but especially of this chapter.

What the true intent and meaning of matrimony, in its first institution, was, and what the nature of that contract points at, I shall leave in better hands; the learned fathers of the church have in all ages taken pains to explain those things to you: nor am I going about to preach, as a reverend divine lately did to the surprise of his auditory, on Gen. iv, I, " Adam knew his wife Eve." But there are a great many civil views in the institution of matrimony, which the propagating of the kind has little or no concern in, and the ordinance of matrimony suffers as much by our scandalous notions of it, as a state of life, as it does in any other part.

Nor is the subordination any part of the case I am upon; I am so little a friend to that which they call government and obedience between the man and his wife, especially as some people would have it be understood, and as the common talk a managed when such things come in our way; that the ladies will take no offence at me, I dare say, I do not take the state of matrimony to be designed as that of apprentices who are bound to the family, and that the wife is to be used only as the upper servant in the house. The great duty between the man and his wife I take to consist in that of love, in the government of affection, and the obedience of a complaisant, kind, obliging temper; the obligation is reciprocal, it is drawing in an equal yoke; love knows no superior or inferior, no imperious command one hand, no reluctant subjection on the other; the end of both should be the well-ordering their family, the good-guiding their household and children, educating, instructing, and managing them with a mutual endeavour, and giving respectively good examples to them, directing others in their duty by doing their own well, guiding themselves in every relation, in order to the well guiding all that are under them; filling up life with an equal regard to those above them and those below them, so as to be exemplar to all.

This is matrimony in its just appointed meaning, whatever notions our fashionable people may have of it. What import else can those words have in them, which we find so carefully placed, and so openly repeated in the office at the time of marriage, "Wilt thou love her, live with her, comfort her, honour, keep her?" and again, "to love and to cherish," and afterward it is added, that you will do all this "according to God's holy ordinance;" which, if I may expound in very plain words, is, according to the true intent and meaning of the first institution, and that is in the sense of God himself, to be a help meet to one another.

Upon the whole, the matrimonial duty is all reciprocal; it is founded in love, it is performed in the height of affection; its most perfect accomplishment consists not in the union of the sexes, but the union of the souls; uniting their desires, their ends, and consequently their endeavours, for completing their mutual felicity.

All the subjection and subordination in the world, without this mutual affection, cannot give one dram of satisfaction or enjoyment. How remote our notions of marriage in general are to these things, and how little the present age seems to understand them, or at least to regard them, I need not inquire; it is too visible in almost every family: nor indeed can it be otherwise, except by some rare example of virtue and good humour meeting on both sides, which, as marriages are now made, is very unlikely to happen; it is a lottery of a thousand blanks to a prize.

Not one in five hundred of those that now marry really understand what they marry for; I cannot give the detail of their general account, and of the answers they would give to the question without blushes, not at them, but for them. I do not mean blushing in the sense that I generally take the word in this book, but I mean blushing for the folly and ignorance of the people.

Ask the ladies why they marry, they tell you it is for a good settlement, though they had their own fortunes to settle on themselves before. Ask the men why they marry, it is for the money. How few matches have any other motive except such as I must mention hereafter, and indeed will hardly bear any mention at all, for many known reasons. How little is regarded of that one essential and absolutely necessary part of the composition, called love, without which the matrimonial state is, I think, hardly lawful, I am sure is not rational, and, I think, can never be happy.

Hence it follows that we have such few happy and successful matches. How much matrimony, how little love; how many coupled, how few joined; in a word, how much marriage, how little friendship. O friendship! thou exalted felicity of life, thou glorious incorporation of souls, thou heavenly image, thou polisher and finisher of the brightest part of mankind, how much art thou talked of, how little understood, how much pretended to, how little endeavoured for! Where does the kind expecting husband find a sincere friend in his bosom! How seldom does the tender affectionate wife take a friend into her arms, even though she does take the person, she takes the man without the husband, and the husband without the friend? Not virtue, not fidelity to the marriage bed, not conscience of the conjugal duty, not religion, will do it; no, not religion! How many husbands and wives will go to heaven from the arms of the wives and husbands they had no friendship for?

How miserably do the pious and the devout, the religious and the conscientious, live together! the husbands here, the wives there, by jarring tempers, discording affections, and, in short, mere want of love and friendship, grow scandals to the married life, and set themselves up for beacons and lighthouses, to warn the wandering world, and to bid them beware how they marry without love, how they join hands and not hearts, unite interests, unite sexes, unite families and relatives, and yet never unite hearts?

How is matrimony abused in all these cases by almost all sorts of people, who, carrying a face of civility and union in the married life, and who; in view of the world, pass for sober, modest, grave, religious, and all that virtue and honesty call for among Christians; and yet trace them into their houses and families, their conversation is gross and in a manner debauched with in decent language, their way of living all luxury and sloth, their marriage covenants broken by strife and contention; in a word, their houses a Bedlam, and their marriage bed a scene of lewdness and excesses not to be named.

Is this living together after God's holy ordinance? Is this making the marriage bed a bed undefiled? Will they pretend there is nothing defiles the marriage bed but whoredom, and forsaking the marriage covenant. Let not that mistake be their protection in the breach of the laws of nature, and despising all the limitations of decency and modesty; there are laws and limits placed by nature, nay, let me say, by the God of nature, even to the conjugal embraces, and a due regard is to be had in all cases to those laws and limits. If I am speaking to Christians I need not explain myself; but as I am to speak to some people who, though the world calls them Christians, can hardly, without blushing, call themselves so, I must be forced to speak as plainly as the laws of decency will allow, in reproving their conduct, I refer to the particulars in the following tract, where they who are guilty may find room to blush.

It were to be wished that all people that marry were to be asked beforehand if they really understood what matrimony meant, and what the true intent of a married life was, as well in its institution as in the grand design of family felicity; the married couple are young, their blood warm; the youth, fired with the blooming beauty of his bride, thinks of little all the while the apparatus of the wedding is in hand, nay, perhaps all the while he is (feigning) I should say making, love to her, as we weakly call his courting her, I think we should rather call it, all the while he is talking in jest to her; I say, all this while he is thinking of little but getting to bed to her. What engages her thoughts I say nothing to, for reasons given already.

Thus, coming together without thought, we are not to wonder they go on without conduct, that they act a thousand weak and wild things afterwards, such as they often live to be ashamed of and to blush at. As they allowed themselves to think no farther than the wedding week, so how awkwardly do they behave when they come to the graver part of life? Matrimony is not a branch of life only, but 'tis a state, 'tis a settled establishment of life, and an establishment for a continuance at least of the life of one of the two. How unhappy are those married people, who, rashly coming together, as I said just now, and perhaps with mean and unthinking views, I think I may say, views unworthy of the dignity and honour of a married state, seem surprised and disappointed when they come to enter upon the subsequent more weighty and solid part of the married life? How often do we hear them say, If I had known what it had been to be a wife, if I had known what it had been to be a husband, and to have the care of a family upon me, and a house-full of children to provide for and take care of, I would never have married. Some indeed repent upon a worse foot. But I am speaking of it now, even where the article of a bad husband or a bad wife are not concerned.

Marriage is an honourable state or station of life, but it is not a thoughtless, idle, unemployed state, even where the concerns of the family are easy, where plenty flows, and the world smiles; yet a married life has its cares, its anxieties, its embarrassments, which the young lady knew nothing of in her father's house, where she lived without care, without disturbance, slept without fear, and waked without sorrows. But married, she is a mistress, she is a mother, she is a wife, every one of which relations has its little addenda of incumbrance, and perhaps of uneasiness too, be her circumstances as good otherwise as she can or would suppose them to be.

We have an English saying, they that marry in haste repent at leisure. Now though my design is not to run down the married state, and raise frightful ideas in the minds of those that are to enter into it, so as to prevent their marrying; yet, I hope, I may hint to them, that they should look before they take this leap in the dark, that they should consider all the circumstances that are before them, that they may have no reason to repent when they shall be sure to have no room for it.

Now, it is not the matrimony, but the abuse of matrimony, which is our present subject, nor let the ladies be offended, as if I was persuading folks not to marry at all; it is not refusing matrimony that I persuade to in order to prevent those abuses, but a considering and weighing the circumstances of matrimony before it is consummated. I agree with the maid's catechise, where the first question is, What is the chief end of a maid? and the answer is, To be married. But I am arguing to remove the occasion of those abuses which make the matrimony ruinous, and a disaster both to the man and to the maid.

This would secure the affection of the parties before they marry; they would be united before they were joined, they would be married even before they were wedded, the love would be possessed before the persons, and they would have exchanged hearts before they exchanged the words of, I, M. take thee N.; in short, matrimony without love is the cart before the horse, and love without matrimony is the horse without any cart at all.

Marrying is not such a frightful thing that we should be terrified at the thoughts of it, yet it is far from being such a trifling thing either that we should run headlong or blindfold into it, without so much as looking before us. 'Twas a prudent saying of a young lady, who wanted neither wit nor fortune to recommend her, that marrying on the woman's side was like a horse rushing into the battle, who depending upon the hand that rules him, has no weapon of his own, either offensive or defensive; whereas, on the man's side, like the soldier, he has both armour to preserve himself, and weapons to make him be feared by his adversary.

I know not by what degeneracy in our manners, or corruption of principles, it is come to pass, but 'tis too general in practice, that matrimony is now looked upon only as a politic opportunity to gratify a vicious appetite. The form, how sacred soever graver heads may pretend it is in its institution, is now become our jest, and not only ridiculed and bantered in our discourse, for that might be borne with, but 'tis become a jest in practice; all the solemn part is dropped out of our thoughts, the money and the maidenhead is the subject of our meditations; not only the divine institution is made a stalking-horse to the brutal appetite, but indeed the best of women are betrayed by it into the hands of the vilest of men, and in the grossest manner abused; nay, which is still worse, this is done with a banter and a jest, all the sacred obligations, the indissolvable bands of religion and virtue, are trampled under foot; the modest and most virtuous lady is impudently defloured, and the night's enjoyment boasted of the next day in the arms of a strumpet; the innocent bride is poisoned with a disease, and the detestable wretch is a bridegroom, and an adulterer, in the first four-and-twenty hours of his engagement.

A------ B------ was a gentleman of figure and fortune; in his coach and four, and with a suitable equipage. He made his addresses to a wealthy citizen, and proposals of suitable settlement, for his consent to court his daughter. Nothing appeared but what was fair and honourable; he is accepted; the young lady, virtuous, modest, beautiful, finely bred, in the bloom of her youth, wheedled with his tongue, and deceived with the appearance of a fine gentleman, and a lover, yields to the proposals, and throws herself into the arms of the worst of monsters.

The very first moments of his embraces fright her with something inexpressibly nauseous about him; yet innocence and virtue had no power to make a judgment of things; but, like the chaste Roman lady, whose Husband had a stinking breath, innocently answered, that she thought all men were so.

In short, the lady is ruined the first night; the V------ boasted among his viler companions, that he had given her something that would soon dispose of her; and it was too true; in less than a month she was in a condition not fit to be described, in about two more the ablest physicians shook their heads, and voted her incurable, in eight mouths she was a deplorable object, and, in less than a year, lodged in her grave; the murderer, for he can be no other, putting on black for a show; but when charged home by the friends of the ruined lady, answered with a kind of a laugh, that he thought he had been cured.

If this unhappy story were a romance, a fiction, contrived to illustrate the subject, I should give it you with all its abhorred particulars, as far as decency of language would permit; that the abuse of matrimony, which is the subject I am now to enter upon, may be exposed as it deserves.

But when facts, however flagrant, are too near home, and the miserable sufferers already too much oppressed with the injury, we must not add to their afflictions by too public a use of the calamity to embellish our story; the murdered lady rests in her grave; we must leave the offender to the supreme justice, and to the reproaches of his conscience.

Sad examples of conjugal treachery might be given of this kind; and I might make the whole work a satire upon those who, abusing the marriage bed, have prostituted the sacred institution to their vice, and made it a covering to crime, a snare to the person drawn into it, and a cheat to devour their fortunes, as well as persons.

The Lady ------, pardon my concealing names, is a person of good birth, of a family in good circumstances, and passed with all that knew her for a woman of virtue. Her modest behaviour gave such a credit to her, and established her character so well, that it would have looked like malice, and been received in all company with a general disgust, so much as to have dropped a word that looked like detraction, or in the least touched her fame.

She is admired and courted by several, and, after some time, married by a person of good fortune, and even superior birth; a man of honour and of quality, and yet, which is now very rare, a man of virtue. He is pleased with his bride to the last degree; vain of her beauty; boasts of her as a prize carried by his good fortune from so many pretenders. But, alas! what chagrin covers the usual smile that sat upon his always pleasant countenance! What torment swelled his breast, when, within the compass of half a year, he finds the virtuous charmer, the mistress of his chaste affections, not only with child, but not able any longer to conceal that, by the unalterable laws I of nature, it could not be his.

He is surprised, he charges her with it, she confesses it with the utmost testimonies of penitence and regret for the injury done him, and, with the force of an inimitable conduct, re-engages him; he forgives her, but finds out the man, lights him, wounds him, and is killed himself in the unequal quarrel. Miserable effect of abused matrimony!

But even all this is not the great point aimed at in this work. Our view is the criminal use of the lawful liberties of matrimony, and that I shall come to in its place.

Among these, however, this is not the least, and therefore proper to this place, viz. that we find wrong notions of the matrimonial vow, wrong thoughts of the conjugal obligation have possessed the minds of both men and women, and they marry now merely to gratify the sensual part, without the views which the nature of the thing, called matrimony, ought to give them. This is what I call making a jest of the institution, that marry in sport, and, like the little children, who not knowing what they are doing, say to one another, come, let us play at man and wife.

They that make a jest of marrying, generally live to be the jest both of the married and unmarried world; when they marry in jest they come to mourn in earnest; they tie themselves in bonds, resolving not to be bound by the obligation; and where is the honesty and justice of this? They that have no sense of the matrimonial obligation can have no sense of the conjugal duty; they marry to lie together; and they satisfy the appetite in the pleasures of the marriage bed. But when that's over, all the rest, which they had no view of before, is a force, a bondage; and they as heartily hate the state of life as a slave does his lot in Algiers or Tunis.

Let me go on a little, then, to furnish the growing world with better notions of the thing; I say, let me take up a little of this work in the needful inquiry of what matrimony is, and how we ought to understand it.

The ladies, indeed, run, the greatest risk in marrying, but the men cannot be said to run no hazard, or to have nothing to lose; a little consideration beforehand would lessen the hazard on both sides, and not only remove the dangers, but prepare the minds of the marrying couple to act their parts wisely and prudently, and to suit themselves to the particular circumstances of the condition which is before them.

This due preparation of the mind for the married state, would prevent all the abuses of it which I complain of in this book.

When they come together affectionately, they, will live together affectionately, at least they will not abandon all affection to one another afterwards, or not so soon; nor will it be so likely that they should declare open war against one another so soon, as when they came together without any previous kindness, except only from the lips outward.

When they come together deliberately, they will keep together deliberately; they will not be so ready to curse the rashness and hurry of their marriage, or be so easily disappointed in one another.

Again, and which is especially to the purposes mentioned hereafter in this work, when they come together coolly and modestly, they will not be so apt, by immoderate and furious excesses, to dishonour the marriage bed, and abuse one another, as too many do.

Matrimony is a solemn work, 'tis proposed as a sacred institution, and the conjugal state is, upon all occasions, looked upon, by those that consider and understand it, as a kind of civil establishment in life; to engage in it rashly, and without consideration, is perfectly inconsistent with the nature of the thing, and with all that is proposed in it, or expected from it, at least by wise and sober people.

I cannot enter here upon a description of all the several incidents which render a married life happy or miserable; they are innumerable, and too long to meddle with in a work so short as this. But as I am moving all those (young people especially) who design to marry, to consider sedately and calmly, and weigh well the circumstances, and all the particulars of what they are going to engage in, as well of persons as things; so I must add, that let the circumstances of the married couple be what they will, I believe it will be universally true, that those matches succeed best which are entered into with the most serious and thorough deliberation; duly debating all the particulars of the persons; seriously engaging the affections on both sides, by mutual reciprocal endearments, and unfeigned sincere love, founded on real merit, suitability, and virtue. These confirm the felicity, if they may not be said really to constitute it. Nor, in a word, is there one match in fifty happy and successful without it.

Now, to come to the last clause in the title of this chapter; it is for want of these calm deliberate proceedings in the apparatus of matrimony, for want of weighing circumstances, and suiting persons to one another, that matrimony is so often abused; suitability of persons is one of the greatest and most important difficulties that lie before the marrying couple for their consideration. The temper of the person is not easily discovered, nor does it require a little judgment and discretion to dive into the disposition of the person; looking too narrowly for defects (since all tempers may have failings) may be injurious on one hand; as covering the infirmities which discover themselves too evidently, may be injurious on another.

I knew a certain lady in the critical time of courtship, mighty inquisitive about the qualifications, the temper, and the merit of the gentleman; and it was thought she showed abundance of prudence and caution in her observation of his conduct, and her inquiries into his character. It happened, one particular person, who was very intimate in the family of the gentleman, and knew him more particularly than most did, had so much integrity as to inform the lady's friend who she gent to inquire about him, that he was a hard drinker, and that particularly he was very ill-humoured and quarrelsome when in drink; though 'twas allowed that he was very well tempered when sober, and, in general, had the character of a good-humoured man.

It seems nobody else was so kind, or so just to her, or so well acquainted with his humour, as to acquaint her of this part, but that one person; and the lady either liking the man, or having particularly a mind to be married, or what else over-ruled her, I know not, but she took this account, which was the only faithful and sincere ono that she had given her, to be malicious and false; so she went on with her affair, as before, giving no heed to what she had been so kindly informed of.

But a little while after, as if Providence had directed it for her more effectual information, and particularly that she might have no excuse, and none to blame but herself; I say, a little after this, he happens to be very drunk, and, in his drink, he not only takes care to give the lady a visit, but goes from her to the house of one of her nearest relations, and shows himself there too.

The lady, surprised, not at his visit, but at seeing him in that condition, as soon as she could decently dismiss him, went big with her discovery, and greatly exasperated as well as disappointed, to make her complaint, and give her passions vent at her relation's, who I mentioned above. But if she was vexed and disappointed before, she was both angry and ashamed now, to find he had so little discretion in his wine as to go and show and expose himself there, so that, when she saw it, she could not forbear reproaching him with if, and that in the bitterest terms imaginable.

The gentleman stood pretty patiently a good while, and bore it all, better than they that knew him expected he should, considering he was very drunk, till the lady giving her passions a full vent, fell upon him in a downright scold, and ended it with a forbidding him to wait upon her any more, that is to say, bade him give himself no farther trouble about her, for she had had enough of him, and the like.

Thug far, I say, he held it very well, considering his condition. But when she came to that part, he looked steadily at her, and with a smiling pleasant countenance, contrary to his usual custom when he had been drinking, he turns to her, "Ha, madam!" says he, "are you so hot and in such a rage! Pray, have you been drinking too?" That put her quite mad; and she reviled him, told him she scorned him, and his question too, that she would have him be informed she was no such person, and a great, deal more. "No madam!" says he, "are you not in drink, and yet can be in such a rage? Are you so passionate as this when you are sober? whereas, you see, I can be such a patient dog when I am drunk; why, then, madam," says he, "in good faith, I'll take you at your word, for you are not fit to make a wife for me." So he takes a glass of wine, and drinks to her better fortune, bade her good bye, and immediately paying his respects to the gentleman of the house, he walks out, and goes away.

If she was angry before, she was calm, perfectly calm, and surprised to the last degree, to see herself treated so soberly by a man that was hardly himself; and that she was rejected in earnest, whereas she had rejected him but in a kind of a passion, and did not intend to be taken at her word.

However, notwithstanding all this, and notwithstanding she saw him in drink several times after that, and sometimes when he did not preserve his temper, as he did then, yet this lady married him after it all. And what followed? As she had reason to expect, so it proved; she was as completely miserable in a husband as a married life could well make any woman be; for he proved not only drunken, but a passionate outrageous wretch in his drink, and that to her in particular.

It is true, he was very obliging and good tempered out of his excesses; but then, as he grew older, the vice increased upon him; till at last, so little made him drunk, and he was so seldom sober, that she had the most vexations, and the least intervals of quiet that ever lady had; and all this for want of obeying not only the intelligence of her faithful friend, but even the kind discovery which Providence made to her, as it were, on purpose, and past her being able to doubt the truth of it; so that indeed she had nobody to blame.

But to return to the case, and not to insist upon the drunkenness of a particular person, here or there, which may be said to be an accident to the temper; but without this, the discording tempers of the party is as great, and as effectual a cause of the abuse of the matrimonial peace, as anything else can be.

I have mentioned the sad consequences of discording constitutions, in a chapter by itself, and which often occasions a great abuse of the matrimonial duty, and particularly of the marriage bed; but that is not the point I am upon here, the difference of tempers is yet a thousand times worse, for this makes a continued breach in everything they do or say, ruins the whole family peace, destroys the comfort of life, expels religion and every good thing; for, as the Scripture says, "Where there is strife and contention there is every evil work."

"Tis the horror of matrimony when two contrary tempers come together, when fire and tinder meet they certainly blaze together; when the spark and the gunpowder touch the whole house is blown up; 'tis a great pity to see in some families a patient wife and a furious husband, or a patient sober husband and a termagant fiery scold; because there is the utmost oppression on one side, and the utmost rage and violence on the other.

But to have two devils together in one house, what can be expected but ruin and confusion to the whole family? and at last either separation or destruction?

It is merely for want of a suitability of temper that the peace of so many families is lost and destroyed, and matrimony abused, and that so many, once happy people, are made miserable. But I shall say more of this still.

Matrimony is a state of union, 'tis the nearest union that the sexes can be placed in. This union is appointed in order to the mutual felicity of the parties; 'tis then a state that both parties should be particularly careful of, and of their conduct in, that they may make it answer the end for which it was so appointed, namely, to preserve, and indeed to procure, the mutual happiness to the parties, and make that union effectual.

How impossible do we make this to ourselves, when we invert the great end and design even of God himself, who instituted and appointed it; and when we make the sacred ordinance a retreat for crime, a cover for our excesses, and a protection to the most abominable practices.

This is what I call abusing the state of matrimony as well as dishonouring the contract. Matrimony is not a single act, but it is a condition of life, and therefore, when people are new-married, they are said to have altered their condition; it is a series of unity contracted by, and should be made up of, agreeing habits; where the harmony is broken, the state of life is abused when the parties cease to be united, and to be united too in that which is right, the life is no more matrimonial; 'tis a jargon of speech, a word without signification, to call it a matrimonial life.

In the contract the parties bind themselves to live in this harmony and state of union; what else is understood by living "according to God's holy ordinance." How do they live according to a holy ordinance, whose conversation even towards one another, and with one another, pollutes and defiles the state of life, and would the very ordinance too, if that were possible?

How the conversation between a man and his wife may and does pollute and defile the matrimonial state (however strange such a thing may be), is the subject of the following chapters, where the affirmative will, I doubt not, be clearly made out.

CHAPTER II.

Of matrimonial chastity, what is to be understood by the word; a proof of its being required by the laws of God and nature, and that wrong notions of it have possessed the world. -- Dr Taylor's authority quoted about it.

I AM yet settling preliminaries; the work I am upon will have so many opposers, such cavillings and quarrellings, as well at the subject as at the manner of handling it, that I am obliged to provide my defences in time against all the batteries of the enemy.

I have this to boast of for encouragement, viz. that I know my argument to be invulnerable; all the arts of hell cannot evade the force of it; if there is the least defect, it must be in the weakness of the performance. Good weapons may be rendered useless or insufficient in an unskilful hand; but as no man else has ever undertaken it, I must venture -- I'll manage it as well as I can.

In the former chapter I have explained the matrimonial obligation, what I mean by the word matrimony, how it should be understood, and in what sense I understand it in the following work. I repeat nothing.

I am now to explain another term equally significant, though little taken notice of among us, a word thought to be difficult, but is not difficult; absolutely necessary to be understood towards the right reading this book, and particularly useful to its explanation, I mean Matrimonial Chastity; 'tis the breach of this chastity that is the subject of the whole work, and 'tis therefore, I say, absolutely necessary to understand what it is. The exercise of lawful enjoyments is one of the greatest snares of life; where men seem to be left to their own latitudes, 'tis too natural to think they are not obliged to any restraint; but 'tis a great mistake: Christian limitation is the true measure of human liberty; where heaven has had the goodness to leave us without a limitation, he expects we should limit ourselves with the more exactness; and perhaps 'tis the intent and meaning of that seeming unlimited liberty (for 'tis no more) that our virtue may have a fair field for its trial, and that we may more eminently show our Christian temperance, in using those liberties with the same moderation where we have no positive restraints imposed, as we would others, where we are under a direct and absolute command.

Being, therefore, about to reprehend the breaches of this moderation, and, in a word, to combat the exorbitances of unlimited life, 'tis absolutely necessary to know what they are, and to lay down, with the utmost plainness that decency will permit, what it is I am to engage against, and for what reasons.

Chastity is a virtue much talked of -- little practised; a great noise is made with the word chastity, and, on many occasions, where little true regard is had to the thing, and perhaps where 'tis little understood; 'tis taken among us for a mere regulation of manners, and a kind of government of life. But the definition is infinitely short of the thing itself, which is of a high and superior kind; it is a rectitude of nature, an inherent brightness of the soul, I'll give you a better description of it presently, and a better describer also, for I must speak with authority, if possible, where I have so much to say, and which you will like so little.

If chastity in general be so little understood, the chastity I speak of is infinitely more out of the way of your ordinary thinking. Matrimonial chastity! 'tis a new, strange term, said one of my critical observers before I published this work; you must be sure to tell us what you mean by it, or it will not be intelligible. "What," says he, "are you going to lay down rules and laws for the marriage bed! Are you going to enclose what heaven has left free, and pretending to show us the deficiency of God's laws, supply that deficiency with some wiser rules of your own? 'Tis against nature, as well as against heaven." But this reproof is misplaced, and the reprover mistaken. I am far from adding to the restraints that nature, and the God of nature, have laid upon us, but am for showing you what restraints they are, and particularly to let you see there are some restraints where you suggest, and perhaps believe, there are really none.

You acknowledge that chastity in general is a virtue, and a Christian duty; and I affirm there is a particular chastity, that is to say, a limited liberty, which is to be observed and strictly submitted to in the conjugal state; this I call matrimonial chastity, and the breach of this I call, as in my title, matrimonial whoredom; let others call it what they will, I can give it no other name than what I think it deserves.

"Tho" they're called misses which lewd men adore,
I cannot guild their crimes a whore's a whore."

Having thus entered upon the difficult task of reproving those criminal practices of men, which are acted under the shelter of supposed lawful liberty, I must state the due bounds and extent of that liberty, that we may the better ground our future censures, and be able to justify the reproof from the rules established in the foundation.

Now, that I may do this with the better authority, I begin with quoting the late pious and reverend Dr Taylor; in his book of Holy Living, he has a whole chapter upon this very subject, I mean of chastity, and I cannot take my arguments from a better beginning.

"Chastity," says the doctor, "is the circumcision of the heart, the suppressing all irregular desires in the matter of carnal and sensual pleasures.

Here the doctor has made a provision to encounter the merry disputants of this age, as pungent and as natural as if he had been now alive, and knew the height to which the corrupt imaginations of men have carried those irregular desires. "What do you pretend to call irregular?" said a cavilling favourer of vice to me once, also before this book was thought of; "what can be irregular between a man and his wife?"

I shall have more to say to that question in the next chapters, and doubt not to speak to the conviction of reasonable creatures. As to human brutes, I am not looking towards them, much less talking to them in a discourse of chastity; let them alone to their irregular desires, and let the success of those gratified desires be their reprover; they generally end in repentance, or, which is worse, self-reproaches. But I come back to Dr Taylor.

"I call all those desires irregular," says the reverend doctor,

"1. That are not within the holy institution, or within the protection of marriage.

"2. That are not within the order of nature.

"3. That are not within the moderation of Christian modesty."

In this last head he includes (to use his own words) all immoderate use of permitted beds, which is exactly to the purpose that I am speaking of, and upon which subject the second chapter of this book is chiefly employed.

"Concerning which (says the same worthy author) judgment is to be made as concerning meats and drinks, there being no certain degree of frequency or intention prescribed to any person, but it is to be ruled as the other actions of man's life are ruled, viz.,

"1. By the proportion to the end.

"2. By the dignity of the person as a Christian.

"3. By the other particulars, of which he speaks afterwards.

"Chastity (says he) is the grace which for bids and restrains all these, keeping both the body and the soul pure, in the state God has placed it, whether of a single or married life," 1 Thess. iv, 3, 4, 5.

And now having quoted so eminent an author as Dr Taylor, whose works are so well known, let me put all my good friends, who watch for my halting, in mind, that the doctor having this very article upon his hands, and being resolved to speak critically, and yet fully, to it, he takes all due caution in the doing it, just as I have done. First, he cautions the reader against unjust censure and reproach. Second, he then fortifies himself against the fears of it; and, lastly, speaks boldly and plainly where duty calls upon him to do so. Just in this manner you may expect me to act in that critical article of liberty which is before me.

The doctor, it appears, knew how the world was vitiated, and the minds of men corrupted, even in his day, and that it was a most dangerous thing to speak of such things as these in the ears of a lewd set of people, which the world was then full of; that they would corrupt the most sanctified advice, and insult the adviser, and therefore as I have done here, so the devout doctor gives caution, and enters his protest against misconstruction and misunderstanding of what he was to say. This he does with infinite modesty and reserve, but ventures for all that upon the reproof as a necessary work; his example is highly useful to me in this equally necessary work, of laying open the crimes of the present age; which, it must be acknowledged, is much further advanced in wickedness than the times the doctor lived in. His words are these:--

Dr TAYLOR'S Preamble to his Chapter upon the Subject of Chastity.

"Reader, stay (says he), and read not the advices of the following section, unless that thou hast a chaste spirit; and in another place (he says) unless thou hast a chaste spirit, and unless thou art desirous of being chaste, or at least art apt to consider whether thou oughtest or not. For there are some spirits so atheistical, and some so wholly possessed with the spirit of uncleanness, that they turn the most prudent and chaste discourses into dirty and filthy apprehensions; like choleric stomachs, changing their very cordials and medicines into bitterness, and, in a literal sense, turning the grace of God into wantonness.

"These men study cases of conscience in the matter of carnal sins, not to avoid them, but to learn ways how to offend God, and pollute their own spirits; searching their houses with a sunbeam, that they may be informed of all the corners of nastiness.

"I have used all the care I could in the following periods, that I might neither be wanting to assist those that need it, nor yet minister any occasion of fancy or vainer thoughts to those that need them not. If any man will snatch the pure taper from my hand, and hold it to the devil, he will only burn his own fingers, but shall not rob me of the reward of my care and good intention, since I have taken heed how to express the following duties, and given him caution how to read them."

Thus far Dr Taylor. He had but one chapter, or section, as he calls it, upon the subject of chastity, and yet you see how wary he was lest the ill digesture of the times should turn that which he designed for the wholesome nourishment of the mind to a corrupt and unclean purpose. How much more have I just ground to warn the reader of this work, that he may forbear reading it with a design to gratify or please a tainted and vitiated imagination! Let him rather prepare to read a just reproof of the vilest actions with the same detestation and abhorrence that I write it with, and with such clean thoughts as becomes a mind seasoned with virtue, awed by religion, and prepared by a due reverence to the divine command.

To the pure all things are pure, to the unclean all things are unclean; they that are disposed to ridicule and make a jest of the just satire here pointed at crime, will but make a jest of themselves; since nothing can be more evident than the offence, nothing can be more just than the reproof. If men will defile themselves, as the Scots say, no man can dight them. It is very strange a man should be afraid to expose a crime for fear of increasing it, as if the very shame should excite to the sin.

But I must keep to the point, and to which I resolve to confine myself. Chastity is no popular subject, it is so broken into upon all hands, and with such a gust of general desire, that to rake into the filth must be disagreeable to the generality of people; and though I do not let it alone for that reason, being not at all reluctant to an attack upon a crime, because grown flagrant and universal, yet at present I am upon another subject; I am attacking a crime equally odious, but which is not equally acknowledged to be a crime, a wickedness which even some that pretend to purity of life will not allow to be wicked.

So much more is the danger, when men walk among barrels of gunpowder, and know it not to be gunpowder, who shall be cautious of his candle? It is not so hard to persuade such men to shun the evil as to convince them that it is an evil; they cavil at the very title of this chapter Matrimonial Chastity; it is nonsense, they say, in the nature of the thing; virgin chastity, indeed, and chastity of a single person, is something, and would bear to be exhorted to; but married chastity is what they will by no means understand, or bear a reproof about.

But because I have, as I said above, a whole chapter upon this very subject, and only mention it here with respect to opinions of good men about it, give me leave to quote the reverend person just now named upon the same subject, and refer you afterwards to my own opinion in the following discourse.

Dr Taylor, in his discourse of chastity, mentioned above, after having spoken of virgin chastity and vidual chastity, comes of course to mention the very thing I am now upon, and in the very same terms, viz., Matrimonial Chastity. And I choose to give it you in his own words, because, before I remembered that the Doctor had mentioned this case, I had finished the next chapters, viz., of the bounds and limitations which modesty and decency had placed to the liberties of the marriage bed, and which the Doctor's opinion so far confirms that I could not but subjoin his thoughts after my own was gone to the press. The Doctor's rules for married persons are thus expressed :

"Concerning married persons, besides the keeping their mutual faith and contract with each other, these particulars are useful to be observed.

"1. Although their mutual endearments are safe within the protection of marriage, yet they that have wives or husbands must be as though they had them not; that is, they must have an affection greater to each other than they have to any person in the world, but not greater than they have to God: but that they be ready to part with all interest in each other's person, rather than sin against God.

"2. In their permission and licence, they must be sure to observe the order of nature and the ends of God. He is an ill husband that uses his wife as a man treats a harlot, having no other end but pleasure. Concerning which our best rule is, that although in this, as in eating and drinking, there is an appetite to be satisfied which cannot be done without pleasing that desire; yet, since that desire and satisfaction was intended by nature for other ends, they should never be separate from those ends, but always be joined with one or all of those ends, with a desire of children, or to avoid fornication, or to lighten and ease the cares and sadnesses of household affairs, or to endear each other; but never with a purpose, either in act or desire, to separate the sensuality from these ends which hallow it. Onan did separate his act from its proper end, and so ordered his embraces that his wife should not conceive, and God punished him.

"3. Married persons must keep such modesty and decency of treating each other, that they never force themselves into high and violent lusts, with arts and misbecoming devices: always remembering that those mixtures are most innocent which are most simple and most natural most orderly and most safe.

"4. It is a duty of matrimonial chastity to be restrained and temperate in the use of their lawful pleasures: concerning which, although no universal rule can antecedently be given to all persons, any more than to all bodies one proportion of meat and drink; yet married persons are to estimate the degree of their licence according to the following proportions: 1. That it be moderate, so as to consist with health. 2. That it be so ordered as not to be too extensive of time, that precious opportunity of working out our salvation. 3. That when duty is demanded it be always payed (so far as in our powers and election) according to the foregoing measures. 4. That it be with a temperate affection, without violent transporting desires, or too sensual applications. Concerning which a man is to make judgment by proportion to other actions, and the severities of his religion, and the sentences of sober and wise persons; always remembering that marriage is a provision for supply of the natural necessities of the body, not for the artificial and procured appetites of the mind. And it is a sad truth, that many married persons, thinking that the flood-gates of liberty are set wide open without measures or restraints (so they sail in that channel) have felt the final rewards of their intemperance and lust, by their unlawful using of lawful permissions. Only, therefore, let each of them be temperate, and both of them be modest."

Thus far the reverend Doctor, a man whose character gave him an undoubted right to the title of a true spiritual guide, thoroughly qualified in his time for a teacher of holy living.

I add nothing, only that here is a confirmation indeed unexpected of all the principles which I have advanced in this work.

Here is a full concession to the real occasion and even necessity of my present undertaking; the Doctor grants that married persons even at that time thought the flood-gates of liberty were set open to them, and that, as I said, modesty and decency were at an end after marriage, and there was no more restraint between a man and his wife.

But you will find the Doctor quite of another opinion, as I also am; and I am very glad to have so unquestioned an authority for my opinion.

CHAPTER III.

Of the end and reason of matrimony, and that there is a needful modesty and decency requisite, even between a man and his wife, after marriage, the breaches of which make the first branch of matrimonial whoredom.

THE ends and reason of matrimony are assigned by our church in the office, or introduction to the office for marrying such persons as may be lawfully joined together; if I repeat them, I hope no reproof can lie against me there; the modest virgin submits to be told, that the reason of joining herself to a man, is principally for the procreation of children; 'tis the law of generation given both to the man and to the woman at first; 'tis twisted with their very natures, and placed among the first principles of life; and 'tis also the law of God, given to man imperatively at the same time that he joined to it his blessing, Gen. i, 28, " And God blessed them, and God said unto them, be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth."

In this great law of Matrimony is founded the utmost intercourse and familiarity of the sexes, by which all that shyness, that modest reserve and restraint, all that which is called shamefacedness and blushing, even in the most modest and chaste virgin, is taken away; that is to say, so far only, and no farther, as respects her immediate intimacy and conversation with her own husband; she freely strips off her clothes in the room with him; and whereas she would not have showed him her foot before, without her shoe and stocking on, she now, without the least breach of modesty, goes into what we call the naked bed to him, and with him; lies in his arms, and in his bosom, and sleeps safely, and with security to her virtue with him, all the night: and this is her place, her property, her privilege, exclusive of all others, for he is her own, and she is his; he is the covering of the eyes to her, and she is called, in the sacred text, the wife of his bosom; she has the only right to lodge there; it is her retreat, the repository of her cares, as well as of her delight, and of her affection.

And if it is not thus with both or either of them, nay, if it was not thus before they married, let them flatter themselves as they please with the formal marriage, or the formality of matrimony, I insist they have violated the laws of God and man, in their coming together; violated their solemn oath and covenant to one another after coming together; and whatever they are in the sense of the law, they are really no man and wife at all in the sense which I am giving of things: whether I am in the right or no, I refer to the judgment of the impartial part of sober mankind. Having said thus much by way of advance, I think 'tis necessary to take notice here how just it is, and indispensably, nay, absolutely necessary to the happiness of a married life, that the persons marrying should have not only an acquaintance with one another before marriage, but that they should be engaged to each other by a solid and durable affection, professing to love, and not only professing but sincerely loving one another, above all other persons; choosing and being the real choice of each other. This is not a small and trifling thing, it is the chief article of matrimony, though not included and asserted in the contract, 'tis a thing of the utmost consequence to the future happiness of the parties. However, as I purpose to speak to it again fully and at large, in a part by itself, I only leave it here as a memorandum proper to the place, and reserve the rest to what shall come after. I return now to the case of matrimonial liberty.

Having advanced thus much in favour of the utmost freedoms between man and wife, and which I might enlarge upon, but that I believe there is really no occasion; I think I grant as much in it as I need to do, in condescension to the proposition mentioned in the introduction, namely, that there can be no offence between a man and his wife, modesty is at an end, that 'tis cancelled by the very nature of the thing, that all things are decent, all things modest, all things lawful between a man and his wife; all which, in a few words, I deny, and insist that there are several things yet remaining, which stand as boundaries and limits to the freedoms and intimacies that are otherwise to be allowed between a man and his wife.

And first, I insist that these limitations of the conjugal liberties are placed in the open view of both the man and his wife, by the laws of nature; so that both of them are furnished with principles of reluctance and aversion, sufficient, if duly listened to, and if the laws of nature are obeyed, to arm them against any breaches of those laws. It is evident in many cases, too many, had it not pleased God to suffer it to be so, that the laws of nature have a much stronger influence upon us than the laws of our Maker; and this is especially remarkable in those cases, where the laws of nature seem to give some latitudes which the laws of God, and institutions of his providence, have thought fit to limit and restrain. For example :

The laws of nature dictate the propagation of kind by the intercourse of sexes; the laws of God subsequent to those of nature, limit and restrain the particulars of this propagation, namely, that the man (by man there is to be understood man or woman) should be allowed but one woman at a time, that they be bound together by the sacred bonds of matrimony indissolvable, after once engaged in, and therefore sacred, and to be inviolably adhered to, and preserved by both parties.

It is true that there is a corrupt principle, inbred and indwelling, taking a kind of possession, too much in man's nature, degenerated as it is by the fall; this corrupt principle dictates the propagation of the kind, that is, as a law of nature, but does it without regard to the limitations imposed by heaven upon the branches; that is to say, without entering into the engagements of matrimony, and this makes those actions criminal, which otherwise would have been lawful; makes the man commit a crime in that very action which, done under due regulations and limitations, that is to say, in wedlock, would not only be lawful, but his commanded duty.

It is the same afterwards; for example, when those limitations are obeyed and submitted to, I mean, the limitations of matrimony, there are (as I have observed) yet farther limitations, which the laws of nature concur with the laws of God in, and which the man is obliged to observe, though this corrupt principle would fain evade and avoid them; these are such as I hinted to be contained in the words Decency and Modesty: now though much of the obligation is taken off by the allowed intimacies between a man and his wife, and a full and free intercourse of sexes is granted, yet I must be pardoned the liberty of saying, there are bounds and limitations of decency, modesty and moderation, which stand as a pale about even their matrimonial liberties, and say to them both in the midst of their greatest endearments, hitherto shall you go, and no farther.

As I am speaking to the married persons only, in this part, I need explain myself no farther than to say, there are bounds and measures, times and seasons, which nature and decency always will dictate to them, and will regulate too, and teach them to regulate between themselves their most intimate conjugal delights and embraces: these nothing but an appetite criminally immoderate, and under no government, no, not of reason, religion, philosophy, or common sense, will trespass or break through.

I hope I have hitherto kept the bounds of decency, and given no offence, though I am reproving one of the most notorious breaches of conjugal modesty; a thing even Nature herself abhors, though Nature vitiated may be said to be the occasion of it; I say, Nature, under any just regulation of sense, Nature, abstracted from criminal habits, abhors it; and which is more, Nature speaks plainer in her reproofs of that crime than I dare do, while the product of those impure and unlawful, however matrimonial liberties, carry the indelible marks of their parents' unhappy excesses and intemperance in their faces, and on the blotched and bladdered skin of their posterity for many years, nay, to their dying days. As if Nature had declared to them, that she was able to show her resentment for the breach of her tacit and secret inhibitions; and that though they broke in upon her in secret by the power of an inflamed and vitiated appetite, and thought themselves out of the reach of punishment, yet that she was able to do herself justice upon them, in a manner that they could not escape, and which should fix a lasting infamy upon both the offence and the offender, by a punishment which they should neither be able to avoid or to conceal.

I need explain myself no farther, Nature does it for me: and I have, by her indulgence, a full liberty to touch this tender part with the strictest observation of my own rules, since she has spoken it aloud, and has made the crime of the parent flagrant in the very pictures of their posterity.

How do such children call upon their parents to blush, every time they see the scrofulous humours break out in scabs and blisters upon the poor innocent lambs' faces? making them bear the unhappy reproach of their father's and mother's conjugal lewdness?

I need say no more to this, but to remind those that are guilty, that the more modest brutes of the forest, who obey the laws of sense, and follow the dictates of mere nature, do not act thus. The wild ass, which the scripture represents as the most vitiated, ungoverned of all the forest, yet the text says, "In her months you shall find her;" she has her seasons, and so have all the rest of the beastly creatures, and they all observe them strictly and suitably to the reasons of nature, man and woman only excepted.

This I call, and I think justly too, as it respects one part only, a branch of matrimonial whoredom, and thus I keep close to my title.

I could load this part with a throng of examples, a cloud of self-condemned witnesses, and some whose stories I can the less bear to relate without blushing, because they are arrived to such a pitch of wickedness as to make it public themselves without shame. But as I said above, Nature is printed upon the tainted poisoned faces of their posterities such indelible spots, has branded them with such marks of infamy, that I may say of; them as was said in another case, What need any farther witnesses? Let L---- D------ of St A------'s, the beautiful Lady ------ of ------, the modest and better taught Abr------, and more I could name, go home and see what havoc this conjugal lewdness has made among their otherwise pretty families; I spare names, because I desire the reproof may be matter of reflection to themselves, rather than scandal.

As to some others, who I could mention too, both Christian and sirname, and who richly deserve it; who are so far from shame, that they make it every day the boasts of their coffee-house chat, their table-talk, and ordinary conversation; I leave them to the dismal time of reproach, when those unhappy children which they now are not ashamed to show one another as the examples of their wickedness, shall again remind them of it, and curse them to their faces.

The case indeed will not bear entering farther into particulars; nor will it so much as allow the necessary expostulations which I should otherwise make here with those married Christians (for such I am talking to) who I would persuade to reflect upon it; it is hard, that neither the case itself will bear an inquiring into, nor the persons guilty bear to be talked to. How can any persons who are really guilty of this conjugal uncleanness, reproach an author for the sin of naming what they are not ashamed of doing? I look upon the crime with abhorrence, and I could refer you to the scripture, where it is branded with a title that deserves it; as I say I look on the crime with abhorrence, so I add, that I look on the persons, with something beyond it, and can only add this of them, that as they were not to be touched under the law, so they are not to be named under the gospel. God would not take them for Jews till they were washed, and I shall never take them for Christians till they reform; let them read their reproof at large in Levit. xv, to which I refer.

I cannot quit this part without making some reflections upon parallel cases. I have heard some serious and learned divines say, that it is a worse crime, and deserves a severer censure from man (observe they did not speak of what either of them merited above), for a man and woman under promises of marriage to lie together before the marriage is completed, than a simple or single fornication between two who have no design of matrimony, that is, in short, between what we ordinarily call a whore and a rogue; and I confess, though at first I hesitated a little at it, I am fully satisfied it is so; and the reasons the said serious divines gave me confirm me in that opinion.

For a man to commit a single fornication, say they, he sins against God and his own soul, there is no room to deny that; the scripture is clear, and the laws of God and man concur in the censure, as they do in the prohibition. But for a man to make a whore of the very woman who he intends and really designs to make his wife, or, in plain English, to make a whore of his wife, he defiles his own bed, pollutes his own seed, spreads bastardy in his own race, and shows a most wicked, vitiated appetite, that could not withhold himself from her merely as a woman, till the performance of a lawful marriage might make it seasonable, as well as lawful; such a man satisfies the brutal part at the expense of his wife's fame, his child's legitimacy, and to the scandal and offence of all good people that shall hear it, and who cannot name it without pity or abhorrence on account of the circumstances.

This is the case indeed, where a man acts such a wicked and scandalous part; he apparently exposes and dishonours his wife, as well as himself; nor is it sufficient to say, that the woman dishonours herself too, or that there is much more of the blame lies on him than on her; for as she sufficiently bears her share of the reproach, so she bears more of the scandal than the man; nay, she exposes herself, not to the world only, but to her husband afterwards; and much might be said to that: nor is it out of the question, for it is indeed a matrimonial whoredom in the literal sense.

But as such I shall speak of it again. I am now naming it as it is a parallel case to that I had been just now speaking of, wherein there is a just equality, and a proportion of particulars very apposite to one another; for here is a horrid complication of the like crimes, the man defiles his own bed, exposes his own wife, contaminates and corrupts his own blood, spreads distempers and poison upon his own race, and all this from one of the grossest pieces of immodesty, and worst of brutality, that can be expressed in words; an infamous kind of eagerness or appetite, ungovernable by his reason, being unable (or pretending to be so at least) to withhold himself from her till other particulars might take off the little restraints, and leave him at liberty.

Let such men go not to the forest and the beasts only, for they act from a much better motion, but to the more rational, more moderate and better governed savages of the Indies, east or west, to the negroes of Africa, the potiguaras of Brazil, nay, to the very hottentots of Monomotapa and the Cape of Good Hope; they will find reason, and nature too, prevails among then) to act quite otherwise, and that while reason and nature concur in arming them against it, so they more punctually obey the command of both, and have this horrid practice in the greatest detestation. But here, let us blush, and say no more, for no modest language can fully express it

I return to the principle, which is the proposition in this chapter, That there is a needful modesty and decency requisite even between a man and his wife after marriage, and not destroyed by their matrimony. Certainly people do not by matrimony cease to be men and women, nor do the man and woman cease to be rational creatures, much less do they cease to be Christians; let every married couple remember those three things, and I am fully assured they will take care not to deserve the reproof of this chapter.

This is, then, that circumstance in the marriage state, where, I say, a reserve is placed between the sexes, even between the man and his wife; where that which we call modesty remains as an indelible bond upon them both, even after marriage: they that say there is no modesty to be named after matrimony, but that there is a perfect unlimited and unbounded liberty on both sides, either do not know or do not rightly consider the laws of nature, the constitution bonds, which, as matrimony does not remove from the sexes, so neither does it remove the obligation from either sex to regard them. One would think indeed the power of nature should be such, and the sense of these things be so plainly stamped in the minds of reasonable creatures, that there should be no need, or indeed room, for the caution. But as the breach of this law, however scandalous, is so visible among us, it merits to stand foremost among the conjugal crimes I am now to reprove.

I foresee what some of my merry readers will think they are to hear of next, viz. that I shall preach lectures of matrimonial moderation, or satirize some of their boasted excesses; but they will be unhappily disappointed; my care of avoiding to reprove in words at length, what some of them are not ashamed to boast of in words at length, will perhaps leave some people to go more unreproved than they deserve.

Yet let J------ A------ take a modest hint upon the grossest indecency of that kind which this part of the town has ever shown, and which he acted in sight and hearing of more of his friends than approved the scandalous practice; when, with the grossest immodesty, he gave the detail of his marriage night's performances to a grave and eminent magistrate of the city upon the open exchange, and was handsomely reproved and exposed for it, as he deserved. When men glory in their shame, they make indecencies of that which might not otherwise be such, and they break the rules of modesty without doors, when perhaps they did not within. But this part of the satire goes no farther than the fact; I return to the subject itself.

Every wise man would act the part of a wise man, were there no law to restrain him. Prudence dictates to men of prudence, and modesty to men of modesty; the great law of matrimony is a strict union of the persons; this union extends to many other things, as well as to the union of sexes, and, among the rest, there is, or should be, a union of kindness moving to a gentle and tender using one another in matters of civility and courtesy as well as in matters of modesty. Certainly the rules of civility are not abolished by matrimony; should not the man and his wife be civil and just to one another, because they may be free? That is a strange freedom that obliges us to be rude and disobliging.

Now these rules of decency, which, I say, are not destroyed by matrimony, extend to many things even between a man and his wife which I have not yet mentioned, and which I have with regret observed to be broken into by some who had been better taught, and who ought to have known by the laws of good manners how to have acted after another sort; the branches I point at now may be touched more closely, and will admit of speaking plainer English than those I have just now mentioned; and though the immodesty may in many things be as great, and that it comes from the same corrupt, vicious original either in the man or the woman, yet they are not expressed in so open and so scandalous and offensive terms.

The first case is, when either the man or woman make injurious reproaches upon one another for natural or accidental infirmities, incapacitating them to answer and satisfy mutual expectation; that is to say, to answer conjugal duties; and this, more especially when those infirmities have not been ante-matrimonial, not before marriage, but occasioned by distemper or disaster afterward, and those distempers or disasters such as are truly casual, and to be honestly accounted for. There must certainly be a great defect of modesty in the man or the woman who can reproach the wife or the husband in such a case as this.

A lady, whose name I reflect on with disdain, but conceal it in charity, after having had five fine children by her husband, having, though with civility too, been denied something which I she desired, and which he thought a little too expensive for his circumstances, after some warm words, but less criminal, turned from him with scorn, and told him, he might let it alone since he was grown so saving; she would not accept of it now; he might keep it for his next child.

The gentleman had about two years before had a fit of sickness, which had brought him very low, and by which he was grown a little paralytic; how it affected his natural powers, could not perhaps be understood so well by any body as by his wife. But supposing the worst, it was not without the utmost breach of decency and modesty, supposing none to have been present but themselves, that she could reproach him with that part of it in such a manner; but it was infinitely more so, and she was inexcusably guilty, that she did it in the hearing of others, and with some kind of additions of banter and raillery too, which sat very ill upon her tongue at that time.

It is true, the folly of it retorted exceedingly upon her fame, and soon got into the mouths of some of her satirical neighbours, who failed not to make her very angry, I had rather I could have said ashamed, upon hearing of it again; but it had no effect upon her as to her conduct to him, nor could she restrain doubling her reproaches between themselves, which her husband, being a man of spirit, resented to the highest degree. This put an end to all conjugal kindness between them, and ruined their family peace, till she at length made him her jest, and that in company too; yet she got nothing by him this way neither, for he taking the jest with a smile of contempt, as indeed it deserved, frequently answered, that he would hire her a journeyman, since she took such care to let everybody know she had occasion for one; that if one was not enough for her, as he thought it would not, he would provide her two or three, that, if it were possible, she might be satisfied, though he very much doubted it. This was very bitter upon her, it is true, but she extorted it from him; indeed, till he took this course with her, he could by no persuasions, by no arguments, nor by any ways that he could use, prevail with her to hold her tongue; nor indeed did those reproaches, however severe, put an end to it, but they went on continually bantering and making a jest of one another, and such like indecent and unkind things as these passed so openly and so often between them, that at length it occasioned a separation for a time, and the husband being too hard for her it ruined her character and reputation; and though it did not her virtue, as those believed who had charity for the lady, and I among the rest, yet she retained the blot of it almost as much as if she had had the guilt, and that as long as she lived.

These are some of the things which modesty and decency forbids between a man and his wife; the contrary is a debt to conjugal affection on one hand, and to laws of decency and good manners on the other, both which no matrimonial familiarities or intimacies can destroy.

And here give me leave to observe, though not with the same reflection, and without any satire upon the thing as criminal and immodest, that, however the matrimonial intimacies between a man and his wife may discharge them of much of the bondage of ceremony in their conversation, yet I can by no means agree, that because a woman has given herself up to him without any reserve, all tenderness and regard to her as a woman, and all distinction in company, should be taken away; that she should have no respect shown to her in whatever circumstances she is considered, but, on the contrary, that therefore her husband should treat her with rudeness and indecency, want of manners, and even of respects ever after. There are some remains certainly of the first civilities due to the wife after marriage, which were paid to her in her distant circumstances as a maid before and in the time of courtship; and unless the wife herself forfeit them by any brutish disobliging things on her side, they are not entirely obliterated by matrimony, no, not to the last.

On this account, though I cannot say that a life of ceremony between a man and wife should be recommended, yet certainly a life of civility should; they say that ceremony destroys affection, and, in some respects, I do not know but it may, and when we see a man and his wife, how ever great, always bowing and scraping and sinking to one another, we are apt to say there's more manners than affection between them.

But, on the other hand, when the husband and wile are so far from treating one another with ceremony that they cannot keep up common civility, but that they treat one another with disdain and contempt, there's a certain loss both of affection and good manners too.

For this reason I would advise all the good husbands and wives that will accept that advice never to mingle their discourses, especially before company, with raillery and jest upon one another; when a woman once comes to make a jest of her husband, she is lost, she is gone; and when the man makes a jest of his wife he is a-going, at least in my opinion. I shall explain the words gone and going presently; when a man makes a jest of his wife everybody believes he hates her; when the woman makes a jest of her husband, they believe she cuckolds him.

At least 'tis a fatal sign that all conjugal affection is dead and buried from between them. I frequently visited my friend M------ when his wife and he had been married about two years, but I was most irksomely entertained every time with his banters and turns of wit, his sarcasms, jests, and indeed buffoonery, all upon his wife; I observed at first she took it well enough, and now and then gave him a smart return, which was not to his advantage; for she had a world of wit, but her modesty and sense convinced her, without anybody's reproof, that it was no part for a wife to act; that her husband was wrong in it, and sometimes that would fetch some tears from her: but she would not imitate that in practice which she thought so ill became her husband, so she bore it all as an affliction.

I had in friendship several times gently hinted to Mr M------, that I thought he was too hard upon his lady, that he knew she was a woman of good breeding, and had an uncommon share both of wit and good humour; but he might easily see she was not pleased with it, and that he seemed really to oppress her with it.

However, he went on, and putting one time very hard upon something in her behaviour, which he pretended not to like, though really without cause, she coloured at his words, which showed she resented them, and was moved; but she immediately recovered herself, and keeping back all her resentment, she, with an inexpressible goodness in her face, and a smile, said to him, "My dear, you would like it in anybody but your wife."

I was indeed surprised at it, but her husband much more; and after the conversation was over, he came to me eager to speak: "Well," says he, "you heard what a blow my wife gave me; I acknowledge she has conquered me; I should have really liked it if it had been any one else, and I was entirely wrong; but I'll take your advice; a man should never make a common jest of his wife, and I'll do it no more I assure you."

I was mightily pleased to see the effect it had upon him; for this humour of jesting with his wife, or rather making her the constant subject of ridicule and jest, came up to this at last, that she could do nothing that would please him; but, in short, everything that his wife did was to be laughed at, because his wife was to be laughed at.

This is the familiarity which the proverb says breeds contempt, and it does so; for men presently jest away their respect for their wives, and after that their affection; though ceremony between man and wife lessens affection, or rather shows it was wanting before, yet affection does by no means lessen civility; ceremony may lessen affection, but disrespect murders it, strangles it. A man can never pretend to love his wife and have no respect for her at the same time; that would be to love her and not to love her altogether, which is incongruous in its nature.

Mirth between a husband and wife is the height of affection, but that's no mirth that is always running down, bantering, and playing the buffoon with his wife; a cheerful affection is the beauty of a conjugal state; but what cheerfulness is there in making a banter and jest of one another, what mirth when they make game, not with one another only, but at one another?

It is really an odd kind of conversation between a man and his wife, when they come into public company, to have them turn their drollery one upon another, and run out in banters against themselves; the world will not fail to make a jest of those who first make a jest of themselves, and to take all the jokes, turns and returns which they pass upon one another, to be founded upon fact, and that every jest so raised is a true jest; in short, 'tis a most preposterous piece of folly, and deserves more satire than I have room to bestow upon it here; I may speak of it again in its place.

I knew a couple of married wits who frequently jested thus with one another till they quarrelled, and, indeed, it generally ended in a quarrel; when it was come up to its height, they went to their separate apartments, and perhaps did not see one another for several weeks, one living at one end of the house, and the other at t'other end; half a dozen times a day, or more, they would send letters to one another, filled with bantering bitter sarcasms and satires, sometimes in verse, in song and in distiches, other times in prose, with scandalous reproaches, filled with immodest expressions of the vilest sort, and not fit to be repeated, unless I should break the rules I have prescribed both to myself and others.

In this manner they would sometimes live for a month or two together, never sparing to give the utmost provocation, and to receive it with the extremest indignation, till they run one another out of breath with their ill usage; and then, as storms when they have spent their strength, and their fury is abated, it would gradually wear off; the fire and brimstone being exhausted, they would begin to cool again, and so come with as little ceremony to an accommodation as they had with little decency fallen out.

What need is there of abundance of discretion as well as affection between a man and wife to preserve the rules of decency, and to keep up the bounds of modesty in their family conversation? This is a reason why it is so essential to matrimony that the persons should be lovers as well as relatives, that there should be an engaged assured affection before there be a political union between them. Without this 'tis very difficult to render the marriage state a scene of happy circumstances and a condition truly calculated for humane society; but of that also in its order, for I must give you a whole chapter upon that head.

Justice is another of the particulars which decency still requires between a man and his wife; he is far from acting decently with a wife that will not on all occasions do her justice. To be injurious to a wife destroys all family peace between them; and whether this injustice be occasioned by and relating to matters of property or matters of duty, 'tis all the same; there is no decency can be preserved where justice is not done; if the wife be oppressed, if her right and allowances expressly capitulated for are unjustly detained from her, or if she be any way stripped either of her ornaments or of her settlements, those are injurious things which destroy affection, and the destroying of affection ruins the peace of the family.

But I am a little gone beyond my subject, which relates only to personal virtue, and the reserves which modesty still makes necessary between a man and his wife; and there are some things even of that kind which still remain. It is true, some of them are such as cannot bear the mentioning without breach of the modesty which I am speaking to protect, and breaking into those bounds which I resolve not to offend against. Other things may be so explained as to be understood by those especially to whom they belong, for the guilty will see the arrow shot at them which others cannot perceive.

The indecencies and immodesties of the tongue deserve a place here, and I insist that, even between a man and his wife, there are due bounds to be observed in both these, especially when they speak not only to, but of one another in the hearing of others.

There is a modesty of the tongue which never forsakes a woman of virtue, no, not in her most intimate conversing with her own husband, but much more at other times; all breaches of this kind touch even her virtue itself, and are branches of that which I call conjugal lewdness, which is to be carefully avoided among Christians.

Nor is the man exempted from this modesty of the tongue, not only with his wife, but especially when of or to his wife before company; nothing is more unworthy a modest and Christian man than to talk lewdly of or to his wife before company; a man ought never to force blushes from his wife on account of their own privacies and intimacies; this is to make these things criminal which in themselves are lawful. I know not any one thing that sits worse upon a man's tongue than to laugh at, jeer, and flout his wife with what had passed between them in their retired conversations, and this before other people; 'tis the most odious, hateful, and, to a modest ear, nauseous, of all discourse, and yet nothing is more frequent, and even among people of figure too, which, I must confess, I have often wondered at, considering the pretences we now make to polite conversation.

Besides, 'tis a breach of decency as it respects his wife of the vilest and most scandalous kind; and if she is a modest and virtuous woman, as well as a good wife, is sufficient to make her abhor his society, and to refuse to appear in company with him, even in his own house; nay, and if continued, will not fail in time to make her hate him, which is the worst condition an honest man can ever wish to be in with a wife.

It must be confessed 'tis a wise man's business after matrimony by all means possible to preserve the affection of his wife entire, to engross her to him, and to make and keep himself the single and entire object of her best thoughts. If she is once brought to hate him, to have an aversion to him, to loathe and abhor him, she must have an uncommon stock of virtue, and be more a Christian than he ought to expect of her, if she does not single out some other object of her affection; and can a man think his wife, who is thus every day disobliged, in the grossest manner ill-used, and, in spite of her resentments, exposed to be laughed at by him, will long preserve an inviolable affection to him? But I may touch this again.

I return to the subject. There are yet greater offences against modesty than these; as I said above, that giving unjust retorts, and making unkind and indecent reproaches in case of casual or accidental weakness and impotence, are scandalous breaches of modesty between a man and his wife. So, besides this, there are yet a numberless variety of violences, as I may call them, committed, like rapes upon nature, in which nothing is more frequent than for a husband to press; wife to such and such things as morality and modesty forbids.

This is highly injurious to the conjugal affection, and exposes the person guilty to a just censure, nay, even to the censure mentioned of matrimonial whoredom. Whether these excesses or violences consist in negatives or in affirmatives, they are in their kind equally criminal.

It must be confessed that language is wanting here, and words cannot fully express the meaning so as to preserve the decency I profess; and I may be asked what I mean when I cannot explain it, not for want of knowing my own meaning, but for want of words to express it; and therefore, as above, I choose to be silent, I'll come as near the case as I can without giving offence, and what cannot be said with decency must be omitted; I had said, that personal weaknesses and infirmities on either side ought not to be retorted between a man and his wife, much less exposed, so I now say, they much less ought to be oppressed on that account.

N.B. I am speaking now not of natural and original impotencies, which, being before marriage, ought to have been discovered, and which our law makes sufficient to dissolve the contract, and separate the persons.

There has been foul work enough made with these things in print by particular lewd and obscene publications, which modest ears are sick of, and the nation mourns for the offence of it; but my discourse looks quite another way.

Besides, our office of matrimony solemnly charges and adjures the persons who come to be joined together, that if they know any such impediments they should declare them at that time; and, in a manner, protests against the validity of the marriage in case of a failure, and from that very protest, such marriages are afterwards frequently made void by Parliament.

But as the subject of my observation is more nice, so it is also more modest, and may with more decency be considered of. The infirmities on either side which the human body is subject to are many; I distinguish them not here, only that I profess to mean such infirmities as regard the sexes only; physicians, accoucheurs, or surgeons and anatomists, understand and can describe them; 'tis none of my business, much less my design.

It frequently does, or at least may happen, that when a young couple come together their constitutions may, as too often their tempers may and do, differ from one another, with respect to these things, to the greatest extreme; one is weak, faint, the spirits low, nature unable to answer what is expected; another perhaps is reduced by child-bearing too thick and too long together, by accidents in often hard and difficult travels, injuries received by unskilful hands, or many other incidents and circumstances not to be named; by these, I say, the person is reduced, debilitated, and rendered unfit to give the satisfaction which has formerly been found. On the other hand, the man is reduced by a tedious lingering decay, which physicians call a consumption; or by other acute distempers, which he can, as is said before, account for without scandal, and to which men are as frequently subject and as much disabled by them, as women are in the cases mentioned just now; such as stone, gout, palsies, epilepsies, rheumatics, dropsies, and such like.

If either or any of these circumstances in man or woman happens where they are joined respectively to another, that is, strong, robust, in perfect vigour, the spirits high, the blood hot, and perhaps boiling; nature forward, and craving desire unsatisfied I need go no farther to explain it what wretched work does this cause between the ill-matched couple? I can openly say I know a beautiful young lady, after bringing her husband several children, yet actually destroyed, I might have said murdered, by these conjugal violences, to say no worse of them; and I make no difference, 'tis the same on the other side; many a man sinks under the weight of his own deficiencies; he is ashamed to decline the duty of the marriage-bed, disdains to be thought unable to satisfy, &c.

I can go no further, and the reader will excuse the interruption. I refer you to a stated and acknowledged declaration in the case, and which is direct to my purpose; and though it is among the Turks, yet the reason of the practice is not the less or the more. The Turks think this very case, whether of the man's side or the woman's, to be so weighty as that it deserves the interposition of authority; the grand vizier in person, where he can be applied to, and in more extraordinary cases, hears the causes himself; in other cases the graver Kadeleschers and judges determine it, where both the man and wife are fully examined, and judgment given as the circumstances require. I am assured also that judgment is given in those cases, not in a ludicrous manner with game and sport, and a court or rather crowd standing round, to laugh and make a jest either of one side or the other; but with a solemn gravity, suitable at least to the dignity of the judge who passes the sentence, and to the reverence which both sides pay to the laws themselves.

Nor is the method wholly Turkish, and to be objected against as a piece of Mahometan original; but it is founded upon the ancient usage of all the Eastern countries, in whose customs it is to be found, though with some variation, even as far back as the Phoenician and Carthaginian empires, and as the Egyptian and Persian Government and monarchies. Hence the phrase made use of in the Scripture by the apostle Paul, called due benevolence, on one hand is commanded, while on the other hand chambering and wantonness, which is supposed to relate to the pretended lawful intimacies between a man and his wile, are forbidden.

It may be expected I should explain myself upon these Scripture expressions, and there is sufficient room for it, and that with decency too; but I resolve not to come to the brink of the offence, nor shall the reader be able to say I go all the length I might go.

The Scripture expressions are expounded by the reverend and learned annotators, and to them I refer; and as to the courts of justice under the Grand Seignior, deciding such cases as these, where complaints ore made by either sex, I could give large accounts of them, but they would break in upon me in the grand difficulty, and offend the reader, except a sort who I am not at this time about to please. Here therefore you must allow me to omit a large and, in its kind, useful part of the design itself, namely, the reproof of scandalous violences on both sides even in the marriage intimacies, which cannot be spoken of with decency, and therefore must go unreproved. One would hope it is a sufficient reproof to those who understand what I mean.

We are but too forward to say, that no one ought to prohibit what God has not prohibited; that what is lawful may lawfully be done; where nature dictates, say they, and heaven has not forbid, what can be pretended, that the rule of modesty is expressed by Mr Dryden thus:

"By nature prompted, by no law denied."

That all things within that compass are to be allowed, and to restrain farther is to bind heavy burthens, which we will not bear ourselves.

But my answer is short, wherever an unrestrained liberty seems to be given, yet we ought to remember that God gave his laws to us as to reasonable creatures, not as to brutes; that we are to act in no cases out of the bounds of reason and justice, no, nor of modesty and decency; the circumstances of it seem to be, left to our discretion, that discretion should be limited by our reasoning powers; if the man or woman, for I speak of and to both, will tell me, that in the extacies of their passion, or affection, or appetite, or call it what you will, they are at liberty to lay aside the use of reason, and set unlike a man, or a Christian, or even a brute; that he is to be a fury, outrageous, unsatisfied, and entirely out even of his own government; that he or she is to lay aside all considerations for the she or he they are concerned withal; all compassion for circumstances, infirmities, weakness, &c. of whatsoever kind, or proceeding from whatsoever cause; that they are at liberty thus to be furious, and to act merely in gratification of their own pleasures, without any other or better consideration, and to do whatever they think fit in the pursuit of their present gust of appetite, even to the ruin and destruction of the husband or wife; I say, if this can be made appear to be just, then I am answered.

But if not, then reason, and modesty, and virtue ought to be listened to; and the cravings of nature, if they are extravagant, should be governed by the rules which nature is subjected to. The thing is a disease and a distemper in itself; and though it may be called constitution and nature, it is a mistake; it is not constitution, but a plague in the constitution; it is a kind of fever or calenture in the blood; it is, in a word, to carry it no farther, a frenzy in the creature; whether in the head or elsewhere, is not to the I purpose, but such it is; and they ought to apply to art, I mean physic, to abate the acrimony of their blood, restrain the excesses of high feeding, hard drinking, and luxurious living; reducing themselves at least so as to bring under the flesh, bring nature under the government of reason, and, in short, bring the body under the command of the soul, for that is the whole case.

I might give some examples of this moderation as it has been happily practised among Christians in our age, and that even among men of the highest rank, and above the restraint of laws. Take one particular relation which I had from an unquestionable author, that is to say, from a grave minister who had been conversant in the very household, and the truth of whose relation I cannot doubt.

"There was a certain reigning prince not long ago alive in the world -- I do not say there are many such left, -- who after having had five sons, and most of them men of fame as well as high birth, and still living, had this particular circumstance attending his marriage-bed; his princess was reduced to such weakness, by frequent childbearing, that she was not able to receive the embraces of her lord without the, utmost extremity of pain and disorder; and it went so far that she was at last obliged to discover it to him, but did it with so much modesty and goodness, that she offered him to consent to his taking any other lady which he might approve of to supply her place.

"She insisted on the reasonableness of it, and that she believed her consenting to it, and from such evident necessity, might make it lawful; nay, she pressed the prince to it very earnestly, offering herself to find out an agreeable person for him, and to bring her to him.

"The generous prince received her first declaration, intimating her own weakness and infirmity, with a concern of pity and affection as became a tender husband, which he always had been to her, and assured her he would not oppress her or offer anything to injure or disorder her. He smiled at her proposal, but told her, No; since providence had thought fit to deny him the satisfaction he used to have in the embraces of his own wife, he hoped he was so much of a Christian as not to break God's laws to gratify natural desires; and that he had so much the government of himself also as not to let his appetite get the mastery of his reason; and with this noble resolution declined the offer his wife made him of another lady, and kept himself single, as it may be called, to the last."

I give this among many examples wherein conjugal modesty has been preserved, and the example is moving. The prince I mention was in the height of his strength, the prime of his age, between the age of thirty and forty; strong, vigorous, full of fire in the field, and, in proportion, elsewhere; the thing was an accident, and to nature was doubtless a disappointment; but the Christian prevailed above the youth, reason conquered nature, and that reason had the government of all his inclinations.

Certainly we are to act according to our reason and our understanding in all cases, where the laws either of God or man leave us at liberty; nay those laws seeming to leave us at full liberty, give the stronger force to the government of our reason; they seem not to say, you are in this left to what your own will directs; but the language of the law of nature itself, and of the subsequent laws of God in the same case is, here you are left to act as reason and religion shall direct, and as the circumstances that may happen shall make reasonable.

The excesses and extremes of our passions are in almost all cases the scandal of the rational life. the principal cause of which is, because reason is given to man as a guard to him against all the exorbitances of nature. Reason is the rule of life to a man, as religion is to Christians; he that is not guided by the last is an infidel, as he that is not governed by the first is a brute. It is a shame to a man that wears about him a soul, to say that he is not guided by his reason, as it is a shame for a Christian to say he is not guided by the principles and dictates of religion.

As reason therefore is our guide in matters subjected to its laws, so in this more particularly, namely, in governing and directing our affections, our appetites, our passions, and our desires. Take it in more indifferent and ordinary cases, we are allowed to eat and drink; God gave the blessings and increase of the field to man: he is, under his Maker, the lord of the world, and he is left at full liberty not only to supply his necessity, his hunger and thirst, but he is at liberty to solace himself with his food, and eat or drink what is most agreeable to his palate; but as reason is the guide of his appetite, so far as to direct him how much to eat or drink upon all occasions, so he that gorges himself beyond what is reasonable exposes himself to the just censure of a brutal appetite; thus in all other cases, a man out of the government of his reason is, in a word, a monster rather than a man.

Methinks the modest reader may take this as it is intended, viz. to extend to the exercise of a brutal ungoverned appetite in any other case to which this of eating and drinking is apposite, and may apply it suitably, though decency forbids me to do it.

We should all blush to be told, in other cases, that we had no government of ourselves; that we were insatiably covetous, or unboundedly ambitious or vain, and much more should we have reason to blush, as being insatiable in any other appetite.

Decency also puts another difficulty upon me here, viz. it obliges me to speak of this article as if the man was the only guilty person, and that the modesty of the woman was a sufficient restraint to her upon all occasions: nor will I make so much as an attempt in prejudice of that charity; if it happen otherwise on any occasion it is so much the worse, because, I think, of the two, the extreme on that side is the most fatal, as well as shameful.

There is a part of this circumstance, which, as it is necessary to be mentioned, so it may be mentioned without offence, though it regards even the nicest branch of the argument; and that is, how fatal this exorbitance is when it meets, not as it were in a kind of conjunction, as where neither the man nor the woman have the government of themselves, but where the extreme is on one side only, with a coldness and indifferency equally extreme on the other; I say, this may be mentioned without offence, because it must not be denied but there is an error both ways, of which reason, as well as duty and affection, are to be the directors and guides. It is, no doubt, a duty on both sides to yield, to please, and oblige one another, where no just objections are to be made; and those husbands or wives who decline one another criminally ought to consider the matrimonial vow and duty in all its particulars, but especially upon the ill consequences which such a coldness may produce, which, though not justifiable at all in the person that may so fly out, yet it is what we ought to avoid, as we are not to lead one another into temptations; and this is one of the things which, as I said, those courts of particular justice take cognisance of among the Turks. But of this more at large in its order. I am now chiefly talking of the extremes of the first kind, and of an unrestrained brutality.

I bury all the hateful particulars which these reproofs are pointed at in the respect I preserve for decency of expression, and conclude with saying, that those branches of conjugal disorder are the scandal of the marriage bed; every Christian, as well as every prudent and wise man, will be ashamed to think he should want a hint to restrain himself. As to the brutal world, men and women who give a loose to their desires, of whatever kind, and hate all mortifications, who despise restraint and rules, that scorn to think they want advice, and are above reproof, I have one hint more for such, and that is this, let them go on and act with a full gust, let them strain nature to the utmost, and let them see whether, if the laws of God or man do not restrain them or punish them, nature herself will not complain, openly expose them, and make them confess the crime when it is to be read in their punishment.

Whence come palsies and epilepsies, falling sickness, trembling of the joints, pale dejected aspects, leanness, and at last rottenness, and other filthy and loathsome distempers, but from the criminal excesses of their younger times? It is not enough to say that it was lawful, and they made use of none but their own wives, the natural course of things go on their own way, nature's streams flow all in the same channels; if the fountain is drawn dry, if the vitals are exhausted, the engines of nature worked with unreasonable violence, the parts feel the same unreasonable force, and the consequences will be the same whether the facts were justifiable and lawful in themselves or not.

Thus, as above, it is lawful to eat and drink; and the kinds and quantities of food which we are to eat are perfectly left to our own discretion; nay, we are left, as I have said, even to regale and divert ourselves both with eating and drinking. But the epicure who gives himself all manner of liberties, that gives a loose to the gust of his appetite, that gorges his stomach with rich sauces and surfeiting dainties, that rather devours than feeds upon what is before him, and knows no bounds to his eating but the mere mathematical dimensions of his bowels: What comes of him? He swells up with fat, is overrun with rheums, catarrhs, and all scorbutic distempers, and at last sinks under the weight of his own bulk, is choked with the very food he eats, and dies in the middle of his dainty meats; and the drunkard, gorged with wine, does the same.

Thus they destroy themselves in the use of lawful things, or, if you please, in the abuse of them; and while they please themselves with having been doing nothing but what it was lawful to do, they perish in the excesses of it, and murder themselves by the unlawful doing of lawful actions.

In the same manner those men who pretend there are no limitations of modesty between a man and his wife, that their reason is not needful to be called in to the government of their appetite, but that they are at liberty to act in all things as mere ungoverned nature, however vitiated, shall direct, what effects do they ordinarily find of it, and where does it end? How do we find them loaded with diseases, contract early infirmities? How does exhausted nature feel the secret defects, and how hard do they find it to recover the vigour and strength which they have pushed to the utmost in a thoughtless excess!

Nay, how often does the boiling blood ferment into fevers, ulcers, and the most incurable diseases! How do the vital parts feel the wound, till the dart strikes through the liver, as Solomon most excellently describes it, and the dismal consequences seldom end but in the grave! Nor is that all, but the tottering head, the rheums, catarrhs, the fluxes, inflammations, and all the fatal consequences of an ungoverned vitiated youth, how often and generally do they appear so openly that it is easy, especially to men of judgment, to read the cause in the consequences, the sin in the punishments. Nay, some will tell you that even the foul disease itself has been the effect of immoderate heats and surfeitings of the blood, without what we call contamination or infection from others, and where none other has been concerned but the man and his wife singly and alone.

If I were at liberty to explain myself upon this nauseous subject, I could, from clear and rational consequences, convince the ungoverned criminal how he lays the foundation of the ruin of his constitution, how he poisons his blood, and spreads the corrupt seeds of disease into the very veins of his posterity; but the occasion is too foul for my pen: let it suffice to admonish Christians and men of sense, that they should remember they are so; that they have reasoning powers to assist them in subduing their inordinate heats; that they should summon virtue and modesty, reason and Christianity, to their aid, and act in all things agreeable to reasonable beings, not like enraged lunatics, though they are not under the restraint of laws.

They are greatly mistaken likewise who expect I should give rules here, and prescribe to them what I mean by modesty and moderation in such things as these; in short, such would please themselves if they could bring me to enter into particulars of any kind on one side or other, for they love to dwell upon the story. But verb. sap. sat. It is enough; I have pointed out the crime as far as decency will permit; the bounds are easily prescribed, so as a common understanding may reach them; reason will tell you where the limits are to be placed between lawful and unlawful, as follows, namely:--

No violences upon nature on one side or another, no pushing the constitution to extremities, no earnest importunities, no immodest promptings; let all that nature dictates be free, spontaneous, voluntary, and temperate, so vigour is preserved, affection increased, and abilities too, for it was a significant expression of the Duke of Buckingham's, in a poem of his called 'The Enjoyment,'

"Love makes men able as their hearts are kind."

It is certain all intemperance, all outrageous excesses, debilitate and exhaust the spirits, weaken nature, and render the person unfit for many of the offices of life besides the same article, whereas a moderate use of nature's liberties have quite contrary effects.

CHAPTER IV.

Of the absolute necessity of a mutual affection before matrimony, in order to the happiness of a married state, and of the scandal of marrying without it.

MARRIAGE is a state of union and the strictest of its kind, that cannot only be found, but that can be conceived of among men. Adam emphatically expresses it, when God brought the woman to him, "This is now bone of my bone, and flesh of my flesh." Gen. xi, 23; and again, v. 24, "and they shall be one flesh."

So solemn the institution, so simple the construction, so fast the bond, so loose the persons bound! It would be much too serious for the reading of these times to enter into a dissertation upon the solemn engagement and upon the weight and significance of the obligation on both sides, how firm the bond, how indissoluble the mutual ties, and how important to the felicity of life it is that they should be religiously observed.

I know too well who I am talking to, and at what time of day; how the subordination of one sex is laughed at and bantered, and the dominion of the other abused and turned into tyranny and oppression; how the women, instead of submission, reign; and the men, instead of a government in love, and a superiority of affection in which that government should chiefly consist, insult and oppress their wives; how the obligation of forsaking all other is ridiculed and made a jest of, and that of keeping yourself only unto her declared to be a mere church imposition, a piece of priestcraft, and unreasonable.

"Do you think," says blushing G------ to his poor subjected but modest wife, "do you think that ever I intended to meddle with no more than one woman? No, no; I never promised any such thing; if I did, I never intended to keep to it;" then he turns and sings a scandalous song out of Rochester, too gross to repeat.

"But to live with her all a man's life,
  Till she grows ----
Good faith, Mr Parson, I thank you for that,
  I thank ye for that."

And whence comes this contempt? I say, it does not proceed so much from the wickedness as from the ignorance of the age; ignorance of the real felicity of their very kind; how all that can be called happy in the life of man is summed up in the state of marriage; that it is the centre to which all the lesser delights of life tend, as a point in the circle; that, in short, all the extraordinary enjoyments of life are temporary and trifling, and consist chiefly in the strange and uncouth pleasure which some men say they find in doing what they ought not to do, which, at best, lasts but till they are wise, and learn to know what it is to repent. But the pleasure of a married state consists wholly in the beauty of the union, the sharing comforts, the doubling all enjoyments; it is the settlement of life; the ship is always in a storm till it finds this safe road and here it comes to an anchor. It is the want of a taste of life makes men despise that part of it which heaven at first constituted to complete the happiness of his creatures.

To argue against marriage because so many marriages are unhappy, and so few exemplify the case as it ought to be, is only arguing the ignorance and corruption of mankind, which as it is the cause, so it is fully discovered by this unhappy consequence. Did men expect happiness in a married condition, they would begin and end it after another manner, prepare for it beforehand with more nicety, and take much greater thought about it before they engaged in it.

Politic matches are weddings for princes and for persons of high birth, where the mere interests of the families are the consideration of the alliance, and where it is not essential to the match whether the persons love one another or no, at least not so essential as in persons of a meaner degree.

But as the persons of a lower station are, generally speaking, much more happy in their marriages than princes and persons of distinction, so I take much of it, if not all of it, to consist in the advantage they have to choose and refuse.

Marriages of princes and persons of rank are rather leagues and treaties of alliance and confederacy than weddings, and they are transacted accordingly; the lady is courted at a distance, viewed in effigy by her picture set with diamonds, contracted by envoys extraordinary, married by proxy, and then travels a thousand miles perhaps, or something less, to find out her husband.

Thus indeed Abraham sent the steward of his household to fetch his son Isaac a wife, about three or four hundred miles off, and she came with the messenger. But the case was plain there; Rebecca saw the visible finger of God in it, and the words of Laban her brother, though himself an idolater, confessed it. Gen. xxiv, 50. "Then Laban and Bethuel answered, and said, The thing proceedeth from the LORD, we cannot speak unto thee bad or good;" and upon this foundation the lady ventured to go with the messenger.

But yet even Rebecca herself, when she acted the like part for her son, and desired to take a wife for Jacob from the same country, she sent no servant of the errand, but made him go in person, and choose for himself, and he did so, and pitched upon his well-favoured beautiful Rachel, had not Laban cheated him, and laid a blear-eyed Leah in her place.

As marriage is a state of life in which so much of human felicity is really placed, and in which men may be so completely happy or miserable, it seems to me the most rational thing in the world that the parties themselves, and them alone, should give the last strokes to its conclusion; that they only should be left to determine it, and that with all possible freedom, that they might be able to say to one another, and that with the utmost sincerity, at reciting the office of matrimony, not I take thee, but I choose thee, thou art my choice; that the man may be able to say, not only she is the wife of my youth, but she is the wife of my affection; and the woman the same.

How little is this, which is the essential part, understood in the world: how little of love is there to be found in matrimony as it is now managed; and what is the consequence but unfaithful performing the marriage covenants, disloyalty, breach of faith and honour, and the worst sort of perjury on both sides? for as the marriage covenant is a solemn oath, and perhaps the most solemn of all engagements upon earth, so breaking it is the worst of perjury, and ought indeed to be punished as such.

Where there is no pre-engagement of the affection before marriage, what can be expected after it? And what do we find comes after it but at best continued jars, quarrellings, scolding, and perhaps fighting? never to be abated, never to be altered, no, not by length of time; not forty years wedlock has been sufficient to tire out the jangling ill-matched tempers; but the evil takes root with time, till the hatred grows riveted, and I becomes natural; they even die with the perpetual disgust upon them, and carry their feuds, as it were, along with them to the grave, as if they resolved to renew the strife in the next world.

It was a miserable example of this which a near relation of mine was an eye-witness to in the town of Sherborn, in Dorsetshire, or very near it. A man and his wife had lived a wretched continued life of contention, for almost fifty years; at length the woman fell sick and died; while she lay on her death-bed her husband came up into the chamber to see her, as a good husband ought; the woman fretful, though sick, found fault with him upon some occasion of no great moment, and grew angry. "Pray, my dear," says the man, "don't quarrel to your last moment." The woman flew into a passion that he should suggest it was her last moment, which, she said, he did not know. This put the man into a passion too, and he said, rashly enough, that if it was not her last moment he wished it was, or it would be happy for him if it was, or to that purpose. "What!" says she, "do you insult me with that? Depend upon it you shall be at no quiet on that account, for if ever the dead can come to the quick, I'll be with thee again."

Whether she kept her word with him or no, I know not; but it is certain she died in two or three days after, nor did the man venture to go up to visit her any more. This was indeed carrying on what we may call an eternal feud; it was a mortal breach indeed, for nothing ever cured it, and yet the couple were not so exasperated against one another, but that they lived together, were people of good substance, and some sense, and even too much wit; but married, it seems, without the grand constituting article called mutual affection, which is indeed, in my opinion, the essential part of the contract: the woman professed she never loved him, and yet she married him; the man declared he never asked her to love him, or cared one farthing whether she did or no, so he had but her money, which was, it seems, what, he took her for. Now, was this matrimony? No, no; it might be marriage, but I deny that it was matrimony; here was nothing of God's holy ordinance, or taking one another according to that ordinance; it was all a contradiction of the main design; in short, it was a something that wants a name; and what can be said to contradict me if I should call it a matrimonial whoredom?

Well might this couple answer or say after the parson, I N. take thee N. but they could never have been married if the office had run, I N. choose thee N. out of my sincere affection to thee, and for that reason take thee, &c. What would have become of us all if this had been the solemn part or oath of the marriage covenant, and that it had been taken upon pain of perjury? How few are there that would dare to be married upon that foot.

Some are of the opinion, prudential matches, as they call them, are best. They tell us, it is the parents' business to choose wives for their sons, and husbands for their daughters; that let them be tied together first, they will toy together till they love afterwards; that property begets affection, and that if all other things hit, they may run the risk of the love with less inconvenience.

But I must enter my protest here: I think they that make a toy of the affection, will make a toy of the matrimony; they seem to know little of the misery of those matches who think they are to be toyed into love after consummation. How often are they cloyed with one another's company before the affection comes in? How little force has the sport of marriage (so a wise favourer of those prudential matches was pleased to call it) in it to contract affection? I have seen enough of it to make me venture saying, there is not one in ten of those kinds of marriages that succeeds.

Nor is the surface-love, which takes so much in the world at this time, any part of the pure, the solid, the riveted affection, which, I insist, is so essential to the felicity of a married life. Where is the union of the whole desire, or even of the soul of desire, that which Mr Milton so very nobly expatiates upon from Adam's words, "They shall be one flesh," Gen. xi, 24?

"And they shall be one flesh, one heart, one soul."

Is this to be obtained after marriage, and that marriage made perhaps by the choice and at the imperious arbitrary command of superiors? If not, as indeed I think it not rational to imagine, is it so slight a matter, and of so little consequence, as that matrimony should be ventured on without a due provision for such a union? Certainly if any action of life is of consequence, it is that which determines the man for happiness or misery; and such is this of matrimony; for I think I may affirm, marriage without love is the completest misery in life. Besides, I must say, it is to me utterly unlawful, and entails a curse upon the persons, as being wilfully perjured, invoking the name of God to a falsehood, which is one of the most provoking crimes that mankind can commit. He or she who, with that slight and superficial affection, ventures into the matrimonial vow, are to me little more than legal prostitutes. Political views may make a marriage, but, in the sense of God and nature, 'tis my opinion they make no matrimony.

Nor does all this outside, skin-deep affection, which such matches at first appear with, protect them against the deficiencies of their own tempers, and the eruptions of their passion; it fortifies none against family breaches, supplies no forces against the attacks of the passions, and the unkindnesses which innumerable circumstances introduce in the subsequent conduct of both parties.

These matches indeed generally produce a great show of affection, and the fondness of the honey-moon hangs about them a great while; on some more, some less. This I call the pageantry of matrimony, and the cavalcade of love. But the strife breaks out insensibly; the contention, the contradiction, and all the little thwartings and waspishnesses, which lay the foundation of eternal discord; these all, like weeds, grow and spread under the decaying plant called love, till at last they check and smother it entirely, and leave the family a kind of hell in miniature.

A late poet expresses himself upon this subject with great elegancy and affluence of wit; whether he spake feelingly or not, I cannot say :

Thus a seeming happy pair
Who Hymen's early fetters wear,
In public fond as turtles are.

The unwed with envy their caresses view,
But, oh! what would the amaz'd beholders do,
If as they see their open loves, their private feuds they knew ?

And whence proceeds all this, and ten thousand times more than heart can conceive, or pen set down, but from the want of a sincere riveted affection between them before matrimony? The man that marries without it must be a knave; the woman that marries without it must be a fool; and let me not give hard words neither, without a sufficient authority for it; but I will make it out immediately.

I say, that man must be a knave. No honest man will promise and engage, nay, swear to do a thing which he is fully resolved not to do, or which he is not sure he is able to perform, and does not sincerely intend to perform.

In the terms of the marriage vow, the minister asks the man these concise questions.

Wilt thou have this woman to be thy wedded wife? He answers, -- I will.

Wilt thou love her? -- I will.

Wilt thou live with her? -- I will.

The interrogation," Wilt thou," is understood as much as if the minister repeated it every time; and though he answers with but one "I will," it is as effectually understood to mean a particular answer to every interrogation as if it was repeated to them all, and the meaning is the same; the man can by no means come off of it; no, nor the woman either, for her engagement is equally firm and binding.

This "I will," is not only a promise obligatory, a solemn engagement and vow, but it is done under the sanction of religion, and of an ordinance of God; it is a sacred oath, it is what the Scripture calls the oath of God, and the married man may justly say, the oath of God is upon him; in short, every time he says, "I will," it is the same thing -- pardon the expression as to say, By God I will. He that takes this solemn oath, without being sure he can sincerely love the woman, and so perform the oath, must be a knave, he cannot be an honest man; and how can he be certain, if he did not really and sincerely love her before? I think the case is plain, and answers for itself.

Again, take the woman's obligation; her answers are the same to questions not much differing; and when the questions are summed up ( I need not repeat them here), she answers and says, or, if you will, she answers and swears, as above,--

I will.

You will! What will you do, madam? Will you live with a man, and lie with a man, you do not love? As I said before, that such a lady must be a fool, I say now it is worse; it is but a kind of legal prostitution, in the plain English of it, too gross and wicked to express. We must not say she is a whore, because the law makes it a literal contract and marriage. But God forbid I should ever say it will pass for matrimony in heaven; the young lady, in short, is willing, or has a mind, or desires (call it what you please), to lie with a man; and she takes a fellow that is just in the same condition, under the influence of some lewd appetite, and he desires to lie with a woman. They are both willing to gratify their vicious part in the formality of a legal appointment, and so they agree to marry in form, and they are called man and wife; as such she throws off the mask of modesty, goes into the naked bed to him, or suffers him to come to bed to her; and as they came together upon the mere principles of desire, as above, so they act the several excesses, and all the conjugal madnesses, chamberings, and wantonnesses, mentioned or pointed at above, and all this while not one ounce of affection, not a grain of original, chaste, and riveted love, the glory of a Christian matrimony, and the essential happiness of life, is to be found between them.

Is this matrimony? Is this a marriage made in heaven? Is this being joined together according to God's holy ordinance? Forbid it, O heaven! that I should call it by that honourable and religious title: on the contrary, it merits, if I may be allowed to give my judgment, nothing less or more than the title of a matrimonial whoredom, or, at least, of a matrimonial prostitution.

It would make a story too long for the present work, and a little too gross for my resolved way of writing, if I should enter into a description of the conjugal conversation of two persons coming together upon this loot, that is to say, of mere nature and the promptings of the sexes, without any previous and personal affection; I say, to describe the manner of their conversation after the first principles of their conjunction are evaporated or exhaled, after the fire is out, and the combustible matter that kindled it is consumed; when the vapour is exhaled, the airy part spent and evaporated, and the humid part fully condensed, how coldly they meet! How they look at one another as a surfeited, cloyed stomach relishes a full-spread table! How they nauseate one another as a sick body that is gorged with physic, or a consumptive person sick of his cordials.

How their very mirth is dull and insipid, and they are so far from diverting one another that their happiness consists very unhappily in being as much absent from one another as they can. Unwarily talking once to a gentlewoman of my particular acquaintance, whose circumstances in matrimony, though very good, have yet a defect of this kind at the bottom. "Madam," said I, "you are very happy in so kind a husband, so tender, so obliging; pray let us have his company." The gentleman was but in the next room, and I was for calling him in. "Let him alone," says she, very coldly, "let him alone; you have not so much of his company as I have; I had rather be without him; he would have made any woman in England a good husband but me."

"Why, madam," said I, "does not he make you a good husband? We are all of opinion he is an extraordinary good husband." "I do not know," says she; "it may be I am not so good a wife as I should be." "O madam," said I, "do not say so; I believe you are a very good wife." "Indeed," says she, "I am not so good a wife as I should be; we married young, and the main ingredient was wanting: we did as we were bid, but we were never troubled much with the thing called love; and I find, by sad experience, wedlock is a miserable thing without it."

"Why, madam," says I, "your circumstances are good, and you live very easy on both sides."

"That is true," said she, "but I tell you the main ingredient is wanting. I never loved him, and I always thought he never could love me, for, indeed, I never did go about to oblige him, because I had never any real value for him."

"That is a very unhappy case, indeed, madam," said I.

"So unhappy," says she, "that I would never advise anybody to marry without they know on both sides how things stand as to love, for it is all nothing but a banter to talk of happiness without it; they that do not love before they marry will never be happy when they are married."

"But, madam, you have been long married," said I; "methinks kind and good usage on both sides should have made love by this time."

"I do not know how it may do in other folks," says she, "but it is not so with me, Mr. W------ is as kind and tender to me as I can desire, and yet I do not know what ails me -- I never did, and I never can love him; it will not do; I would advise nobody to marry before they love; let them depend upon it, if they do not love before hand they will never love afterwards; it is not to be done: I have found it by sad experience."

" Why, madam," says I, "the world thinks you are a mighty happy couple."

"Why, then, we have cheated the world," says she, "as we did one another; for I can assure you, as I speak to you in confidence, we are a very unhappy couple."

"Why, madam, you do not quarrel," says I.

"No," says she, "never; good manners and good breeding keep us from that, but what are all those negatives to make a couple happy? There is no happiness without love, and that on both sides. Oh!" says she, with a sigh, and so concluded the discourse, "let nobody marry and come together without love; it is nothing but what is not fit to name without it; it is all scandalous and shameful;" and so we called up other discourse, for I had enough of it, and the lady fell into tears, and yet she confessed all the fault was her own too.

And what, generally speaking, is the end of such preposterous conjunctions as this was, but a birth of monsters? Pardon me. I do not mean that the children born between them shall be monsters in shape, imperfect, unfinished, wanting their limbs, or with more limbs than nature directs, as in many monstrous births is the case; though I could say some pertinent things upon that subject too, if the age could bear it: but my meaning is, these conjunctions generally break out in monstrous consequences; family confusions, violent contentions, unsufferable passions, raging at one another in vile language, quarrels, feuds, fightings, or at least, insultings of one another; in all which they act furious as in their original gusts of another kind, reproaching themselves with that very criminal part which brought them together, upbraiding one another with the very things which threw them precipitantly into one another's arms, from whence proceeded the ruin they bear. These, and a thousand monstrous passions, ungoverned like the fire of their early, blind and hasty desires, are the effects of that preposterous matrimony that is contracted upon such foundations as these.

How is it possible anything but this, or such as this can be the issue, since when the first desires are gratified, dislikes and aversions, hateful regret and repentings, as naturally succeed such corrupt and half-born love, as hatred succeeded the same kind of affection in Ammon, when he had ravished his sister, and which made him, as it were, kick her down stairs.

A true affection can never be the product of a vicious inclination, any more than an evil tree can bring forth good fruit, it is contrary to the nature of the work; a chaste, affectionate embrace, is quite another thing; the one is from heaven formed in the soul for the good of mankind, by the glorious hand of a beneficent power, and directed for the propagation of a chaste and virtuous breed, fitted with inbred original modesty and principles of virtue, as it were, conveyed by blood to the honour of the very ordinance of matrimony itself, and of the primitive institution of it in paradise. Shall we constitute a vicious or vitiated desire in the room of love, and a corrupt combination of two inflamed pieces of pollution under the shelter of legal forms, and call this matrimony? It can produce nothing but mischief and confusion, the nature of the thing dictates no other.

To say love is not essential to the form of a marriage is true; but to say it is not essential to the felicity of a married state, and consequently to that which I call matrimony, is not true; and you may as truly say that peace is not essential to the good of a family, as that the harmony and conjunction of souls are not essential to the happiness of the persons joined together.

If the man or woman that is to marry do not value whether they are happy or no, or whether they live with the person they are to marry in a state of war or peace, always jarring, fighting, and contending, or always agreeing, uniting, and joining in their desires and designs. If it is indifferent whether they are as doves always brooding under one another's wings, or serpents hissing at and stinging one another, such may marry blindfold, and expect the consequences: such a woman may take a man as the sow takes the boar in her season, merely to raise a litter, merely to gratify her brutal part; and when that is gratified, and he or she perhaps surfeited with the person, may run away to an adulterous bargain with another, for the mere gust of variety, as is often the case. In short, what is marrying, and what is the meeting of the sexes, where love and an original affection is not concerned? it is too wicked to mention, too vile to name; to describe it would run me into the worst sort of levity, and I must talk as viciously as they act that do so.

Conceive of it then in the grossest terms you can, in terms suited to the beastly part, in terms fitted to give your thoughts the greatest disgust, and to fill you with detestation; for, in a word, there is nothing of decency or modesty, nothing chaste or virtuous, can be said about it. It is true everybody that does marry in this manner does not consult the reason of the thing, and do not perhaps consider what they are doing.

They do not look into the scandal of it, or weigh the consequences they desire a man that is indeed the fact; it is in the nature of the thing, and cannot be denied: but the lady does not consider what consequences attend its being desired in such a manner she takes the thing as it appears the man offers to her upon honourable terms, as they are corruptly called; that is, he will marry her; she neither inquires of herself whether he is the man of her choice, whether she loves him, and upon what reason and foundation the love subsists, whether upon his person as a man, or his merit as a man of virtue and sense. But she ignorantly passes over these things, and does not see that she lies open to all the censure, which, I say, is justly due to such a kind of matrimony.

This is saying as much in her favour as the case will admit, as much as indeed it is possible to say for her: but let her strip the case naked of all the false glosses which it is perhaps covered with, and then look upon it; or let her look into it after a year or two, worn out in the odd, uncouth, retrograde wedlock that she is engaged in, and then she will see with other eyes; then she will see she wedded a worthless, senseless, vain and empty shadow of a man, in gratification of the humour which she was at that time in for a bedfellow; that she has the man, and no more, and that now all the rest is wanting; that she has the man but not the husband, not the companion, not the obliging, affectionate relative that she ought to have looked for, and to have fixed her choice upon; and what bitter reproaches does she load herself with when she sees herself in the arms of a fool instead of a man of sense, of a brute and a boar instead of a man of breeding and behaviour, of a churl and a fury instead of a man of humour and temper; and all this occasioned by her following blindly and rashly that young wanton inclination, which she knew not how to govern.

This is treating the crime with tenderness and the criminal with pity, that must be confessed, and I am very willing to do so in compassion to human infirmity. But when all that is done, I must be allowed to say, the fact deserves the severest reflection, let the ignorance or rashness, or whatever other infirmity of the persons, be pleaded in their excuse.

It may be further suggested, that sometimes these unhappy consequences do not follow, or, if you please, it is not always so bad. But this argues nothing in favour of the false step taken, or the gross conduct spoken of. Providence may, in compassion to the infirmities of his creatures, deal with them better than they deserve, and may mercifully spare the punishments which they ought to expect; but this mercy is far from a reason why they should offend; on the contrary, it is a reason why they should not.

On the other hand. Now view but the felicity of a married couple engaged before marriage by a mutual, a sincere, and well grounded affection; who love, and know why they do so; love upon the solid foundation of real merit, personal virtue, similitude of tempers, mutual delights; that see good sense, good humour, wit, and agreeable temper in one another, and know it when they see it, and how to judge of it; that make each the object of a reciprocal choice, and fix all the view of their future felicity in the possession of the person so loved; whose affection is founded in honour and virtue, their intentions modest, their desires chaste, and their designs equally sincere.

When these come together, there is matrimony in its perfection; if they marry, they can answer the minister, when he asks them, Will you love him? Will you love her? the man can say, I will, because I do; I will, and she is assured I will; I will, for she highly merits all my affection.

It would call for a volume, not a page, to describe the happiness of this couple. Possession does not lessen, but heighten their enjoyments; the flame does not exhaust itself by burning, but increases by its continuance; it is young in its remotest age; time makes no abatement; they are never surfeited, never satiated; they enjoy all the delights of love without the criminal excesses; modesty and decency guide their actions, and set bounds, not only to their motions, but to their desires; and, as Milton emphatically expresses it:--

" -------- Shall to his wife adhere, And they shall be one flesh, one heart, one soul."

Milt. Par. lib. 8, fol. 214.

Nothing criminal can creep in between, or among the pleasures they enjoy; their delights are full, yet they are chaste, temperate, constant, and, in a word, durable.

Their children are like their parents, as streams are from fountains, formed in the mould of virtue and modesty; not furies and little devils, that partake of the rage they were formed in, with their blood boiling before it comes to the consistency of its due vigour; but they hand down virtue to their posterity by the due course of nature, and the consequence of due calmness and serenity in their own spirits; for it is certain that humour and temper descend in the line of families as well as diseases and distemper; it is a just encouragement to virtue that it is so, and it is just to let such know it for the encouragement of their good conduct.

How blest is the house where such a couple inhabit! and all this difference flows merely from this one branch, viz. love before marriage; love is the constituting quality of their matrimony, the reason of it, the foundation on which it was built, and the support of it after it was built. Such families are happy by the mere natural consequence of life; their tempers have nothing in them to form any discord or strife from; they cannot differ, contend, rage, quarrel, reflect, reproach, provoke; it is not in them; nature has no such thwart lines drawn over their constitution; they are united in good, and can never be united in evil too; these contraries would not illustrate, but destroy one another; in a word, they are all love, and because they are all love, therefore their behaviour is all peace; the calm is in the soul, and when it is so, there never can be a storm in the mind; love is not in them a passion, but a quality; it is rooted and riveted in their very beings, they have a disposition to it in their very nature.

This being a settled principle in them, both natural and habitual, it comes, of course, to exert itself in the article of matrimony. 1. They resolve not to marry but where they are sure and fully satisfied they can love, that is to say, that as they resolve it to be a duty, so they resolve to practise it. 2. In order to this, prudence directs them to reject every offer where love does not concur with the other circumstances, and make the person perfectly not agreeable only, but the object of their sincere and complete affection, and that upon good foundations too.

When these things happen, then they marry; if the person thus married meets with a disappointment, as how often is the sincerest affection abused, be it that the lady marries a bad husband, is mistaken in the object, fixes her mind upon an unworthy fellow that feigned love, and honour, and virtue, in his addresses, and proves a hypocrite in them all; what is the consequence? She is made miserable indeed, and wretchedly so; but we do not see the house made a bedlam; it is not fire on one side and tinder on the other; it is not sulphur and nitre, which meeting makes thunder; the brute behaves as brutes will; but the poor lady mourns; sees herself made miserable by the man she loves; bears it as Christians bear remediless sorrows, perhaps pines under it and dies, as is the fate of many a faithful, tender, and affectionate wife. And it is the same thing in the man; he takes a lady, in appearance good; she is to him the wife of his youth, of his affection, of his first and purest love, whom he made his choice before marriage, and places his delight in afterward: but as none can see the inside and soul of the object, she proves a piece of froth and vanity; is idle, luxurious, expensive, thoughtless in her affairs, cold and indifferent in her affection, and, at last, loose and light; and, in a word, anything, or everything, that is foolish and wicked.

It is not easy to describe the anguish of his soul at the disappointment. He had fixed his love with a firm and riveted force, as a wise man would and ought, long before lie married her, nay, perhaps before he courted her; he had chosen her from the beautiful, the wealthy, the virtuous, and the good-humoured, among whom, his circumstances being good, he had room to choose.

As he loved before marriage, he resolved to love her afterwards, because he was sure he should; and thus he resolved to make her happy, and make himself happy in having her. But how is he disappointed when he finds a traitor in his bosom, a fury in his bed, a serpent in his arms, that neither loves, values, nor regards him. That, after a few years, or perhaps days, forgets all her matrimonial vows, the strongest ties of the solemnest oath; thinks of nothing but pleasure and folly, despises the entreaties of her husband, and, at last, himself, as a husband; and, it may be, closes all with running away from him, or with ruining him, breaking both his heart and his fortunes together.

These are some of the disasters where the love is on one side without the other. What must then be the consequences where it is of neither side? How miserable, how distracted a family does it make! And in what wretched doings does it frequently end. To marry without affection! It seems to be like two bulls chained together, that being tied so close as that they cannot gore and kill one another, yet are always striving to do it, wishing to do it; and, if they break the bonds, never fail to bring it to pass.

I cannot think, and have so many reasons for my opinion, I believe I shall never alter it; I say, I cannot think the marriage can be lawful where there was not a resolved, settled affection, sincerely embraced before the matrimony was contracted. I will not follow Mr Milton, and carry it up to this, that it may be dissolved again upon that single account: no, no; I shall open no doors to the vitiated wishes of the times, where men would have marriage be a stated contract; where, as the parties' agreement made the bargain, so the same mutual agreement might dissolve it; where, as insincere love joined them, a sincere and perfect hatred should part them again. This would fill the world with confusion, would pollute the ordinance of matrimony, instead of keeping it sacred as God's holy ordinance; it would make marriage a stale, a convenience, to gratify the sensual part, and to be made use of as a thing not to be named; and when that worst part of the affections was satiated, the parties be left to please and gratify their wicked appetite with variety.

This is not talking like Christians, or like men of virtue; no, not like men guided by human prudence, or by civil polity, much less reason; for this would corrupt the blood of families, level mankind with one another, confound order, and, in a word, fill the world with whoredom.

No, no; if you will rush like the horse into the battle; if you will be mad, and follow rashly, and without consideration, the raging heat of corrupt inclination only, and go hoodwinked and blinded, you must take the consequences to yourselves; if you will wed without affection, you must be content to live without affection; if you come madly together, you must expect to live madly together; as King Charles said to his brother, the Duke of York, when he had married the lord chancellor's daughter in private, and would have disowned her in public, "you must drink as you brew." In short, the bond is too sacred to be broken at pleasure; the chain too strong for the two bulls to break; as you are once bound, you must remain in bonds; once in Algiers, and ever a slave; nothing releases you but a redemption by death, on one side or other.

How foolish then, as well as wicked and unlawful, is it to marry before you love. To rush into a state of irrecoverable life, without the only article that can make it tolerable. They that marry without affection go to sea without a rudder; launch into the most dangerous ocean without a pilot, and without a compass. Love is the only pilot of a married state; without it there is nothing but danger in the attempt, nothing but ruin in the consequence.

The dirty part of it I have mentioned; and I still insist upon it, that it is not a matrimony of a right kind. To me it is no matrimony at all; but a corrupt, rash, hot-headed (and worse) bargain, made to gratify the worst part of the man or woman, to please the grossest part of his constitution, and for nothing else. Let a modest woman, if such she can be, stand forth, and answer this one short question

Pray, madam, what do you marry this gentleman for?

She cannot say, she marries him to take care of her affairs, as is generally the plea of the young forward widows, for she is a maiden lady, and has no affairs.

She cannot say, she marries for maintenance, for she is rich, and has a plentiful estate.

She cannot say, she marries for affection, for she declares she does not love him.

She cannot say, it is to have children, for she says something else to that, of which our next chapter shall speak more fully.

Pray, then, what do you marry this man for? Her answer, if she will speak truth, must be this:-- Truly, because I want to lie with a man. Horrid plea! Is this a just reason for matrimony? And can it, be honestly called matrimony; whatever it may be called in the sense of legal forms, can it be culled so in the sense of conscience and of honour? Is it not much more proper to say, it is a matrimonial whoredom?

I see but one answer that can be given to this argument, or be made a plea for this kind of matrimony, and this is a coarse one for either party, I confess, but much more so for the ladies, viz. That marriage is said to be appointed to prevent fornication; and that it is a scripture direction to marry, rather than to burn. Let them that marry upon this foundation acknowledge it then, and tell one another so beforehand, and see how the tale will sit on the tongue of a young gentleman, when he courts a lady, and begins to address her thus:--

"Madam, I have a great desire to marry you."

"Pray, sir," says she, "what do you desire me for? You do not love me, I hear."

"Why no, truly," says he, "I can't say I have much love for you, or for anybody else."

"Why then do you marry, pray?" says she.

"Why, madam, to tell you the truth," says he, "I want a woman, and I am loath to go to a whore, so I will supply myself in a lawful way."

This would be very impudent, you'll say, it may be: but I must add, it is honest, and much honester than to swear he loves her above all the world, damns himself over and over if he don't; tells her a thousand lies to draw her in, and when he is married, tells her the truth in a brutish and insolent manner, that he never cared one farthing for her; that he wanted a woman, and took her for his convenience; and that now he has had his fill of her, she would greatly oblige him if she would dispose of herself out of his way, offering her one of his garters for the occasion.

It would lead me into the grand error of language, which I have professed to avoid, if I should pretend to give this wicked, vile part, a full delineation; it is difficult to express such a dirty subject in clean words; and therefore I avoid giving the ladies the anatomy of u couple come together without a previous affection; or the discourses that pass between them when, perhaps, one side or other are disappointed in the grand expectation. It would surfeit the reader to hear a certain tradesman's lady call her husband ------ dog, and ask him what he thinks she married him for? Nor should I mention so foul a story, did not Mrs ------ give all her neighbours leave to hear her say a thousand things, in plainer English, to him every day of a grosser kind.

If the ladies will speak, the boys and girls in the street will never hold their tongues. When the secrets of the bed-chamber become no longer secrets, and the wife shall publish her own shame, who can she think will conceal it? When she ceases to blush, who will blush for her?

But it is enough; let us touch this vile part with as light a stroke as possible, and you must be content to go without the modest Lady S------ B------'s story; as also the diverting complaint of Madam Arab. ------ with that of the new-married Alderman ------s lady, and several more of the discontented part of this modest town, unless you please to get an account of them from their own mouths, which they are most ready to do on all occasions, as public as you please, men, boys and midwives, being present.

This is the effect of marrying without affection, without a serious, pre-engaged soul, without mutual and unfeigned complaisance and delight one in another; in a word, this is what I call matrimonial whoredom; if I miscal it, let me be convinced by the better behaviour of the persons, that I slander the state of life thus entered into, and then I shall acknowledge my error; and it cannot be reasonably expected of me before.

CHAPTER V.

Of marrying and then publicly professing to desire they may have no children, and of using means physical or diabolical, to prevent conception.

THAT matrimony was instituted for the regular propagation of kind, I have noted already, and need repeat no part of it; I only add, that the present vitiated humour of the times has brought up our modern wits to cavil at the words regular propagation. They will allow it to be proper for the regularity, but not essential to the propagation, and so they would have matrimony be only taken for civil regulation of government, appointed merely by humane polity, and the contrivance of statesmen, to keep the people in a kind of formal subjection to constitutions and government, and to make the lawyers work, to order inheritances and successions, as they think fit.

For, say they, in the Beginning it was not so; and then they bring us the story of Abraham and his maid Hagar, Jacob marrying two sisters, and then lying with both their maids, and the like. These examples, they say, prove that propagation being a general work, ought not to be brought into bondage, and under the subjection of these constitution-regularities, but that successions and inheritances should be wholly patriarchal, the father dividing his substance among his children, as he thinks fit; and then they add Mr Dryden, a lewd poet, upon that subject:

"When man on many multiplied his kind,
Ere one to one was cursedly confin'd."

If (were upon the subject of polygamy in this chapter, I should, perhaps seasonably too, answer this corrupt way of reasoning here; but it may come in its place; at present my thoughts, and applications are another way.

The laws of our country, and the acknowledged principles of the Christian religion which we profess, have united their force to lay us under subjection to this part of constitution-government, as those men call it; and be it right or wrong in its own nature, be it better or worse in itself, and in its circumstances, we are under this regulation born in the reach of it, the laws of God and of our country bind us to it, and there is no room to make that a pretence; the cavil can have no force among us in this nation.

Let me explain a little upon this subject, and if it be too grave I shall be the shorter, but it is absolutely necessary to be understood. It is plain, whatever silence we may pretend the scripture has shown, our laws have determined it to be fixed fast upon us; no man may have two wires at a time here.

1. Because the laws of the land forbid it, and make it criminal.

2. Because both the man and the woman bind themselves against it by mutual agreement, and marry positively upon that condition.

First, The laws of the land. Every law is, as I may say, of our own making. Every man is bound by the laws of his country; he is bound to the obligation, that is, to obey and subject himself to them; and he consents in the making to submit to the punishment in case of a breach of these laws. The parliament is a true representative of the whole country; every subject is present at the making every law that passes, though not personally, yet he is present representatively in his representative, and actually makes every law that passes; he consents to it, and submits, or promises to submit to it; and this makes his punishment just and rational too, if he breaks the law, because he first yielded to be governed by it.

Now the laws of our country are of two kinds in this case; the common or statute law, and the divine law, which we call conscience; the first makes what we call constitution, and is founded upon what our legislature supposed to be the meaning and design of the laws of God; for the legislative authority of our country never are intended to contradict either the law of nature or the divine law.

As then the laws of our country enjoin it.

As these laws of our country are consonant to, or at least are supposed to be founded upon, the laws of God, and the laws of nature.

And as we are all bound, as members of the constitution, to submit to and be governed by the laws of our country.

And, lastly, we are bound by the laws of God to obey the lawful authority of that government and country we live under.

So by all these obligations we are obliged against polygamy, and it would be a sinful excursion for us to come into it.

Secondly, Because both the man and the woman bind themselves against it by mutual agreement, and marry positively upon that condition.

What we are mutually engaged by contract to perform, and which it is lawful to perform, it is unlawful for us not to perform. It is a vulgar, but well-founded proverb or proverbial saying, every honest man is as good as his word. Certainly a mutual compact is mutually obliging; nor can it be pretended that there is any force in it, for the man knows he marries upon that condition; if not, let him but tell his wife he will, notwithstanding his agreement, marry another while she is living; and let him see who will take him upon those terms; if the lady consents to it, that's another case. I shall then say this only, viz. that he does not offend her; he commits no breach, no trespass upon her; as to his disobeying and breaking the laws of God and of his country, let him answer for that where those things are to be answered for; but as to his wife, he does her no wrong, if he takes ten wives together, because she consented to it, and took him under the express condition.

This, I think, is a true state of the case, and confirms this point; that let us pretend to what excuse we will for polygamy, from the pretended silence of the Scripture, yet we are effectually prohibited and foreclosed by the laws of the land and by our voluntary consent, expressed in the solemnest of all oaths, the marriage contract.

Being then under the obligation of single-handed matrimony, let us talk of it as it lies, and go back to where we left off. This matrimony is at least the only lawful, established, and regular means of propagation of the species. All births out of this circle are, as it was in the old Jewish constitution, out of God's congregation, for a bastard was excluded to the fourth generation; and all our births extra matrimonial, or, as the Scots call it, on the wrong side of the blankets, are spurious, illegitimate, and given up to the reproach of bastardy, esteemed corrupt in blood, and carry the blot or blend in the escutcheon to the end of time, so that the brand is indelible; no time, no merit of persons, no purchase of honours or titles, can wipe out the remembrance of it.

This then being the case, I need not tell the ladies that this is the only way by which they are allowed, with honour and reputation, to bring forth children; it is the only protection to their characters when they are with child, viz. that they have a father for it; that it was born in wedlock; such a young lady is big with child, there scandal begins to open its mouth. Well, what then, she is married! There's an immediate answer that stops everybody's mouth; and the virtue of the lady is no more struck at, nor can be; for it is the road of nature, joined with the direction and limitation of the law, and that as well the laws of God and man; of which at large in its place.

But how then comes it to pass that people marry that would have no offspring? And from what principles do these people act who marry, and tell us they hope they shall have no children? This is to me one of the most unwarrantable and preposterous things that I can think of in all the articles of matrimony; nor can I make out if I were to set up to defend it, I say, I could not for my life make it out that there is the least pretence in it to honesty, or to modesty, nay, I would not undertake to justify the morality of it.

But let us first see if it can be reconciled to modesty; for that is the particular point I am upon, and whether it does not come justly under the reproach of the matrimonial whoredom that I am speaking of.

If you should come to a lady of the greatest modesty and virtue in the world, and put it close to her upon any weighty part of the subject, as about settlements, inheriting estates, and the like, she would not scruple, though perhaps with some little reluctance, at that kind of the question, that she expects to have children when the gentleman and she comes together. Modesty obliges the lady to shun and avoid the discourse as much as she can; but she tacitly owns she is to be understood so in the very nature of the thing; and if she is talked to among her own sex, where she could be free, and they were so weak as to ask her such a question, which I think few women would do, as, whether she expected to have any children, she would say, "Yes, to be sure; what do you think I marry for else?"

Now take a married life, with all its addenda of family cares, the trouble of looking after a household, the hazard of being subject to the humours and passions of a churlish man, and particularly of being disappointed, and matching with a tyrant and a family-brute; with the still more apparent hazard of being ruined in fortune by his disasters if a tradesman, by his immoralities if a gentleman, and by his vices if a rake: I say, what woman in her senses would tie herself up in the fetters of matrimony, if it were not that she desires to be a mother of children, to multiply her kind, and, in short, have a family?

If she did not, she would be next to lunatic to marry, to give up her liberty, take a man to call master, and promise when she takes him to honour and obey him. What! give herself away for nothing! mortgage the mirth, the freedom, the liberty, and all the pleasures of her virgin state, the honour and authority of being her own, and at her own dispose, and all this to be a barren doe, a wife without children; a dishonour to her husband, and a reproach to herself! Can any woman in her wits do thus? It is not indeed consistent with common sense.

Take it then on the man's side, it is the same thing. I have known indeed a man pretend to profess such an aversion to children in the house, and to the noise and impertinences of them, as he called it, that he could not bear the thoughts of them. But then this man did not pretend to marry; and so far he was in the right; his conduct was congruous, and consistent with itself, and he was all of a piece.

N. B. But then pray note, by the way, this man married afterwards, and then he was ready to hang himself that he had no children; that he was not like other families; that he looked like a house that heaven had blasted; that others had children enough, and some more than they could keep, but he that had a plentiful fortune, a beautiful woman to his wife, and both of them in health and years suitable, should be barren.

After some time, that, as if to punish his unjust aversions, his wife was withheld child-bearing, she brought him two sons at a birth; the man was overjoyed and thankful for them, and the fondest father in the world: Thus he stood reproved for his former error, and was a living witness against himself.

The first part of his conduct was scandalously wrong, as I have said; the aversion to children was unnatural; but then he acted the rational part so far, that he did not marry. But for a man or woman to marry, and then say, they desire to have no children, that is a piece of preposterous nonsense, next to lunacy.

If A.G.,a. grave jester at matrimony, who tells us it is the only reason he does not marry, that boasts the ladies are every day dying for him, and that he would marry but that he hates children; I say, if he will please to have one of those modern witted ladies that desires to marry, but would have no children, they may certainly marry, and yet resolve upon the wholesome negative between them for a certain space of time, viz. to number fifty, or thereabouts; and it is great odds but they may obtain the seeming answer to their request, and go barren to the grave.

But if any doubt the sincerity of the ladies who make those pretences, let the gentleman who has a mind to try them effectually, and who professes to love a pretty lady's conversation, but hates this foolish thing called coition, as Religio Medici calls it; I say, let him put (origin) upon himself, and then court one of those chaste would-be-barren ladies, and see if any one of them will take him. My word for them, and no venture neither, not one of them would care to be seen in his company.

Sir Roger l'Estrange, in his AEsop in the moral of one of his fables, has this short story very well to my purpose: "Well! I am undone," says a certain grave widow lady to another lady of her intimacy; "I am undone, I say, for want of a good, honest, understanding, sober man, to look after my affairs. Everybody cheats me, no body will pay me; Mr ------ has left me in good circumstances, but it is all abroad in debts and accounts; and I am but a woman, and everybody imposes upon me; what shall I do? I think verily, if I could but find such a person as I really want, I should be almost tempted to matrimony. But then that ugly, nauseous business of a husband and a bedfellow, and the rest of it. I profess my stomach turns at the thoughts of it; the very mention of it makes me sick; it puts me quite off all my thoughts again, so that, in short, I shall be ruined, I know not what to do.

Well! however, as she had told her mind to the other lady, and bid her think of it, and find but such a man for her, if she met with anything suitable to her circumstances, the lady comes to her one day full of joy, and big with the discovery.

"Oh child," says she, "I have thought of what you told me the other day about your circumstances, I have found a man that will fit you every way to a tittle: so grave, so sober, so honest, you can never put yourself into better hands; he is a master of business, and bred to it; he understands accompts, making leases, letting farms, knows everything, and in short, you can never have such an opportunity while you live; for he will suit your other proposal too, about that usual affair of matrimony; you understand me, madam; I can assure you, he will never disturb you that way, he has no thoughts of that kind, nor is he in a condition for it."

The lady heard her with smiles till she comes to the very last words, when she turns up her nose with a snuff. "Away! away!" says she, "I thought you had known better than that too; I love the virtue, as I told you, but I hate the infirmity."

Now when I shall see any one of those ladies who are for marrying, but say, they hope they shall have no children; I say, when I shall see them marry an origin, or such a man as this lady recommended to her friend, and knowing him to be such, then I shall no longer doubt their sincerity.

Or when one of those ladies, professing an aversion to children, shall also maintain an aversion to matrimony because of it, and shall reject all the best offers, the handsomest gentlemen, suitable settlements, agreeable figures, and the like, and resolve the celibacy of her life, purely because she would have no children; this indeed, however it may reflect upon her sense and her wisdom, will yet reflect nothing upon her virtue, or upon her sincerity, because she acts according to her professed sentiments; and all her conduct is of a piece.

But to pretend to all this aversion for children, to nauseate the nursing, the watching, the squalling, the fatigue of bringing up children, which, as they call it, makes a woman a slave and a drudge all her days; to be perpetually exclaiming against this, and then marry, what must we call this?

For a young, handsome, and agreeable lady, with all the blushes and modesty of her virgin years about her, and under the best of education, to marry, go naked to bed, and receive the man, as it were, in her arms, and then say, she hopes she shall have no children, and she desires to have no children, this is a language I cannot understand; it will bear no modest construction in my thoughts, and, in a word, is neither more nor less that she would have the pleasure of lying with a man, but would not have the least interruption from her usual company keeping, the jollity and mirth of her younger years; that she would not abate her pleasures, she would not be confined at home, or loaded with the cares of being a mother.

In a word, she would have the use of the man, but she would not act the part of the woman; she would have him be the husband, but she would not be a wife, and, if you bear the blunt style that some people put it into, she would only keep a St----n.

There is indeed no dissembling the matter, it is neither better nor worse; she would please her appetite with the bare brutal part, but would be freed from that which she calls the trouble of matrimony, child-bearing; which, by the way, the most virtuous, modest, chaste, and valuable ladies in the world, have, in all ages, esteemed to be the blessing of a married life.

I remember there was an example of a lady in a certain neighbouring country, who married a person of quality, but conditioned with him not to cohabit for a certain time, I think it was for a year or two; and the reason she gave for it was, that she would not spoil her shape; but then, as above, she conditioned not to cohabit, and yet when she did cohabit, her lord did not find her so chaste, or that her virtue was of so much value to her as her beauty; and she ventured, if fame lies not, the spoiling her shape, in an extraordinary manner, when she declined the enjoyment of her own husband, and ran the risk of her small waist in the ordinary way. But that part is not to the present case.

In all the examples I have met with, where the conduct of the person has been justifiable, they have joined to their aversions for child-bearing the proper remedies, namely, abstinence from the men; if the lady that desires to be no breeder, keeps herself single and chaste; if she preserves her virtue and remains unmarried, I have no more to say, let it be to her as she desires; no doubt she will not be troubled with children if 'she knows not a man;' if she withholds the means, nature will certainly withhold the end, and if she dies virtuous, I warrant her she dies barren.

But here is a farther and yet more fatal mischief attending, and which, if the wish is real, as I am to suppose it is, I see no room to forbear suggesting, that she will certainly use some means to prevent it. The truth is, there is not much sense in the discourse without it, as there is no honesty with it: for what can a woman say to herself that lies with a man every night, and yet really wishes and desires to have no children? It is most natural to say, why I must either take some method or other with myself, or I shall certainly be with child.

A certain lady, not a hundred miles from St Ann's ------, and who was one of the merry club, called "The Assembly of Barren Does," had an unpleasant dialogue with a friend of hers, who she thought to be a privy-councillor of hell, but proved not quite wicked enough for her, upon this very subject; another lady being present, who protested against the proposals, though she was not averse to the thing for which they were proposed.

Lady. O cousin, says the first lady that was newly married, I am glad to see you, for I want sadly to talk with you a little.

Cou. Well, child, what is the matter, are you with child yet?

Lady. No, thank God, I am not, but I am ready to die with the thoughts of it.

Cou. Why so frighted, child; what is the matter?

Lady. O! I would not be with child for all the world.

Cou. Not with child, and not for all the world. What do you mean?

Lady. I mean as I say; if I am with child I am undone.

Cou. Why, what, are you afraid of? I warrant you have a notion that you shall die with the first child, have not you? Why, all the young married women fancy so.

Lady. No, no, I do not trouble myself with that, I might do as well as other women for that; but it is an odious, hateful thing, I abhor the thoughts of it.

Cou. I never heard the like. Why, what did you marry for?

Lady. Nay, that's true; but every woman that marries is not with child presently.

Cou. No, not presently, no more are you. Why, you have been this half year almost?

Lady. Yes, seven months.

Cou. And not with child! Why, what have you been doing all this while? Why, it may be, you will never have any?

Lady. Oh! if that could but happen, I should be happy then.

Cou. What do you mean? Are you in earnest?

Lady. Yes, I am in earnest; I would give five hundred pounds if I could be sure never to have any.

Cou. I could have given you an infallible method to have prevented it a little while ago.

Lady. What was it, cousin? La! you would oblige me infinitely; it is not too late yet, is it?

Cou. My method was this, child, not to have been married.

Lady. Phoo, that's saying nothing; besides, you know I had a mind to marry.

Cou. Ay, cousin, I know you had, and to be with child too, as well as other women, Why not?

Lady. No, I vow and swear to you, I always had an aversion to the very thoughts of children.

Cou. Nay, then you should never have married.

Lady. Well, but I could not help that; I tell you I had a mind to have a husband.

Cou. I do not know what to say to you, cousin. Why, if you had a mind to lie with a man, you might be sure you would be with child; prithee do not talk so simply; why you make a child of yourself, as if you understood nothing.

Lady. But, cousin, is there no way to prevent it now?

Cou. To prevent it now! Let me see, you say you are sure you are not with child yet.

Lady. Yes, I am sure I am not.

Cou. Why, then, I will tell you how you shall prevent it.

Lady. Oh how, cousin! Do tell me that valuable secret.

Cou. Why, do not let Mr come to you any more, child.

Lady. Pshaw, that that will not do. How can I help it?

Cou. Why cannot you pretend indisposition, and lie away from him.

Lady. Ay, that is true, but that is not the thing, I cannot abide that neither; that would be parting beds: no, I cannot think of that neither; I cannot abide to lie away from him.

Cou. You are a pretty gentlewoman indeed; you would not be with child, and yet you would lie with a man every night. Is not that the case now?

Lady. Why, truly, I cannot say but it is a little of the case. But what can I do?

Cou. Nay, I do not know; you must even run the venture, as I suppose you do, and as other women do.

Lady. Then I shall certainly be with child; and what will become of me then?

Cou. Become of you? Why, you will be brought to bed, have a fine boy, and half a dozen more after that, and do bravely, as your neighbours do, and as your mother did before you, child.

Lady. La! cousin, you distress my very soul; I cannot bear the thoughts of it.

Cou. There is no help for it, child.

Lady. Sure there is, cousin; something may be done: I heard of one Mrs Pleas----t that did.

Cou. Why, you little devil, you would not take physic to kill the child, would you, as, they say, she did?

Lady. No, but there may be things to prevent conception; is there not?

Cou. Why, look you, let me see, I do not know. (Here she muses as if to consider of it, and that she knew of some measures that might be taken to answer.)

Lady. Do, cousin, if it be possible.

Cou. Nay, since you are so much in earnest.

Lady. Indeed, I am in earnest.

Cou. Why, there are things to be taken to --

Lady. What, to make folks miscarry. Oh! I would not do that neither; I dare not do that.

Cou. What? you mean to prevent your being with child, I suppose.

Lady. Ay, ay, I do mean that, but I would not take things to destroy the child, that would be murder. I would not do that by no means, cousin.

Cou. Why look ye, child, I would not deceive you; it is the same thing.

Lady. What do you mean?

Cou. Why, I mean as I say; I tell you it is the same thing, child.

Lady. What! the same thing to prevent a conception as to destroy the child after it is conceived; is that the same thing?

Cou. Yes, I say it is the same thing. Lady. Explain yourself, cousin, for I do not understand you, indeed; it does not seem the same thing to me.

Cou. Why, in the first place, you would prevent your having any children, though you married according to God's holy ordinance; which ordinance, as the office of matrimony tells you, was appointed for that very end; to take medicines, therefore, to prevent or to destroy that conception, are equally wicked in their intention, and it is the end of everything that makes it good or evil; the rest differs only in the degree.

Lady. I cannot understand your niceties; I would not be with child, that is all; there is no harm in that, I hope.

Cou. That is not all the case, child: though I do not grant that there is no harm. Now you have, as I said, married a man, and he no doubt desires and expects children by you.

Lady. Yes, Mr C------ is mighty desirous to have children.

Cou. And what do you think he would say to, or think of you, if he knew you would be taking physic to prevent your being with child.

Lady. He would be very angry, I believe indeed, very angry.

Cou. Ay, and have very ill thoughts of you, I venture to say that to you, child; therefore be cautious, and act very warily in what you do.

Lady. Well, cousin, and so I will, but that is not the case, I do not fear his knowing it; but as to what you were saying before.

Cou. Why, as I said before, I say again, your taking physic beforehand to prevent your being with child is wilful murder, as essentially and as effectually as your destroying the child after it was formed in your womb.

Lady. How can that be? when there is nothing to destroy. I can destroy nothing.

Cou. The difference, as I said before, lies only in the degree; for example ----

Lady. Ay, pray let me have an example; for I do not reach it indeed.

Cou. Why thus; you was with Mr ------ your husband last night; I will suppose, then, that if you do nothing to injure it, and though you were never to lie with him more, you would be with child.

Lady. Oh! you hurt me with but supposing it.

Cou. I understand you, child, but do not interrupt me.

Lady. Well, I will not, though you wound me deep every word you say; but pray go on. (Here she cries, fearing she is with child, and dreading to hear that it is not lawful to destroy it.)

Cou. I must suppose as before, then, that you conceived as lately as you can imagine; whenever such a thing happens, it must take its beginning somewhere or other.

Lady. Well, what then?

Cou. Why then, if you take a medicine to prevent it after it is done, is not that destroying it?

Lady. You fright me, cousin.

Cou. I cannot help that, I had rather fright you than deceive you; the difference is only here, that by this medicine you destroy a younger conception than you would do in the other case; but it is no less a real and an effectual child in embryo, than the other.

Lady. And is not that a difference?

Cou. What difference in murder, whether the person killed be a man grown, or a little boy?

Lady. What must I do then, cousin?

Cou. What must you do? Why, be quiet and easy, child, and take your lot in the world, as other women do.

Lady. Oh! I cannot bear the thoughts of children.

Cou. Then you should not have married, child. Why, did ever any woman marry, and not wish or children?

Lady. Yes, yes; I know several that married and resolved to have none, if they could help it.

Cou. Why, then, you know several monsters of women? why, it is preposterous.

Lady. Well, I know two in particular, and they took things to prevent it, as I would fain do.

Cou. Then they should have taken them before marriage, and honestly told the man so, and see if any honest man would have meddled with them.

Lady. But, dear cousin, go on with your discourse. Why may I not take something to prevent my being with child now, when, as I tell you, I am sure I am not with child, except for a night only? And why should I be with child just now more than all this while?

Here the discourse stopped awhile; and the cousin, though she had said it was against her conscience and judgment, was prevailed with to tell her of a medicine, and a devilish one it was, if she had set down all the particulars.

N.B. You are to note, that it was a medicine indeed for the wicked; but the other lady that gave it her kept out the main and most dangerous ingredients, and gave her, as appeared afterwards, nothing but what, if she had been with child, she might have taken with the greatest safety in the world. However, the other having believed she had taken other things, her imagination made it work other effects than it would have done.

When she had taken the medicine it made her very sick, and, in a word, set her vomiting and purging most violently, and threw her into a high fever.

In her fever she was exceedingly struck in her conscience with the fact; and I could give a very pleasing account from her own mouth of her after reflections upon the criminal part, which she was then convinced of, and began to be penitent for. But that part is too serious for this time of day, and few of the readers of our times may be grave enough to relish it.

But the story turns upon another part, being extremely afflicted at what she had done, and having nobody to give vent to her mind about it; her cousin, who had unhappily given her the direction, being gone into the country; I say the want of her to vent her thoughts, and ease her mind to, joined to the fever, made her delirious or light-headed; and in one of her fits of talking she knew not what, she unhappily betrayed the secret, told what she had done to the nurse that tended her, and she had discretion little enough to tell it to her husband's mother, and she to her son, the lady's husband.

It moved him with a variety of passions, as, in particular, an indignation at the horrid fact, anger at his wife, who, though he loved to an extreme, and had never shown the least unkindness to her before, yet he could not refrain, sick as she was, and even at death's door, to reproach her with it, and that in the bitterest terms, which put her into a violent agony, so that every one about her thought that he had killed her; and then he was as angry with himself at the impatience of his temper.

However, to make out the short history in a few words, the lady recovered, the fever went off, and she was restored to health; but that was not all, she was restored to her senses in the point in which she had trespassed, as I said, upon her modesty. But she suffered some affliction in that very article that she had been blamed for; she lived near two years more with her husband, and never was with child; and all the while she was under the greatest affliction for not being with child, much more than she was before for fear of it, and indeed with much more foundation.

Her apprehensions now were, that her husband should suppose either that she still used art with herself to prevent her being with child, or to destroy a conception after it had taken place, or that she had injured herself some way or other by what she had formerly done, in such a manner that now it was probable she might never be with child at all; and these thoughts, especially the last, did really make such an impression upon her husband, before she could easily perceive a great alteration in his conduct and carriage to her, that he was colder, and, as she thought, very much changed in his affection to her, carried it with indifference and slight, looked upon himself as greatly injured and abused by her; frequently talking as if he thought the ends of matrimony being really unjustly destroyed by her with design and wilfully, their marriage was void in law, and ought to be dissolved in form; and once or twice, if not oftener, intimated to her that he thought of bringing it into parliament, in order to obtain a dissolution of their marriage.

This terrified her to the last degree; she behaved herself to him with great submission, and, indeed, more than he desired; frequently, and on all occasions, protested to him with all possible solemnity that she had not taken the least step, or entertained a thought of doing so, towards anything of that kind, since her late fever; assured him of her being fully satisfied that it was unlawful, and that she had committed a great crime in what she had done before; that it was a sin against her husband; that she had injured him in it, dishonoured herself, and offended against the laws both of God and man. He could not say more to her than she did to load herself, and managed so well, so humble, upon the main subject, and so obliging to him, that she convinced him of her sincerity, and he became fully satisfied of that part, as indeed he had great reason to be upon many accounts.

But for what was passed, there was no answer to be given to it; she hardly knew what she had done, and what she had not done; she did not know what she had taken, except the names of some of the drugs; what effect, they might have had, she was as ill able to know as anybody else was to tell her; she might have spoiled herself for aught she knew; nor was she able to give him any assurance that it was not so.

This left him very uneasy, and, as I said above, he did not fail to let her know of it, which extremely afflicted her; for though, as above, he was a very kind husband, yet it was a thing so very disobliging, and showed such a contempt of him, when he was by all possible means endearing himself to her, so that he resented it exceedingly.

Under this distressed circumstance of her affairs, and dreading the being exposed, as above, by her husband's bringing it before the parliament, though he was soon satisfied the House would not have engaged in it one way or other, unless it had been to vote it scandalous, which would have done him no service at all; I say, in this distress her cousin came to town, and she no sooner heard of it but she (lies to her, and their first meeting produced the following discourse.

Lady. Oh I cousin, now I am undone indeed; I am completely miserable. (She could say no more for crying, nor could she speak a good while).

Cou. What is the matter, child, what is it? pray tell me, are you with child?

Lady. Oh! miserable to the last degree; I can't describe it to you. (Cries again vehemently.)

Cou. What is it, cousin? I entreat you compose yourself.

Lady. Oh! that cursed dose of physic you gave me.

Cou. Nay, child, don't say I gave it you.

Lady. No, you did not give it me; nor I did not follow your directions in it.

Cou. Why? Did you take it when you were with child?

Lady. I don't know, I am afraid I did.

Cou. Nay, then you made mad work with yourself indeed; I am sure I directed you just the contrary. But to tell you the truth, if you took nothing but. my directions, it was a very innocent thing; it would have done you neither good nor harm.

Lady. Ay, but it purged and vomited my life away almost, and threw me into a violent fever. (Here she tells her the whole story as it happened, and as related above.)

Cou. Why, you were certainly with child then, and the fright put you into that condition.

Lady. I believe it did; for I had no sooner swallowed it down, but I was in the greatest agony imaginable at the thoughts of what I had done; I was struck as if an arrow had been shot through me; I was all horror and disorder, soul and body.

Cou. Ay, you frighted yourself sick: I am sure what I gave you directions to take would have done you no hurt, if you had been with child.

Lady. Are you sure of it?

Cou. Don't you remember how earnestly I persuaded you against the thing itself?

Lady. Yes, very well.

Cou. And how I argued with you, that it was as much murder as if the child had been grown to its maturity in your womb.

Lady. Yes, yes, I remember it particularly.

Cou. Well, cousin; and do you think, then, I would have given you a dose to kill the child within you, when you know how I urged you against it so earnestly, and told you 'twas wilful murder?

Lady. Well, but you did give me the directions.

Cou. Ay, ay, let any physician see it: I'll appeal to the best of them; I gave it you to put a stop to your doing worse, and for nothing else.

Lady. And could it do me no harm?

Cou. No, I'll answer for it, if you took nothing but what I directed.

Lady. Nay, I neither added or diminished, I can assure you.

Cou. Then let anybody show the recipe to the doctor, and I'll stand by it, that as I gave it you to be rid of your importunate wicked design, so I gave it you to prevent your taking something worse of somebody else.

Lady. Oh I cousin, if that could be made out, I wish Mr ------ knew it, for he is disobliged so by it, that I believe he will never be reconciled to me; I believe he will expose me for it, and we shall separate about it. (Here she tells the whole story of her deliriums, and of her husband's being told of it, at before.)

Cou. It is a lamentable story indeed, cousin, and things have been very ill managed among you.

Lady. But, dear cousin, what shall I do? are you so sure of what you say, that I may depend upon it I have received no damage?

Cou. I will go to any physician with you, and convince you.

Lady. Nay, if you did cheat me, then it was a kind of a happy fraud. Shall I let Mr ------ know it, if there is any occasion?

Cou. With all my heart; I'll justify every word of it, and satisfy any reasonable man.

Lady. I don't know whether anything will satisfy Mr ------ now, for 'tis hard to remove a fancy of such a nature when once it has taken root in the mind; nor do I believe all the arguments in the world would be of any weight with him.

Cou. Well, howsoever, I desire one thing of you for your own satisfaction, and mine too.

Lady. What is that?

Cou. Why, let you and I go to some eminent physician, and show him the recipe, and tell him the plain matter of fact; and let us hear his opinion.

Lady. We will go to Dr ------ then.

Cou. With all my heart.

According to this agreement they went to the doctor, and he read the particulars; he assured her, that he who gave her the medicine to cause abortion, or prevent conception, or to do a breeding woman the least harm, deceived her; for that there was nothing in it but what a woman with child might freely take without the least danger, and that nothing in the medicine could do her the least injury.

This gave the lady herself full satisfaction, and made her very easy; but she did not see any room to bring this part about with Mr ------ her husband, for that his resentments were run high, and he grew warm at but the mention of the thing; but she thought to tell him all this story would but lay the weight heavy upon herself, so she resolved to let it rest where it was, and wait the issue. And thus she wore out, as I said, above two years, though with many hard struggles and frequent reproaches from her husband, who was extremely soured in his temper by it, and did not stick to use her hardly enough about it upon all occasions.

At last, to her particular satisfaction, and his too, she proved with child indeed, and that put an end to it all, for it removed the grand suspicion that, she had poisoned or vitiated her womb so that she could never conceive, and she still wished to have no children, which indeed was the reverse of her case now; for she earnestly desired to be with child, to put an end to all these dissatisfactions. And thus ended this melancholy affair.

From the whole story useful observations may be made very apposite to the case before us. The wretched humour of desiring not to be with child, appears here in its proper light. How direct a crime it is in itself, is proved from the office of matrimony, which is God's holy ordinance, appointed and instituted by himself for the regular propagation of the species.

The argument against taking medicines to prevent or to destroy conception, which is the same thing, is very just; since, in the nature of the crime, it is as much a real murder to destroy the one as the other, as it is as much a real murder to kill a little boy as a full grown man.

What, then, are those people doing who talk of physic to prevent their being with child? It is, in short, neither more nor less than a stated, premeditated murder; and let those that act so consider of it, and come off of the charge of murderers, if they can.

I could illustrate this by several other stories or relations of matters of fact, but I have not room to spare on that head. A certain lady of noted fame, is, I hear, making herself more than ordinarily remarkable upon this very principle, and assures the world, that she not only thinks it lawful to wish she should have no children, but to use all possible means to prevent it; nay, she declares, as I am told, that she not only thinks it no injury to anybody, but that it is far from being a crime to destroy the birth or embryo conceived within her, and that she has frequently done it.

Here she learnedly enlarges in her discourse (for she is open enough upon that subject), and disputes upon the question, whether it is a sin to kill anything which has not a soul? And when she thinks she has conquered the difficulty, and has proved that every creature may be destroyed by man that has not in it a human soul, she brings it down to the case in hand: she says, that it is no offence to God or man to destroy a cat, or dog, or any other such creature, though it be not for food, and though it be done arbitrarily, without any provocation given or hurt done by the creature, but even if it were in sport. Then, I say, bringing it down to the present affair of a child conceived in a womb, she begins a new inquiry, which the learned anatomists, and the most skilled in the productions and operations of nature, have not yet been able to determine, namely, when, and after what particular time and in what manner, the embryo or body of a child conceived in a woman, receives the addition of a soul? how the union is made? and when the infusion of soul is appointed?

This she determines to be at a certain time and descants critically upon it, in order to establish the cursed hypothesis of her own invention, viz. that all the while the foetus is forming, and the embryo or conception is proceeding, even to the moment that the soul is infused, so long it is absolutely not in her power only, but in her right to kill or keep alive, save or destroy, the thing she goes with, she won't call it child; and that therefore till then she resolves to use all manner of art; nay, she does not confine herself to human art, to the help of drugs and physicians whether astringents, diuretics, emetics, or of whatever kind, nay, even to purgations, potions poisons, or anything that apothecaries or druggists can supply: but she goes farther, and joins with the poet, nay, she has the words at her tongue's end from that famed author, though in another case, acheronta movebo.

In English, she tells them plainly, if drugs and medicine fail her, she will call to the devil for help: and if spells, filtres, charms, witchcraft, or all the powers of hell would bring it about for her, she would not scruple to make use of them for her resolved purpose; highly approving of that known Spanish proverb, suited to the ordinary occasions only of using dangerous medicines from quacks, and unpractised, unacquainted lands; I say, the Spanish proverb, viz. " Let the cure be wrought, though the devil be the doctor."

Now this is an example flagrant, and, as I said, notorious, her practice comes up to the heighth of it, or else she is less a devil than she pretends to be, and boasts of being much wickeder than he really is; in which case, I must own myself to be of the opinion of the learned and witty Mr Fuller, viz. that he that openly professes to be wickeder than he really is in fact, is really and essentially, whether in fact or no, as wicked as he professes to be.

But, not to dispute with this she-murderer, for it is not my business here to decide either of her questions, either when the soul is infused into the embryo in the womb of her that is with child, or whether it is less criminal to destroy one than the other; I say, not to dispute with a murderer, I am to go on with the relation, viz. that she professes the lawfulness, and owns she practises it, though not the last so freely as the first. Let us enter a little into the circumstances and character of a woman that does thus; that the picture being set in a fair view, those whose blood is less inflamed with the rage of hell, may look a little before them, and consider, before they act the inhuman part with themselves, what they are doing or going to do, and what they may reasonably suppose to be the consequence.

First, These desperate medicines which are usually taken for such purposes, what are they, and of what kind? have they an effect only upon that particular part which they are pointed at? are they able to confine the operation of the physic to the very mathematical point of situation? and shall the poisons extend no farther? are they sure they shall affect no part but the conception? shall the physic, like a messenger sent upon a particular business, knock at no doors in his journey going or coming? shall it affect no other part? shall the murdering dart kill just the part, strike a mortal wound just there, and nowhere else, and innocently passing by every other place, do no more than just the errand 'tis sent about?

What if you should mistake, and the application being misplaced, the arrow should miss the child, and kill the mother? I have heard of a certain quack in this town, and knew him too, who professed to prescribe in this very case; the villain, for he must be no other, had his preparations of the several following particular kinds, and for the several following operations, and accordingly gave the directions to his patients as follows:--

"No. 1. If the party or woman be young with child, not above three months gone, and would miscarry without noise, and without danger, take the bolus herewith sent in the evening an hour before she goes to bed, and thirty drops of the tincture in the bottle, just when she goes to bed, repeating the drops in the morning before she eats; take the drops in Rhenish wine, right Moselle.

"No. 2. If she is quick with child, and desires to miscarry, take two papers of the powder here enclosed, night and morning, infused in the draught contained in the bottle; taking it twice shall bring away the conception.

"No. 3. If the party be a man, and he would have the child the woman goes with preserved against her will, let her take the decoction here directed every morning for three weeks, and one of the pills every night; but when her travail approaches, leave off the decoction, and let her take three of the pills, the child shall certainly be brought into the world alive, though it may be some danger to the mother."

That was, in short, he would kill the woman, and save the child.

There were likewise recipes, with these directions: "If the party only fears she is with child, but is not certain, take these powders night and morning, as directed, her fears shall be over in four times taking.

"If the party is not with child, and would not conceive, take one paper of the powders in a glass of warm ale, every morning after the man has been with her, and she shall be out of danger."

I need give no vouchers for this account; there are people still living, who sent several poor servants to him, pretending this or that part to be their case, and craving his learned advice, and so have had his hellish preparations, and given him his due or rate for them, and so brought them away, in order to have him prosecuted and punished.

But I leave the mountebank, my business is with the unhappy ladies who venture upon these dark doings, in pursuit of the wicked design against child-bearing; they run great risks in taking such medicines; and 'tis great odds but that, first or last, they ruin themselves by it. This wretch of a quack could, it seems, kill the child or the mother, which he pleased; and you may, by a wrong application, do both, kill the child and the mother both at once, and so be a self-murderer, and a murderer of your own off spring both together; at least, 'tis an article worth a little of the lady's thought when she goes about such a doubtful piece of work as this is; and if she should come to a mischance, she would perhaps support the reproach of it but very hardly; I mean, if she has any reserves of conscience and reflection about her.

Again: If it does not reach her life, it goes another length without remedy; she poisons her body, she locks up nature, she damns herself to a certain and eternal barrenness for the time to come; and as boldly, as she says, she desires it to be so, does not value it, and the like. She might consider, that it may so happen that she may alter her mind; nay, she may come to the extreme the other way, and I have more than once, nay, very often, known it to be so.

Nor is it improbable but that her mind may be the most likely to alter, when she knows she is brought to an impossibility of altering it. Nothing is more frequent than for a woman to reject what she may have when she may have it, and long and wish for it when it can be no more obtained; the desires (of that kind especially) are generally very impetuous; the stream runs rapid and furious; and if she should come to be as desirous of children as she may be now to destroy them, 'tis odds but the violence of that desire turns a distemper, and that to such a degree as may be very troublesome as well as dangerous, and often proves mortal.

Solomon says of the grave, and the barren womb, 'that they are never satisfied;' they never say, it is enough: and what an object will such a woman be, and, under such reflections, either by herself, or by others, that torments herself, and perhaps somebody else, to be with child, after she has already dried up the juices, stagnated the blood, and fettered nature, so as that no such powers are left by which the operation can be performed.

The lady I mention, indeed, laughs at all these things, and bids defiance even to God and nature, contemns consequences, and scorns the supposition of a change of mind, and a return of desires; from whence I infer only this, viz. that she knows little what nature means; what the various extremes our nature is subject to; and in that abundant ignorance she must go on till she comes to be her own punishment, her own tormentor, and to expose herself as much in one extreme as she does now in another; and if that should never happen, it will be only said of her as it has been of many a criminal of a worse kind, viz. that she died impenitent.

But to so back from the person to the thing, for examples import nothing, but as they confirm the subject, the story may please, but 'tis the improvement of the story that fixes the truth of the argument which it is brought to support. This horrid practice, I mean of applying to extraordinary means to destroy the conception, has yet many things to be said to it.

As it prisons the body, and, as I have said, locks up nature, so let me remind the ladies whose vanity prompts them to the practice, especially too if they have any such thing as religion about them, that 'tis a kind of cursing their own bodies, 'tis blasting themselves; and as they take upon them to do it themselves, how just would it be, if heaven, taking them at their words, lays it home farther than they would wish or intend it? and that seeing they desire to bear no fruit, heaven should say, in the words of our Saviour to the fig tree, 'No fruit grow on thee hence forward for ever."

It must be a temper unusually hardened, that could bear such a blast from above without some horror. Let any lady, I mean Christian lady, for I direct my speech now to such, though they may be ignorantly or rashly pushed on by the folly of their circumstances; I say, let any Christian lady tell me, if she should hear those words really and audibly pronounced from heaven to her, could she look up with satisfaction, take it for a blessing, and say 'Amen ?' I cannot but hope we have very few of the most audacious atheists among us could go the length.

And now I have accidentally named that word look up, that is to say, look up to heaven, for so I understand it, however, that language is pretty much unknown among us, I could almost venture to put in a grave word to the ladies that marry, and would have no children; those preposterous, not unthinking, but ill-thinking ladies, I say, that will marry but would have no children; as 'tis most certain that they expose their modesty in it, so they likewise expose their Christianity; and let me ask them but this short question; "Pray, madam, what religion are you of?"

By asking after the lady's religion, I do not mean whether Protestant or Papist, Church of England or Presbyterian, but whether Christian or Pagan, a worshipper of God, or of the devil; of one God or a thousand gods, nominal gods; in a word, have you, madam, any such thing as religion about you? It is indeed a question which, in a Christian nation, should pass for an affront; but, when people act counter to principle, and counter to profession, they open the door to the question, nay, they make it rational and necessary.

But I will suppose the lady shall answer, "I am a Christian and a Protestant."

"Well, madam, then you will allow me to say, that sometimes you pray to God, or, to give it you in the language of the moderns, you say your prayers."

"Yes, I do," says the lady; "and what then?"

"Why then, madam, you suppose, or grant, that God can hear you when you say your prayers ?"

"Yes, I know he can," says she; "what then?"

"Why then, madam, you believe he will answer your prayers too, and grant your requests also, because he has promised he will, if what we ask be agreeable to his will. 1 John, v. 14."

"Well! and what do you gather from all this?" says the lady.

"Gather, madam; why, I gather this, that as you are a married woman, and would fain be barren, and have no children, never give yourself any trouble about physic, and taking drugs to prevent conception; but kneel down, and very humbly and sincerely pray to God to curse you with barrenness; tell him that you are one of his creatures, who he, at his first blessing mankind, had allowed to increase and multiply, but that you desire no share in that blessing; and so beg, that he would be graciously pleased to blast the child you go with, if you are with child, and shut up your womb, if you are not; for that you desire none of his blessings of that kind."

If the lady I have been speaking to above is, as she says, a Christian, and prays to God at any time; if she knows and believes that God knows her thoughts, can hear her prayers, and will grant her request, if it be according to his will; let her, I say, if she can do thus without trembling at the thoughts of it, go to her knees, and pray devoutly that she may have no more children, or no children.

If God is so merciful to her as to deny the vile, wicked request, she ought to be very thankful that her prayers are not heard; but if it should be granted, she must and ought, with the same humility, to acknowledge 'tis righteous and just, and that the judgment, for such it must be, is of her own procuring.

This would be putting the matter to a short issue; and we should see whether the ladies are serious enough to carry their folly to such a heighth, or no.

But there is another length that some of these ladies go, and this indeed carries things beyond all the suggestions of my title; instead of matrimonial whoredom it should be called matrimonial witchcraft; the truth is, I dare not enter into examples here, no, not where I may have some reason to suspect, nay, to believe, nay, where I have been informed it has been so, because I would not point out any one as criminal to such a degree, unless the fact was as plain, as admitted a conviction in the way of justice.

Nay, when my friend M------ R------ assured me, that his next neighbour Mrs G------ W------ boasted in public, that she intended to do so and so, nay, though I heard her own she had done it; yet, as the witches in New England went so far in acknowledging their own guilt, and their familiarity with the devil, that at last they could not obtain to be hanged, no, not upon their own evidence, or be believed upon their own confession; so I cannot persuade myself to tell you, that I believe Madam W------ really guilty of so much wickedness as she pretends to, or that she deserves the gallows so eminently as she boasts she does.

To go to the devil to prevent God's blessing! I must confess 'tis very audacious; and if Providence takes no particular notice of such, and gives no public testimony of resentment, it would seem very strange to me; I should only say, there is the more behind, the wretches have the more to expect; let them think of it.

Some will tell us, there is nothing in it; that really the devil has no power to do anything in it, one way or other, and that all the notions of charm, spell, filtres, magic knots, &c. are jugglers' tricks, and have nothing in them; they reach the fancy indeed, and affect the imaginations of weak, vapourish people; but that really these things are out of the devil's way, and that he knows nothing of the matter, and can do nothing to help or hinder; that the devil has no skill in midwifery, and can neither tell a woman when she is with child, or when she is not; he can no more make her miscarry, unless it is by frighting her, than he can make her conceive; that 'tis all a cheat, contrived by a gang of artful knaves to get money, pick pockets, and deceive the ignorant women.

How far this may be true or not, I leave to those that are well enough acquainted with the devil, to know how, and to what degree, he can or does act in these cases. But the crime of those people that go to him for his help is the same, whether he can assist them or not; with the addition of fool, if he cannot.

I might ask here, whether this practice is consistent with honesty? As for religion, modesty, and reputation, that I think I have mentioned to satisfaction; but as to the honesty of it, there is something more to be said. First, as I said above; to a husband it cannot be honest by any means: we'll suppose the man to be an honest, sober, and religious husband; he married, no doubt, as men of honest principles, and of the utmost modesty, do, that is, in view of raising up a family as well to inherit his estate, supposing that part to be sufficient, as to preserve a name and a posterity, as other gentlemen do.

Finding his wife barren, at first he prays heartily, as he may do lawfully, that he may be fruitful, and have children. Mark the harmony! he prays for having children, and she prays against any; he looks up to heaven to entreat he may be blessed and increased; she goes to the devil for help, that his prayers may be frustrated; he marries in expectation of children; she marries him, but endeavours by all the hellish, diabolic arts and tricks she can to prevent it, and disappoint him. And where is the honesty of all this, pray? At least, how is she just to her husband?

If she had told him of it before marriage, it had altered the case; or if she had acquainted him with it when she did thus, and he had consented, it had been another thing; at least, as it regarded him, there had been no injustice in it, because of his voluntary assent to it: but then it is foolish to suggest, for no man in his senses would ever agree to such a ridiculous proposal, and therefore 'tis highly dishonest and unjust to her husband.

It is likewise an immoral action in itself, as it is inconsistent with the reason and nature of things, and clashes with several stated rules of life, which are of divine institution. But that is not, as I said before, the proper view of this discourse.

As it is not honest or moral, so, on the other hand, it seems not to consist with the character of a modest and virtuous worn in. If a whore acted thus, I should not wonder at all; for her business is to conceal her immodest, criminal conversation, and, if possible, to hide her shame; for her to apply to physicians and apothecaries, take drops and draughts, and physic herself from day to day, I should make no wonder at it; 'tis what her circumstances make not rational only but necessary.

But for an honest woman! openly and lawfully married! whose husband is publicly known; who lives with, and acknowledges her to be his wife, and beds with her, as we call it, every night; for this woman to desire to be barren, much more to endeavour to prevent, or, which is the same thing, to destroy the conception, blast the fruit of her own body, poison her blood, and ruin her constitution, that she may have no children! This can have nothing in it but witchcraft and the devil; 'tis scandalous to the last degree; 'tis seeking the man merely as such, merely for the frailer part, as my Lord Rochester calls it, and that brings it down to my subject, viz. the lewdness of it, which entitles it, in my opinion, to that I call matrimonial whoredom.

They may gild it over with what pretences they wilt; they may use their female rhetoric to get it off, and to cover it; such as fear of the dangers and pains of a hard travail, weakness of constitution, hereditary miscarriages, and such like. But those things are all answered with a question, Why then, madam, did you marry? Seeing all this was known before, they were as solid reasons for not marrying, as they can be now for not breeding. But the lady, as above, would venture all to have the use of the man; and as for her reasons why she would have no children, she must account for them another way.

Had the lady been with child, and had a dangerous travail; had she been frequently with child, but always subject to abortions, or constant and dangerous miscarriages; had she received any hurt in the delivery of her former children, which threatened dangers if she came again; or had several other circumstances attended her, less proper to mention than those; had she been abused by midwives, or weakened by distempers or disasters, this would alter the case.

But the circumstance I insist upon is, when the woman marries, takes a man to bed to her, with all the circumstances that are to be under, stood, without obliging us to express them; lives with him, and lies with him every night, and yet professes to desire she may have no children: these are the circumstances I insist upon, the aggravations of which admit no abatement, and for which I do not know one modest word of excuse can be said. This is what I call conjugal lewdness, nor can I see anything else in it; it was the plain end of her marrying; it is in vain to call it by other names, and cover it with other excuses; it is nothing but whoring under the shelter or cover of the law, we may paint it out, and dress it up as we will.

CHAPTER VI.

Of being overruled by persuasion, interest, influence of friends, force, and the like, to take the person they have no love for, and forsake the person they really loved.

THE subject of this chapter is very particular, and the effects of it sometimes very dismal; one would think it was hardly to be named among Christians, that in a country where we pretend so much to personal, as well as national liberty, any such violences could be offered, or at least be suffered.

As matrimony should be the effect of a free and previous choice in the persons marrying, so the breaking in by violence upon the choice and affection of the parties, I take to be the worst kind of rape; whether the violence be the violence of persuasion or of authority; I mean, such as that of paternal authority, or otherwise; for as to legal authority, there is nothing of that can interpose in it; the laws leave it where it ought to be left, and the laws of matrimony, in particular, leave it all upon the choice of the person, and in the power of their will; and therefore, as by the office of matrimony appears, it does not say to the person -- Thou shalt take this man, or thou shall take this woman; but Wilt thou take this man, and Wilt thou take this woman? and unless the person says, I will, which is a declaration of free consent, and, indeed, strongly implies a free choice, there can be no matrimony.

Hence I might enter into a long discourse of the justice of young people, on either side, resisting the persuasions, nay, indeed, the commands of those who otherwise they ought to obey, in a case of this moment. I should be very loath to say anything here to encourage breach of duty in children to parents; but as in this case the command seems exorbitant, so the obedience seems to be more limited than in any other, and, therefore, I may go farther here than I would do in any of the points of subordination in other cases.

It is a maxim in law, as well as in reason, there is no duty in obeying where there is no authority to command; or, if you will, thus: There is no obligation to obey where there is no right to command; the parent has, no question, a right to command, nay, to govern and over rule the child in all lawful things: but if the parent commands the child to do an unlawful action, the child may decline it; for a thing cannot be lawful and unlawful at the same time.

It is evident, in the case before me, if the parent commands his child to marry such or such a person, and the child either cannot love the person, or at the same time declares he or she is engaged in affection to another, the command of the parent cannot be lawfully obeyed, because it is unlawful for the child to marry any person he or she cannot love; nay, the very doing it is destructive of matrimony, and they must either lie one way or other, or else they cannot obey it, for they cannot be married: for example,

A father says to his son, "I would have you marry such a young lady."

"Oh! sir," says the son, "I beg of you do not desire it of me; she is a woman that, of all the women in the world, I would not marry upon any account whatever."

"Do not tell me you will not marry her," says the father, "I have good reasons for your having her."

"But, sir," says the son, "I hope you will not insist upon it, for I cannot do it."

"What do you mean? You cannot do it," says the father angrily.

"Why, sir," says the son, "I cannot love her."

"O, well; you must venture that," says the father; "marry her first, and you will love her afterwards."

"Indeed, I cannot marry upon that foot, sir," says the son, but respectfully, "it would be a sin to marry a woman I cannot love."

"I tell you," says the father, "I have singled her out for you, and I expect you should have her."

"I am sorry, sir, you should choose a wife for me," says the son, "and never let me know it."

"I think it is your duty to submit," says the father, "so long as I think she is a suitable match for you, and for the family."

"But, sir," says the son, "it is impossible: I can never be married to her; no clergyman dares marry me to her."

"What do you mean by that?" says his father.

"Why, sir," says the son, "either I must lie and be forsworn, or he cannot marry me; and I hope you will not desire me either to lie, or to be perjured."

"Do not tell me of lying and perjury," says the passionate father, "I do not inquire into your impertinent cavils; I tell you, she will make a very good wife for you, and I say you shall have her."

"Well, sir," says the son, "if you can make any minister marry me to her."

"What is it you mean," says the father, "to offer such stuff to me? If you do not take her, it shall be worse for you; I tell you, you shall have her."

"Why, sir," says the son, "when he asks me, if I will take her, I may answer, I will; but when he comes to say, Wilt thou love her? I must say, I will not; I must lie, if I should say, I will; and if he can marry me so, let him."

"I do not make a jest of it, son," says the father, "I expect you go and wait upon her, for I will have you marry her, I tell you,"

Thus the father laid it upon him hard; he put it off with this a great while, that he could not love her; but the father insisted upon it, and threatened to disinherit him; and so he wickedly complied, married the woman he hated, and forsook a young lady that loved him, and that he was in love with; and he was unhappy, and cursed his marriage to his dying day; and so was the woman he married also. Indeed he did not go so far as the son did in the example I gave you before; he did not marry them both, but he was very unhappy.

The limits of a parent's authority, in this case of matrimony, either with son or daughter, I think, stand thus: The negative, I think, is theirs, especially with a daughter; but, I think, the positive is the children's.

If the child looks retrograde, and would throw herself away upon a scoundrel, upon her father's coachman or book-keeper, or upon anything unworthy of the family and fortune of the lady, much more if the person she inclines to marry is scandalous, a man of vice, a man of an ill character, a drunkard, a gamester, a rake, or what else is to be called scandalous, the father, or mother, or next parent or guardian may, I believe with justice, interpose their authority, and may command her not to take such or such a person, the father may put the negative upon her; nor is it sufficient for her to say, she loves the man, or is in love with the man.

But when the same father or parent comes and directs her, the said daughter, and says positively, you shall marry such or such a man, whether you love him or not, there, I think, the case differs extremely; and the young lady telling them, she does not like the man, that she cannot love him, and will not marry him for that reason, is a justifiable reason, and she ought not to be forced: or, if she says, that she is in love with another, and that other is not yet discovered, it is, nevertheless, a sufficient reason, and she ought not to be forced; nor can the command of a father or mother bind her to marry the man she cannot love, because it would be an unlawful action, unjust and injurious both to the man and to herself; and no command of a parent can be obliging upon her to do an unlawful or unjust action.

The parent, therefore, may command her not to marry this or that person, but may not command her to marry any particular person, who she declares herself not to love; for this would be to command her to lie, and be forsworn, in the express terms of the marriage contract.

Again; it were to be wished, that every one that marries, before they fix their affection sincerely upon the person they are to have, would consider what I just mentioned above, viz., the wrong they do to the person they take; suppose it be the woman, who, at the book, they promise upon until to love, and yet afterwards, perhaps, tell (hem to their faces, they never loved them at all. This is an irretrievable injury to the person, who perhaps was, us it were, snatched out of the arms of those that did love her, and of another that would have loved her, and who, perhaps, she loved also, and, persuaded or over-ruled by parents, to take one who pretended as much to love as any one, but only took her for her money, and venturing upon those pretensions, she or he is now deceived and disappointed, the wrong is irreparable; the lady that might, if he had let her alone, been made happy, is abused, is made miserable, is injured in the grossest manner, and he had much better have ravished her, and been hanged, as he deserved: I mean better for her; then she had been free again, and though she had been abused, the injury had been at an end; but here she is abused daily, the crime is renewed, and she is made unhappy to the cad of her life.

This marrying without affection, or contrary to inclination, has a variety of complicated mischiefs attending it, and especially considering that, upon the least disagreeableness between the persons married, former objects and former thoughts revive in the mind; they are always comparing their condition with what it might have been, with what others are, and with what, at least, they fancy others are; ever repining at what is, ever wishing what can never be. Everything they have is disagreeable and unpleasant; they look on their life as a slave at Algiers looks upon his chains; they fancy themselves as persons only bought and sold, as persons committed by warrant, and made prisoners for life.

The state they are in is embittered by every circumstance, and every circumstance embittered by the want of affection; the thing is bad in itself, and want of affection makes every part of it worse.

Nor is it probable that such a marriage should issue otherwise; I had almost said it is not possible: but the nature of the thing directs it, and the disagreeableness can hardly tail to happen, because there is not only no fund of affection to build upon, but a kind of a pre-engaged aversion, which is certain to assist, and to render every thing worse, rather than better.

I could give a long history of a family, within the compass of my own observation, where both the man and the woman were thus stated; that is to say, brought together by the allurement of good circumstances, and the over-ruling directions of their immediate governors and friends; when, on both sides, their choice and affections were guided, at least against the respective object, it not to other objects; and though, perhaps, those other objects were not indeed so suitable as to birth and fortune, for this breach happened in a family of some figure, and among that we can quality, yet the choice they had made for themselves had certainly been more suitable to them; as man and woman, and had tended infinitely more to their satisfaction.

It seems they had frequently had rufflings and rencounters, as they might be called, upon the subject before; and as they went upon an old mob rule, that few words among friends were best, and those very spiteful; so, if they did fall out, it was short, but bitter; and this battle, which I happened to have the following account of, and which was one of the worst they ever had, may pass for a specimen :

It happened to be at supper, and the gentleman had drank to his lady with a kind of a sneer and a bow, and my service to your ladyship (for she was a lady). "Ay, ay, "says she, "service! service!" repeating the word two or three times; "it's well where there is no love there can be a little good manners;" and so the battle was begun.

Knight. Love! love! nay, the d---l take your Ladyship, you know I never loved you in my life.

Lady. Nay, I was pretty even with Sir Thomas, for I hated you heartily from the first hour I saw you.

Knight. Equally yoked! madam, that's true, equally yoked! (To that he added an oath or two.)

Lady. Ay, ay! a yoke indeed, and two beasts to draw in it.

Knight. Good words, madam why didn't you say whore and rogue?

Lady. And if I had, it had been but plain English.

Knight. And plain truth, you mean, I suppose.

Lady. Nay, what was Sir Thomas, to marry a woman that he could swear he never loved in his life?

Knight. And pray, what was my lady, to go to bed to a man she hated most heartily.

Lady. The more innocent of the two, for I was never married.

Knight. Not married! Why, what have you been doing then all this while? What's the English of that, madam?

Lady. The English of what? I could make it speak English if I would; but good manners, rather than a regard to the person, stops my mouth.

Knight. Nay, let it come out, madam; there can be no loss of good language between you and I. I have lain with a woman I did not love, and you have lain with a man these four years, and were never married. What will my lady call herself next?

Lady. Not a whore for all that; so I have the better of Sir Thomas still.

Knight. What can it be then? No magic, I doubt, will bring your ladyship off.

Lady. Yes, yes; I shall bring myself off fairly; I say, it was no marriage, it was all force, a rape upon innocence and virtue.

Knight. A rape! didn't you go to church and repeat the words, and say, I will?

Lady. Go to church; no, no; you may say, indeed, I was drugged to church, I did not go; I tell you it was no matrimony, though it was a marriage; I was ravished; and nothing else.

Knight. But who forced you, and who dragged you to church; I am sure I went to church with as ill a will as you.

Lady. I don't know what you did; but I went like a bear hauled to a stake, I know.

Knight. And I think you have been a bear ever since; I suppose that made you so.

Lady. Whether I have been a bear or no, I have been baited like a bear; that is true enough.

Knight. Well, your ladyship is even with me there indeed, you give me the dog for the bear.

Lady. You must drink as you brew, Sir Thomas; you know that it was you began it.

Knight. It is just upon me indeed; I broke my faith and honour with the angel I loved for the cursed thirst of money. My father knew not what he did when he persuaded me to it; but I must marry a fortune!

Lady. Yes, and I must be tickled with a feather, and wheedled up with being a lady. If I had taken the man I loved, I had had that which few ladies enjoy; I had had the man that loved me, and he had had the woman that loved him, and both been happy; and now, here is the baronet and the lady as wretched as a foot soldier and his trull.

Knight. I saw nothing in you at first to make a man happy.

Lady. And I desired no happiness so much, when I went to church, as to have been delivered from you.

Knight. I was bewitched with the money indeed, but never with the lady, I assure you.

Lady. And my mother was fond of the knighthood indeed; I am sure I was never fond of the knight.

Knight. I might have had as much money, it may be, somewhere else.

Lady. And I might have made the man I loved a knight with my money, whenever I pleased; but my mother had her failings.

Knight. If I had had less money, I might have had a better wife.

Lady. And I could never have had a worse husband.

Knight. Well, I will find some way to put an end to it, I'll warrant you; at worst, a pistol and half an ounce of lead will deliver me at once.

Lady. The sooner the better, Sir Thomas; heaven keep you in the mind.

In short, the lady had the better of him, and put him in a rage, and then he left her, and went out of the room; but about the usual time of going to bed, they came a little to themselves again, and were preparing to go to bed, when a few words rising the wind, it blew up into another storm, and they fell out more furiously than before.

She told him she had had but two children, and she thanked God they were both dead.

He told her he desired no more of the breed.

She replied, she desired all the world to take notice, that if ever she was with child again, it would be a bastard, and none of his.

He turned round from her, and bid her turn her back to him.

She said, with all her heart, and did so.

"Now curse yourself," said he, "if ever you turn your face to me again."

She said she knew a better way for it than that; so she called her maid, took her leave of him, and went to bed by herself.

The next day she took her coach, and went to a relation's house, took some jewels with her, and sent for her clothes. And thus ended a mother-made match on one hand, and a money-made match on the other hand; on both hands without affection, and where they had been mutually pre-engaged to other objects; and what was all this, pray, but a matrimonial whoredom!

It would take up too much of this work to give the short history of the remaining life of these two passionate married enemies, for such they were. As they were people of good fashion and figure, they might have quarrelled with some reserve to good manners; but, on the contrary, she pursued him with all the spite and rage of her tongue that it was possible for a woman to invent; said all the bitter and disdainful things of him that ill-nature could inspire her with; scorned all the motions of friends towards a reconciliation to him, which at first he was not averse to; and at last gave out that he kept a whore, and that she intended to sue him to a divorce.

In return, after he found her obstinate, he put all the contempt upon her he was able, and in all company where he could possibly come at her; made ballads and songs of her; and, in a word, they took all possible ways on both sides to make it impossible they should ever come together again.

After some time he went abroad into France, when he did the spitefullest thing that it was possible for him to do, or that, I think, a man could ever do by a wife. Being (as he had given out) at Paris, he caused a rumour to be raised that he was very sick, and a little after that he was dead. This he carried so far, that his servants and dependents, who he left at his house, were all put into mourning, and the lady was firmly convinced that he was dead; nay, he employed a subtle, managing fellow, to come to the house where the lady lodged to give an account of his death, and that he, was at the funeral.

In a word, things were carried so far that the lady was courted by another gentleman, and at length consented to be married; but all things being prepared for the wedding, settlements made, the very day come, and her friends about her, he sends a messenger to tell her that he was coming to the church to see her married, that he would have remained in his grave a little longer, but that he was resolved she should not have so much pleasure as that of one day's delusion; and that he would not do the gentleman the injury of letting him ignorantly marry a she-devil, as he had done.

This was managed so wickedly, and with such a keenness and severity of spite, that it almost cost the lady her life; and it might have gone farther, for the gentleman was affronted so that he demanded satisfaction of him, and it went up to a challenge; but some friends interposed, so that they did not fight.

The enraged lady fell sick with disdain; and the fury that this piece of management put her in was such, that she continued languishing near two years; but then recovered. A great many friends interposed, if possible, to reconcile them"; but there was no room for that, it was gone too far.

At length they brought it to a truce, though they could not bring it to a peace; they brought them to an agreement of civility, viz. not to insult or affront one another any more, and this was all they could ever be brought to; nor was it easy to bring them to that, so exasperated were they on both sides, so irreconcilably provoked, especially the woman.

This is one example of a marriage by force of friends, and by motives of avarice and pride, where the parties were pre-engaged by their affection to other objects. I could give many instances in their degree equally unhappy, though perhaps not carried on to such an extravagant length, but all serve to convince us how fatal it is for men or women to engage their persons one way and their affections another.

Certainly those people who have the least value for their own ease, that expect any felicity in a married life, should think before they take this leap in the dark; I say, they should think a little how in the nature of the thing they can expect happiness in a woman they do not love, and in a woman who they shall be tied to live with while they love another, and shall be night and day wishing their beloved Rachel were in their arms instead of the blear-eyed Leah which they had taken in her place.

But thus it is, and that too frequently to wonder at, that men love the person they do not marry, and marry the person they cannot love.

Tell me, ye sacred powers, which rule on high, If love's a heaven-born passion, tell me why Do mortals love, and heaven so oft deny?

Unhappy man! by law's unequal tie, Bound to possess the object he would fly; And left to love what he cannot enjoy.

CHAPTER VII.

Of marrying one person, and at the same time owning themselves to be in love with another.

To love and not to marry is nature's aversion; to marry and not to love, is nature's corruption; the first is hateful, the last is really criminal; and, as has been said in its place, it is in some respects both murder and robbery; it makes a man felo de se with respect to all the comforts of his life; and it makes him a robber to his wife. if she be a woman that has the misfortune to love him. And this I have spoken to at large in the last chapter.

But to marry one woman and love another, to marry one man and be in love with another, this is yet worse, tenfold worse, if that be possible! it is in its kind a mere piece of witchcraft; it is a kind of civil legal adultery, nay, it makes the man or woman be committing adultery in their hearts every day of their lives; and can I be wrong, therefore, to say that it may be very well called a matrimonial whoredom? If I may judge, it is one of the worst kinds of it too.

It is, first, a plain downright crime in the beginning of it; if both the man and the woman are in it, they indeed cheat one another; first, the man thinks the woman has the worst of it, and that he only cheats her; she fancies that he has the worst of it, and that she cheats him; but, in short, it is a mutual fraud, wherein both are cheats and both cheated, both deceivers and both deceived.

When they come to the book to marry, they mutually engage what was engaged before, like a knave that borrows money upon an estate which he had mortgaged already. Mark what a complication of crimes meet together in the church; when they come up to the altar, the man plights her his troth or truth that he will love her, when he knows he cannot do it, for that he loves another already before her.

The woman plights him her troth that she will love him, when, as the lady just now mentioned told Sir Thomas ------, she heartily hated him from the first time she ever saw him. Here is mutual pledging the troth to a falsehood, which is, in short, a premeditated lie; like a cold blood murder, it is intended to be done long before it is done. Here is also a stated, calm, intended perjury; a swearing to do what they own they not only did not intend to do, but knew before hand they could not do.

How many kinds of dishonesty are here mixt together? Take it in the very first words of the minister, being as an introduction to the office of matrimony; the minuter adjures them, as they will answer it at the great, and dreadful day, &c.', when the secrets of all hearts shall be revealed, that if they know any lawful hindrance or impediment why they should not be lawfully joined together, they should then declare it, protesting against even the validity of the marriage, in case they fail.

I require and charge you both (as ye will answer at the dreadful day of judgment, when the secrets of all hearts shall be disclosed), that if either of you know any impediment why ye may not be lawfully joined together in matrimony, ye do now confess it. For be ye well assured, that so many as are coupled together otherwise than God's word doth allow, are not joined together by God, neither is their matrimony lawful.

Hereupon the minister giving them time to answer, they are silent; that is to say, they declare no impediment, which is a tacit declaring that they know of none; and yet, at the same time, they know that in conscience they have settled their love and affection upon another person; and the man, or woman they now marry they cannot love, and ought not on that account to marry, because they promise what they know they shall not perform.

How many times also does the secret come out afterwards, either unawares by themselves or in delirious fits, extremities of distempers, dreams, talking in the sleep, and such other ways, which prove, however, fatal to the peace of the family, yet unavoidable?

Such persons have great reason to be sure that they do not talk in their sleep; for what the mind bears such a weight of upon it, which indeed it is not equal to, and is not possible to be supported, though by a vigilant guarding the tongue in the day-time it shall be kept in, yet how often will it break out in a dream, and the tongue betray itself in its sleep?

How miserable is the lady, frequently wishing she were in the arms of the man she loves instead of his arms who she is unhappily tied to? Those ardent wishes prompting her desires, she falls into a deep slumber, and dreams that it is really so, as she wished it might be.

In the transports of her imagination her waking soul commands her tongue, though the whole organic body be laid asleep; I say, commands the tongue to tell the dangerous truth; she cries out as in an ecstasy, discovers the affection, and unhappily names the man. The fair ------, the toast of the town, the beauty of the beauties, had admirers enough, was beloved to madness and distraction by a throng of admirers; at last, for the sake of a settlement, a little more than ordinarily large, she quits the generous Ca------, the lord of her affections, the only man in the world that had found the way into her heart, and to whom she had made innumerable vows of fidelity; I say, quits him with the utmost rudeness, and throws herself, at the importunities and commands of her avaricious parents; I say, throws herself into the arms of a mean, a coarse, an unbred, half-taught citizen, the son of a rich, overgrown tradesman, himself a clown, only that he was a boor of fortune, can keep her fine, and cause her to ride in a coach. And what then?

She marries this lump of unpolished, simple stuff, and they live tolerably well for a time, when one night, in a dream, she fancied herself in the arms of her former lover, pleased to a rapture with what she had so long reason to know she could never enjoy; she flies out even in her dream to talking aloud; and not only to talk aloud, though fast asleep, but gives her tongue a loose into all the most dangerous expressions, that love to the real master of her heart, and the utmost contempt of her gaoler, as she called him, meaning her husband, could inspire her with: nor was this all; for where will misfortunes end? but in the height of her ecstasies, and with a wicked, though but fancied liberty, she calls her former lover by his name, and so betrays herself to her husband, who hears himself accused of the worst of crimes, treated with the worst contempt, and the greatest of indignity put upon him, in words at length, that can be thought of.

Her husband was not at first well awake, and so, perhaps, was not let into the first part of it; nor was he presently capable of understanding what it all meant; but when he heard himself abused in so gross a manner, it put him into a passion, and he replied rashly to her, not thinking she had been asleep.

This replying to her unhappily waked her, or at least so much as to put a stop to her talking aloud. Her husband was presently aware that his wife was not awake, and vexed that he waked her; he lies still a little, till sleep over coming her, and the pleasing ideas of her past loves set her to talking again; when her husband subtilely managing himself, spoke softly at her ear several words agreeable to what she had said, and brought her by that means (as is not impracticable) to answer several questions, and that in such a manner as his patience would bear it no longer.

This want of temper was perhaps her felicity so far, as that she discovered no more to him, though she had discovered so much already as made an irreconcilable breach between them. And first, as he was exasperated to the highest degree by what he had heard, and waked her in a kind of a passion, he asked her what she had been dreaming of?

She was not presently come to herself enough to recollect that it was all a dream, so that she made him no answer for a while; but he repeating the question, it soon came into her thoughts that she had dreamed something not fit to tell him of; so she answered, she had dreamed of nothing; but he pressing her with the question, she said, "Did she dream? why, if she did, she could not remember it." But what confusion was she in when she heard him tell her all the particulars of her dream as fairly, almost, as if she had told them herself?

However, she insisted that she knew nothing of it; that if she did dream, nothing was more frequent than for people to dream, and forget what they dreamt of, and so might she; for that she knew nothing of it, at the same time little thinking, nay, not suspecting, what had happened, viz. that she had been talking in her sleep to her former lover with all possible endearments, and had spoken to him of her husband with the utmost contempt; and she was confounded again to have her husband repeat the very words which she knew she had dreamed of.

But her husband, whose passion drove him beyond all bounds, was not satisfied with up braiding her with the particulars, but told her that she had revealed them all herself in her sleep, and that she had said so and so to him, upon his making little short answers to her, and offering some questions; and that, in short, she had betrayed her own intrigues; from whence he charged her openly with being dishonest, and with that person also, and that before her marriage to him as well as after, alleging that it appeared from her own mouth. Nor was he prudent enough to conceal the thing, and to let it lie as a private feud between themselves; but he told it openly and publicly among the neighbours, and in almost all company. But he had the worst of the quarrel, though he had the better of the fact, and that by his want of conduct too.

The women's wit, they say, never fails them at a pinch; 'tis easy to imagine that his wife was in the utmost confusion at the discovery of the thing as it was, and especially while she was at a loss to know which way he came by his information; for though she might easily have supposed that she must have spoke aloud in her sleep, yet as she had never known herself to do so before, she did not think of it at first, but thought he had dealt with the devil, and that he must have been with some conjuror, who, as she had been told, could, by the help of the devil, first make people dream of what they thought fit to inject into their thoughts, and then tell of it to whom they thought fit.

This filled her with indignation at her husband, for having, as she affirmed, bewitched her, and employed the devil to betray her into mischief, and then betray that mischief; and she resolved to give him a home charge upon the subject, and threaten to bring him upon the public stage for enchantment and sorcery.

But he put a better invention into her head; for unwarily he threw it out, that he heard her talk in her sleep, and that he asked her such and such questions by whispering in her ear, and that she answered so and so.

It immediately occurred to her, that if this was all he had for it, he was but one affirmative, and no witness in his own case, and that her negative might go as far as his affirmative; that she had no more to do but to deny the fact; that as to the story of whispering questions, and her answering them, the pretence was a novelty; and so strange, that though it might be true, nobody would believe it, especially if she firmly denied it.

Upon this she began with him; told him she had perceived a good while his jealous and uneasy humour, and that he had laid a great many plots and designs to attack her reputation, and all to find an excuse to justify his ill usage of her; but that her conduct was such before the whole world that nobody would believe him; and that now he had dressed up a story between the devil and him, to fix something upon her, if possible; but that it was an evident forgery of his own, with the help of his witchcraft; and as the story was itself improbable, and next to impossible, so she declared it was a lie, and she defied the devil and him, they might both do their worst.

She gave him this so roundly, and with such assurance, and told it also so publicly (as he did his story), that the man began to find she had the better of him; that people began to think her ill used; that he was only jealous of her, and that he had made this story to blast her character, and to justify his own jealousies; then as to the whispering story, everybody said it looked like a forgery indeed, and nobody believed a word of it, for it seemed improbable; so that the husband began to talk less of the matter than before, and was sensible that she was too hard for him.

But the more he began to give out, the more furiously she followed her blow; for she not only told her tale as above, but she employed two or three emissaries to hand it about among the ladies at the tea-table, and among the gossips; and the man, in a word, got such an ill name, that he was the contempt of all his neighbours.

Nor did she end here; but she added her former design to the latter: and, first, she separated from him at home, or, as 'tis usually expressed, they parted beds; in short, she told him, that it was reported there were magicians and fellows that dealt with the devil, who, they said, by the help of evil spirits, could cause people to dream what and when they pleased, and to talk in their sleep, and that she understood her husband had been conversing with some of those cunning men, as they called them, in order to make the experiment upon her by whispering things in her ear while she was asleep, and so making her dream so and so, and then report that she talked of those things in her sleep, in order to expose her.

That therefore she would lie by herself, for she would not lie in bed with one that would bring the devil into the room, to expose and betray her; that she would have her maid lie with her every night, that she might have good witness of her conduct; but that she would not trust herself any more to sleep with one that would betray her to the devil, and then to all the world.

This she not only told her husband, but told it to all her friends and tea-table emissaries; and the story was so plausible in its kind, and was told so much to her advantage, that everybody justified her conduct, said she was in the right, that she could do no less, and that no woman in her senses would sleep in bed with a man who was able to do such things as those; and that, in short, it was all one as to sleep with the devil.

The man had no remedy but to deny the charge, and to say he never had anything to do with the devil, or with any such people as conjurors, magicians, or any such sort of folks, in his life. But all that went but a little way, for who would not deny it if they were the most guilty of any in the world? But the woman vouched that so and so he had said, and such and such things he had pretended; that he could not do so without the help of the devil; and that, therefore, it was not safe for her, by any means, to trust herself with him.

Thus the guilty wife got the victory over the innocent husband by the mere dexterity of her wit and the conduct of her allies, not forgetting the assistance of a public clamour; the man himself, at the same time, was not famed for overmuch sense or conduct in this, or other things, and therefore was the easier managed by a keen-witted wife. But the inference from the whole discourse comes in perfectly adapted to the argument which it is brought to confirm, viz. that to love one person, be it man or woman, and then marry another, is neither honest to the person quitted or to the person married, but especially not to the last, and more especially not honest to the person herself or himself; in a word, it is not an honest marriage; for the engaged affection is a just impediment, and ought to have been declared and discovered at the book, upon the declaration appointed to be made by the minister as above, or before they came so far.

As for the success of such marriages, the blessing attending them, and what happiness is to be expected from them, it seems to be laid open in part in the little history just recited; but it is really visible to common experience in almost every age and place in the world, I mean our English world.

What delight, what complaisance can there be in that matrimony, where the heart did not go with the hand? where the marriage may be said to be made from the teeth outward, and no more? where the love is fixed in one place, and the bed made in another? What is this but a fraudulent contract, a protestation with a design to deceive, which, by the way, is the very essence of a lie, and one of the worst kind too?

What complaisance or pleasure in their enjoyments of any kind between the unhappy couple, and how can it be called a fair marriage? Two swear to love, and at the same time both know they neither do nor can; that they neither desire it nor intend it, and they come to the book, two carcases without souls, without assent or consent, but in mere subjection to circumstances enter into a horrid slavery; the woman dragged by her old grandmother, or her thundering and threatening parent, because the miser can give her a portion, or not give it her, as he pleases; can make her a fortune or a chamber-maid, a lady or a shoemaker's wife. Under these terrors and obligations she does as she is bid, and marries anybody they please, let him have wit, sense, and manners, or neither wit, sense, nor manners: as she is pre-engaged, and her affections look quite another way, the thoughts of this marriage are her abhorrence, her aversion, and yet she marries him. What must we call this? is it matrimony? No, no; it has nothing of matrimony in it but the form; it is all a cheat; they lie to one another when they repeat the words; and they both know they do so, nay, they intend to do so; as to the consequence, you have it before, between Sir Thomas and my Lady ------; but as to the fact, it is horrid in its nature; they are but two victims, I cannot indeed, in one sense, call them prostitutes; but they are prostituted by the governing relations, brought together by the arbitrary authority of those that have the influence over them. "Here," says the old father, with a lordly air, to his son, "take this young woman to church, and marry her;" perhaps the debate has been between them before about loving her or not loving her, and the young man has told him positively, he hates her, or that he cannot love her. But it is all one, the old man likes the settlement, and tells him in so many words, that if he will not take her, his brother shall, and shall have his estate too.

I could name so many examples of this kind, and give you an account of so many families ruined by it, that it would tire you in the reading. But give me leave to single out one for your remark, which, though the case was nearer home, you must allow me to place at some distance, that the particular families may not be marked out and exposed. Suppose, then, the scene in France, not far from a great city, not the greatest, but the greatest city but one in the kingdom: A certain rich merchant had two sons, and though he had a very great estate, it was of his own purchasing, so that there was no entail upon it, and he was therefore at liberty to give it to which of his sons he pleased.

His eldest son was a young gentleman of good sense, and a very agreeable person, and his father had bestowed some charge upon his education, had given him learning and good breeding, to qualify him, as he said, for the life of a gentleman, and, as he usually expressed it, to make him know how to live agreeable to the fortune he was able to give him; but withal, the father kept him pretty much in subjection; and the more, by making him always sensible how much it was in his power to make him a gentleman or a beggar, that is to say, to give him an estate, and make him live like a gentleman, or turn him loose in the world to seek his fortune.

Particularly, the father was often repeating to his son, how he expected that he should conform himself to his measures in taking a wife, and that if he did not, he would absolutely disinherit him, and give his estate to his younger brother.

Whether this absolute declaration of the father did not, in some manner, influence the son, so as to create, with the aversion to the tyranny of it, a kind of dislike to everything the father could propose, I cannot say; perhaps there might be something of that kind in it too, for nature abhors violence in love.

But however it was, this is certain, that when his father proposed a match to him, he did it with an air of authority; told him he had pitched upon such a family, where he knew there was a suitable fortune; that it was a very advantageous alliance, and that he had already discoursed with the lady's father, and he found things were very well, and that everything would be to his mind, and therefore he would have him think of marrying her.

"But, sir," says the son, "you will please to let me see the lady, I hope."

"Why," says the father, "what if you should not see her till afterwards, there's no great matter in that? I suppose you know it is in such a province, and she will be sent to Paris (London) after the contract is signed, and there you may marry her."

Son. What, must I marry her unsight, unseen.

Father. Why, didn't the king marry the queen so? Did not the Prince of ------ marry the Lady ------ so? Sure, you are not above such people?

Son. But, sir, they did not love them the better for that.

Father. What's that to the purpose? Do they not live gloriously together?

Son. I cannot think, sir, of marrying by proxy.

Father. You are willing, I find, to give me more trouble than you need. What, must I bring the lady up to town on purpose for you to see her, and see whether you like her? What occasion is there for that? I assure you, like her, or not like her, you are like to take her, or you and I shall differ upon an article that will be very disagreeable to you.

Son. No, sir, I will not give you or the lady that trouble; I will go down into the country, if you please, and see her there.

Father. And what then?

Son. Then, sir, I will give you my answer.

Father. Answer; what do you mean by that? I assure you I shall not come into your notions, viz. of giving you a negative voice; the settlements are agreed on, and are sufficient to make you both happy, and to make you live like a gentleman all your days. Do you think these are not infinitely of more consequence than what you call pleasing your loose fancy? I hope my eldest son will not be a fool.

Son. Nay, sir, if you will not give me a negative voice.

Father. If I will not, what then? Why, I will not, for I cannot; it is ridiculous for you to pretend to dislike, where such a fortune is settled on you. (Here the father began to be angry, and added some threatenings to him, and particularly that his second brother should have her, and all his estate, so the young gentleman complied.)

Son. Nay, sir, I cannot tell what to say; if you will have it be so, it must be so; then I need not go indeed.

Upon this the young man yielded, and the contracts being finished, they were married by proxy, as great men are; but the consequence was, that he went to another lady whom he loved, and had been in love with for some years, and letting her know the distress he was in, they consulted together what to do; and the result was this, they went together, and were privately married, and the marriage fairly consummated, at least a month before the other, and confirmed by good and substantial witnesses.

But concealing it entirely from his father, he wickedly went and married the other lady too, in public; by which, indeed, he obtained an irreversible settlement of his father's estate; so that when it came to a discovery, his father could not take it away again, or disinherit him, the estate being fully and fairly settled.

The lady was, indeed, grossly injured and abused, for though she was fairly married, yet he was not; and upon a long, and to him, shameful hearing in a court of justice, the first woman was declared his lawful wife, only the other being left to take her remedy against him at law, which yet she would not do.

But the consequence did not end here; for the gentleman carried it so obligingly to her whom he had not loved, and managed so dexterously with her whom he had both loved and married, that he brought them to consent to polygamy, and they both lived with him, and that in one house too; he kept them, indeed, separate apartments, and different servants, but they carried it very well to one another, and lived easy, there being a plentiful fortune among them.

But even in this best side of the story, what a complication of mischiefs was here? Here was matrimonial whoredom in the very letter of it, and all introduced by a force upon affection, first, by the father unjustly forcing his son to marry a woman he did not love. Secondly, by the son wickedly cheating his father in a seeming scandalous compliance to get the estate. Thirdly, by the son again, basely and injuriously marrying a virtuous lady, imposing himself upon her as a single man, when he was already married to another woman. And lastly, by living in open adultery, and keeping them both.

I could, as I have said, load you with stories of this kind, I mean, of the forcing young people to marry against inclination, and contrary to secret obligation, and especially contrary to pre-engaged affections. But I must give you this observation upon them, which, in effect, is equal to the repeating them, viz. that they would be almost every one of them tragical; especially if you will allow to have the destroying all the comforts of life, and all the enjoyment that could be expected in the state of marriage, be reckoned tragical; which, indeed, I do allow, and every whit as tragical as cutting of throats.

To cross the affections of young people in marriage, especially where the proposed object is not scandalous or extremely despicable, is, I think, a little synonymous to murder; it is a wilful violence upon the mind, and that, I think, equal or superior to a violence upon the body; it is a formal ravishment upon virtue, and that in so much the worse a manner, as it is done under the form of justice and law, and is still made worse, in that it is without a remedy.

If violence is offered to the chastity of a woman, she has her recourse to the law, and she will be redressed as far as redress can be obtained. Where the fact is irretrievable, the man should be punished, and the woman is protected by the law from any farther force upon her for the future.

But here the woman is put to bed to the man by a kind of forced authority of friends; it is a rape upon the mind; her soul, her brightest faculties, her will, her affections are ravished, and she is left without redress, she is left in the possession of the ravisher, or of him who, by their order, she was delivered up to, and she is bound in the chains of the same violence for her whole life.

Horrid abuse! Here is a sacred institution violated, and, as I may gay, profaned; an unjust violence offered to chastity and modesty on one hand, and to honesty on the other; who marries by the importuning authority of the parent, contrary to solemn and secret engagements passed to another, contrary to inclination, contrary to pre-engaged affections, and, at last, contrary to law.

Is not here a matrimonial whoredom? I think, if it allows any alteration in the word, it is for the worse, and it should rather be called a matrimonial adultery. Nor is it very unusual for these sorts of matches to be pleaded as excuses for all the wicked excursions which are made after marriage, either by one side or other; the man hangs about the woman he loved before, follows her even after he is married to another; tells her, she is the wife of his affection, the other is only his wife in law, and by form; that he is still faithful, and has reserved his heart for her, though he has given his hand to the other, who he is cruelly bound to call wife.

It is not long since we had a public example of this and that, in the highest class of dignity, and where the lady insisted upon her being as lawful a wife, and as strictly virtuous as the fairly and openly married possessor; and even in the very article of death, refused to acknowledge it a crime. But I would not, I say, bring examples too near home, where they are publicly known, nor revive the mistakes, which should rather be buried in the grave with the persons mistaken.

Forcing to marry is, in the plain consequences, not only a forcing to crime, but furnishing an excuse to crime; I do not say, it is a just excuse, for nothing can be a just excuse for an unjust action; but it is furnishing a plausible pretence, to such persons especially, who were but indifferently furnished with virtue before, to justify the excursions of their vice: now as a man who is forced by any undue restraint to enter into obligations of debt, give bonds, judgments, and such like acknowledgments, merely to obtain his liberty, shall plead that force in bar of any prosecution upon those obligations; and the law will allow the plea, especially where the debt also is just; so these men plead the breach made upon their inclinations to justify the breaches they make upon the lawful restraints both of human and divine laws, but with not the like justice in the plea.

It was a very unhappy dialogue between a young gentleman and a neighbouring clergyman, which I lately came to the knowledge of upon this very subject, and which being much to the same purpose as my present argument points out, may not be improper here.

The young gentleman had been dragged into such a marriage as I have just now mentioned, by the positive command and authority of a rich uncle, who had a great estate to give, and who had fixed upon his nephew as his next heir, being his brother's only son; it seems this uncle had declared he would make the young man his heir if he married to his mind.

The young gentleman was too wise not to oblige his uncle in everything he could; but in this of love he was very unkindly crossed by the old man, and indeed very unjustly too. The case, as I received the account, was as follows:

There was a young lady in the neighbourhood, who the old man had proposed to his nephew to marry; and her friends being content to treat about it, the terms of estate and settlements were agreed between them, and the writings were ordered to be drawn; for that lady had no inconsiderable fortune neither; in the mean time, the gentleman was admitted to wait upon the young lady, (and which does not often fall out, indeed, where the choice is made first by grandfathers and uncles, as was the case here) they agreed, liked one another mighty well, and it went on even to loving one another, and that violently. In the mean time something presented itself with more fortune, and the uncle takes upon him to change his mind, imposing the change too upon his nephew, and so breaks off the match, obliging him to go and wait upon a new mistress, and this without so much as a pretence of any other objection than that of a larger portion offering in another. The young gentleman was exceedingly disgusted at the proposal, and used all possible arguments with his uncle, and employed all his friends to persuade him to let the first match go forward, as it had been carried on such a length that he could not go off with honour or satisfaction to himself, the young lady and he being mutually engaged in affections as well as interests.

But the old man was inflexible and arbitrary, would not hear of any reasons, but would be obeyed; and as for affections, and such trifles as these, he slighted them to the lust degree, as things of no consequence at all in the case. Well, the young gentleman had no remedy; he was obliged, though with infinite reluctance, to abandon his mistress, a lady of merit and beauty, fortune and good breeding, and everything agreeable to him, and turn his eyes where his uncle directed, without any regard to all these, or to his own inclination. But he did not do this without acquainting the lady with the force that was put upon him, and letting her know his unhappy circumstances, offering to relinquish all the hopes of his uncle's fortune and favour, and take her at all hazards. But her friends would not agree to that; nor would she consent without her father, for then they might have been both beggars. This being the case, they parted, but with mutual assurances, however, of affection, and of a farther union, if the uncle could be brought to any compliance.

But this was not all, for now the uncle proposes the new match to him and sends him to wait upon the lady. He had, with great difficulty, complied with the old gentleman in the quitting the first lady, who was mistress of a thousand good qualities, as well as of a good fortune. But when he came to this new proposed creature, his stomach turned at the very sight of her. She was not deformed, indeed, but far from handsome; she had neither wit nor manners, good humour nor good breeding, beauty of body nor beauty of mind, in a word, she was every way disagreeable, only that she had a vast fortune.

However, the uncle, who was as arbitrary in the negative before, was as tyrannic in the affirmative now; and without troubling you with the many disputes between the uncle and the nephew upon that head; his entreaties, his humble petitions against tire match, declaring (as he himself said) to his uncle, that he had much rather be hanged; yet he obliged him to take her, and take her he did, being loath to lose an estate of near two thousand pounds a year, besides money, and, which was worse, having no other dependence in the world.

After he was married, that is to say coupled, for he often declared it was no lawful marriage, but a violence upon him, he made as bad a husband as any woman that knows she has nothing to be beloved for, and knows the man hates her when he takes her, could expect: for being thus tied to the sour apple-tree, married to his aversion, and separated from the object of his affection, he abandoned himself to company, to wine, to play, and at last to women, and all kinds of excess.

A pious and reverend minister, not of his parish, but of a neighbouring parish, and of which the gentleman was patron, frequently took opportunities to talk seriously to him upon the sad subject of his extravagant life, and with a Christian plainness, though with decency and respect too, especially as he was his patron, he often pressed him to take up, to reform, and, at least, to regulate his morals.

The gentleman took all his admonitions in good part; but told him, in so many words, it was his uncle had ruined him, soul and body; that he had a sober education, and was as promising a young fellow as any in the country, till his uncle ruined him, by forcing him to marry against his will; forcing him to abandon a lady that he loved, and whose very example, added to the influence she would have had upon his affections, was enough to have kept him within bounds all his days; and then he related all the circumstances of his match, as I have related them above.

In vain the good minister urged the Christian arguments of duty, the command of God, the scandal to his person, the ruin of his fortunes, and all the other arguments which religion and reason furnish so fully on such occasions. His answer was, "What can I do; I have no retreat, my family is a Bedlam; I have nobody there to receive me but a she-devil, always raving, and always quarrelling; that is neither quiet with master or servants, or even with herself; that has not one good feature to render her agreeable, or one good humour to render her tolerable? To be at home," says he, "is odious to me, but to dwell there is intolerable; the family is to me an hospital to look into, but would be a gaol to be confined to. Had I married the woman I loved," said he, "I had been as sober as I had been happy."

"But, sir," says the good man, "religion is not to depend upon relative circumstances, and we are not to serve God, as we have, or have not, a comfortable family."

"That is true," says the gentleman; "but who can be religious in hell? Who can think of God, or anything that is good, when he is bound to converse with everything that is bad?"

"Such things are very afflicting, indeed," says the grave divine; "but afflictions should rather guide us to heaven, than drive us from it. I have heard it spoken of in jest, "That a bad wife will lead a man to heaven."

"And I speak of it in earnest," says the gentleman, "that mine will drive me to the devil."

"O, sir," says the minister, being greatly troubled to hear him talk at that rate, "do not say so, I beseech you; you ought rather to consider it as an affliction, and humble your mind under it. But running out into crime is heaping up misery, and making bad worse."

"Why, what can I do, sir?" says he. Who can tie himself down to his mortal aversion ?"

"There are many Christian methods," says the minister, "which you may apply yourself to, sir, to make the burden lighter to you than it seems to be now."

"What are they," says the gentleman; "I do not see into it; it is impossible to help me, unless some miracle would intervene to deliver me."

"Yes, yes," says the heavenly counsellor, "there are ways: pray to God, as you do at church for your enemies, that he would turn her heart."

"Turn her!" says the gentleman. "Pray to God to give me courage to turn her out of doors, and take in that blessed creature I loved."

"That cannot be now, sir," said the minister, "you must not pray to God to allow you to sin against him."

"Why, then," says he, laughing, "shall I pray to God to send the devil for her."

The good man could hardly forbear smiling at the expression, but recovered himself, and said, "Your smile tells me, sir, you are speaking in jest; so, I suppose, you do not expect I should answer that question."

"I know not what to say, it is half in jest, half in earnest. If it should be so, I do not know how I should be hypocrite enough to cry for her."

"Sir," says the minister, "I beg of you let us talk of nothing profane; you know we are to pray for our worst enemies."

"Nay, she is my worst enemy, that is true," says he; "but I cannot promise to pray for her, and I am sure I can never forgive her."

"Why so, sir," says the divine, "you are strictly commanded to forgive."

"But not to forgive her," says he, "because she never says, 'I repent,' as the scripture says my brother must do, or else I am not bound to for give him."

"But, sir," says the divine, "you mistake the text; you are bound to forgive your enemies upon the penalty of not being forgiven, and in the command the condition of his repentance is not included."

"I do not know," says the gentleman, "your doctrine may be good, but I cannot promise that I can observe the rule; it is riot in the power of nature to bear the weight; it is unsufferable."

But, sir," says the minister, "there is no need to run out to excesses and immoralities, because of a disagreeable wife."

"Sir," says the gentleman, "there is need to go abroad, when a man cannot stay at home."

"I beg, sir," says the good reprover, "you will consider whether reforming yourself would not reform your wife."

"I do not know as to that," says the gentleman; "but what, if it should, I should be perhaps a little more quiet, but not at all more happy."

"How do you mean, sir?" says the minister, "I do not understand that."

"Why, what signifies reforming her," says the gentleman; "I hate her. If she was as religious as a nun, and as holy as an angel, it would be the same thing; she is my aversion."

"Now you have discovered the matter," says the minister, "and the truth is out; you must then change your work, and instead of praying for your wife, pray for yourself."

"What can I pray for," says the gentleman.

Says the good director, "pray to God to turn your aversions into a just affection to your wife."

"What," says the gentleman, "must I pray to God to make me love the devil."

"No, sir, but to make you love your wife; and if you loved her as you do her you lost, you would not see half so many faults in her as you do now."

"It is not to be done," says the gentleman, "it is against nature. Was ever any gentleman in love with a monster? I might pray to God, indeed, to metamorphose her, to turn the devil into an angel, deformity into beauty, black into white; but I have no rule set me to authorize such a petition."

"You are sadly exasperated, sir, against your wife," says the good man with a melancholy air. "Why! I have seen your lady; she is no monster, no deformed person, no blackamoor; it is very sad to hear you talk thus."

"No, no; though she is far from a beauty," says the gentleman, "yet she is no monster, I do not mean so; but she is a monster in her condition; she has a deformed mind, a black soul; there is nothing in her but what would oblige a man to hate her. "

"You do not love her," says the minister, "that is the greatest misfortune of it all."

"No, no, that is true, I do not love her to be sure," says the gentleman, "who could?"

"It is a dreadful thing," says the serious, good man, "you should marry a lady of fortune, and have such an aversion to her. You must of necessity, sir, repent of it, and reform it, or it may ruin you for ever."

"Nay, sir," says the gentleman, "I have repented enough, if that will help me; I have repented from the first moment. But as to reforming, I do not know what to say to that."

"Why, then," says the minister, "you have ruined yourself; God help you, and assist you to change your thoughts."

"No, no, sir," replies he, "it was my uncle ruined me; he knows it by this time; he murdered me; he suffers for it, I doubt not, before now. I am undone indeed, but I had no hand in it myself,"

"But, sir," says the minister, "be pleased to consider the manner of life you lead now. These things are sad, and I lament your condition heartily. But a bad wife is no excuse for a bad life."

"I tell you," says the gentleman, "there is no living a good life with her, so I should be damned if I stayed at home; for I must be always fighting and raging; I must live as some drunkards do, with their heads always hot. Who can stay at home with the devil?"

"But, sir," says the minister, "even living abroad, as you call it, you need not live an immoral life; there are gentlemen who have disagreeable families, that do not presently run out into excesses of vice and immorality."

"What," says the gentleman, "about women, you mean; I suppose that is all."

"But that is adultery, sir," says the minister, "which is a dreadful thing to be thought of."

"Why, as to that," says the gentleman, "my uncle must answer for it; he made me commit adultery; I could not help it."

"I do not understand how that can be, sir," says the good minister.

"Why, it. was all adultery; the very marriage was but a civil whoring; it was all adultery from the beginning; I was a married man before."

"Ay, sir," says the minister, "there must be more in that then, by a great deal, than ever I understood before."

"No, nothing more than you knew too; I say, it was a civil adultery, a matrimonial whoredom, to marry this woman, for I belonged to another woman, our souls were married; we were united by the strictest bonds of faith and honour; it was all breaking into the rules of justice, and the strictest obligations that it was possible to lay upon one another; it was all perjury and adultery of the worst sort. That old wretch, my uncle, made me an adulterer, and it is but the same sin continued in."

"You really fright me, sir," says the minister. "Why, this is a terrible case. How could your uncle force you? And why did not you declare at the book, as you ought to have done, that you knew a lawful impediment why you should not be joined together, for that you were firmly engaged to another, and the ether to you; I dare say no divine of our church would have married you."

"O, sir, there was a reason for that too," says the gentleman; "a reason that nobody could withstand; a reason enforced with an estate of two thousand pounds a-year; and the reason all in the power of a tyrant, deaf to all reasonings but that of money; in short, there is the reason that has undone me, and that made an adulterer of me. What signifies it what I do now?"

"It is a dismal case, sir," says the minister; "but I beseech you to consider the crime is not to be continued in and increased; and if you sinned in marrying, you have the less need to sin after marriage. All evil courses are to be repented of and broken off."

Here the minister went on serious, like himself, and made very earnest applications to him to change his course of life; but as that part is remote from our present purpose, I omit the repetition. Thus far is suited to the case before me, namely, the miserable consequences of marriages entered into contrary to pre-engaged affections; forced matches made by relations, for the mere sake of money, without regard to the obligations that may be subsisting at the same time, and without regard to the affection and inclination of the parties concerned. Who can call such matches lawful marriages? and what is the submitting to them less than a matrimonial whoredom?

As to the matrimony, that passes among princes, kings, emperors, and such like; as I said at first, they seem to me to be rather alliances and political agreements than marriages, in which the conjugal affection is not considered as a material, or not as the most material part. The love of princes is managed in a higher and superior way; it seems to be a consequence of that marriage, not a cause or reason of it; and, for ought I know, as it is not often so extraordinary as in private persons, so it is not so very often quite wanting; the dignity and quality of the person has a great influence upon their behaviour, and, if they really have not abundance of love, they often carry it as if they had an excess of good humour and complaisance, which makes up a something almost equivalent to love, and they are not so miserable in the deficiency as meaner people are.

However, they have their unhappinesses too, and as they are not without their uneasinesses, when the want of a mutual affection breaks out, and gets the mastery of their civilities, so, on the other hand, where an entire agreeing affection meets in persons of that high rank, how superior is their felicity to that of other people! How glorious is their peace! How beautiful the conjugal figure! How happy is the life of such a pair! So great an addition is a mutual affection to the happiness of life, even in persons of the highest rank, it adds a lustre to their glory, and is, notwithstanding all other good circumstances;, the brightest beam in all their illustrious enjoyments. Such was the life of two glorious sisters, the late Queen Mary and Queen Anne, of whom it is said, and I never heard it contradicted, that they were entire mistresses of their royal consorts' affections, queens of their hearts, enjoyed a complete conjugal felicity, and furnished back the same joy, making full returns in kind. Nor is it the least part of their fame. But then it may be added to both those happy couples, and which yet confirms what I am arguing upon, that they saw and loved before they married. They neither courted by pictures, or married by proxy; their princes came over hither to view, choose, and approve, and then married the persons they chose; they courted in person, and so, I think, all should do that expect to enjoy in person.

How happy is it, and how good has Providence been, in directing human affairs, that matrimonial love is a common blessing I that the most perfect enjoyment, and that which alone completes all enjoyments, and finishes the happiness of life, is an enclosure laid open by the merciful disposition of heaven, for all his creatures to share of; and the meanest honest man, who is not pressed with poverty, is oftentimes as completely happy, and always as capable of being so, as the greatest prince, I mean, as to his conjugal happiness.

Suitable society is a heavenly life. Take a view of family disorders; household strife and contention, and join but to these the matrimonial vices I speak of, and you make the house a hell, where rage and crime constitute the place, and where the flame burns without consuming, though not without increasing; and where the offences increase the punishment, and the punishment increases the offence. But we must proceed.

CHAPTER VIII.

Of unequal, unsuitable, and preposterous marriages, and the unhappy consequences of them. Of the effects they have upon the family conversation. How they occasion a matrimonial whoredom many ways. Also something of the marriage covenant and oath; and how all the breaches of it are a political and matrimonial whoredom, if not a literal whoredom; with several examples.

THE contract between a man and woman, which we call the marriage covenant, is mutual and reciprocal, the obligations on either side are equal, and the weight they carry with them is equally obligatory. What inequalities there are in the coming together, ought to be considered beforehand; and the want of considering those inequalities beforehand, is that of which I complain. These inequalities, in some measure, destroy the end of matrimony; and if they do not make it void, yet they rob the parties of the social comfort of a married life; and some indeed entirely destroy those comforts themselves.

If any man shall tell me those inequalities may be made up by prudent conduct on both sides; that no man must expect a life of perfect suit ability; that tempers, opinions, passions, desires, aversions, ends and aims, should all agree; and, above all, that even where they clash and disagree, yet there is no absolute necessity that they should interrupt the felicity of life, make matrimony a kind of damnation, the house a bedlam, and the conversation a hell, a state of strife, rage, fury, and eternal contention, all this I grant.

But if they shall add, that therefore these things are trifles, are of no moment; that they are not worth interrupting the other views of matrimony, and that they are to be referred to after discretion on both sides. He that shall talk thus seriously, all I can say to him is, I am sorry for his head. It is true, that prudence will go a great way towards reconciling unsuitable things; and Christians will learn by the Christian law to abate on both sides, forbearing one another in love.

Nay, I will go farther: continual jarrings in families sometimes find a time of truce, and the husband and wife, like two combatants, wearied with blows, lie still and take breath. But, alas! what is this? it is but to recover strength for a more furious rencounter; the lucid intervals being over, the fire rekindles; the passions break out and burn with the more force, the rage is redoubled; and we may say of such, as the scripture says in another case, "The last end of those families is worse than the beginning."

The inequalities then, and unsuitable things from whence these feuds fake life, and are kindled up to a name, are far from trifles; the fire of household strife burns to the lowest hell; it is an unquenchable flame; it is kindled in trifles; that may be, and is often true. But those trifles set the fire, and nothing but a wisdom, more than is generally to be found in human nature, can extinguish it.

These unsuitable things, then, ought with the utmost precaution to be guarded against, searched for, shunned and avoided, in our first thoughts about matrimony, especially if we have any views of felicity in a married state. For here all future unhappinesses of married mortals begin.

Take it matrimonially; take it as it is, a partnership, for matrimony itself is but a partnership; though it is not a partnership in trade, it is what is ten thousand times more solemn; it is a partnership in life, a partnership of souls; they are embarked in the same ship, they go the same voyage, and, give me leave to say, they swim they sink, they are happy, they are miserable they are poor, they are rich, just as they agree or not agree, love or hate, are united or no united; they go on hand in hand, and have but one fate; they rise and fall, are blessed or cursed nay, I believe I might add (with but few exceptions), they are saved or damned together.

Nor let this be censured for such an extravagant expression as it may seem at first sight; for if it be a necessary consequence of family disorders that the passions are in a general disorder on both sides, by mutual provocations (and how is it possible to be otherwise?) how then can it be, but that they must sin together, must provoke one another to all those offences which naturally attend an enraged mind, an envenomed spirit and a soul embittered by outrageous usage?

Hence proceed vile and provoking words, bitter and cutting reproaches, undue and indecent reflections, horrid wishes, imprecations, railing and cursing; till, in short, they push one another on to the gates of hell, and need no devil but their own ungoverned rage to thrust them in.

All this, and more, if more can be thought of is the product of inequalities in matrimony unsuitable matches, a joining things together that will not, and cannot join; as I said, they may be tied together, but cannot be joined, joined but cannot be united. Such marriages are to me little less than a sentence of condemnation to a perpetual state of misery. The man or woman thus married is sentenced, as the Romans sentenced Nero to die, more majorum, that was, to have his head put into a collar of iron, or kind of pillory, and to be scourged to death; they are condemned to be tied together, and to be worried to death.

To marry two persons together that are of contrary dispositions, unsuitable tempers, disproportioned years, and the like, is like the way of punishing malefactors in Persia, viz. tying the living body to a dead corpse, till the rotting carcass poisoned the living, and then they rotted together.

Let those, then, that esteem those inequalities to be trifles, and that think the hazard nothing but what may be ventured upon, let them, I say, rush on like the horse into the battle; but let remember it is with Solomon's fool, tanquam boves, like an ox to the slaughter, and knows not that it is for his life.

Household strife is a terrestrial hell, at least it is an emblem of real hell; 'tis a life of torment, and without redemption. Matrimony is an irreversible decree; 'tis a grave from whence there is no return; nothing but the King of Terrors can open the gaol, and it is then but an even lay between the man and his wife who goes out first; and if, when the gaoler comes, the devil comes with him, 'tis but one to one who he calls for; nay, if they have lived the life I speak of, as is very probable, they may even do what they never did, that is to say, agree for a moment, and go together.

What, then, can the man or woman be said to be doing that ventures upon matrimony without studiously considering and consulting the suit abilities that offer in the case, without sitting down and judging sedately, at least from what is apparent, what may probably be the case afterwards. If they are sensible of their own infirmities, let them calculate for themselves, as doubtless any man or woman might do, what will be their case. As every one that looks into his own conscience may, if he will be impartial to himself, make a judgment of his eternal state, so every one that will look into their own temper, and impartially compare it with the circumstances and disposition of the the person they are to be married to, may make a tolerable judgment of what their condition will be after marriage; and accordingly they may and ought to venture, or not to venture. A venture it is at best, because, after you have done your utmost, you may be mistaken, may be deceived; and after the utmost caution, some unsuitable things must be expected; you must expect difficulties, and to have many things to struggle with, an exercise for all your virtue, all your self-denial, all your temper: as long as flesh and blood is a composition of contraries and inconsistent humours, there will be something always left to try your patience, to try your Christianity, and which, being considered, makes it the more needful to use the utmost precaution in the choice.

I am not going to give directions here how to search into these unsuitable things, how to judge of them, and how to distinguish tempers; that would be a work too voluminous for this place; but one general caution may, for aught I know, if well followed, be as good as a hundred sheets of paper filled with words of less signification. The caution is short, and easy to be understood; whether it be easy to be put in practice or no, that you must judge from yourselves. It is, in few words, this: -- Study well your own temper first.

How shall any man or woman know whether the temper of the woman or man they are about to marry be suitable to them, and may concur to their future felicity, if they do not first know their own? I remember a gentleman of quality and fortune who courted a lady a long while, and their fortunes and all other circumstances agreeing, they were at last married. While the matrimony was depending, he happened to be talking with another gentleman, who was his intimate, and who knew the lady; and he was congratulating himself, if I may be allowed such an expression, upon the good prospect of his affairs, and the felicity which he promised himself in his match, the fortune, the wit, the beauty, the good humour of the lady he was courting; to all which the other gentleman gave the assent of his own opinion from a long acquaintance in the lady's family, and with her person.

"But, after all," says the gentleman who courted this lady, "there is one main thing remains which I cannot come at, and upon which almost all the rest depends."

"What can that be?" says the other gentleman; "I think there is nothing in the lady but what may make any gentleman happy."

"Why," says the first gentleman, "I cannot learn anything of her temper."

"O," says the other, "she is of a very good temper."

"Ay," says the first, "when she is pleased; so, they say, is somebody else; but I want to see her angry. Pray, did you ever see her angry ?"

"Yes, I have seen her angry too," says his friend.

"Well, and how was she then?" says he. "Is she a furious little devil when she is provoked?"

"Nay," says his friend, "that is according as the provocation is. Everybody is subject to provocation, and all people have passions."

"Ay," says the courting gentleman, " but is she not apt to be angry, soon provoked, -- a little pot soon hot?"

"Why," says his friend, "if she were, she is soon cold again, that I can assure you, and the good humour returns again immediately."

"Well," says the first with a sigh, "pray God she be not a passionate creature, for if she is, we shall be the unhappiest couple that ever came together."

"Why so?" says his friend.

"Why," says the first gentleman, "because I know my own temper too."

"Your own temper," says his friend; "why, what is your own temper? I see nothing in your temper but what the lady may be very happy in."

"It may be you do not," says the gentleman; "but I do; I tell you I am a passionate, fiery dog, and cannot help it; a word awry, the least unkind or provoking, sets me all in a flame immediately; like the linestock to the cannon, I fire off as soon as I am touched, and make a devilish noise."

"You jest with yourself," says his friend; "but I do not take you to be so bad as you represent yourself."

"That is because you do not know me so well as I know myself," says the gentleman.

"Well, well," says his friend, "if you are hot together, you will cool together."

"That is small satisfaction to me," says the gentleman, "because I cannot promise it of my side."

"But I will promise you on her side," says his friend, "that one kind word will cool her again immediately, and then she is all goodness and sweetness in a moment."

"Ay, so a word or two will cool me," says the gentleman; "but who will yield to give the cooling word first? there's the difficulty."

"Why, you must," says his friend, "it is your place; it is the man's place, you know, always to submit to his wife."

"I cannot answer for myself," says he; "I know I am apt to be very hot."

"And what will you do, then?" says his friend; "you should have considered this before."

"Nay," says he, "I must venture now, it is too late to go back."

So, upon the whole, they did venture, and two pieces of wild-fire they were; and in a very few months after their marriage, the effects of it appeared in a manner hardly fit to be repeated; and all this only because, when it was consulted and discoursed about, it was too late to go back; so that, in a word, the gentleman had as good not have considered it at all, for considering after it is done is no considering.

It is remarkable, however, in the discourse above, that the gentleman's concern about the temper of the lady he was going to marry, was occasioned chiefly from a conscious knowledge of his own, and this was the reason of my telling his story. For if we would make a right judgment of our own disposition first, we should the sooner see whether we should be suitably matched to the person proposed; it is not, indeed, the easiest thing in the world to know the humour and disposition of one another, especially not in a month or two, of a courting conversation; yet as all judgment of that kind should take its rise from the knowledge of our own disposition first, it becomes every one to study well their own temper, and to learn to judge impartially of themselves, which, by the way, is not the easiest thing in the world to do.

You may know whether you are of a complying, yielding, abating temper or no; whether you can bear provocations, and make no return till the heat is over, and then admonish calmly; or whether you are full of resentment, furious, apt to take fire, and long in quenching; whether you are rough or smooth, tender or harsh; in a word, whether your temper is fit for another to bear, or able to bear with another as unfit to be borne with as your own. From our own tempers, thus impartially judged of, we might very often I do not say always determine and choose for ourselves with success.

But now, to bring this down to the case before me. What must we say of that matrimony which is concluded in spite of all the knowledge and discovery, either of the other person's temper or of our own? That is carried on by appetite, by the gust of inclination, by a view of the outside only, without consulting anything but the face, without inquiring into the qualifications, the temper, the humour, the capacities, or any of the decorations of the mind. What is all this but a mere vitiated desire, a corruption, and, I may say, a depravity of the judgment, without sense of virtue or value for the accomplishments of the soul? In a word, what is it but a matrimonial whoredom?

And what are the consequences? And how do these consequences prove the thing? namely, that when the corrupted gust is satiated, when the first heats are over, and souls begin to converse together, then they begin to repent and repine; they see an end of their happiness just where other people find the beginning of theirs. In a word, the man and the woman remains, but the husband and wife are lost; the conjunction holds, but the union is lost; the marriage is fixed and fast, but the matrimony is gone; in a word, here is the whoredom without the matrimony, the vicious part without the virtuous, the humid without the sublime; there is the married couple without their souls; their affections are no more united than the poles, and like the living and the dead body I mentioned just now, they are only bound to one another, that at last they may rot together.

Horrid matrimony! horrid discording tempers, raging passions, outrageous words, hot, fiery breakings out of ill-natured, bitter, and scandalous reflections; these sum up the family conversation between them; these form the felicity that they have to expect; these are the productions of hot-headed, unsuitable wedlock, of marrying without thought, taking a woman purely for a woman, or a man merely to have a man; in a word, such marrying is, in my sense, no better or worse than a matrimonial whoredom.

Now, as I said in the beginning of this chapter, the obligations of the marriage covenant or vow are mutual and reciprocal: the band is equal, the burthen is equally divided. And this is it that makes the discording tempers, the unsuitable circumstances of which I am now entering upon the particulars of, so fatal. Marriage is a yoke, so it is very well represented, in which the creatures yoked are to draw together. If they are unequally yoked, what is the consequence? The plough goes not forward, the weak horse draws all the load, and is oppressed, and at length both sink together; the family is confused, the affairs of it are at a stand, the family peace is destroyed, the interest of it neglected, and, in a word, all goes wrong, till at last ruin breaks in, and both the unhappy creatures are lost and destroyed together.

This being the case, the inequalities and unsuitables of matrimony are far from being trifles, that are to be disregarded and ventured on, unless by such people to whom it is indifferent, whether they live happy or no, and that can be as happy with an unsuitable match as with a suitable one. I know there are such kinds of people in the world, whose very souls are indolent and asleep; who receive no impressions of grief or joy, pain or pleasure, and whose minds are, as it were, perfectly passive in life, unconcerned in whatever happens to them; that neither look before them or behind them, one way or the other, but rise in the morning to go to bed at night, rise up on purpose to sit down again, and sit down only to rise up. These are indeed fit to marry in this manner; they are the family of the easy ones, and to them it is all one to be happy or unhappy, blessed or unblessed, quiet or unquiet. Frowns are all one to them as smiles, and bad words as good; they neither taste the sour or the sweet; the music of the viol, or the scraping of a kettle, is alike to them, and they distinguish not between good and evil. All I can say to such is only this, that at present I am not talking of them, or to them; I am rather directing my speech to the rational part of mankind, who aim at a happiness in this life, and understand what it means; who desire to live like men and like Christians, and know how to do so; and for this very reason would match themselves with such, and such only, as have the like just notions, and understand what a life of enjoyment means, as well as themselves.

To these, I say again, that all inequalities in a state of marriage are as so many wounds in the body, which, if left to nature, will fester and in flame, and at length mortify and be fatal; at best they require a great deal of surgery, plaistering, and, perhaps, opening and incision, to cure and restore them; but are abundantly better and easier prevented than cured, be the skill ever so great. In short, all inequalities are diseases in marriage, and all diseases are best cured by anticipation; for, as the learned say, errors in the first concoction are not remedied in the second; but the ill digesture affects all the natural operations, till at last it reaches the blood and animal spirits, and there contracts capital diseases.

To conclude. Let all those that expect felicity in the married life, that have the least view beyond the sensuality of the brutes, and look on anything in marriage beyond the bridal bed, I say, let them study to match with proper and equal circumstances with persons as near as possible suitable to themselves, and that in all the particulars of which I shall give the detail in the next chapter. Whether my advice be of weight or not, I refer to what follows.

I am told, in the very moment of writing this head, that to talk of inequalities and unsuitable things in marrying, is too general; that it is an amusement only, and gives no light into my meaning. A young man marries a wife, his thoughts are sure to be upon having a suitable bedfellow, a pleasant, agreeable, handsome woman to divert himself, and to sport with. What, do we tell him of inequalities and unsuitableness? he knows nothing of it. I must explain myself.

In obedience to the ignorance of the objector, and supposing it the sense of the times, I shall explain myself accordingly. And first, I grant that young gentlemen now act just as the objection is stated; they marry, get a fortune and a bedfellow, and that is all they trouble themselves about. The case is excellently well expressed by my Lord Rochester:--

"With an estate, no wit, and a young wife,
The solid comforts of a coxcomb's life."

Roch. Art. to Clo.

I grant, I say, that this is much of the case before me; and this is that makes so much matrimonial whoredom in the world. This is the very essence of the crime I am reproving, namely, that the married people look to the coxcomb's comforts, not to the real comforts of a married life; to the enjoyments of the night, not the enjoyments of the day; to what's present, not what's to come; and while they do so, no wonder we have such dreadful family doings as we have in the world. Such strife, such breaches, such family wickedness! While the end for which they marry, and that kind of vicious love which brought them together lasts, they run out in their wicked midnight excesses one way, and when that love is cooled, the vicious flame quenched, the fire extinguished there being no solid affection founded upon virtue and true merit they run out into their daylight excesses another way; I mean, jarring, scandalous contention, and discord. Thus the first part of life is matrimonial whoredom, and the last part matrimonial madness.

By all this, I think, 'tis apparent that, next to virtue and religion, suitability is the only solid foundation on which the conjugal felicity is grounded; and unsuitable matches ought to be avoided with our utmost care. And that I may explain myself at large, and because these unsuitable things are too many, and have too great obstructions attending them to be contained in a general definition, and more than at first sight seems probable, take them in the following particulars, all of them really inconsistent with the felicity of marriage:--

1. Unsuitable years.
2. Unsuitable in quality.
3. Unsuitable estates.
4. Unsuitable tempers.
5. Unsuitable principles of religion.

Of all these I should speak distinctly, and employ distant chapters upon some of them; nor would it be remote to the design of this work to do so upon all of them; but I study brevity, and I am very far from having a barren subject before me; I have rather more matter than can be brought into the compass I have prescribed to myself; yet things must be explained as I go, and especially because they all tend to make the married life unhappy, though they may not be all equally fatal. I will run them over therefore, in a summary way, for the present; the persons guilty will have room enough to enlarge in their own reflections separately, and as it suits their case; for the scandalous inequalities of such marriages as I aim at are too many; no man will say there is a want of examples.

Nor are the inequalities of matching, as they are now managed, especially by the ladies, of so light a consequence, and so insignificant as some would make them; and let but the ladies reflect a little upon the melancholy circumstances of some of their sex, who, warmed thus by the secret heats of nature, which they have afterwards been sensible of, they have thrown themselves away in the scandalous manner I have mentioned, with what self-reproaches have they loaded themselves, when they have seen themselves in the arms of scoundrels and brutes, who, at other times, they would have loathed the thoughts of, and who they live to abhor with as complete an aversion, after these unhappy heats are cooled, as ever they did before. But of this in its place.

CHAPTER IX.

Of marrying at unsuitable years.

IT is true that the laws of matrimony have not prescribed us to years, except in the case of infancy and childhood, and the reasons for that are obvious; but, as is mentioned before, where the laws are silent, there the general rules of reason and religion take place, and are laws to Christians and to men of reason, as is the case of our limitations in meats and drinks. We are not limited or directed to what, when, or how much we shall eat or drink; but all excesses in either are sinful, and so all scandalous and indecent things among Christians are sinful and unlawful; and the rules of decency and sobriety have certainly the force of laws to those who profess themselves Christians, as much as if they were expressly mentioned in the decalogue itself.

Now to judge of decency with respect to the disparity of years in persons marrying, I think we need go no farther than to bring it down to the original word, modesty, of which I took notice in the introduction; and, I think, this may pass for a maxim, that what cannot be modest is not decent; or, if you will, transpose the particles is and can, and read it thus: that what is not modest cannot be decent. If, then, Christians are to do things of good report, certainly things not decent and not modest are forbidden them. How the practice of our modern Christians in this particular article are either modest, decent, or of good report, inquire within, and you shall know farther.

It is the opinion of some, that after there is no more room to expect children, it is not lawful to marry. Nor are the people who are of this opinion the looser or weaker part of mankind; but the serious, solid, and religious, us also persons of judgment and learning, and they ground it upon this very text Phil, iv, 8. "of good report;" and upon comparing this with what is expressly mentioned in the office of matrimony, namely, that the principal end of matrimony, as an ordinance or institution of God, is for the lawful procreation of children. "Now to what end then," say they, "is matrimony, when the person, that is, the woman in particular, is past child-bearing? All the rest can be nothing but what is not fit to name. The office of matrimony, indeed, adds, that another reason of matrimony is to prevent fornication." Remed. Amoris.

Now, if the married couple are past children, one would think, too, it should be time for them to quit the other plea; and then let them tell us, if they can without blushes, whether they have any plea for matrimony, that does not come within my title, viz. conjugal lewdness, or matrimonial whoredom? There are many scandalous things that might be said upon this subject, but I turn it all another way, and had rather mention it by way of question; let the parties answer it if they can, without breach of decency. I dare say they will find it difficult; and yet there may be more modesty in the answer than there is in the thing itself too.

Suppose the lady to be about five-and-fifty; and the question is first put to her, whether she has any room to expect children, or whether she thinks it possible, in the ordinary usage or course of nature, that she should have any children? And this lady marries, whether a younger person than herself or not, though that is ordinarily the case; but suppose, for the present, not a young man, because I shall speak of that part by itself. Now what can be a lawful or modest reason for this matrimony? or if we should say to this lady, Pray, madam, why did you marry? what could she say.

To say she married in hopes of children, that could not be; it is foreclosed in the beginning of the question.

To say she married for one to look after her affairs, that could not be; that is foreclosed too, by supposing her to be in good circumstances, and to have her estate all settled and firm.

To say she does it to avoid fornication, modesty, if she is mistress of any, will forbid her talking in that manner.

She has, indeed, nothing to say, but to blush and look down; to acknowledge that she did it; to gratify (as the poet expresses it modestly) a I frailer part; in short, she ought to say that she married merely to lie with a man. And is not this matrimonial whoredom? If not, what, then, must it be called, and by what words, that will not be criminal in themselves, can we express it?

Suppose the lady to have no occasion to better her fortune, her circumstances being very good, and, indeed, in such cases they seldom better their fortunes, but worst them.

Suppose her to have no want of a steward or I manager, her estate being a jointure or fee-farm rent, paid her quarterly, or interests of stocks, or any other certainty that takes those excuses from her.

Suppose her to have no occasion for advancing her equipages or retinue, or her splendid way of living; for these, and such as these, are usually made excuses for all those scandalous things, and much dirty pains are taken by the guilty ladies to cover the action from the just reflections which the world casts upon them. But when they are examined to the bottom, it is evident, that, as the prophet Isaiah says, "the covering is too narrow, and the nakedness will appear."

But to come closer to the case. Here is a lady of fifty or sixty years of age; she has had children in her younger years, but has left bearing for ten or twenty years, and is past not the probability only, but even the possibility, according to nature, of hearing any more. But this woman casting her vitiated eyes upon a young fellow of twenty-five or thirty years old, perhaps her servant, her book-keeper, or her late husband's steward, or some meaner person, she presently takes care to let him know that he may be admitted, if he will push at it. The young fellow takes the occasion, and, making his easy interest, she marries him.

If any man is displeased at my calling this by the name of matrimonial whoredom, let him find a better name for it if he can, and tell me what I shall call it that is suitable to the thing itself. If it not lewd and scandalous, nay, open declared, lewdness, what else must it be? what else can it be? I remember the excuse a certain ancient lady gave for such a marriage had more craft in it, though perhaps more truth too, considering it allegorically, than most of the lame extenuations I generally meet with.

"Dear madam," says a neighbouring gentle woman, her relation, to her, "I hear your lady ship is resolved to marry; I cannot say I believed it, for, indeed, I did not"

"Why, cousin." says the lady, for such she was, "why should you not believe it?"

"Madam," says she, "because, for your own sake, I would not have it be true."

"Why, cousin," says the lady, why would yon not have it be true ?"

"Oh, madam," says the cousin, "you live so purely; to be so easy, so happy, so free as you are, methinks you cannot think of coming into fetters again."

But, cousin," says the lady, "I am not so easy as you think I am."

"Dear madam," says the cousin, "what can be more happy! Why, you have nothing to trouble you, and nobody to control you."

"Well, cousin," says the lady, "no more I will not, if I marry; for I am resolved to take a young man, that has his dependence upon me, and I am sure to preserve my authority with him."

"Oh, madam," says the cousin, "pray God you don't find yourself mistaken."

"How can I be mistaken, cousin?" says the lady; "why, I take him with nothing; I shall make a gentleman of him."

"Ay, madam, though you do so," says the cousin, "I have known so many underling fellows turn tyrants, and domineer and insult their benefactresses, that I can never think of anything but of being betrayed and ill-treated when I hear of such matches."

"What," says the lady, "when one raises them from a beggar, cousin."

"Tis all one, madam," says the cousin; "when once they get to bed to their mistresses, they never know themselves after it; they know no benefactors."

"Well, I must venture it, I think; why, I can't live thus," says the lady.

"Live thus, madam!" says the cousin; "why, don't you live as happy as a queen?"

"Alas! cousin, you don't know my case," says the lady; "I am frightened to death."

"Frightened, madam, with what?" says the cousin.

"I don't know what," says the lady; "'tis the devil, I think; ever since Sir William died almost, I have been disturbed in my sleep, either with apparitions or dreams, I know not which. They haunt me to death almost."

"Why, madam," says the cousin, "I hope Sir William don't walk."

"No, I think not; but I think I see him every now and then," says the lady, "and sometime another shape; 'tis Sir William, I think, in another dress."

"What does he say to your ladyship? Does he offer to speak?" says the cousin.

"No," says the lady, "Sir William did not but the other appearance spoke to me, and frightened me to death: why, he asked me to let him come to bed to me; and I thought he offered to open the bed, which awoke me, and was even dead with the fright."

"Oh, madam," says the cousin, "then it was but a dream, it seems; it was not the devil."

"No, it was a dream; but it was the devil, to be sure," says the lady, "for all that."

"Well, but, madam," says the cousin, "if it was the devil, what will a husband signify?"

"Why," says the lady, "I can't bear to be alone in the night, and be thus terrified."

"Why, madam," says the cousin, "will a bus band, and such a one as you propose, be able to drive the devil away? I suppose your woman lies with you; she is as able as he for such a thing; that is to say, she will be with you, and call for help, if need be; and he can do no more."

"I do not know what to do, cousin, not I," says the lady; "but I think I must have him; my mind is so distracted I shall never be easy."

"Nay, madam," says the cousin, "then it is that makes you dream so, it may be. "

"No, no, cousin," says the lady; "don't have such thoughts on me, pray."

Upon the whole, her cousin found what devil it was haunted her ladyship; so she confessed, at last, that the lady had good reasons for marrying; but then she argued warmly against her taking the young fellow, and after reckoning up great many gentlemen in the neighbourhood, he pressed her earnestly not to marry below herself.

"Why, madam," says the cousin, "a gentleman will always be a gentleman, and will treat you as you deserve, like a lady, and like a person of distinction; but a scoundrel knows not how to use a lady well when he has her."

"Well, but, cousin, who would you lay out for me, then?" says the lady.

"Why, madam," says the cousin, "there's your neighbour, Sir Adam ------."

"Fie, cousin," says the lady, "how can you talk so? Why, he's an old man; I'll never take a man older than myself."

"Why, madam," says the cousin, "when we are young we always say the man should be at least ten years older than the woman."

"Ay, then; then was then, but now's now, cousin. Why, sure, you don't think ------? What should I do with an old man almost seventy?"

"Nay, madam," says the cousin, "I don't know what your ladyship should take any man, old or young, for: I think you are perfectly happy as you are; but if you don't like him there's Sir John ------; he is younger than your ladyship by ten years.

"I wonder at you, cousin," says the lady; "why, he is a sickly, decaying gentleman; he is troubled with I know not how many distempers."

"No distemper, madam," says the cousin, "but the gout."

"Well, the gout," says the lady, "that's enough; I have no mind to be a nurse, I assure you."

"Well, madam, and will your ladyship have this young fellow then? I profess it is scandalous."

"Why, I think I must, cousin: he is a handsome, jolly, brisk fellow," says my lady; "I cannot say but I like him."

"Nay, if you want a brisk young fellow," says the cousin.

"I don't say I want him for that; but what would you have me take, a skeleton?"

There is a long part of the dialogue still behind, in which the old lady confessed some things in confidence to her cousin, which, though extraordinarily well to my purpose, will not so well bear reading, and therefore I omit them. But, in a word, the lady took this young fellow, and she was as unhappy with him as could be imagined. She settled two hundred pounds a year upon him for his life; and, in a word, he broke her heart; and he lived upon it afterwards, till he anticipated the income of it, sold his life in it, spent the money, and died in gaol; all which he richly deserved, for he was a brute to her, however brutal her marrying of him was.

Now, what, was all this but matrimonial whoredom? She married him for nothing more or less but the mere thing called a bedfellow; and he took her to be her servant, to give it no worse a name, and to have a settlement of two hundred pounds a year for his pains.

But we have grosser examples than this, and that nearer our own days, and within our own knowledge. A certain lady, and of a great for tune too, at the age of sixty-four, not many days ago took into her service, as I may very justly call it, a young clergyman of four-and-twenty, a handsome, jolly gentleman, who might have had wives enough, and suitable to himself, and such as might have made him happy, having a tolerable benefice, which he lived comfortably upon.

But avarice, and the view of enjoying seven hundred pounds a year, a coach and four, with all the addenda that a man of sense knew well how to comfort himself with, prevailed with him to tie himself down to the sour apple tree, and he submits to the servile drudgery, and marries her.

And here the consequence fell hard on the man's side. First, she grew insufferably covetous, and so narrow, that, keeping her revenue in her own hands, she hardly allowed him expenses for his daily subsistence. In the next place, she was jealous of him to a kind of madness and distraction; and, in a word, he was forced to threaten to leave her, and turn her off again, before he could obtain any tolerable usage.

Now what did this lady marry for? What pretence could she possibly make for it but this matrimonial whoredom that I speak of? It is hardly possible to assign any other reason, at least, that will support itself, or that any one can defend. She lived perfectly easy, had her friends about her, the estate was in her own hand, and she wanted no help to look after her rents, for it is apparent, after her marriage, she did it without him.

In short, it is evident the end of that scandalous match was visible to the world; there could not be one modest word said for it; at least, that could carry any weight in it; and the town have used her accordingly, for she is the reproach of all company, the scorn and scandal of her sex, the talk of all the tea-tables and assemblies round about; the poor drudge who she has taken into pay is pitied by everybody, and the town where he lives, it is doubted, will make a bonfire when she is pleased to walk off, and congratulate him by all the methods suitable to the sense of his deliverance.

When an old man of seventy or eighty marries a young girl of twenty, we have generally some game among the common people about it. But here there may not be so much room for scandal, because it has often happened that men have had children at a very great age, and there may be extraordinary reasons for them to desire children, as particularly for the enjoying estates to which they have no heirs. But be the reasons what they will, the thing is unquestioned because lawful, and the having children is possible; so that the great end and reason of matrimony are not destroyed.

But what shall we say when two ancient people, the woman past children and the man also, what do these join together for? And which of the ends of matrimony are to be answered in their conjunctions? I observe the world are generally reconciled to those matches because of the parity of circumstances, and they ordinarily express themselves thus: Well, let them marry, there's no great disproportion in their age; ay, ay, why should they not marry? they are very well matched; the man is almost threescore, and the woman is not much less; they'll do very well together; so there is little or no scandal raised here, I mean in the mouths of the common censurers of such things.

But I differ from the common opinion here exceedingly; and I must say, that in my opinion, this is as much, of more, a matrimonial whoredom than the other. The reason is the same; the occasion of matrimony is the same, with this difference notwithstanding, and to the disadvantage of the latter case; for that, in the first case, the lewd part lay wholly upon the woman, here it lies upon them both: where the old lady married the young man, the matrimonial whoredom could lie only on her side; but here the equality of years makes an equality of guilt; there was a single shame, here a double; and I am much mistaken, if two being guilty makes the offence less than one.

What can two people at those years say for I marrying, seeing they know they can have no children? It must be for the frailer part, which it is not my business to name; and 'tis only contrived in a manner less exposed to the common scandal of the times; the woman has her wanton ends answered, without the reproach of taking a young fellow to bed to her, on the account mentioned before, and only is content to sleep with an older bedfellow to avoid the scandal.

But there is a worse case in this scandalous matrimony yet behind, and this is on the man's part; a flagrant example of which take as follows: A------ B------, a grave citizen, and in the flourishing part of his years, though not in his prime, not a youth, being about forty, buries his wife; he has three or four children by his former lady, and cares not to have the charge of any more, or, to use his words, would not wrong his children, but has a kind of an occasion, which shall be nameless, and he must marry.

To answer both these ends, and to join the wise and the wicked together, he will, in the abundance of his prudentials, take a wife that shall be sure to be passed children; so gratifying the beast and the Christian both at once. Upon this, he singles out a grave motherly widow, who he took to be about five-and-fifty, and indeed, by her face, she seemed to be no less.

The lady had as much occasion for a husband as Mr B------ had for a wife; whether it was upon the same motive, history is silent in that part, and so am I; but, it seems, she had been given to understand what foot it was Mr B------ married upon; and not being willing to disappoint him, or rather not willing to lose him, she called herself an old woman, and her beauty concurring, admitted what few widows are pleased to stoop to, viz. that she was, as above, near five-and-fifty.

Being thus happily married, and Mr B------ wrapt up in his enjoyments, lo, to his great disappointment, the lady proves with child, and, in the due course of time, brings him twins, a fine boy and girl; and after all this, as I say, in the due course of time, three more.

This unlooked-for, undesired fruitfulness, moves him to inquire a little farther; and searching the register at the birth of his twins, he finds, to his surprise, that truly fame, and a coarse countenance, had wronged his wife about ten years, and that, instead of being five-and-fifty, she was not much above four-and-forty.

Under this disappointment, his continence betrayed the occasion of his marriage; for, as above, he had no less than five children by her, which, her fortune being not extraordinary, ruined the fortunes of his first children, who he pretended to have so much concern for. This was the end of matrimonial whoring with Mr B------. And now he is ashamed to talk publicly of his own shame, as well the reasons of his marriage as the management of it, in which he has indeed this advantage of the satyr, that his discoveries are too gross to be described, as his language is to be repeated; so he must pass unreproved for the reasons given in a former page.

I meet with so many of these sorts of lewd marriages that I can hardly refrain giving a list of them, saving that they come so near home, and the persons will so necessarily be pointed out by the descriptions, that I am loath to draw pictures that everybody must know. But something must be said to show the variety.

There lived an eminent city gentleman, if that language may be allowed to be good in heraldry, not a mile from St Mary A------, who, having lost a good wife, went a fortune-hunting for another; but openly declared he must have an additional qualification too, viz. she must be past children.

N.B. -- He had a house full of children already, and but a moderate fortune; so he pretended to marry again to better the fortunes of his children.

An intimate grave friend of his, and a real friend to his fame, as well as to his family, took the freedom to expostulate upon this subject with him very freely, and it occasioned the following short discourse, according to the old English custom, which foreigners laugh at us for, and which we have little to say, for their salutes were Jack and Tom, though men in years and men of figure, one almost an alderman.

Says Tom, his grave friend, to Jack, "Prithee, Jack, what's all this I hear of you? Why, you make all your friends blush for you.

Jack. Blush for me! What do you mean? I don't blush for myself, what need they blush for me?

Tom. Why, you run to every hole and corner, to every church and meeting-house, ball, and assembly, a wife-hunting, and, as they say, a fortune-hunting too; that's worse.

Jack. Nay, that's false too; I have indeed talked of marrying, but not like that neither.

Tom. But what need you talk so much of it? There are women enough; 'tis but ask and have, pick and choose; the market's on our side; you know the ladies have the worst of it. You may have a wife anywhere.

Jack. I don't find it so, I assure you.

Tom. Why, so it should seem; but how can that be, Jack? A man in your circumstances can't want a wife.

Jack. Not such good circumstances neither. Han't I got a house full of children?

Tom. Well, and what then? And an't you reckoned a ten thousand pound man, an alderman's fellow?

Jack. Ay, but I am, perhaps, a little too nice in choosing too: I'm not so easily pleased, it may be, as you imagine.

Tom. What, you want another young wife, as pretty and as pleasant as that you lost. One would think you should be past that, Jack. Why, you are turned of forty.

Jack. Only that you happen to be quite mistaken, and that I look just the contrary way.

Tom. What do you mean by that? Explain yourself; what is it you drive at?

Jack. Why, to be plain with you, the case is this: money I would have, that's the first thing; but then I have children enough.

Tom. What! grown miser already. What! would you marry an old ugly overgrown widow of seventy, only for her money? Han't you money enough?

Jack. No, no. Look ye, Tom, I an't the man the world takes me for; I am well enough, but I am far from rich; and I have seven children, you know; and that's enough to make a rich man die poor.

Tom. Don't halt before you're lame; you are worth ten thousand pounds at least; everybody knows that; and a thriving man too.

Jack. No, no, I an't so rich; but if I was, what's that to be divided into seven parts? And what must the eldest son do? Must he have nothing more than the youngest sister? You know I'm a freeman.

Tom. Well, you want a wife with a fortune, that her money may go to your children. What old fool must that be?

Jack. Well, that is the fool I want; however, Tom, you know I am a father.

Tom. But what if she should have more children of her own, Jack? What then?

Jack. No, no, ware hawk; that is my business; I will take care of that.

Tom. What! will you have a wife past children? Is that it?

Jack. Yes, yes, that is it, indeed; but I would not have a very old one neither.

Tom. I do not think that is a lawful marriage, Jack.

Jack. Why so, pray?

Tom. Why, where do you read that any of the ends and reasons of matrimony is to pick out a wife only for her money? That is not taking a wife, Jack, it is matrimonial plunder 'tis robbing a woman, only within the pale of the church.

Jack. Well, but to tell you the truth, Tom, I care not a farthing whether I have much money with her or no, if I like the woman.

Tom. Well, now you speak bravely and gallantly; I like that. But hark ye, Jack, what is become of the story of the seven poor children? And where is the father you talked of?

Jack. Why, yes, I am the father still, for I stick by the point. I am resolved to have no more children.

Tom. So you will have the old hag without the money? nay, that is worse than all the rest. What! an old woman and no money! That is the devil, Jack. You will not be such a fool, I am sure.

Jack. Why, you talk madly. I think I may have a woman past child-bearing, and not have an old hag, I hope.

Tom. Prithee, tell me what will please you, and then a body may look out for you.

Jack. Why, a good, jolly, handsome, well-bred woman, about forty-eight to fifty.

Tom. A widow, I suppose; there is no venturing upon a maid under fifty, not in your case.

Jack. No, I would have her be a widow that has children, but has done childing for seven or eight years.

Tom. And she must be jolly and handsome, you say?

Jack. I would not have her old and ugly too, Tom; that is too hard.

Tom. Well, I believe I know what you want, and what you mean. But, pray thee, Jack, be honest; methinks you are all wrong. What should you marry for?

Jack. Why not, pray?

Tom. I will tell you why not, if you are willing to be serious. You had a fine charming lady almost twenty years; she brought you a good fortune, and has left you seven fine charming children: your two eldest daughters are fine, beautiful young ladies, and marriageable; it would look very hard to bring a mother-in-law among them all. It will make a sad house, Jack; it will ruin your children.

Jack. Not at all. My two eldest sons are in business; one I have placed out to an Italian merchant, and one is in my own counting-house; and my two daughters will go to their aunt, their mother's sister, who will be glad to have them.

Tom. And what must the three young ones do?

Jack. O, they will do well enough till they grow up.

Tom. But where is the father now, Jack? What is come of the father you talked of?

Jack. Why, what is the matter?

Tom. Why, take home a mother-in-law, disperse your family, and turn your children out of doors as they grow up; and all this for a new wife. Is this like a father, Jack?

Jack. No, no, I will not turn them out of doors for her neither.

Tom. That is a jest, you know better; you must turn them out of doors, or they will turn her out of doors, that you may depend upon; and the last would be hard too.

Jack. But what necessity is there for either of them?

Tom. The best answer to that, Jack, is, what necessity can you have to marry at all?

Jack. I do not know; I have no necessity, indeed, but I am alone without a wife. I want one to guide my house and govern the family.

Tom. How can that be, when you have two young ladies, women grown, that are perfectly fit for it, and show you that they very well understand it?

Jack. That is very true, but they will not be always with me, they will marry. One of them is bespoke already.

Tom. Well, 'tis time enough then; and besides, perhaps, before they are both gone, your two youngest may be grown up.

Jack. That is true; but it is not like the government of a wife in a family; there is no authority.

Tom. How do you mean? You would not give the authority over your children to a wife? and you must do that, or turn them out of doors, or, as I said above, you must give the children authority over your wife, and that will never do; so, in short, your house will be a bedlam, and you will be undone; for if once the family peace is gone, the man is undone; that I take for granted,

Jack. Well, I must venture it, I think; for I must have a wife to direct things; there must be conversation and confidence, and abundance of things which a family requires, that make a wife absolutely necessary.

Tom. Come, cousin Jack, do not mince the matter; you do not want a wife, but you want a woman.

Jack. You are quite out, Tom; you mistake the matter.

Tom. Well, well, you may call it what you will; but you will never make the world understand you any otherwise.

Jack. I cannot help that; I am to understand for myself; I do not value the world. I tell you that part is not so much as in my head.

Tom. Well, if it i not in your head, it is somewhere else, then, I tell you; nobody can nor ought to take it any otherwise; it is a preposterous thing; it is against the laws of God and nature.

Jack. What do you mean by that? What law is it against, pray?

Tom. Why, you force me to be serious with you whether I will or no. I tell you, the marriage you propose, though it is not against the express letter of the law, is against the intent and meaning of it; it is all vice and wickedness, and I am sure that is against the meaning of all law or rule that a Christian ought to walk by.

Jack. You surprise me. Pray explain yourself.

Tom. Why, the thing explains itself. To marry a wife on purpose to have no children! Why, anybody knows the meaning of that. I am plain, and I explain myself thus: As to marry her to give your children her money was a matrimonial plunder, so to marry her to have no children at all is a matrimonial lewdness; it is only a kind of legal whoring, Jack, you may call it what you will; I tell you it is vice, under the protection of the church, as I said the other was robbery.

Jack. You are very plain with me, that is true, but I tell you there is no such thing in my thoughts.

Tom. And I tell you, whatever you may persuade me to, you will never make any man else believe it. The notion of directing your house, governing your family, conversing, confidence, and such stuff as that, all these are pretences, and no more; the thing is a woman, a woman, I tell you, and nothing else.

Jack. Nay, if you will make it be so whether I will or no, I cannot help that.

Tom. Why, then, take a wife in the ordinary way of suitable years, like a Christian.

Jack. What, and fill the house again with a new family? No, that will not do at all.

Tom. Why, if you will not marry like a Christian, then live unmarried like a Christian. Pr'ythee be a Christian one way or the other. But to marry, and yet resolve to make it impossible to have children! there is nothing of the Christian in that, any more than you may call yourself a Christian, and live like a heathen.

Jack. You are very severe, Tom; very rigid.

Tom. I love plain dealing; I am for your doing honestly, either one way or the other. If you are in a strait for a woman, take one in the name of God, and in the way which God has appointed. But to pretend a thousand things, and then marry with views contrary and in consistent with the ordinance itself, that is all grimace; the visible occasion is lewdness, scandalous lewdness, and you cannot carry it off, let your pretences be what they will.

This discourse ended soon after this. But the citizen was not so convinced of the justice of his friend's reasoning as to guide him to the wiser medium, and not to marry at all; but, on the contrary, he pursued the brutal part, took the woman, gratified his grosser appetite in spite of argument; in a word, he committed the matrimonial abomination I am so justly exposing. And he felt the consequences of it many ways: as, first, he destroyed his constitution, ruined his health. Secondly, he was blasted, as it were, from heaven; for he got a woman of an unquiet, furious temper, that harassed him with her tongue, made a bedlam of his house, and broke the peace of his family. Thirdly, endeavouring to oblige one that knew not how to be obliged, he disobliged all his children, proved an unkind father, and that drove them from him, some one way, some another; and, in a word, he ruined the whole comfort of his life; and such is the fruit of matrimonial whoredom.

To conclude This is frequently the occasion of great mischiefs in families where it happens; it creates constant feuds, and, above all things, jealousy; indeed it has a direct tendency to it; it is as natural for an old man to be jealous of a young wife, and an old woman to be jealous of a young husband, as it is for people to be afraid of fire or thieves where there is nobody left at home to look after the house. Nor are such people at all beholden to the world's good will. Nothing is more frequent than for the people, by their common discourse, flouts, jeers, and gibing, to promote those jealousies, and (if the married couple have no more wit) to raise and increase them.

CHAPTER X.

Of marrying with inequality of blood.

INEQUALITY of blood this is an article in matrimony which they who would be thought to expect any felicity in a married life, ought very carefully to avoid, especially if it relates to families also. How scandalously have I known a lady treated in a family, though her fortune has been the very raising, or at least restoring, the circumstances of the person who has taken her, only because she has been beneath them in degree. That she has not been of noble blood, or of what they call an ancient family; that she has not been what they call a gentlewoman, and yet they have not found any defect either in her education or behaviour. How has she been scorned by the relations, and the title been hardly granted her, which the lord of necessity gives her; and all because of what they call mechanic original. Again, Sir G------ W------ has married a lady out of a noble family. Sir G------ is master of a vast fortune, has about seven thousand pounds a year estate, and cash enough in ready money to purchase as much more. But, alas! he is of no family; his father was a citizen, and purchased a coat of arms with his money, but hardly can tell who his grandfather was; and the lady is taught to despise him at that rate, that it is hardly reconcileable to her sense that she should ever entertain him in the quality of a husband. It is true that she had but a mean fortune, viz. five thousand pounds. What then? she had much rather have married a Scotch nobleman, as she could have done, the Earl of ------, though he had not above a thousand pounds a year. But then she had had a man of quality, and she had had a coronet upon her coach; she had matched like herself, and mingled with noble blood, as she ought to have done. But now she is debased and dishonoured, she is levelled with the canaille; the old countess, her lady-mother, considered nothing but the money; and d----- it, she had rather have been King Ch----'s whore, and then she might have been a duchess, and her children had been dukes of course, and had had noble blood in their veins by the lowest degree, and royal blood on the other side; whereas now, in short, she looks upon herself to be little better than prostituted, and that merely for an estate.

With this elevation of pride concerning blood and family, she treats her husband with the utmost disdain; she will have her equipage by herself; she will not so much as give his liveries, but the livery of her own family; she will not have his coat of arms painted upon her coach or engraven upon her plate; much less will she suffer her coat of arms to be quartered with his, if she could help it, on any occasion; and it is a great mortification to her that her eldest son, attached to his father, and honouring his person, learns not to copy after her; and is not ashamed of the blood of his paternal line, by whom he inherits so fair an estate.

My lady carries on her resentment so far, that she won't visit her husband's sister, though she has married an earl, because she disdains to rank below her; and as to all the rest of Sir G------'s relations, they are looked upon as not worth making a bow to them, other than she would to a country farmer that comes to her ladyship to pay his rent.

Among her intimates she laments the misfortune that she should be so dishonoured in her match; wonders at herself how she submitted to let such a fellow come to bed to her, and is horridly provoked that she has had any children; for the present she has parted beds with him a great while, so long, that she thanks God she has forgot him in that relation; she made a political quarrel with him three years before, and she swore to him that he should have no more to do with her that way, she would as soon lie with her coachman: and she has kept her vow most sacred; and was it not for some conveniences of her way of living, equipages, the mansion-house, which is new and fine, and cost fifty thousand pounds in building, and the like, she would feign another quarrel, and step out of his house too, and then she would be my Lord ------'s daughter again, and not my Lady ------, the wife of a city knight, which is as much one to her as if she had been Mrs ------, the shop-keeper's wife at Winchester, or Mrs Anybody; or especially it had been much more honourable to the family to have been Lady Mayoress; then, at least, she had been quality for a year, and her good man had been once a lord, though his father had been the Lord knows who.

When she talks to his servants, that is to say, those that are his servants too, she taunts them with such an air of haughtiness as if they were dogs, not servants; while she treats her own servants with a difference, as if they were as much superior to his as she thinks she is to their master.

The honest gentleman her husband is a man of sense and breeding, and particularly of abundance of good humour. He thought at first he should have been very happy in a wife, and he chose her for what he thought she had (but she had it not), namely, good temper, sense, and sincerity. He could have bettered his fortune in a wife, by thirty or forty thousand pounds, whenever he had pleased, so that he neither married her for her family or her fortune; though he was not a lord, he was able to buy a lord when he pleased, and as much despised a title, unless it had been by blood, or obtained by special merit, as she adored it only for the mere equipage of it. His disappointment in her temper was a great affliction to him, and he did not fail to expostulate it with her, though with the utmost civility; but pride had gotten the ascendant so much over her temper, that she was resolved to ruin her family peace, as it were, in mere revenge for her false step, as she called it, in marrying beneath her quality, though she really revenged it only upon herself.

Again, her pride was attended with such unhappy circumstances, that it exposed her very much, and made her the common jest of all the families of gentry, and even nobility also, of which there are a great many in the country where she lives. As I have said that Sir G------ was a well-bred gentleman and a man of sense, he was acceptable to everybody, kept the best company, and was very well received in all places; nor, however the lady acted, did the nobility, even of the first rank, think it below them both to converse with him and even to visit him, which relished so ill with her ladyship, that she could hardly refrain from her little sarcasms even before them; reflecting on persons of quality keeping company below themselves, as she called it, and of the ancient nobility debasing their blood by mingling with mechanics; that their ancestors scorned to intermarry with the commonalty, and kept the honour of their families entire and untainted.

She was roundly answered once, at her own table, by a certain noble lord of an ancient family who told her:--

"Madam," says he, "your ladyship very much mistakes the case; in former days the nobility possessed great estates, and had powerful dependencies; the landed interest was theirs, and almost all the possession was their own; the commons held under them either in vassalage or villainage, either as vassals, tenants, cottagers, or servants; and then it was indeed beneath a man of quality to match among the vassals.

"But then two things are to be observed which have happened in England since that time.

"1. The commons have grown rich by industry and commerce.

"2. The nobility are become poor, or at least poorer; be it by sloth and luxury, I do not determine.

"The consequence is this, -- that the nobility sell their estates, and the commons buy them; and so the landed interest is separated, and the commons possess, I believe, ten parts of twelve, hardly leaving the other two parts of the twelve to the better-guided nobility.

"Then, madam, of these whom we still call the commons, great numbers of them are of noble families; for the gentry bringing their sons up to industry and trade, they have found the sweets of commerce in such a manner, that they have raised innumerable families out of nothing; by which means it is now come to pass that many of our best gentry are embarked in trades, and there are as some good families among the tradesmen as most out of that class. We often go into the city to get fortunes for our sons; and many noble families, sunk by the folly and luxury of their predecessors, are restored by marrying into the families of those that you call mechanics; and, madam (added his lordship), the children of those families, thus raised by their merit, are not easily distinguished from some of the best houses in the kingdom."

Here his lordship thought he had pleased the lady, because she had three sons, very fine young gentlemen, by Sir G------. But, far from being pleased with his discourse, she could not forbear being almost rude to his lordship, and told him she thought the nobility could not match so among the commons without corrupting their blood, and that those that had done so ought to be no more esteemed gentlemen, or to rank among the ancient families.

His lordship smiled. "Well, madam," says his lordship, "then you must let the tradesmen keep their money too, as well as keep their daughters; and we shall continue to decline and become poor by our riotous and extravagant living; and so, in a few ages more, the wealth of the nation may be almost all in the hands of the trading part of the people, and the decayed nobility may be as despicable as they may be poor. Pray," added he, "what would all our noble blood do for us without our estates? And pray, madam," says he, "be pleased to look into things, and see how many noble families are, at this time, the offspring of trade; we do not find that their posterity are less valued among the nobility, or less deserve it. Two dukes," adds his lordship, "are at this time the grandsons, and one nobleman the son, of Sir Josiah Child, who was but a tradesman; and the noble families of Excester, of Onslow, of Ar----, of many more are married to the daughters of tradesmen; and on the other hand, the sons of Sir James Bateman, Sir Thomas Scawen, and several others are married to the daughters of our nobility."

His lordship was going on; but she begged him to say no more of that, fearing he would have brought it down to herself at last; and so the discourse went off. But the lady was handsomely reproved.

These are some of the fruits of unequal marriages, and in which much of this matrimonial whoredom may be committed; and I call it so, because the submitting to lie with a man only on the account of a settlement or fortune, at the same time despising, and in the vilest manner contemning the man, is a mere selling the person for a slave, or though the words are something harsh prostituting the person for the sake of money. And what is that more or less, according to my notion, than matrimonial whoredom?

The next article is that of unsuitable estates. This is of the same kind with the last, and, in its degree, is equally destructive, and therefore I join them together in the same chapter; the only difference is, that the first respects a person of quality marrying a mechanic, a patrician, or ono of the blood of the patricii, marrying a plebeian. But this latter looks a stage lower, and respects only the difference of estates, where the blood may be the same; which difference, how ever, is carried on by some to greater resentments than among the nobility. This happens frequently among tradesmen, and is distinguished by many people, very much to their disadvantage. Sir M------ G------ was a city baronet, that is, the son of a money baronet; he married a lady, the daughter of a rich citizen, not in the bloom of her youth, far from beautiful; but then he had a vast fortune with her: all this was well of his side. But what was she? Why, in the first place, bringing her to a level with himself, she has a great deal of money, that is true, and he has little or nothing; he has a great deal of good manners and good humour, she very little of either; he is handsome, she next door to frightful; she insults him upon the inequality of her fortune. What does he say to her in return? Has he nothing to answer on his side? Truly, no, not at first; but being a man of breeding, as I said above, he took it quietly, and was easy; gave her all manner of liberties, made no reply, gave her not one ill word; till, at length, being provoked beyond all possible degrees of human patience, he resolved to make her a terrible return; and indeed he was sorely provoked, that he was. He first begged of her to be easy and quiet, and to use him better, and manage herself better. She provoked him so much with her vile reproaches and reflections upon his being a beggar, as she called it, and making a figure with her money, that one day it broke out into a flame that could not be quenched; but it was his particular good fortune to have several of her own friends to be witnesses of the provocation, and so far to justify him as at least to witness in his behalf that her language was in sufferable.

Nor is it to be wondered at, that when he did break out, he did it with such fury that conquered all her resistance, and that put a full check to her clamour; for it touched her in the most sensible part, namely, her character as to modesty.

He gave her this, even the very first time, in a full broadside, as the sailors call it, and when, as I say, her own relations were present. But he did not do it till she had long and very often provoked him, by reproaching him with her for tune, and his want of a fortune, and that with so much bitterness, that even some of those relations of her's begged her to forbear, and have done with it; and he, perceiving that relation inclined to speak, withdrew to give her an opportunity, which she improved, and earnestly entreated her to forbear; told her it was now too late to reflect upon those things; that they had money enough to make them both happy; and that, let it be whose it would before, it was a stock in common now, and she should never make their lives unhappy now about the foolish question, who brought it? She told her she might easily see her husband was exceedingly moved with what she had said already, and that she would certainly provoke him by such outrageous usage to make her some bitter return; that she ought to consider she was a wife, and that it is always in a husband's power to make a woman's life uneasy to her, especially when he has justice on his side.

She was so far from being prevailed upon by this calm and cool reasoning, that she flew out into a passion against her husband, though he was not in the room; reviled him over and over with his living gay upon her fortune, while he was but a beggar himself, and the like; so that the poor lady who had talked so calmly to her had not room to put in a word.

In the height of this feud the husband came in again, and calmly desired her to have done, and be quiet, and at least to talk no more of it then, when she seemed to be in a passion; but it was all one, she ran on till, in a word, she was out of breath, and began to have done, merely for want of strength, not rage. To proceed:--

"Well, madam," says he, "now I hope it is my turn to speak a little;" then, turning his speech to the lady that had spoken in his absence, and to her other relations, he gave them a brief account how long she had treated him in his manner; how little occasion he had given her for it, and with what patience he had borne it; how just it was for him to say that he could bear it no longer, and that he was resolved to use her as she deserved. Then, turning to his wife, who still upbraided him with marrying her or her money, he said, "It is very true, madam, I did so, and who the devil would have married you for anything else?" He added, that if she would find any one to take the bargain off his lands, he would return all the money again to be rid of her; and if she could not, since she had taken him, and he was unhappily bound to stand to the agreement, he insisted she should act the part of a wife, not of a termagant, of a gentlewoman, not a Bilingsgate; and that, since she had taken him, let her fortune be what it will, he expected to be used as well as if he had taken her upon an equal foot, otherwise he is sold to her for a slave, which he did not understand to be in the contract

She reviled him upon this, with his taking her money with design to abuse her; he reproaches her with giving him her money and her person too, upon a worse occasion; he tells her, he could have lived without her money, better than she could live without a man; that he only hired himself out to her to be her servant (he called it by a harder name), and that he had earned all her money by lying with her, which a porter would hardly have done cheaper.

It is true, this was bitter; but there were two misfortunes on her side attending it.

1. That she extorted it from him. And,

2. That it was true. Both these joined to excuse the knight, who otherwise, and as I said, till by long and insufferable taunts and ill usage he was put a little out of himself, was a person of all possible temper and manners.

This also brings it home to my point, viz., that these lewd, ill-principled matches are often as miserable as they are scandalous, as unhappy as they are unseemly; and as they begin in wickedness, they end in weakness; for crime and shame follow one another.

I shall, perhaps, be asked here, what this unsuitable and unequal marrying relates to my title, and to the subject I am upon, viz., matrimonial whoredom? and why I ramble from my text? But I shall make it out that I am not gone from my subject at all, because almost all those inequalities and unsuitable things, which I complain of as the bane of matrimony, are generally the consequences of those marriages which are guided by the tail rather than the head, forced on by the inclination rather than the understanding, pushed by the impetuosity of the corrupt part, not guided by the steady results of reason, the fruit of desire, not judgment, and with a view to sensual pleasure, not solid enjoyment.

These are the great moving wheels in the machines of rash and unguided love; the passion of love, not the quality, is the weight that makes them move; it is the fuel of love, not the flame; the flame would be pure, were the materials that feed it pure; but when the combustibles are nauseous, the burning scatters noxious vapour; like the stink-pots which the Turks used to throw into ships when they boarded them, which would poison the poor men out of their close quarters, and make them run out, though they were sure to be killed.

Secret, lewd, and ungoverned desires, make these open and scandalous doings so frequent; were it all done in a criminal way, I should take notice of it in lump, as a breach of the laws of God and man; and as the text speaks, "an iniquity to be punished by the judge," Job, xxii, '28. but it is quite otherwise here; the fire is covered, the stench is concealed, and we have all the criminal filthy part acted under the disguise of virtue, and the protection of law. This is the offence, this is the grievance complained of; and this the reason why I give it the new, and perhaps a little shocking, title of matrimonial whoredom.

The meaning is plain; it is a breach of law under the protection of the law; it is a crime, through the policy of hell, placed out of the reach of justice; it is a sin against the meaning of matrimony, but within the letter of it; it is a wickedness couched under the name of virtue; it is, in short, a devil in masquerade, whoring in the vizor of matrimony; a sinner dressed up for a saint, a foul disease under the term of a decay; it is idolatry under the cover of true worship, and, as I said above, lewdness under the protection of the church.

What excuse can it be to say that the law cannot reach it? Are there not many sins which the command of God prohibits and forbids, which, notwithstanding, no law can punish? And are they less criminal for that, or the more? The laws of the land punish no man for avarice, yet covetousness is expressly forbid in the Scripture; and the love of money is called the root of all evil. The laws of the land take no notice of our anger, passion, fighting, gluttony, excess of drink, and several other things, except murder, breach of the peace, drunkenness, &c., are the consequences. You may eat till you gorge your stomach, and destroy your life; you may sip, and whet, and dose nature, till it expires in a lethargic sottism; you may rage and storm, and make your house a hell, and the law takes no cognizance of you. But no man will say they are not all detestable and abhorred crimes for all this, unbecoming a man of sense, and inconsistent with a man of religion.

Thus, in the case before us, the law is silent, and the sinner safe, provided you do but marry. Let the foundation of it be what it will, let the reason of it be all as gross and corrupt as hell, the motive all sulphur and salt, the views as vicious and filthy as words can express, that is all to be answered for somewhere else, and you take it upon yourselves, so you do but marry; the law, like Gallio, the deputy of Achaia, "cares for none of these things." -- Acts, xviii, 17.

But are they the less criminal? Is the lewd part less offensive? Is the soul less corrupted? Is the man less debauched? -- Not at all, but rather the more; nay, the devil, I make no question, as he has infinitely more advantage to prompt, fails not to make use of the advantage, for he is no fool: I will answer for Satan so far, he can hardly ever be charged with missing his opportunity, or not seeing his limes and seasons; he never fails to break in at every weak place, and always knows where those weak places are.

We cannot doubt but the devil, if you will grant there is such a thing, takes all the advantage that can be of this part; he shows the law protecting, and persuades you that it is therefore justifying the fact, a fallacy as black as himself; he prompts the vicious appetite, and then shows you how it is lawful to gratify it; he quotes Dryden upon you, and shows the case of King David and the polygamists for a parallel.

What can be more specious, what more easily gilded over? Inclination calls for it, and the law allows it. Under this pretence all the criminal things which the marriage-bed is capable of are justified.

But was the true intent and meaning of the laws of God or man impartially judged of or inquired into, the case would be quite otherwise. God forbid we should dare to say that the institution of matrimony, which was pure as the institutor was holy, could be designed for a pander to our impure and corrupt inclinations; or that God's holy ordinance can be made a plea for any of our unholy and vicious practices; and above all, that they should be made a cover and protection for them.

All the heats and fires raised within us by the acrimony of the blood, by the inflammation of the spirits and animal salts, are kindled from hell, set on fire by the devil, and made to rage and boil up in the veins by the inflaming vitiated thoughts and imagination, that imagination which God himself says is evil, and only evil, and that continually; and whatever the just and serious reasonings are which we should use upon this, and the consequences we should draw, surely they are not that we should apply ourselves to quench this fire in the lakes of Sodom (I do not mean literally as to Sodom), that we should study ways to satiate and gratify those impure desires; and then, finding some artful method, give a loose to our appetite under the cover of a legal protection, sheltering our wickedness under the letter of the law.

On the other hand, if I was to enter into the affirmative or positive part, and tell you what you ought to do, I should say these are the deeds of the body, which you should mortify if you expect to live (Rom. viii, 4), the thorns in the flesh which you should pray against (2 Cor. xii, 7) the enemies you should struggle with; and this is what the Scripture means when it speaks of our crucifying the flesh, with its affections and lusts (Gal. v, 24). But I must not preach. To talk Scripture to a man when he has a woman in his head, is talking gospel to a kettle-drum, the noise is too great, the clamour of his vices is too loud, and he will answer coldly, as the wise men of Athens answered St Paul, "We will hear thee again of this matter" (Acts, xxvii, 32); or to put it into a kind of paraphrase, "We will hear thee again, some time or other, when we have nothing else to do."

I come, therefore, to search the crime, and fully to expose it. Your own reason, and, if you have any, your religion, will instruct you to reform it. These unsuitable matches are generally derived from these corrupt and depraved principles; and these vile appetites are the things that carry us on to break into all rules, religious and moral, in the pursuit of women.

When the appetite governs the man, he breaks all the fences and leaps over all the bars that reason and religion have fixed in his way; and if he can but justify himself by pretence of keeping within the bounds of the law, though it be only the letter of it, he troubles not himself with the intent and meaning of it.

Hence all the matrimonial inequalities, the marrying at unsuitable years, with unsuitable fortunes, and all the indecent and ridiculous not incestuous matches which we see daily among us; so that to speak of unsuitable matches is far from being out of the way of my business, or remote from my subject; they are, generally speaking, from the same impure and corrupt originals, impure streams from the same poisoned and corrupted fountain.

The man is eager, urged by the importunities of his vitiated appetite; his head is full of it; he runs from place to place to find an object. To say his eyes are blinded with the fumes and vapours of his fermented blood, is to speak according to nature; it cannot be otherwise. As we say love is blind, and sees no faults, so it is undoubted the passion is blind; the rage of the appetite blinds the eyes, and he is not capable of seeing even the defects of nature, much less to distinguish the unsuitableness of objects, and the inequalities of circumstances; he is still further off from seeing the defects of the mind, the unsuitableness of the superior parts; it is all out of his way.

As it is in the more vicious part men often abandon handsome and beautiful ladies, their lawful wives, and take up with the foulest, ugliest, and most disagreeable creatures, to make their whores, so in this humour of marrying merely to quench desire, the vapour darkens the eyes, the vice clouds the sight, the man or woman takes what offers, making no judgment, no distinction of worthy or unworthy, suitable or unsuitable, young or old; it is the sexes that are only concerned, it is the fire that is to be quenched; neither reason, religion, or reputation are hardly allowed to give a vote in the case; nay, sometimes common sense. And in this heat, I say, most of the unequal, unsuitable marriages are made; and what is it all? what can it be called? Is this matrimony? Is this being joined together according to God's holy ordinance, or is it whoring under the mask of the holy ordinance? Is this a chaste and honourable marriage? Is this the bed undefiled? or is it rather a mere matrimonial whoredom?

I might include in this same chapter the unsuitable tempers which often come together on such occasion; but as it is true that this is a thing not always to be avoided, and is what too frequently happens in marriages made with the utmost consideration, so I shall convince the reader that I am careful not to run from the subject in hand by passing it over as a thing out of my way at present. It is not always possible fully to discover the tempers and dispositions of one another before marriage; and they that make the fairest and most diligent inquiry, should first be sure they know and regulate their own tempers, that the fault be not at home while they lay it upon their relatives. But this would require a long discourse; I have not room for it here.

Unsuitable principles in religion would also come in here; but I think the people I am describing need not quarrel much about that; for all principles, all religion, seems to be burnt up in the impure flame, and therefore all care and concern about them dies with it. How should that man be supposed to think of religion who, in spite of reasoning, and in perfect neglect of a family of seven children, could plead necessity of having a wife, make a thousand shifts to turn off the scandalous part, and yet insist upon having such a wife as should bring him no children, that he might satiate his gust of sensuality without the incumbrance of procreation, contract marriage with a bar only to the original reason of marriage, and enjoy his corrupt pleasures under the disguise of God's holy ordinance?

Could this man be supposed to consider the unsuitableness or inequality of anything, much less the temper or the principles of the woman he married?

And the consequence made it appear; for happening to marry a woman that had neither good temper or good principles, he ruined the peace of his family, dispersed and disobliged his children, thrust them out of his immediate care, and left their education and instruction to other relations; in a word, he robbed himself of the comfort of his children, and his children of the comfort of a father.

And where was the religion of all this? In short, what of matrimony was in it all? What was it but, as I said before, a poisoned stream from a corrupted fountain, a dishonest flame quenched in a dishonest manner? And it can be no otherwise where the soul is governed by the body, where the spiritual part is overruled by the fleshly, where the sensual directs the rational, as is the case here exactly; I say, it can be no otherwise. The order of things is inverted, nature is set with her bottom upward, heaven is out of the mind, and hell seems to have taken possession.

"Nature inverted; the infernal fires,
Burn inward, raging in corrupt desires:
Such as the sulphurous lake from whence they came,
Alike the fuel and alike the flame."

CHAPTER XI.

Of going to bed under solemn promises of marriage, and although those promises are afterwards performed; and of the scandal of a man's making a whore of his own wife.

I HAVE dwelt upon the inequalities of matrimony the longer, because of their variety. I come now to single cases again, and I shall dispatch them in single sections as I go. I have now before me a very particular case, in which marriage is made a healing or protection to a scandalous crime. Promise of marriage is marriage in the abstract, say our advocates for lewdness; and therefore for the parties to lie together is no sin, provided they sincerely intend to marry afterwards, and faithfully perform it.

This is, in short, a scandalous defence of a scandalous offence; it is the weakest way of arguing that any point of such moment was ever supported by. It is so far from covering the offence against God, that it does not recompense the personal injury done to man. I have hinted at it already in a previous chapter, and given you there the opinion of the best of men, and particularly the censure of the protestant churches upon it, in which, as I said, they are more strict, and punish with more severity, than in cases of simple fornication.

It may be true, that promise of marriage is marriage, but it is not marrying; it may be called marriage, or rather a species of marriage; and therefore our law will oblige such persons to marry afterwards, as well in cases where they have not consummated the agreement as where they have; and will give damages, and that very considerable, in proportion to the circumstances of the parties, where these promises are broken, especially where the person makes the breach by marrying another purely in contravention of those promises. And this is all the remedy the injured person can obtain.

Also such a promise, especially if made before witness, will be, and frequently is, admitted as a lawful obstacle, or impediment, why a person under such an obligation should not be allowed to marry any other; nay farther, the person claiming by virtue of such a promise may forbid the bans, as we call it; or may stand forth, and show it as a cause, even at the very book, why the two persons coming to the book may not be lawfully joined together; and the minister cannot proceed, if such a cause is declared, till the matter is decided before the proper judges of such cases.

But all this does not reach the case proposed at all; for were promises of marriage thus allowed, and lying together upon such promises lawful, you would have no more occasion of a fair and formal espousal, and we should have very little open marrying among us. And what confusion would this make in the world. How would the sacred obligations of marriage be enforced, claim of inheritances secured, legitimacy of children cleared up, and obligation of maintenance be preserved? How and where would these promises be recorded, when denied and revoked? How would they be brought into evidence, and the offender against them be convicted? In a word, what confusion would such loose coming together make in families, and in successions, in dividing the patrimonies and effects of intestate parents; and on many other occasions.

Our laws have therefore carefully provided, that marriages should not be esteemed fair and legal, if not performed in a fair and open manner by a person legally qualified to perform the ceremony, and appointed to it by office; and the government is always concerned and careful to punish any defect in the performance even of those qualified persons, when they connive at any breach upon the institution in the office of matrimony; such as marrying people clandestinely, in improper places, at unseasonable times, and without the apparent consent of parties; and though the law is very tender with respect to making such marriages void, yet they are much the more severe in fixing a punishment upon the person that officiates; in order, if possible, to prevent all clandestine and unlawful matches.

The law then requiring an open and formal coming together, as a just recognition and execution of all previous and private engagements, and refusing to legitimate those engagements, however solemn, and however attested, so as to admit them to pass for a real and legal marriage; at the same time forbidding all consummation of such agreements till the open and appointed form of marriage, settled by the legislature, is submitted to, and mutually performed; all coming together of the man and woman, upon the foot of such private engagements, promises, or contracts, is thereby declared unlawful, and is certainly sinful; it is no marriage; the children are bastards, the man and woman are guilty of fornication; the woman, let her quality be what it will, is no better or other than a w----, and the man a ------; what you please to call him.

But now, notwithstanding all this, we have an excuse ready, which is, it seems, growing popular; at least, it is calculated for abatement of the censure, and alleviating the crime or the guilt, and consequently it is calculated to legitimate the practice also; that is to say, they allow it is not strictly legal; 'tis not a full compliance with the laws of the land, and therefore they comply with that part, and marry afterwards.

It may be supposed, the advocates for this practice have ranged over all the Protestant or even Christian nations of Europe, to find out some allowance for this wickedness in the practice of any other country; and I have traced them in the inquiry, and can testify that they have but one little corner of Europe to fix it in, and that is our little diminutive would-be kingdom, called the Isle of Man. And here, Mr Cambden tells us, it is a custom, or rather was a custom, that if a woman be with child, and the proper father of the child marries the woman within two years after its birth, the child shall be legitimate.

Now, supposing this to be so, 'tis to be observed --

1st, That this was nothing but a custom in favour of the poor innocent child, whose hardship was great in suffering the reproach of a crime it was no way concerned in.

2nd, That this was only a custom in that barbarous corner, and before the people there had received the Christian religion, or were civilized under a regular government.

3rd, That it is not allowed so at this time, since the Christian religion is received, and has been reformed, no, not in that country.

The advocates for it are therefore beaten from all their defences; and they can find the practice nowhere justified -- nowhere continued. All they have left for it now is, that they will not have it be criminal in the sight of heaven -- no breach upon conscience; in a word, no sin: and if this can be obtained, the practice has but one obstruction more to remove in order to make it general, and that is, the risk the woman runs, from the weakness of the obligation of honour, and from the men's making light of the promise after they have obtained the favour on her side.

Hence, it seems, the strongest tie upon modern virtue is the regard to safety, and the women pay a greater homage to that security than to the duty, to their interest than to their virtue; to their alimony than to their conscience; and to their prosperity than to their posterity. Let us state this case a little clearer than it seems to stand in your present view, and see if we can bring the world to have a right notion of it; for at present, I think, the generality of mankind are greatly mistaken about it.

1. The obligation we are all under to the laws of God is a foundation principle, every Christian must allow it; and that we ought not to commit any crime against heaven, that is, not to do anything which He has forbidden. He that denies principles is not to be disputed with; and therefore I lay this down as a fundamental, a maxim; which, without begging the question, I may take for granted, while I live among Christians, and am talking to such.

2. The obligation we are under to the laws of the country under whose government and protection we live, is a rational deduction from and is commanded by, the laws of God, viz. to be subject to the higher powers, and in all things lawful to submit to governors.

3. The obligation we are under to our own character, and the regard to reputation, are undisputed; and we ought to do what is of good report, seeing a good name is better than life.

All these three establish the rules of marriage to be not only lawfully imposed, but absolutely necessary, and that they ought to be exactly complied with; and all of them make it criminal for any persons, that is to say, man and woman, to lie together before they are legally married.

Having laid this down as a settled and stated preliminary, it then follows that no pre-existing engagement or promise between the man and woman, no, nor any subsequent performance of the promise, can be substituted in the room of marriage, or make the coming together which is so, as above, forbidden) be lawful or justifiable.

Nor can any subsequent performance, I say, take off the crime or scandal of what is past. It is true a subsequent marriage makes it lawful for them to come together afterward, because it is not indeed unlawful for such to marry. It is not unlawful for a man to make his whore his wife, however foolish; but it is unlawful for any man to make his wife his whore, however seemingly and intentionally honest.

But the promise, say they, makes the woman his wife. I grant it does so indeed in point of right, but the form alone gives the legal possession. Signing a writing, and depositing an earnest, or part of the money, gives a man a right to the estate he has thus purchased, and he may fairly be said to have bought the estate; but he must have the deeds fairly executed, signed, sealed, and delivered, and livery and seisin given in form, before he can receive the rents, and before he can take possession of the land, or the tenants own him for their landlord.

Under the old Jewish institution, which, it must be allowed, was critically just in every part, being instituted immediately from heaven a woman betrothed or espoused to a man was called his wife, yet he never knew her till she was openly and lawfully married, that is, till he took her in form.

The Virgin Mary was espoused to Joseph, but she was not married, or, as the word is there used, he had not taken her to him; yet she is called his wife, and he is called her husband. Matth. i, 15, "His mother Mary was espoused but before they came together, she was found with child." In the next verse, Joseph is called her husband; ver. 19, "Joseph, her husband; being a just man --"

Again, ver. 20, "The angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream, saying, Fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife." And again ver. 24, "He did as the angel of the Lord had bidden him, and took unto him his wife."

Thus the espousal made the woman a wife But they were not allowed to come together until the public ceremony of taking her to him; which public ceremonies also are to be seen at large in the rites and ceremonies of the Jewish church. Vide Dr Godwin.

In like manner, a man and woman engaged by promise are man and wife, in foro conscientiae; but they are not legally man and wife till they are legally and publicly married in due form, as the law requires.

All this preliminary is made needful by the wicked pretence of being man and wife, as they call it, in the sight of God, which is a mistake; they really are not man and wife in the sight of God, any other than as espoused; so, indeed, they are, and cannot be lawfully separated, much less joined to any other person; but they are not effectual man and wife in the sight of God till they are so also in the sight of man till the public marriage, which is part of the ordinance itself, is performed, whereby the espousals are recognised, and the law satisfied.

And what is this promise they generally speak of in such cases? Is it not expressly so made, and do they not call it, a promise of marriage? Is not the woman's excuse or plea delivered always in those very words, "He promised to marry me?" At least, these are the promises we mean, and that I am now speaking of. As to those wicked promises between two, so to take one another, and to live as man and wife without the ceremony, it may be called an agreement, but it is not a promise of marriage, and so does not relate to our present discourse.

But now to bring it down to the case in hand. Suppose here are two young people, a man and woman; they treat of marriage, the woman agrees, and the man solemnly promises to marry her. But, in the mean time, the fellow (hell prompting, and his own wickedness tempting) presses this woman to let him lie with her. His arguments are smooth and subtle: "Why should you refuse?" says he; "we are fairly man and wife already by agreement (and, in the sight of God, the intention is the same thing as the action); there is nothing more to be done but just a few words of the parson, and the formality of repeating it in the church, and that we will do, too, as soon as I can get the licence down (suppose it to be in the country), or as soon as the asking in the church is over; and you may take my word, for I assure you again I will be very honest to you (and then, perhaps, he swears to it), and how can you refuse me?" And then he kisses her, and continues urging and teazing her, and wheedling her to it, and perhaps she as much inclined to it as he, only more for waiting till marriage than he; so that the devil takes hold of inclination on both sides to bring about the wickedness.

Upon these pressings and importunings, at lost he prevails, and she complies. And what is this to be called? The woman will not allow herself to be a whore, no, by no means; the man declares 'tis no whoredom, he scorns the thoughts of it; he abhors it. He promised to marry her, and he performed it, and they were married afterwards. He did lie with her, indeed, and she was with child first. But what then? they were married before the child was born; so that the child was born in wedlock so that there is no harm done in all that.

But all this is wrong -- 'tis all vile and abominable; 'tis not only whoring, but 'tis worse than whoring; or, if you please, the worst kind of whoring, and that many ways.

1. On the man's part, here is a public confession that you had a wicked, filthy, ungovernable inclination, that could not contain yourself from a woman for a few days, but must gratify your appetite at the expense of modesty, honesty, justice to your wife, justice to your own reputation, justice to the child to be born, and, besides all, a breach of the laws both of God and man. How scandalous a piece of conduct is it! how brutish, unlike a man, and unlike a Christian! And all this under a circumstance so easily complied with, under an apparent agreement for marriage, and even while the preparations are making perhaps on both sides.

2. On the woman's part, to say nothing of the vicious and beastly part, and her want of modesty in respect only to her sex; yet, besides all that, here is a testimony of most egregious folly -- a perfect neglect of her own virtue and of her reputation; abandoning the first to gratify the man, and risking the last on a bare verbal promise, which it is not only possible he may break, and probable he will break, but highly improbable that he should not; nay, according to the custom of men, according to the professed notion and the common language of the town, she ought never to expect the performance of such a promise. "He's a rogue," say they, "that gets a woman with child before marriage, and he's a fool that marries her afterwards; he's a knave that promises to marry her, but he's a fool that performs it."

3. To return to the man's part. How absurd a thing is it to make a whore of his own wife; to expose her for a whore who he proposes to embrace as an honest woman ever after; to draw her in to be exposed, to be shouted at, to be jested with, and insulted all her days, to be the scorn of her neighbours, slighted and shunned by modest women, and laughed at by everybody; and all this to gratify a present gust of vicious desire, which, in a few days, would be satisfied without the hazard of reputation, without reproach, and without reproof. How ridiculous does it make the man, and how ashamed is he afterwards to think of it, even as long as he lives! And it may be, that very child born, the product of this matrimonial whoredom, shall live to upbraid his own father with it, or perhaps do the same, and justify it by his father's example.

4. Again, to speak of it as to the woman's part. How rash, how inconsiderate, to expose herself to the reproach of being a whore, whereas, in a few days, she might have gratified both herself and her husband too without any scandal to her character. Now she exposes herself, not only to the reproach of all her neighbours, but to the contempt of the virtuous, and to the jest of the mob; and, which is more than all the rest, 'tis ten to one but her husband himself comes to upbraid her with it, and perhaps hate her for it; at least, he will be always telling her how honest he was to perform such a promise, which nobody but himself would have made good, and nobody but a fool, that is to say, nobody but her, would have trusted to; and, indeed, though 'tis ungenerous and unjust in him to treat her in that manner, yet 'tis what she has a great deal of reason to expect, and what she really deserves by her conduct.

R------ H------ is a north country laird, which is a title there not beneath a man of quality; the lady had, it seems, made a slip in his favour before marriage, of what kind you may guess: however, he healed up the sore, and married her afterwards; so his character, as an honest man, was saved also. But how fared it with the lady?

In the first place, as he carried it but very indifferently to her as to kindness, so he never failed to upbraid her with his extraordinary honesty in taking her; how just he was, and how infinitely obliged she ought to think she was to him; that it was what nobody but he would have done; and if he took anything ill from her, though it was twenty years after, he would not fail to tell her she was ingrate that she owed him a debt she could never pay; and so run back the whole story upon her, and how, if he had not been honester than he was, he had never taken her, and then she had been undone.

2. To make the poor lady completely unhappy, he is jealous of her to the last degree, and treats her very hardly on that account; and when she expostulates with him upon that head, and appeals to him for her conduct ever since marriage, which has indeed been blameless, the brute runs it all back to the first and only false step of her life, and, with a flout upon all her integrity and exactness of living, tells her, with an old Scots ballad at the end of it

"Titty, Tatty, Kitty, Katty,
False to ea man, false to au men."

It seems 'tis a proverbial saying for a man who has married a whore, intimating that, as she was a whore to him, so she would be a whore to any body else, or to every man.

Thus she is all her life subject to the reproach; not forty years' wedlock, and an unblameable life, will make it up; the debt is never paid, and yet always a paying; and all this for a shameful yielding herself up a few days before the form would have sanctified the action.

Nor is it sufficient to plead no, not to himself that he importuned her, or surprised her, or drew her in; those things are all forgot, or, if remembered, amount to no excuse. The breach in the woman's virtue being: once made, he must be a man of uncommon temper, and of a great deal of good humour, that does not, one time or other, throw it in her face, and load her with the reproach of it.

In the next place, the hazard on the woman's part is unequal, extremely unequal; for she runs the hazard of mortality. Suppose the man would be just to her, and marry her; but then, as I once knew to be the case, suppose he falls sick and dies; the woman is undone, she is left with child; she cannot claim the man, nor the child inherit from him as a father; she has not only no right to anything he has left, but, for want of a power to make such a claim, she discovers that she is not a legal wife, but was his whore; and this in spite of ten thousand promises of marriage; ay, though there were ten thousand witnesses of those promises. So certain is it, that no promises of matrimony make a marriage, and that a woman cannot expose herself with greater disadvantage, than to take matrimony upon trust; that all the assurance that it is possible for a man to give her, cannot be an equivalent to the sacrifice of her virtue, besides the risk of mortality, as above, in which case she is inevitably ruined.

And after all, what pretence is there for the thing, since matrimony is the matter treated of? Why is not the treaty finished? and if the treaty is finished, why in such haste for the consummation? or why the consummation without the ceremony, or before it? Horrid unrestrained appetite! Why must the brutal part be gratified at the woman's expense, and that at an expense so very great, that nothing can make amends for it?

I knew a disaster happen on the very same case as this, when mortality interposed; death snatched away the man, in the very critical moment.

The case was thus: A young man courted a neighbouring maid; the girl had a very good character, was not a servant, lived with her mother, and lived tolerably well; but his circumstances were the better of the two; so that it was thought to be a very good match for her.

Their marriage was agreed on; and the young woman, at his request, took a lodging in the town where he lived; several things for a time prevented their marrying, and particularly the want of a licence; but he being, after some time, obliged to go to London, on some particular occasion, he promised his mistress to bring a licence down with him to marry her.

However, in this interval it unhappily appeared that he had prevailed with her to let him lie with her, and the girl proved with child. He was so just to her, that when he came back from London, where he had stayed some time, he brought the licence with him, and twice they went together to a neighbouring minister to be married; but still one thing or other intervened; as once they came too late, the canonical hour being past, the scrupulous gentleman refused, and would not; and the next time the minister was really very ill, and could not, but appointed them to come the next Thursday, that being Tuesday, and he would not fail, God willing, to marry them.

On the evening of the Wednesday, the young man was taken sick, which proved to be the small-pox, and, in a few days, he died. He declared upon his death-bed, that she was, as he called it, his betrothed wife; owned the child to be his, obliged his mother to take care of the young woman, and of the child, which was as much as Providence allowed him time to do.

But this took wind; the young woman was known to be with child, and known to be unmarried; and some maliciously informed the parish officers of it, and they, the justices of the peace, on pretence of securing the parish. But the young man's mother answered presently to the satisfaction of the parish; and the minister testified for both the young man and the young woman also, that they were twice with him to be married; so that the honesty of intention was on both sides apparent; yet the young woman was exposed by it to the last degree.

What folly, as well as wickedness, was here? A young, well-meaning woman prevailed with, on the weak pretence of being essentially though not formally married; I say, prevailed with, to gratify the man at the hazard, and, as it proved, at the cost or price of her virtue and of her reputation; forced to acknowledge herself a whore, and to bring a bastard into the world; when, upon only waiting a few days, all the scandal, all the reproach, and, which is more, the crime also, had been avoided.

Here was whoredom under the protection, or in the colour and disguise of matrimony! He told her they were married in the sight of heaven; he called her his wife, and it was too evident he used her as such; and heaven, in justice, brought her to shame for it. What was this but a matrimonial whoredom? and that of a fatal kind; a kind that has so many weak and vile pretences for it, but yet so fair and specious, that many (till then) innocent women, have been imposed upon by them, and ruined.

But that which is still unaccountable in it, is, that the hazard is so great, and the benefit, the gratification, or what other ugly thing we may call it, is so very small; it is like a man and woman on horseback, venturing to ford, or rather swim, a deep and rapid river, when the ferry boat is just ready on the other side, and may be called to them in a few minutes, to carry them over safe. There is no common sense, no rational argument, in their favour. But the brutal part prevails; the woman, abused with fine promises, prostitutes her honour, her virtue, her religion, and her posterity, on the lightest and most scandalous pretences that can be imagined; and when she has done, has nothing to say but old Eve's plea, "The serpent beguiled me."

I know nothing that can be said for the man; nothing but what is too vile for me to mention, too gross for my pen; and, as I said in another place, the crime must go without its just censure, only because it is too gross to be named. The motives to it are so wicked, the pretences for it so foul, and there is so little to be said in defence of it, that, in short, the best thing I can add, is to say, it is the worst piece of matrimonial wickedness that can be practised; I call it matrimonial, because committed under the shelter of that sacred covering; the holy ordinance is made the disguise for it, the woman is beguiled, under the masque, and on the pretence of its being no crime.

The man is the deceiver; he acts the devil's part every way, he is the tempter, and is a party to the crime: as for himself, his reason must be subjected, or he could never submit to so sordid an action; he must be degenerated into something below a man; his appetite must be all brutal and raging, perfectly out of the government of his understanding; in a word, he must be out of himself; the thing is so contrary to reason, that it is indeed contrary to nature, and to common sense, for a man to defile his own bed, corrupt his own race, make a whore of his own wife; nothing can be more inconsistent with nature, and, us I say, with common sense; not to say a word about religion, or the laws of God; these, to the people I am speaking of, are not to be mentioned, or, in the least, supposed to have been thought of.

What must the man or the woman think of themselves, when, after marriage, they come to reflect upon this part? What reproaches will they cast upon one another? "What comfort," as the scripture says, "can they have in those things whereof they are now ashamed?" Granting for once what, however, very seldom happens, that they do not come to reproach one another, and revile one another; suppose the man good-humoured enough not to abuse his wife for her easy complying, or to be jealous of her doing the same for others, according to the Scots song mentioned above: on the other hand, suppose the woman does not upbraid the man with deluding her, making a thousand scurrilous reflections upon him, for drawing her in by his fair promises, his horrid oaths and solemn protestations, and now to upbraid her with yielding. Suppose, I say, the man and the woman both, not so ill-humoured as to reproach one another with the crime; yet they will deeply reproach themselves, for laying themselves so open to public scandal, for the satisfying a mere gust, and the prevailing importunities of their corrupted appetite, when so small a time of forbearance would have made all safe on both sides.

In the meantime, let the self-reproaches on either side be ever so severe; let the repentance be as sincere and as public as you please to imagine it, the fact is the same; and I cannot call the thing itself anything more or less than, according to my title, a matrimonial whoredom, and that in the coarsest degree.

Perhaps some may think my censure too hard on the other side; I mean, as to the man's marrying the woman afterwards; and that while I exclaim so loudly against the offence of lying together, though under sacred promises of matrimony, I encourage the men to break those promises, pretending, that the offence being already so great, they can be no worse; for since it does not lessen the crime, say they, what should they marry the woman for? If she must be counted a whore all her days, and he a criminal, though he is so honest as to marry her, what signifies the honesty? He can be no worse if he lets it alone? And thus my reproof, they say, will do more hurt than good.

To this I answer: let the woman then provide against that; for I shall never think pity due to any woman after this, who, being thus warned, will let a man lie with her upon promises of after-marriage; there can be no wrong done to the woman, seeing she may avoid the danger by avoiding the crime; and yet the man is greatly mistaken too, who pretends, that to break his engagement with the woman does not increase the offence. If this were true, and that by performing the promise the person was not the less criminal, the offender would always take care not to perform the obligation; and so we should have a continual complaint. But, I say, let it be so; nay, let the woman take it for granted, I am sure she ought to do so, that whenever she yields on such terms, she will be left in the lurch, and exposed; and this, if anything, would shut the door against her complying.

Nay, I must needs say, the common usage is so much against her, that one would wonder any woman should be so weak to yield upon those conditions; and, to me, it argues necessarily one of these two things.

1. Great neglect of the consequences of things; great indifference not only as to her being with child or not with child, taken or refused, married or not married; and so also with respect to her fame and character, whether honest or a whore. But,

2. It argues likewise a perfect indifference as to the crime; and as to its being an offence, against God or man; and such a woman ought not to be supposed to value the sin of being a whore, any more than the scandal of it.

Indeed; to be utterly thoughtless of the consequence, and every way as wicked as the man, seems to be just the character of the woman in this particular case: and I must leave it upon her, that she who thus complies, declares herself, by the very fact, to be utterly unconcerned about her character, whether as a woman of virtue, or as a Christian; and if ever she is brought to her senses again, she must be convinced that she deserves to be so understood.

CHAPTER XII.

Of the husband knowing his wife after conception, or after it appears she is with child. Of the reasonableness and lawfulness of it; and whether this may not come under the just denomination of matrimonial whoredom.

As the procreation of children is the only, or at least the chief reason of matrimony; so when the woman has once conceived, it is the opinion of the learned and modest world, her husband ought to know her no more till she has brought forth, and is delivered of her burthen.

Some will have this be called a rigid law; that there is nothing in the laws of God to direct such a restraint, and that, therefore, it is what the text calls binding heavy burthens; like the pharisees imposing severities on others, which they would not be bound by themselves; and, as the same text hints, would not touch them with one of their fingers, that is to say, would not observe, or be under the obligation of those laws which they preached up the necessity and duty of to the people.

The question before me, at present, is not who does, or does not obey and observe the rules of modesty, which we lay open to be their duty; but whether those rules are just, and such as ought to be observed, yea or no? If they who dictate laws do not obey the same laws, be that double guilt to themselves, and be theirs the repentance; the debt is no less a debt for its not being paid, but it is doubly a debt upon those that instruct others to pay it. However, that is a subject to be entered upon by itself, our present business is to speak of the thing as it lies before us.

The article I have now mentioned is not so much a rule of decency as it is a law of nature; the obligation to it is, therefore, backed with a superior authority: it is not founded in custom and habit; it is not the effect of the curse, or brought in as modesty is, as the fruit of the fall. Shame and blushing may be the consequence of sin; but the seasons, and the laws of generation, are the offspring of nature; the great parent of life is the director and guide of life, and has appointed the laws of it as a general head of constitutions, by which all the creatures are directed, and, generally speaking, all the creatures are willingly, because naturally satisfied with those constitutions, and freely obey them.

The brutes obey the laws of nature; it is not a submission, nor a subjection, but a mere consequence of their life; and it is the manner in which their natural powers are directed; it is the channel in which they flow; they know their seasons, and they follow as nature leads; chaste and reserved when the streams of nature abate, hot and furious when the animal spirits return; in a word, they come when nature calls, and not before.

But man! ungoverned man! neither influenced by the laws of God, or of nature, gives himself a loose to his corrupted desires, and subjects nature, reason, and even religion itself, to his appetite; in short, to a corrupted and depraved appetite, a furious, outrageous gust; his will governs his understanding, and his vice governs his will; the brutal part tyrannizes over the man, and his reason is overruled by his sense.

It is observed of the deer, that whereas it is a mild, quiet, gentle creature; tame, even by its own disposition, pleasant and inoffensive, and this through almost all the seasons of the year; yet, in its season, that is, what they call its rutting-time, they are the most furious of all creatures; and though they do not, like the ravenous and voracious kinds, such as the lion or bear, fall upon other creatures for their food, and to satisfy their hunger, which, as is observed, is a reason for their being so dangerous, yet, on the other hand, the stag or the buck, at that particular time, flies upon man or beast, and will kill and trample under its feet whatever comes near him, or, at least, offers to come near its female.

No park-keepers, rangers of forests, or others, how bold and daring, or however familiar among them, will dare to come near them in their rutting-time, unless very well armed and attended, that is, with dogs and guns; even the dogs themselves, though they are their terror at another time, except it be the whole pack together, will not meddle with them if they can help it.

Naturalists tell us, that the blood of the creature at that time is boiling hot; and though it be not in a fever, which, they say, in a dog is madness, or in cats, and some other creatures, because it does not lie in the head, as it does in dogs and such other creatures as are subject to madness, yet that the spirits are in as high a ferment in these, as those are.

Be that as it will, it is certain this is the work of nature, not a disease upon nature; and when the end, which is generation and propagation of the kind, is answered, when the season is over, the creature returns to its natural calm and quiet, to a disposition familiar and domestic; will come up to the keeper, feed out of his hand, and be as tame again as before.

This fury of the blood, however raging in the buck, I say, abates with the season, and he returns to be the same gentle, pleasant creature he was before. But it is not so with the man; when the fury of his appetite, prompted by the youth of his spirit, rises to a heighth a little more than common, it continues there; it is not slacked by the evacuations natural to the case, but he continues a madman still, and knows no bounds.

In vain is reason given him, and intended by the Giver to be the guide and the governor of his life, to be his director, and to command his passions and affections; his appetite fretting once the government, like a hard-mouthed horse, he feels no curb, knows no restraint, and is guided by no reins but those of his enraged will.

I can describe the article I am upon by no mediums but those of simile and allegory. Decency forbids me speaking plainer than this. The man is a fury, and knows no limits to the rage of his inclination; but, pushed on by the heat of ungoverned nature, and supposing an unlimited liberty is given him by the marriage-licence, which, by the way, is a mistake, he acts all the immodest things imaginable with a suggested impunity.

Hence sodomy itself has been not only acted, but even justified, in the marriage bed; and, indeed, one may be expected as well as the other; for why may we not look for one unnatural excess as well as another.

The Turks, it is a little hard I must be forced to leave the practice of Christians, and go look among the Turks and Infidels for examples of modesty and decency, but so it is; the Turks. I say, have brought this very offence which I complain of under the government of their laws; and, as I said before, it is remarkable, and a pattern for Christians, that they try those causes in a manner much more awful and grave than we do.

Nor is the woman under that restraint which they are here, where, though she is perhaps grossly injured, she cannot do herself justice, because modesty forbids her tongue expressing the particulars and describing the fact. But there, if any unlawful violence is offered to a woman by her husband, under the liberties of the marriage bed, and she finds herself so aggrieved, as that she is obliged to seek redress, she proceeds thus :

1. She goes to the proper officer and demands a summons for her husband to appear before the Grand Vizier, to answer to her complaint.

2. When he appears, and she is called in to justify her charge, she says not a word; nor is her face unveiled, till she comes to what we call taking her oath; but then unveiling her face, she stoops down, takes off her slipper in the face of the court, and holds it up to the judge (the Grand Vizier; turning it the wrong side upward.

This is enough to the court, who understand her distinctly, namely that she swears upon the Alcoran that her husband offers unnatural violences to her, and that she cannot live with him upon that account. She need say no more; but upon this process she obtains a divorce against him, unless he can do one or both of the following things:

1. Clear himself of the charge; or

2. Give sufficient security for not offering the like to her again

There is no need to demand a farther explanation of these things, or to ask me, what is meant by offering unnatural violences to a wife? Those questions aim evidently at what I have from the beginning protested against; and any just and modest reader will understand what I mean by that.

It is enough to tell you, that the very thing I complain of in the head of this chapter is one of them. It is enough that the woman has conceived, and is with child. What can be desired of her more, is, in the language of Mahometan modesty, a violence, nay, an unnatural violence; and the woman complains of it as highly injurious.

The woman has indeed a strong and unanswerable argument against the man in case of this complaint, which, it is true, we cannot plead here; namely, that she holds up two, or three sticks, which are given her by the officers, intimating that her husband can plead no necessity for his using her in that manner, for that he has one, two, or three wives besides her, according to the number of sticks which she exposes, or holds up, and that, therefore, he ought to let her alone to go on in her pregnancy, that she may bring forth a man child without danger of miscarriage, which, it is suggested, might otherwise happen to her by that violence.

I very much doubt this will be called a new doctrine here; and I have been told already (by a man of modesty too) upon reading it in the manuscript, that I shall never persuade Christians to believe it criminal, whatever the Turks may do. But why should I suspect this, where, as I said before, it is not the law of matrimony, or the law of Turks and Pagans that I am mentioning, but the law of nature; though custom may be argued to be a law, or as a law, and that in many things. Custom is a tyrant: nature is a just and limited government. Custom is anarchy and confusion; nature is a regulated monarchy, and a well-established constitution.

But to go farther, the law I am speaking of is nature, supported by reason; or, if you please, reason supported by nature. Reason thinks it just to follow where nature leads, and where there is no just and rational objection against her dictates, because nature is certainly judge of her own constitutions, and best knows her own actings; her influences run in secret channels, which no force ought to obstruct, and when they do not swell beyond bounds, ought not to be checked and stopped up.

There are many arguments in philosophy, as well as in medicine or physic, why the course of nature should not be obstructed and interrupted; and except where her exorbitances seem to break out into offence, she ought not to be restrained, and even there but gently and with good reason, and in its proper time.

But custom pretends to govern nature with a kind of absolute dominion, and to tyrannize over all the laws of reason, and of nature too.

"Custom, which all mankind to slavery brings,
That dull excuse for doing silly things.

Now if custom has set up a vicious practice, in contradiction to nature and reason too, shall this be a received law among us, who pretend to know and practise so well? besides, as the devil said to the sons of Sceva, nature we know, reason we know, but who are you? you, custom, you are an invader and an usurper; an invader of nature, and an usurper of the throne of reason, that sets up for a judge of convenience, and a judge of right and wrong, to which you have no more claim than you have to judge of truth and religion.

In all such cases it is but a just inquiry to make here, what is this custom derived from? And I am sure, in this case, it must be answered, this custom is begun in crime; it is derived from an offence; and, as is the tree, such is the fruit, offensive; for this evil tree cannot bring forth good fruit; it derives from vitiated and corrupt affections, heated blood, and debauched, suppressed reason.

Do men gather grapes of these thorns? Can good come out of this evil? Corrupt appetite, unrestrained will, break out in corrupt actions, and continued in, grow up to corrupt habits, and this we call custom; when it is grown up to that name, custom, it immediately begins to tyrannize, and make itself an excuse for its own errors. In a word, men go on in a custom because it is a custom; so it gets years on its side, and then it is called an old custom, an ancient custom, which adds veneration to it, and at last an immemorial custom, or, as we vulgarly express it, a custom time out of mind, which is sufficient to make a law of it.

This corruption usurped upon nature, and turned into custom, is the thing we have to combat with in the article before us, in which we have this lawful plea to bring against it, viz., that custom in crime is just as much a defence for it, as antiquity in error, and is, indeed, the same thing; and so, in the case before me, for a man to say, I have always done so; you startle me a little, it is true: I did not examine into the thing, but I never made any hesitation about it; it is a custom, and I believe everybody does it as well as we, and therefore I cannot think it is a crime; you must preach it down in general; when it comes to be changed by other people, I will think of it, but I believe everybody does so as well as I.

These are really dangerous as well as unjust arguings, and the more so, because they are too true and too real. But what is then to be done? Must custom, founded upon the most scandalous mistake, take place? It was, in its very original, an encroachment upon nature, upon modesty, and upon temperance, and shall we plead its antiquity, which is so far from an excuse, that it is an addition to its crime? This is as if a convicted highwayman should plead for mercy because he had been forty years in the trade, an old offender, and long practised in the crime.

If the custom is wicked, if it is, in its original, a treason against virtue, and an encroachment upon nature, will any man plead for the practice because their ancestors were guilty of it before them?

There is indeed a happy article in this argument, viz., that there is not one word of excuse for it, but this foolish plea of its being a custom; all other arguments are against it; it is evidently a pollution in nature, a scandal to its purity, to its virtue, to its moderation, and to all that can be called prudent and wise.

Procreation of the species, and the generation of mankind, is the just end of matrimony; it is expressed so in the office of matrimony, and in the sacred text in many places. Now when the woman is with child, the end of matrimony is answered; the demand is at an end till she is light again (as the women call it). Some would fain plead a progressive conception, and that there is a supply wanting to complete the formation of the foetus, and a great deal more of that kind.

But this is evidently a mistake, and the contrary is manifest; the work of conception is hit off at once; the materials being furnished, nature being set on work, all the forming parts are engaged together; they may, indeed, be hindered and interrupted in their operation by future aggressions, and by the very offence which I complain of; but that any addition can be made to the work of nature, especially in the manner, and at the distance of time that we speak of, is grossly absurd, and contrary to nature.

The limitation of time when, as I say, the man should know his wife no more, is placed at so convenient a distance as that of her being known to be with child. If there were any such thing as a second conception, or additions to the work of conception, auxiliar to nature; I say, if there were any such thing, as I can by no means grant, though I do not dispute it here, yet it is evident it must be at or about the beginning of the conception, not at four or five months distance of time, for then a woman might go with two or more children at once, and bring them forth four or five months after one another; nay, a woman might be always conceiving, always breeding, and always bearing or bringing forth.

Whither must these gross ideas lead us? and into what absurdities must we run in our thoughts of them? Let those that can conceive thus of such matters enter into a decision of the controversy; I think our present subject is no farther concerned to answer them, than only to appeal to reason and experience, and to ail the learned anatomists and accoucheurs to judge of it.

I observe, when I hint the modesty of Mahometan nations and other people, who, as I have said, abstain from their wives as soon as they have conceived or, to put it right, as soon as they know they are with child, I am answered with a kind of eagerness, that it is easy to them, because, having a plurality of women, or being allowed as many wives as they will, they can lay by one and take another as they please, so that they are never without a wife; but as soon as one is with child she withdraws to her apartment, and he knows her no more. But then he calls another to his bed, and as she may continue four or five months before he can be sure she is with child, by that time the first is sure to be delivered, and be ready for his bed again; and so of all the wives in their turn. And thus the man is never without a woman for his convenience.

If this be so, all that can be said for it is, that this is a kind of argument in favour of polygamy, that is to say, that we make use of it as such. But the Turks are very far from giving this as a reason for their polygamy; the reason of that practice is taken from the custom of the Patriarchs, and is made a part of Mahomet's law; and if they were not so allowed the use of many women promiscuously, it is certain they would still abstain from their wives during the time of their being with child.

It is looked upon as a preposterous thing, a pollution and impurity, nay, they take it to be nauseous and unnatural; the sober men among them speak of it with detestation, and upbraid the Christians with it as acting more than bestial, for that very few of the brute creatures practise it; and, if you consider it with exactness, you will not find any of the brutes that will admit, much less seek, the conjunction of their sexes after conception. However eager when nature prompted, and however loud the female calls the male, yet, after the fire of nature is quenched, she fights him, and flies at him if he attacks her.

It would be an unpleasant task, and unsuitable to the just restraint which I have put upon myself in the first undertaking of this difficult work, if I should pretend to enter here into a philosophical or anatomical description of the reason and nature of the brutal appetites, their seasons, their conduct in them, and their punctual observing the laws of nature in the various circumstances of those seasons; their conception, their bringing forth their young, their suckling and nourishing them afterwards; how regular, how exact, and how punctual the creatures are to those seasons; and how modest and unconcerned with one another when those seasons are past, or in the due intervals of them.

I say, it would be an improper search under the limitations which I am otherwise bound by; the inquiry would be very improving, critical, and curious, and such a thing may not be unprofitable in surgery and anatomy; but at present our subject points another way, and I am rather discoursing the morality as well as the modesty of it, the rational, not the physical foundation of it; and searching into the reason why we give ourselves such liberties which the savages and undirected part of mankind do not take.

As to the weak excuse, that the Mahometan and Pagan nations have a plurality of women go that they supply nature's demands another way, it is a most scandalous confession, that the vicious part of the man is the only occasion of the practice; and that this is done, not that it is supposed to be right, but because the power of the vice prevails, and the appetite rules the man, the reason and nature is subjected to desire, and the pure flame is overborne by the impure eruption of salt and sulphur.

And where is the Christian all this while? Where are the necessary mortifications of a holy life? Where do such mortify the deeds of the body? (Rom. viii, 13). How have they "crucified the flesh with its affections and lusts?" (Gal. v. 24).

Shall Christians, that pretend to walk by the pure pattern of their Saviour and his Apostles and by the perfect rule of the Scripture, at this same time plead a necessity of polluting themselves, and that in a filthy and loathsome manner; a manner which they cannot speak of without blushes; shall these plead a supply of he demands of nature, and a necessity for want if a plurality of women?

How ought such rather to remember that they are Christians, and that the double obligation lies upon them to abstain from such things, by how much they pretend to a greater assistance in their mortifications from superior and invisible helps of religion? How do we see the clergy of the Roman church devote themselves to perpetual celibacy, and enter into solemn vows of chastity, and perform them too; for though some may offend, we cannot, with common justice, charge it upon the whole body of the clergy, and of the religious people?

And shall Protestants only pretend to a necessity of crime, and that they cannot restrain themselves from secret lewdness, or keep themselves from shameful pollutions, but that they must allow themselves to act against nature and against virtue, and even against the stomach? This is the grossest piece of confessed frailty that one can meet with anywhere, and nothing that I know in story can come up to it.

As to the abstinence of those who, in some countries, are allowed a plurality of wives, we are assured that some, yea, many of them, after having had the knowledge of one of their women, that they know her no more till they have an assurance that she has not conceived, and that she is not with child. The Grand Seignior, it is certain, acts thus among the ladies of the Seraglio; and if we may believe some who pretend to know, lives a much more temperate life, and acts with a great deal more moderation, among three or four hundred ladies, all at his command, than the gentlemen I am speaking of do with one wife and no more.

In a word, among those people, for a man to know a woman after she was already with child, would be detestable, it would be an abomination to them; the woman would refuse it with as much resolution as she would a ravisher, and the man must be abandoned to all that was counted brutish and unclean that should offer it.

Whether it be so among us, or how it is received and practised among us Christians, I leave to the general opinion, and to private experience, not meddling with that part, as too gross for me; though I might give examples too notorious, from the mouths of our flagrant friends of the unblushing club at Tony's ------, and from the testimony and confession of abundance of the modest society at ------'s, besides some of the ladies who have intermeddled so lately -- I do not say so decently in the affair as to be partly the occasion of this very chapter, and of all the parts of it; of whom my wonderful concern for their fame gives me leave to say no more. It were to be wished that they would for the future be as careful of their own characters as I am.

I am sorry, after all I have said upon this filthy subject, to observe that here are yet no want of advocates to defend the practice; though I must add, that there is a perfect sterility of argument or, at least, reasonable arguments to support their defence of it.

What they say amounts to so little, and that little is so scandalous in its nature, and sits so ill upon the tongues of men of virtue and moderation, much less men of Christianity and religion that I blush for them and conceal it. Nothing requires a more just and severe censure, except it be the action they would defend by it.

To say they cannot refrain is to confess a frailty which papists and popish votaries despise and pretend to make light of, nay, which pagans and mahometans overcome by the power of their religion. The nuns dedicated to Christ, and to such and such saints, undertake to preserve an entire chastity, and the religious orders of monks and friars do the same; the clergy universally make no difficulty of it, and this for the length of their whole lives. And shall protestants not be ashamed to say they cannot for so little a time and so just an occasion? It is a most shameful necessity they are under; if the fact be true, they ought, as I said in another case, take physic, use medicine, and strive by justifiable methods to abate the acrimony of their blood, bringing themselves into a rule of regimen of diet, that they may remove the cause and enable them to command their raging desires by weakening the desire itself.

Nothing is more certain than that luxurious living, eating and drinking, what we call rich diet, high sauces, strong wines, and other incentives, are great occasions of vice, are provocatives and raisers of other and more scandalous appetites; the blood is heated and fired, and the spirits are inflamed; nature is elevated and prompted, and then we plead and argue what we ought to be ashamed so much as to name, and would blush to do at another time.

This luxury is not only a sin in its own nature, but it is a strong motive to other sins; it is the devil at our elbow, prompting and exciting, and we ought to avoid the cause as we would obey the Scripture, which says, "Flee youthful lusts." The reason is given in the very same verse, for they "war against the soul;" they raise a tumult in the man, they arm his vices against his reason, and procure him enemies, even from within, that are too hard for him; in short, they raise the devil, which he cannot lay.

It is an undeniable maxim, that a luxurious appetite in eating and drinking raises an ungoverned appetite in other pleasures; nature obeys its own laws; great takings in must have great goings out; gross feeding and strong rich taking in of diet must have evacuations in proportion; if there is an acrimony in the blood, there is a physical application necessary in its course; great digestures must have strong emetics; there must be evacuations of one sort or other.

Now a vitiated appetite of one kind is the effect of a vitiated gorging the appetite on the other; and the gross feeding occasions gross desires; on the other hand, to restrain and limit the appetite in eating and drinking, is the only way to get a complete victory over our own corruption.

A mortified mind, therefore, a soul resolved not to be overcome, or to be drawn aside of its own lusts, and enticed, but resolved to mortify the flesh, with its affections and lusts, would restrain itself voluntarily, and subdue all the occasions of the crime. Certainly high feeding is the original of high vices, and brings the worst inconveniences of this kind upon the man. Hence fastings were introduced in the primitive churches, and mortifications, in order to bring under the body and bring the flesh into subjection: and they are practised among the most devout of the popish recluses to this time, in order to enable them to restrain natural inclination, and they do find them effectual; the abating the quantity of animal food, the pungent particles of which sharpen the blood, press upon the nerves, and give an ungoverned vigour to the spirits, is certainly the way, and an effectual way, to reduce the corruptions to the government both of reason and religion.

If this devil cannot be cast out but by prayer and fasting, then prayer and fasting must be practised; for the evil spirit must be cast out, and the strong man must be dispossessed.

Nor is it necessary upon a religious account only, and to reduce us to the rank of Christians, but indeed it is necessary in the case before us to bring us to a due exercise of our reason, and to act like men, that we may not live like human beasts, without all government, and without any subjection to the dominion of our reason.

This, then, is the true way to take off that piteous plea, viz., that they cannot restrain themselves. To act reasonably would be to restrain ourselves; and those that really cannot so restrain themselves grant that they have not the exercise of their reason. If due mortifications were practised, the difficulty of restraining themselves would be taken away in the particular case I am speaking of, and the inclination would not be able to conquer the aversion, for there must certainly be something shocking to nature in the thing itself; and there wants nothing but a decay of the ferment in the blood to make the victory easy, and to bring the enemy to be subdued.

And to add to this physical resolution the methods of diet, why should not both men and women tie themselves by solemn vows, promises, and religious resolutions, to keep themselves within bounds? Perhaps then they would assist one another in the performance. Why do not protestants, as well as papists, enter into vows of continence? No doubt if they would be assistant to one another to break those charms of hell, those filters and bewitchings, which are certainly the attacks of the devil, they might break them.

Did they do this they would fortify one another in the ways of virtue; and it would not be so easy to be drawn into crime; a threefold cord is not easily broken, and here is a threefold help: As, 1, a conviction that you ought to perform it; 2, a solemn vow to engage the performance; and, 3, mutual assistance both in the vow and in the resolution to pay it.

I would hope that this vile practice is carried on among us rather for want of knowing how offensive it is than for want of power to resolve a performance, and to engage the mind in it. Custom has made the vice, however odious in itself, so natural to us, that there are thousands of people among us at this time, who, if you should ask about it, would readily answer with a surprise, I profess "I never thought it had been an offence."

Men go into it eagerly without consideration. Nature gives faint checks to the mind; for even nature, left entirely to itself, would yet have some reluctance, and would a little recoil at the unnatural action. But the men are used to it; there is no express law against it; they see no notice taken of it in the Scripture, or in any subsequent institutions; they are under no restraints of that kind; and where should they then be restrained, and by what?

Ignorance, then, of the nature of the offence renders the man in danger of committing it. The custom of the country he lives in is a terrible plea, and he is too apt to cleave to it and venture upon the custom; he knows no law against it, and therefore sees no crime, no breach of any law, in the committing it.

How weak, is corrupted nature not to see the scandal of so really odious and filthy a practice, and how far is this ignorance from being an excuse. It is indeed a sin of ignorance, but then it is a criminal ignorance too, and so it makes no excuse for, but aggravates the charge, as murder committed in drunkenness is an aggravated murder.

To be ignorant of a thing that nature dictates is shutting the eyes against natural light, resisting the most powerful motive that can be found opposing it. Why do not such people open their eyes? Nature assists them to do it; but the debauched inclination will fully close them; so that the ignorance is really as criminal as the action.

Saint Francis, if you will believe the writers of his history, was particularly persecuted with wicked and raging inclinations to women; and the devil, who, by the way, knows how to prompt us in that particular article, where nature is weakest and most inclined to yield, often laid snares for him, and would appear to him in the shape of a beautiful lady, or in the appearance of lewd and indecent gestures. But to resist him, and keep down the rebelling vice in his blood, he would fall upon his body with the scourge and the discipline. "Ha! brother ass," says he, that was the best title he could give his carcass, "do you want correction? Is your blood so hot still?" Then he would fast forty hours, and all the while whip and tear himself with a wire scourge till he made the blood come.

Be the history true or not, the moral is good. The unmortified pampered carcass is the real fund of all these raging, tyrannizing inclinations, which we make our simple excuses for doing sordid things; and though I do not prescribe disciplines and fastings, by way of meritorious mortification in this case, us the papists do; yet I must tell my guilty reader they are absolutely necessary in the case to reduce the (carcass) body into a due subjection to (the soul) reason; and he that cannot otherwise conquer an outrageous appetite, ought and must use the proper methods to reduce it; the cause must be taken away that the effect may erase.

A man who not only has a rational soul, but has the powers and faculties of it, viz. his understanding and will in their due exercise, should be ashamed to say he cannot restrain this or that corrupt affection; the affections are certainly regimented in a subordinate station in the soul, and are placed in subjection to the understanding. He that gives them leave to advance beyond their appointment, suffers his soul to be hurried down the stream of the affections, is so far divested of himself, and out of his own government, and ought to use rational means to recover the exercise of his reason, and to give those upstart tumultuous things, called the affections, a due and severe check.

This doctrine of discipline and mortification, how much soever it may look like popery, is notwithstanding a most absolutely necessary thing in the life of a man of sense; and though I am not talking of it here as a religious exercise, at least not in the manner and on the principle of merit, as the papists practise it; yet I must own, it is the most effectual means to answer the end in such cases as these.

If it be true that the affections, which are the grossest part of the man, are up in arms; if this mob is raised in his soul, for such it is, the militia must be raised to suppress them; violence must be suppressed by violence; the torrent must be checked, and the man be reduced to the government of himself, and brought into good order by proper powers; for as it is (in short) a tumult in his soul, and a rebellion against the just dominion of his reason, so he must use the means nature has put into his hand to quash and suppress the rebellion, and chain them down like galley-slaves to the oar, to humble and mortify them.

The allegory is good; it is the height of the animal spirits which occasions all the exorbitances in the affections, and those heats are to be abated by austerities and discipline. Nature calls for it, whether religion calls for it or no; it is a political as well as a physical method; prudence will direct; and any physician, if you were honestly to tell him your case, would take it as a disease in the blood, an inflammation and fever in the head or elsewhere, and would prescribe you just such physic, such abstinence, and such mortifications as I mention, as the best medicine for it as a distemper.

I am the longer upon this subject of abstinence and mortification in this place, because the pretence in this article is, the strength of inclination is too great, and that we cannot complete it, though it ought rather to be said, will not. Now, were it really true that they could not reduce and conquer the inclination by the force of ordinary resolution, then the reducing the principle of it is the next sure and effectual method. Water may, if the quantity be sufficient, conquer and put out a fire; but removing the combustibles, taking away the fuel, is a never-failing method; the first may do it, but the last must do it. No fire burns upon itself; that which we call burning, is nothing but penetrating and dividing the particles of matter; if the matter be removed, there is nothing to separate, nothing to operate upon, and the fire goes out of course.

The like plea for mortifications holds good in most of the other cases I have mentioned in this work; for should we trace all the raging excesses which I have touched at in the former part of this work to their true original, we should find much of it owing to the extravagance of our living in England; I mean as to eating and drinking. What is the reason we have so many people die of fevers here more than in any other part of the world? and that, every year or two, we have what we call a new distemper, which carries off so many that at those seasons the weekly bills in London rise up to six hundred or seven hundred a week? Why is the small-pox so fatal, and particularly among the gentry and persons of distinction, but because of the excesses of eating and drinking, in which, as well as in the nature of what we eat and drink, we go beyond the rest of mankind?

The same reason is to be given for other things the same excesses ferment the blood, raise the spirits, and produce all the immoderate scandalous things which I have been complaining of and which there is so much reason to complain of among us; in which the Turks and savages appear to act more like men of reason than we do.

Their way of living is not so high; their blood does not boil with the same intemperate heats consequently their abstinence is not so much a virtue; but I must add too, that our incontinence is the more a vice; 'tis a crime occasioned by a crime; and we ought to use temperance first in our diet, and then we shall, with the more ease, practise temperance in other things.

The crime of Sodom, however unnatural the vices are which they practised, is laid all upon a cause, which was of the same kind with ours, pride and idleness and fulness of bread. By which I understand that their lascivious wickedness proceeded from their luxurious diet; sloth and gluttony enraged their blood; and they sat upon the high places to do evil.

Our fulness of bread must be acknowledged to be a great assistant to our immoderate appetite another way; for this high feeding gives high spirits, and these prompt to all exorbitant crimes. Excess of the animal spirits fill and fire the blood, and when those heats rage, then the head contrives wickedness, I need not speak it plainer, the case is easily understood. Nothing can bring us to a life of moderation in our pleasures like a life of temperance and moderation in eating and drinking.

But I come from the cause to the crime, and must say a word or two more to that.

Among all the brutish circumstances of it, this is one, that it is an action stripped of all modest pretences, all tolerable excuses; as it is a mere act of pollution, so there is not one word to be said to extenuate it; the man can only say, that he does it as an excursion of mere sensuality, or a gratification to the flesh. There can be no end in it, or reason for it, that can be so much as named without blushing. The woman is with child, that is supposed. It is known, and she acknowledges it. What, then, can be said on that side? The end of the conjugal act is already answered; wherefore does he come near her? It is only to satisfy the cravings of his vice, only to gratify his frailest part, to please himself, or, as the Scripture says, "To fulfil the lusts of the flesh."

This is an end so base, so mean, so absurd, that no Christian man can plead it in excuse; and yet, at the same time, it is impossible to find any other excuse for it; in short, it is a mere shameless use of a woman to abate the heat of his spirits, and cool his blood; it is making a necessary-house of his wife, and nothing more or less; and that indeed is a sordid thing, so much as in the suggestion of it; it is adding scandal to the crime, covering it without a cover; there is no excuse can be made for it, no tolerable name be given to it (that I can find at least) but this of matrimonial whoredom, according to my title. Let us then think of reforming this scandalous practice; let us look at it in a due perspective, in a clear, open light. If any one thing can with modesty be said in defence of it, let us hear it; if not, if it is to be only confessed as a crime, let it be forsaken as a crime. What cannot be defended, ought to be reformed: what every one is ashamed to speak for, none should be ashamed to forsake.

I could offer some examples upon this subject, but they are of such a coarse kind that it is too foul to mention; there is no entering into the particulars; it would offend the ears of all those that have the least pretence to modesty. Some of our worthy neighbours will, indeed, on this very score, pass unreproved, and the filthy circumstances not be animadverted upon because they cannot be mentioned; but it is so, it cannot be helped, so they must escape.

I have the honour to converse with some gentlemen so abstemious, that they are able to clear themselves of this charge; and it is to their honour that I mention it; though, but in general, Sir W------ G------ and his lady have treated one another in ways with such justice and with such reserve in this case, that as soon as ever the lady has found herself with child, she always lodged in apartments by herself till she was delivered, and the like at other seasons, that no occasion might offer, where there was so much love, to have any excess.

Nor has this modest custom been so much a stranger to our ancestors as it seems to have been to us, a truth not at all to our advantage; his was, without doubt, the original of that good custom among persons of quality, and of any tolerable fortunes, to have separate apartments, the gentleman's lodgings and the lady's being separate, so that, when decency required, they went from one another for a while till proper times returned, and made lodging together reasonable again.

It is true middling families have not this convenience, and cannot keep separate lodgings furnished for one another; it may be said of such, indeed, that they have the greater exercise for their virtue, because they are obliged always to lodge together. But how great soever the exercise is, and how difficult soever to be put in practice, still, as it is a virtue, it ought to be strictly observed; nor, in my opinion, can any man be said to live a life of virtue that neglects it.

The rest is all prostitution; nay, it is worse; is unnatural, it is a kind of lesser sodomy, for doubt not but Sodom's sins, the foundation of which was laid, as I have observed, in high feeding, emphatically expressed in the sacred text by "fulness of bread," so the consequences broke out in divers other excesses besides that one detestable crime which bears the name and reproach of the place to this day. Their gorged stomachs discovered themselves, no doubt, in all the excesses of a provoked appetite and an inflamed blood; and it is so, in like cases, to this day.

We have a testimony of this in all places, and, I may say, in all ages of the world: the high feeders are the high livers; excess of wine is described in Scripture to produce excess of vice, and the fire of nature burns in proportion to the fuel. Hence the Italians, a nation who revel in all the varieties of luxury, such as rich wines, luscious fruits, high sauces, pickles, preserves, sweetmeats, and perfumes, to an excess, how do the hellish fires rage in them. How do they run out to all the extremes of criminal riot, even to that fury of love called jealousy, and this often ending in blood. How do they dwell in wantonness and lasciviousness, and carry it on to all the most unnatural extremes of the dead lake itself, and this not only now, but in the Romans' time also it was the like.

At the same time the more moderate feeding nations round them are in proportion less outrageous in their vice, and whether it be from any principle of virtue or no, they are so by the mere consequence of things; they live more sparingly, and their blood is kept lower, not always inflamed (as is the case in Italy and other parts of the world); they are forbid wine, which to these northern climates is the fuel of outrageous actions, and leads to innumerable crimes.

How easily, then, is this scandalous excess to be cured. They have very little regard to modesty, to the demands of their reason or of religion, who will not reduce themselves to a moderate degree of heat, in order to mortify such criminal desires as these; if a little abatement of wine, or of strong, nourishing, and rich diets, and feeding more sparingly, would do it, they must have no desire to live within bounds, like Christians and like men, who will not abate a little at the trencher, that they may be able to abate in another place.

Gluttony and drunkenness are too near akin to the debaucheries of love, as they may well be styled, not to be called the parents of the vice. If you restrain the original, you cut off the sequent crime; if the springs are cut off, the streams will soon fail; if the fountains are stopped, the rivers will soon be dry: and they that will not suffer so small a mortification as the denying themselves a little in the excesses of the table and the bottle in order to abate some of the more criminal excesses in the other place, loudly tell us they are in love with the crime, that they are pleased with the vice; and that it is not that they cannot restrain themselves, but that, delighting in the vile part, they do no not desire to restrain themselves, or to be restrained, that they will not remove the fuel, lest the fire should abate. Thus one excess follows another: a debauchery of one kind follows the debauchery of another; the matrimonial whoredom follows the drunkenness and the gluttony by the same necessity, and as naturally, as the consequence follows the cause; the influx occasions the efflux, and the man is but the same; he is a volunteer in both, a willing servant to the devil, and desires not to be delivered from the pleasing necessity.

I am the longer upon it here, as I said before, because, indeed, it is the same thing in all the other wicked things I have mentioned in this work. Whence comes all the indecent lawful things we have been talking of but from this sin of Sodom, viz., fulness of bread? While the stomach is gorged with animal food, of which no nation in the world feeds like us, while the blood is filled with these pungent particles, and the veins swelled with animal spirits, no wonder the seminal vessels are over-full, and summon the man to a dismission or evacuation, even at price of his virtue, of his conscience, and of his reason.

Let them that are truly desirous to prevent this unhappy eruption of consequences begin in the right place; abate the first mischief; let them remove the causing evil, and the consequent evil will die of course.

A mortification of the palate would be an effectual reformation upon the life: by a due regimen of diet we might bring ourselves to be a reformed regular nation, and I see no other way ever to bring it to pass.

We are ruined in our morals by lawful things; the excesses in our lawful enjoyments make them criminal; even our needful supplies of life are the ruin of life. We not only dig our graves with our teeth by mingling our diseases with our food, nourishing distemper and life together, but we even eat our way into eternity, and damn our souls with our teeth; gnawing our way through the doors of the devil's castle with our teeth. In a word, the drunkard may be well said to drink himself to the devil; the nice eating glutton feeds and fattens himself up for the devil's slaughter-house, because one vice feeds another till they are made ripe for hell by the distracted use of lawful and laudable things; making lawful and even necessary things criminal, and sowing the seeds of vice in the ordinary ploughings of mere nature.

How usefully might we apply this to our particular friends, of whom so many will strive to blush when they read it. A------ L------, Esq., had never been a whore-master if he had not dined so often at Puntack's; nor had good and grave Sir L------ W------ visited Tabby R------ by moonlight, if he had not dwelt so many dark evenings at Brown's; so he goes from the bottle to the bawdy-house, in which the man may be said only to act nature, and pursue, as all the world does, the direct course of cause and consequence.

If G------ W------ will cease to make his house a stews, his marriage-bed a pollution, and bring his modest wife to a necessity of turning her slipper the wrong side upward at him, if he will be able to give a better excuse for his matrimonial whoredom than that he cannot help it, let him cease to eat three hours together at break fast, let him not gorge at noon till he falls asleep at the table, or drink at night till he lies under it; let him read 'Cornaro of Venice,' and live upon two ounces and five drachms a day, and half-a-pint of wine in three days. I will answer for it, his wife shall not lock herself up for fear of coming to bed to a fury, nor swear the peace against him to get him bound to the behaviour of a Christian, for fear of being murdered in the lawful method of man and wife.

Madmen by day will be roadmen by night; they that have no government of themselves one way, how should they have it another way? I expect it will be objected here, that the nations which I have named, such as the Turks and Moors, though they drink no wine, and do not feed, as we do, upon flesh, yet are as wicked and vicious as other people.

That these nations are vicious may be true; and having no laws of conscience or religion to restrain them, they are, no doubt, much the worse. But yet I deny one part, viz., that they are so privately wicked, so lawfully lewd, as I call it, as we are; they have their many wives, as they will, but not so much conjugal lewdness as I believe we have, and I have many reasons to think so.

The subject of this chapter is indeed one, but have I not given twenty instances of matrimonial whoredom in the compass of this work? Is not the common ordinary course of our married loose ones a series of most scandalous doings, such, and of such kind, as the Mahometans and savages, who have no guide but nature, no check but the aversions of common sense, would abhor? Of the same nature with this, is that of a man coming to his wife after child-bearing, and before her body be sufficiently cleansed from its natural impurities, before the seasons set apart for her proper purgations are finished. This is an article to be lightly touched too, because, forsooth, we will not bear to be spoken plainly to of the things which we yet are openly and shamelessly guilty of.

This is one of the breaches mankind make in their ordinary practice, not upon the laws of decency only, but upon the law of nature; for the separation is evidently directed by the law of nature; it is dictated from the first principles of that knowledge which the most ignorant are furnished with of themselves.

The women, indeed, ought to be the conservators of this law; and as they seem to have a kind of absolute power over themselves during their ordinary separations, they seem to be the most chargeable with the breach of it, because they are not altogether so passive at this time as at another.

If there is a breach of modesty here, it is on her side chiefly, and therefore the reproof is to her, and ought to be so taken; for it is as notorious a charge upon her as that of admitting a man, upon promise of matrimony, before it was formed into a marriage; which, indeed, though the aggressing was chargeable upon the man, yet the yielding or consenting, which was wholly upon the woman's side, and in her power, plainly makes her chargeable with the offence, makes it all her own act and deed; so it is here; and therefore it is true that the crime is her's, and the reproof is upon her, and upon her only.

The law of God, in the public institution of the Jewish economy, states this case with respect to the woman's separation after child-bearing in such a manner, as that though the Jewish constitutions being abolished, do not seem to be binding to us, yet they are certainly a just rule for us to state a Christian regimen or government from; they are a good standard to measure decency and the laws of good order by; they were certainly formed upon the most perfect model of justice and equity, perfectly suited to the nature of the thing, and are binding in decency, if they are not absolutely so in conscience, and under the usual penalties, as the rest of God's law at that time was.

Most of the sacred constitutions of the Jewish state were enjoined upon the severest penalty generally of death, being cut off from the congregation of the Lord, &c.; and amongst those things to which those severities were annexed, those which respected uncleanness and natural or accidental pollutions, were some of the chief, such as having the disease of the leprosy, issues of blood, nay, even eating leavened bread in the seven days of the passover; counterfeiting the sacred oil and the sacred perfume were punished with death, "that soul was to be cut off," &c.: the reason was, because it was a despising the legislator. But when he comes to enjoin the needful purifications, and the particular uncleannesses which were to be purged by washings and separations, as also for the eating of blood, the reasons are given in plain words; God speaks them himself; "I have separated you from other people that ye should be mine, and ye shall be holy unto me," as in Exodus, chap, xii; and Leviticus, chap, xv and xvii; and several other places.

Now, if these legal purifications were appointed only that the people might be a more exactly clean and sanctified people than the other nations about them, the reason holds, though the sanction of that particular constitution is ceased, as in other cases; for example, the law for the man who had trespassed upon his neighbour, cheated or deceived him, was made to appoint a sacrifice to atone for the crime, and restitution for the trespass; the crime is still the same, though the manner of making an atonement for it is ceased.

The uncleanness is the same whether the law be in force or no. By the Mosaic institution, the woman was to perform her separation or, what was then called a purification a certain time; upon her bringing forth a male child, she performed an exact quarantine, viz., three and thirty days, and seven days; and for a female child she was obliged to perform a double quarantine, namely, sixty and six days, and fourteen days; during which time the man was not to be suffered to come near her, or so much as to touch her, upon the severest penalties, as above.

Now, not to insist upon the legal purifications of that strict law enjoined from above, and which had such solid reasons given for it, yet the law of nature, upon which all that part, is originally founded, is the same. You may say the neglect of it is not a mortal sin, or that deserves death. But you cannot say it is not a pudor, a shameful, an immodest thing, or that it is not loath some and odious, even in its own nature; for the regulation of clean and unclean, like right and wrong, is still the same, settled and unalterable, as things established in the law of nature, which are not altered by customs and habits, whether good or evil.

It is true that our usage has reduced these separations and purgations of the sex to a month or thirty days, which the law of God had fixed at six weeks, and has made no difference in the time of separation between the circumstances of a male or female birth; for all which we give physical reasons, such us generally satisfy our scruples in those affairs: nor is it my business to dispute here the reason and nature of the alteration, and whether it is sufficiently grounded; our physicians and anatomists are best able to answer for that part, and I suppose can do it.

But even, with all the abatement of days, and I doubt not it is reduced as low as it can be, yet I say, with that abatement we find it is not observed; our libertine age breaks through it all, and if it were a fortnight, would perhaps do the same; and this is the thing I complain of; and for want of which decency, or rather duty, people of this age may be justly said to deserve the censure which a wise and good man put lately upon them, namely, that we have not less holiness than our ancestors, nor less honesty, but much more; only that he thought the holiness and the honesty of the days differed, and that some things would pass now for holiness and for honesty with us which would not pass for such with our ancestors.

This indeed may alter the case very much, and the ages may differ in the species when they do not differ in the name of the things; the standard of virtue may alter as the standard of our coins frequently do; but the real thing, the silver, and its intrinsic rate or value, alters not, it is always the same and ever will be.

To bring it down to the case in hand. Virtue and modesty were things our ancestors had to value themselves upon in a particular manner; and indeed they had a great share of them, such as they might justly value themselves upon. Now we may boast, I hope, of virtue and honesty in quantity as much as they, and I believe we do talk as loudly of it as ever they did; but whether our virtue and our honesty are of as fine a standard or not, I dare not enter upon a nice inquiry into that part for sundry good reasons, not so fit, perhaps, to mention, as we might wish they were.

Sometimes I am afraid there is a baser alloy among us, and that the species is a little altered (in these ages of mirth and good feeding); I will not venture to say it is not so. But even in the particular before me, I have been told our forefathers were stricter in their adhering to the laws of nature than we think ourselves obliged to be; that they abhorred the pollutions that I complain of, and that they left us, their posterity, much a sounder and healthier generation for that very thing, perhaps, than we may leave those that are to come after us.

It is a very unhappy case, that these practices should affect posterity so much as they say they do, because whether we consider it so much as we might do or not, I cannot doubt but our children will be touched in their health and constitution a little, if it be but a little, by the corrupt practices of this lewd age. What we bring upon ourselves is nothing but to ourselves, and we might be apt to say, we alone should suffer for it; and it were well if it were no otherwise.

But to forfeit for our posterity, to entail diseases upon the blood of our successors, to send them into the world with aching heads, rheumatic joints, entailed discuses, inflamed blood, and affected nerves, and cause them, as we may say, to come weeping into the world, and go groaning out of it; this would give a considering mind a pang of remorse, and make us anticipate our children's sorrows a little by sighing for them sometimes before they are born.

Life at best brings sorrows enough with it, and we need not seem to be concerned lest our children should not have their share of them; they will bring evils of that kind enough (and fast enough too) upon themselves; we have no need to send them into time with an inheritance of crippled joints and aching bones, and take care to give them cause to curse their fathers and mothers, as many do every day.

I make no doubt but the intemperance and excesses I have spoken of in this chapter have sometimes descended from line to line to the third and fourth generation, and that many of the miseries of life are owing to the infected blood of those that went before them. And let such people reflect seriously upon the number of children born into the world in this luxurious, intemperate, vicious age, and in this city in particular, who die in the very infancy of their life, who coming into the world loaded with distempers, the effect of their parents' intemperance and unnatural excesses, struggle a few days with the unequal burden of life, and expire under the weight of it.

It is but within a few days that I have seen examples of this kind in families within the reach of a little inquiry. One has four children left out of twenty-four; another has two out of eighteen; another three out of twenty-two; and so of many more; whereas T------ C------, a man of virtue and temperance, within the reach of my own acquaintance, has had thirteen children, and never buried one, but at ninety years of age sees them all grown up men and women, healthy, strong, fruitful, and full of children of their own.

G------ D------, another ancient, grave, and religious gentleman, had but four children, his wife dying young, and himself living single afterwards to a great age, saw those four, being all daughters, bring forth just eighty children, and had at one time one hundred and thirteen of his children, grand-children, and great-grand-children dining with him at his table.

These are some of the examples of temperance and modesty which assist to a strong constitution, whose vigour extended in the course of nature, multiplies much more than the heats of an outrageous flame, and leaves a tincture of health and vigorous spirits upon their posterity; whereas a tainted soul, corrupting the mass of blood with vice and lewdness, brings a generation of diseased and distempered animals, fit to be sent to an hospital, cradle and all, and calling for physicians and the help of art, even before they can be fairly said to live.

It is true I do not place all this to the account of the two particular branches of intemperance and excess only which are mentioned in this chapter, but to the whole practice of immodest and indecent actions, the product of extravagant desires, mentioned in the chapters foregoing; for being now at the close of the account (and it is time I were, for it is a black account indeed), the application refers to the whole, viz., the general immodesty of the day, as practised among married people, and pleaded for, vindicated, and defended, under the cover and protection of the sacred office, and under the pretence of being lawful, because within the bounds of matrimony.

Nor do I pretend that I have yet gone through all the branches of this dirty practice; the wickedness is dispersed among a vast variety of causes and circumstances, as it is among abundance of people; not a back door, but the corrupt blood, the offspring of a corrupt race, sally out a