Page:A Treatise concerning the Use and Abuse of the Marriage Bed.djvu/339

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

[ 325 ]

get him bound to the Behaviour of a Christian, for fear of being murthered in the lawful Method of Man and Wife.

Madmen by Day will be Madmen 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 vitious as other People.

That those Nations are vitious, 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 a 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 touch'd too, because (forsooth) we will not bear to be spoken plainly to, ofthe