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jarring Tempers, discording Affections, and, in short, meer want of Love and Friendship, grow scandals to the marry'd Life, and set themselves up for Beacons and Light-houses, to warn the wandering World, and to bid them beware how they marry without Love, how they join Hands and not Hearts, unite Interests, unite Sexes, unite Families and Relatives, and yet never unite Hearts?
How is Matrimony abused in all these Cases by almost all Sorts of People, who carrying a Face of Civility and Union in the married Life, and who, in view of the World, pass for sober, modest, grave, religious, and all that Virtue and Honesty call for among Christians; and yet trace them into their Houses and Families, their Conversation is gross, and, in a manner debauched with undecent Language, their Way of living all Luxury and Sloth, their Marriage Covenants broken by Strife and Contention; in a word, their Houses a Bedlam, and their Marriage Bed a Scene of Lewdness and Excesses not to be named.
Is this living together after God's holy Ordinance? Is this making the Marriage Bed a Bed undefiled? Will they pretend there is nothing defiles the Marriage Bed but Whoredom, and forsaking the Marriage Covenant. Let not that Mistake be their Protection in the Breach of the Laws of Nature, and despising all the limitations of Decency and Modesty; there are Laws and Limits plac'd by Nature, nay, let me say, by the God of Nature, even to the conjugal Embraces; and a due regard is to be had, in all Cafes, to those Laws and Limits. If I am speaking to Christians I need not explain my self; but as I am to speak to some
