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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 murther 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 meer 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 push'd 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 strike 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 'tis 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 it self, has been the Effect of immoderate Heats and Surfeitings of the Blood, withoutwhat
