Page:A Treatise concerning the Use and Abuse of the Marriage Bed.djvu/120

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suffers him to come to Bed to her; and as they came together upon the meer 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, chast, and rivetted 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 Foot; that is to say, of meer 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 isgorged