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this they call Insulting the Church, and, indeed, so I think it is; and they have their Ecclesiastick Constitutions, by which it is punishable, and the Priest is punished also that officiates in such a Marriage.
But to quit this nauseous Part as soon as we can; untimely Marriages are certainly scandalous in their Nature, especially where the Age is unequal, where one, being young, and scarce Ripe, by the ordinary Course of Nature, for the Marriage Bed, the other is of full Age; 'tis not a Matrimonial Whoredom only; 'tis, in my Opinion, a kind of a Matrimonial Rape, because it has something of Violence offered to Nature in it on one side, and something odiously and criminally Immodest, on the other.
It is true, and 'tis objected against me here, that in other Countries it is ordinary for the Children, especially of great Families, to come together young, and they have a usual Saying, that like Fruit gathered green, and laid up, they will ripen together; upon this Foot they frequently marry very early, the Ladies at eleven to twelve, and the Gentlemen at thirteen or fourteen; and, as it is the practice of the Country, there's no Scandal in it.
I have little to say to this Practice abroad; I know it is so in Spain, Portugal, and some other Places in the World; and there may be natural Reasons to be given in justification of the Practice; some taken from the Constitution of the People, some from the Climate, some from one Cause, some from another. Naturalists can say more to it than is needful here. Man and Woman have a Vegetative, as well as a sensitive and rational Life; and there maybe
