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any Value for their own Character, because it would expose the Crime, as well as the Fact.
I grant, that the Respect to the Dead is not the thing that makes the Crime, but that Respect being a Debt of Decency, why is it not paid? Let the Reason be enquired into, the Answer must be natural, because the Party has a secret Inclination to gratify, and which is to be obliged in spight of that Pretence. Now all Matrimony that is meerly enter'd into to gratify the Inclination, that is undertaken meerly for the sensual Part, is, in my Sense, a debauched Matrimony, because Sensuality is not the true End and Design of the Ordinance of Matrimony, but a Corruption of it, and an Abuse.
It is for the Honour of Matrimony, and to dignify the Ordinance in a due Manner, that those Things should be avoided which bring Scandal upon it, tho' it be but in the Circumstances, not the essential Part: To see a Couple come together meerly and openly to gratify the vitious and Brutal Part, and satisfy their Sensuality, and then take the sacred Name of God in their Mouths, and tell us, they do come together according to God's holy Ordinance. This is making, not a Jest of Religion only, but 'tis Prophaneness, 'tis turning sacred Things to debauched Purposes, 'tis giving religious Titles to corrupt Undertakings, and sanctifying Crimes by the Mask of Innocence.
Let Protestants and Christians, or those who would be esteemed such, look back upon the Purity which they profess, and no longer study to cover and conceal Crime under the Appearance of Religion, but honestly explode the vitious Part, and distinguish rightly betweenThings
