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Modesty, the trespassing upon which is the ground of the whole Complaint. If these Men could be talked to in their own Language; if the odious Expressions they use in their ordinary Discourse could be thrown in their Faces, and they could be daub'd with their own Dirt, it would describe them in a more effectual manner, they would be painted in the most suitable Colours, and dress'd up in the Robes that would best become them; and, in one respect, it ought to be so, that every Crime might be shown as it really is.
It was a Practice in some of the Nations in the Eastern Countries, that if a Woman was convicted of Adultery, he was stript stark naked, and led about the City, that she might be exposed in the same Nakedness in which the had voluntarily exposed her self, and so be punished in the very kind of her Offence.
But this would not do in a Christian Country; it would be it self an Offence against Decency, and a Breach of the very Modesty which it was intended to punish, and therefore it cannot be done; in like manner the Crime I am reproving, cannot be expos'd in the lively manner that other Offences are expos'd in; because, as I may say, we cannot speak the Language: The Dialect these People talk is a great part of the Crime; and as it is not to be made use of for their Reproof, so we are straiten'd exceedingly in Reproving; and they triumph over me in this very Part, that I talk in the dark, and reprove by Allegory and Metaphor, that People may, know, or not know what I mean, just as it may happen.
This may, in some Sense, indeed be true, as I have said above, but the Hardship risesfrom
