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a treatise concerning the use and abuse of the marriagebed showing i the nature of matrimony its sacred original and the true meaning of its institution ii the gross abuse of matrimonial chastity from the wrong notions which have possessed the world degenerating even to whoredom iii the diabolical practice of attempting to prevent child-bearing by physical preparations iv the fatal consequences of clandestine or forced marriages through the persuasion interest or influence of parents and relations to wed the person they have no love for but oftentimes an aversion to v of unequal matches as to the disproportion of age and how such many ways occasion a matrimonial whoredom vi how married persons may be guilty of conjugal lewdness and that a man may in effect make a whore of his own wife also many other particulars of family concern loose thoughts at first like subterranean fires burn inward smothering with unchaste desires but getting vent to rage and fury turn burst in volcanoes and like aetna burn the heat increases as the flames aspire and turns the solid hills to liquid fire so sensual flames when raging in the soul first vitiate all the parts then fire the whole burn up the bright the beauteous the sublime and turn our lawful pleasures into crime l ondon printed for t warner at the black boy in paternoster row mdccxxvii t hepreface i am so sensible of the nicety of the following subject and the ill nature of the age that though i have introduced it with all the protestations of a resolved caution and of tying myself down to all possible modesty in the whole work and though i have concluded it with due explanations and a free appeal to the most impartial judges yet i cannot but add a word of preface the justness of the satire the loud calls which the crimes here reproved make for justice and a due censure the dreadful ruin of the people s morals and the apparent contempt of modesty and decency which grows so visibly upon us by the shameless practice of what is here reproved join all together to vindicate this undertaking and to show not the usefulness only but the necessity of it it is almost thirty years since the author began this piece he has all that time heard with a just concern the complaints of good men upon the hateful subject the grave and the sober the lovers of virtue and of religion have with grief expressed themselves upon the growing scandal and they have often pressed him to finish and bring out this reproof and have joined with his opinion of the justice of it hitherto he has been reluctant as to the publishing it and partly on account of his years for it was long since finished and partly in hopes of reformation but now despairing of amendment grown old and out of the reach of scandal and of all the pretences to it sincerely aiming at the reformation of the guilty and despising all unjust reproaches from a vicious age he closes his days with this satire which he is so far from seeing cause to be ashamed of that he hopes he shall not where he is going to account for it.

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at least he can appeal to that judge who he is soon to come before that as he has done it with an upright intention for the good of mankind so he has used his utmost endeavour to perform it in a manner the least liable to reflection and in his judgment the most likely to answer the true end of it viz the reformation of the crime and with this satisfaction he comfortably prays for its success t hecontents the introduction chapter i of matrimony the nature of it its sacred original and the true intent and meaning of its institution as also how our notions of it are degenerated the obligations of it disregarded and the thing itself as a state of life grossly abused chapter ii of matrimonial chastity what is to be understood by the word a proof of its being required by the laws of god and nature and that wrong notions of it have possessed the world dr taylor s authority quoted about it chapter iii of the end and reason of matrimony and that there is a needful modesty and decency requisite even between a man and his wife after marriage the breaches of which make the first branch of matrimonial whoredom chapter iv of the absolute necessity of a mutual affection before matrimony in order to the happiness of a married state and of the scandal of marrying without it chapter v of marrying and then publicly professing to desire they may have no children and of using means physical or diabolical to prevent conception chapter vi of being overruled by persuasion interest influence of friends force and the like to take the person they have no love for and forsake the person they really loved chapter vii of marrying one person and at the same time owning themselves to be in love with another chapter viii of unequal unsuitable and preposterous marriages and the unhappy consequences of them of the effects they have upon the family conversation how they occasion a matrimonial whoredom many ways also something of the marriage covenant and oath and how all the breaches of it are a political and matrimonial whoredom if not a literal whoredom with several examples chapter ix of marrying at unsuitable years chapter x of marrying with inequality of blood chapter xi of going to bed under solemn promises of marriage and although those promises are afterwards performed and of the scandal of a man s making a whore of his own wife chapter xii of the husband knowing his wife after conception or after it appears she is with child of the reasonableness and lawfulness of it and whether this may not come under the just denomination of matrimonial whoredom chapter xiii of indecent and untimely marriages whether as to the years of the persons marrying infants and children or marrying immediately after the death of the husband or wife that went before.

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chapter xiv of clandestine forcible and treacherous marriages the conclusion introduction it is certainly true that modesty is no natural virtue what the latins called pudor or shamefacedness is the effect of crime and is always occasioned by a consciousness of guilt whether it be actual guilt or intentional guilt of a fact already committed or guilt of a crime resolved on tis much the same before adam and eve knew evil as well as good before they were conscious of offence they went naked and blushed not and tis most significantly expressed they knew not that they were naked they knew not that nakedness was a turpitude an indecency and therefore when adam gives that poor foolish excuse for hiding himself from the eyes of the infinite author of sight and says because he was naked gen iii 10 11 god asks him who told thee that thou wast naked doubtless before the fall innocence was given to man for a covering and he not only knew not that he was naked but he really was not naked though he was not clothed he knew not how to blush at being naked much less why the same innocence is the protection of virtue to this day in the untaught savages in many parts of the known world where nakedness is no offence on one side no snare no incentive on the other but custom being the judge of decency to them takes away all sense of indecency in going uncovered whether in whole or in part see mr milton upon that head god-like erect with native honour clad in naked majesty so pass d they naked on nor shunn d the sight of god or angel for they thought no ill milton par fol 95 now the same custom in these northern parts having concurred with the necessity of the climate on one hand and the laws of religion on the other to clothe and cover the body the breach of that custom would be a breach of decency and a breach of the laws both of god and man hence modesty succeeds whether as a virtue in itself or as an appendix to virtue we will not dispute but where the rules of decency are broken a sense of shame comes in with as much force as if all the laws of god and man were broken at once it may be true that if man had continued in a state of unspotted innocence unshaken virtue had been part of it that as his soul had been untainted with so much as a thought of crime so no covering had been wanted to any part of his body other than the severities of climate might make necessary but to justify what has been done since that i may take notice of the manner and put you in mind of the authority of it too we may observe that as his guilt made him naked god himself covered him with his own hand gen iii 21 it is said positively that god clothed them with the skins we suppose of beasts unto adam also and to his wife did the lord god make coats of skins and clothed them so soon were the creatures dedicated to the convenience as well as life of man hence though nakedness in a state of innocence had been no offence at that time it is otherwise now and we have the sanction of heaven to enforce the decency as we have the force of the seasons to urge the necessity of clothing it were to be wished we had nothing to say of the indecency even of the clothing and how we study to go naked in our very clothes and that after god himself put them on to cover us too but of that by itself god having then appointed and nature compelled mankind to seek covering all the pretences for going naked on that account are at an end a mere chimera an enthusiastic dream seldom attempted but by a sect of madmen worse than lunatic who heated with a religious phrensy the worst of all possessions pretend to nakedness as the effect of their innocence at the same time making it a screen to all manner of lewdness and debauchery nature and religion having thus introduced decency the strict and religious regard paid to that decency is become a virtue essential virtue and is so in all the requisite parts of virtue i mean those which are understood as commanded by the laws of god or by the laws of nature and this is modesty as it is the subject of our present discourse we say that modesty is the guard of virtue and in some respects it is so and were modesty universal virtue would need no other defence but as the world now stands she is fain to fly to other succours such as laws of men the command of religion the power of reason and at last the protection of governors so hard is she pursued by vice and the degenerate passions of men modesty then as i am to understand it here and to discourse about it is nothing but a strict regard to decency as decency is a strict regard to virtue and virtue is a strict regard to religion indeed they seem all in some sense to be synonymous and to mean the same thing it is true honour and virtue may speaking strictly be said in some cases to be preserved though decency is not so much or equally regarded but let all that plead the possibility of that distinction know that however possible it may be it is so far from being probable that where decency is given up honour should or can be preserved that they will find it very hard to have it be believed as they that give up their modesty cannot be said to preserve decency so they that give up decency will be hardly believed to preserve their virtue hence modesty is become a virtue in itself and if it be not literally and expressly all that is understood by the word virtue tis virtue s complete representative its true image and they are as inseparable as the gold and the glistering.

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the object of modesty respects three things 1 modesty in discourse 2 modesty in behaviour 3 modesty in regard to sexes 1 by modesty in discourse i think i must of necessity be understood a decency of expression particularly as our discourse relates to actions or things whether necessary or accidental that are and ought to be matters of secrecy things which are to be spoken of with reserve and in terms that may give no offence to the chaste ears and minds of others and yet perhaps are of necessity to be spoken to indeed such things with respect to decency ought never to be spoken of at all but when necessity urges and it were to be wished that in a christian and modest nation where the laws of decency are expressly admitted as rules of life all immodest discourses were decried by universal custom and especially that printing and publishing such things as are not to be read with the like decency were effectually suppressed but as i have made that subject a part of this work i say no more of it here 2 by modesty in behaviour i understand that which we call decorum distance and deference in conversation chiefly as it respects the distinction of qualities in the persons conversing but that part is not at all concerned in this discourse our present design looking quite another way the last of these viz modesty with respect to sexes is the subject intended in this tract especially as it is confined to this one branch of it namely the conjugal part of life the intercourse between the sexes or the freedom of conversing between a man and his wife in which many think all the rules and laws of modesty are finished and at an end a mistake so gross so full of fatal mischiefs to the public virtue and to the intent and meaning of decency in general that it is much in a nation so every way virtuous as this and where the rules of virtue are enforced by wholesome laws such a corrupt notion should spread so far and so many absurdities break out into practice upon that subject the notion is that there is no more such a thing as modesty to be named between a man and his wife that as they are but one flesh and indeed but one body there s no nakedness between them that were they alone covering would be not only needless but nonsense if the climate did not require it that nothing can be indecent nothing improper that there s no restraint and that no law can be broken by them but everything is handsome everything honest and everything modest that tis a full answer to all reproach in any case that may be charged to say it was my own wife or it was none but my own husband this is made the covering to all manner of surfeiting indecencies and excesses of which i am to speak at large in their order it is high time to combat this error of life and the more because it is grown up to a height not only scandalous but criminal and offensive and in some things unnatural and still the more because tis a mistake that is increasing and tis feared may go higher till at last it may break out into yet greater abominations the difficulty before me is to know how to reprove with decency offences against decency how to expose modestly things which tis hardly modest so much as to mention and which must require abundance of clean linen to wrap them up in how to speak of nauseous and offensive things in terms which shall not give offence and scourge immodest actions with an unblamable modesty that is without running out into expressions which shall offend the modest ears of those that read them this i say is the only difficulty i am insulted already on this head by the rude and self-guilty world my very title and the bare advertising my book they say is a breach upon modesty and it offends their ears even before it is published they not only tell me it will be an obscene and immodest book but that it is i impossible it should be otherwise they say i may pretend to as much reservedness and darkness of expression as i please and may skulk i behind a crowd or indeed a cloud of words but my meaning will be reached and the lewd age will make plain english of it nay that i shall make plain english of it myself before i have gone half through the work others armed with the same ill-nature have their tongues poisoned with another kind of venom and they tell me it is an immodest subject that as it cannot be handled decently and cannot be discoursed of modestly so it is not intended to be so but that tis a mere bait to the curiosity of that part of the reading world whose vices are prompted as much by a pretended reproving them as by the plainest expressions that it forms the same ideas in their minds and they receive the notions of vice in as lively a form by the very methods taken to expose and condemn the facts as if those facts were represented to the optics in all their shameless nudities with the most vicious and corrupt dress that could be put upon them on a stage or in a masquerade i shall answer these people best by a silence in my introduction and a speaking performance it is my business to let them see they are mistaken and that a truly modest design may be pursued with the utmost decency even in treating of a subject in which all the vilest breaches made upon decency by a wicked and hitherto unreproved behaviour are to be censured and exposed as to a vicious mind forming corrupt ideas from the most modest expressions i have only this to say the crime of that part is wholly their own i am no way concerned in it the healing fructifying dews and the gentle sweet refreshing showers which are god s blessing upon the earth when they fall into the sea are all turned salt as the ocean tinged with the gross particles of salt which the sea-water is so full of the same warm cherishing beams of the sun which raise those sweet dews from the earth shining upon the stagnant waters of an unwholesome lake or marsh or upon a corrupted jakes or dunghill exhale noxious vapours and poisons which infect the air breeding contagion and diseases in those that breathe in it but the fault is not in the showers of refreshing rain or in the wholesome beams of the sun but in the salt and in the filth and corruption of the places where they fall and thus it shall be here words modestly expressed can give no immodest ideas where the minds of those that read are chaste and uncorrupted but if a vicious mind hears the vice reproved and forms pleasing ideas of the crime without taking notice of the just reproof the fault is in the depravity of the mind not in the needful and just reprover i shall therefore take no notice of that suggestion as what i think does not deserve the least regard but go on to a just censure of the crime in such a manner as i hope shall neither lessen the reproof nor expose the reprover in order to this i may indeed lie under some restraints be confined to a narrow compass of words and the story may want in some places the illustration of apposite similies useful arguments and above all of flagrant examples to set off and set home the arguments that are made use of and this to the great loss of the author in taking away those ornaments of his discourse but where it cannot be otherwise the reader must be content to abate it however i pretend to say you will not find it a dry a dull or a barren subject for all that and though something may be lost and much left out to preserve the rules of modesty which i could not reprove the breaches of with justice if the work was criminal itself yet i doubt not to

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find you subject of diversion enough mixed with the gravity of the story so as i hope not to tire you with the reading at the same time preserving the chastity of the subject the authority of a reprover and binding myself down with all possible severity to the laws of decency modesty and virtue which i write in the defence of but now while i am making these provisos pray let me be understood too with that just and necessary liberty of speech which shall render my discourse intelligible i am neither going to write in an unknown tongue nor in an unintelligible style i am to speak so as to be understood and i will not doubt but i shall be understood and those whose vicious appetites are under government so as to give them leave to relish decent reproof for indecent things may understand me without large explications especially on occasions where they know the cases will not bear it the scripture is the pattern of decency and as the learned annotator mr pool in his synopsis criticorum and in his annotations also observes speaks of all the indecencies of men with the utmost modesty yet neither does the scripture forbear to command virtue gives laws and rules of chastity and modest behaviour and that in very many places and on all needful occasions nor does the scripture fail to reprove the breach of those laws in the most vehement manner condemning the facts and censuring and judging the guilty persons with the utmost rigour and severity as i shall on many occasions be led to observe as i go on let none therefore flatter themselves that their crimes shall avoid the lash of a just satire in this work for want of expressions suited to the nature of the reproof and the vileness of the offence we shall find words to expose them without giving a blow to decency in the reproof we shall find ways and means to dress up surfeiting crimes in softening language so that none but the guilty need to blush none but the criminals be offended but the crime must be reproved there is a necessity for the reproof as there is a necessity of a cure in a violent distemper do we reckon it a breach of modesty for the body to be exposed in anatomies and published with learned lectures on every part by the anatomists are not the vilest and most unnatural of all crimes necessarily brought before courts of justice that the criminals may be punished as they deserve and though it maybe true that sometimes judicial proceedings are not managed with such decency in those cases as others think they might and which however i allow to be sometimes unavoidable yet notwithstanding all that can be pretended of immodesty in those proceedings the punishment of the criminal or his being sentenced must not be omitted for the preserving the modesty of the trial an offender would come well off in many offences besides this i am treating of if he must not be brought to justice because the very mention of his crime would put criminal ideas into the minds of those that hear of it let it suffice then in the case before us i am entering upon a just and needful censure of preposterous and immodest actions i shall perform it in as decent and reserved terms as i am able to do and as a man meaning to correct not encourage vice is able to do if a lewd fancy will entertain itself with the mere ideas of crime where it is only with the utmost severity condemned be the crime to the criminal i see no reason to be afraid of doing justice on that account a man is to be executed for sodomy nature and the laws of god require it must not the criminal die because all that see or hear of it must immediately form ideas of the crime in their thoughts nay and perhaps may think criminally of it this would give a loose to wickedness indeed and men might sin with most freedom where their crimes were too vile to be punished because they were too gross to be named so when a cloud its hasty showers sends down they re meant to fructify and not to drown and in a torrent if a drunkard sink tis not the flood that drowns him but the drink but twould be hard because a sinner s slain for fear of drowning we should have no rain besides it would be a light escape and some of our first readers would triumph another way over the author if they could be satisfied that they had sinned in a manner so gross that he could not find words to reprove them in i mean such words as were fit for modest ears to hear the hearing of our well-known friend g a with his three brother as they call them in the north who think themselves beyond the reach of reproof as they are out of the reach of conscience may find themselves mistaken here and that if they will venture for once to think and look in they may see themselves touched to the quick and yet the readers hardly able to guess at their crime and not at all at their persons which last they ought to acknowledge is a special favour to them whether they deserve it or no so kind have i been to their fame and so careful to leave room for their amendment which i would hope for in spite of their solemn vows to the contrary nor shall that eminent brute of quality pass untouched here whose name or titles need no other mention than what are to be summed up in this short character a life of crime with this peculiar fame without sense of guilt and past sense of shame i say he shall see his most inimitable way of sinning stabbed to the heart and damned with an unanswerable and unexceptionable reproof and yet without any description either of his person or his offence other than as may be read by himself and those that know him though i must allow him to be the weakest and wickedest thing alive vain of being the first in a crime and the last that will leave it that blushes at nothing but the thoughts of blushing and thinks a man of wit can be ashamed of nothing but repentance that sins for the sake of crime without the pleasure of it and is got seven degrees in sin beyond the devil in that he not only boasts of sins which he never committed but tells the world he fibs by boasting of sins which all the town knows he cannot commit if such a wretch on earth ye gods there be i ll die if our sir be not he nor let another flagrant example of married lewdness trouble himself or express his concern least he should be omitted in this work for fear of our offending the chaste ears of our readers with his vile story a city sinner as his crime let him not doubt but he may find himself suitably reproved seeing he is so fond of it and since he desires the fame of being superlatively wicked he may hear of it in a manner that shall make others blush for him though he cannot blush for himself but to pass these and some more for in this age of preposterous crime we should never find our way out should we enter into the labyrinth of characters and bring on regiments of example our present business is with the offence not with the offenders with the crime not with the criminals if a just satire on the wicked part will not reclaim us i doubt the list of the guilty of both sexes though it would indeed be as numerous as our city trained bands would be us useless a muster as that at the artillery ground and find as little reformation among them as it is in ordinary crimes that men sin on because they scorn and are ashamed to repent so in the case before me when they are launched

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into the most flagrant of all crimes things so odious that it is offensive to modest ears so much as to hear of them and difficult to a modest pen so much as to write of them they take hold of the hellish advantage and make the greatness the superlative blackness of their offences be their protection in the committing them as if they were out of the reach of reproof because no modest pen can dip in the dirt or rake in the dung-hill of their vices without being sullied and daubed by them that it would be scandalous for any modest man so much as to mention what they do not think it scandalous to do thus the hardened and fearless a c who defies god and man laughs at reproach and threatens every reprover impudently said to his parish minister that modestly spoke of his crimes you may talk to me here doctor at home but you dare not speak a word of it in the pulpit i am out of your reach there why all the women would run out of the church and they d throw stones at you as you go along the street if you did but mention it happy criminal that hugs himself in being too vile to be reproved or so much as modestly mentioned that his crimes cannot be exposed because modest ears cannot bear to hear them spoken of let the offender who is famed for being revengeful and who is not so far off as not to hear of it resent it if he thinks fit i am told he will soon hear more of it where it may be spoken of without fear of his anger this very case runs parallel with what i am now engaged in but the age shall see the effect shall not answer their end shall it be criminal to reprove the offence which they think it is not criminal to commit must we blush to speak of what they will not blush to do and must the most detestable things go on in practice because we dare not go on to cry them down god for bid we should by silence seem to approve that wickedness while that silence is occasioned only because the wickedness is too gross to be reproved sure our language is not so barren of words as that we cannot find out proper expressions to reprehend an impudent generation without breach of decency in the diction or that immodest actions may not be modestly exposed if corrupt imaginations will rise up and men will please themselves with the difficulty i am put to for words if they will turn my most reserved terms into lewd and vicious ideas and debauch their thoughts while i expose their debaucheries let them go on their own way let them think as wickedly as they please they shall owe it to themselves not to me both the fire and the tinder are all their own here shall be no materials to work upon no combustibles to kindle but what they bring with them but the work must be done in spite of the difficulty shall they watch for a slip of my pen and take advantage if possible from any misplaced word to reprove me of indecency in the necessary work of reproving their shameless immodestly must i be ashamed to expose the crime which they are not ashamed to be guilty of and blush to mention the things they boast of doing the truth is i know not why i should not freely name the men who in the open coffee houses and in their common wicked discourses publicly brag of the most immodest and shameless behaviour and vilely name themselves to be guilty of if make sport of the crimes and value themselves in being the criminals but it shall not be long before i may speak of it much plainer however as the offence is flagrant is grown scandalous and notorious and that we find the age ripening up by it to the highest and most unnatural of all crimes to the shame of society and to the scandal even of the protestant profession i have undertaken to begin the war against it as a vice and hope to make good the charge though i know i do make the attempt at the risk of all that a modest writer has to hazard he that undertakes a satire against an universal custom shall be sure to raise upon himself an universal clamour my lord rochester is plain in that case nor shall weak truth your reputation save the knaves will all agree to call you knave it must be acknowledged the age is ripened up in crime to a dreadful height and it is not a light a gentle touch that will bring them to blush the learned and reverend ministers the good the pious who would reprove them are forced to content themselves to sit still and pray for them and as the scripture says to mourn in secret for their abominations they cannot foul their solemn discourses with the crimes which they have to combat with the pulpit is sacred to the venerable office of a preacher of god s word and the gravity of the place a decent regard to the work and especially to the assembly forbids them polluting their mouths with the filthy behaviour of those they see cause to reprove and this makes many a lewd and vicious wretch go unexposed at least as he deserves and many a scandalous crime as well as the rich and powerful criminals go unreproved the auxiliary press therefore must come in to supply the deficiency they may read i hope what they could not hear nor am i afraid of the faces of men that eminent in wickedness flagrant in lewdness and abominable in tongue as well as in practice the famous and infamous in the worst of vices sir p shall here see himself marked out for his odious behaviour in defiance of his quality or power he who by office and authority punishes every day less crimes than he commits who sins out of the reach of reproof from the pulpit because too vile as well as too powerful to be spoken of by a modest divine who perhaps thinks it his duty rather to pray for him which he laughs at than to reprove him which he would storm and swear at i say he shall find what was said in another case the press may reach him who the pulpit scorns and he whose flagrant vice the b adorns the fearless satire shall to rage give vent and teach him how to blush though not repent in short it is a strange world and we are grown up to a strange height in our notions of things we have brought ourselves to a condition very particular to the day and singular as i may say to ourselves the policy of our vices has got the better of virtue and the criminals have managed themselves so artfully that it seems they may sin with less hazard of reputation than the innocent may reprove them for example the crime is now less scandal than repentance and as the proverb says it is a shame to steal but it is a double shame to carry home again so it is a shame to sin but it is a double shame to repent nay we go beyond all that it is no shame to be wicked but to whine and repent is intolerable and as the late colonel h said in the flagrance of his wit that it might be a fault to whore and drink and swear and some worse sins of his which he reckoned up but to repent to repent says he repeating the words nothing of a gentleman can come into that to be wicked adds he is wicked that s true but to repent that s the devil blush to repent but never blush to sin but the rubicon s past it must be put to the venture and let rage and exasperated lust do its worst the lewd age shall hear their shameless

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behaviour as well exposed as it will bear and that without any shameless doings in the reproof they will find no levity here no cleansing blurs with blotted fingers they shall have nothing to blush for but that they give occasion for such a reproof which being engaged with them on the occasion of their filthy conduct may be forced to speak of it in terms necessary to express our detestation of it but not at all adapted to encourage or recommend it c onjugallewdness chapter i of matrimony the nature of it its sacred original and the true intent and meaning of its institution as also how our notions of it are degenerated the obligations of it disregarded and the thing itself as a state of life grossly abused being to discourse in a particular and extraordinary manner of the breaches of the matrimonial relation with the disorders which are committed under the protection of matrimony and being to exhibit a charge of very high crimes and misdemeanours against some people who think themselves very virtuous and modest and yet give themselves all those matrimonial liberties it is highly needful to explain to such seemingly ignorant what the true intent and meaning of that ill-understood state of life is what it imports and how christians ought to rate and esteem the obligation of it in the conduct of a regular life for as i find my judgment of things is like to differ from others that what they think lawful i shall condemn as criminal and censure what they think moderate and sober the preliminaries ought to be settled as we go that we may begin upon right principles leaving no room to cavil at terms and dispute upon construction of words nicety of expression double entendres and such trifles i resolve to speak plainly and would be understood distinctly matrimony is according to the words in the office appointed in our liturgy god s ordinance that i shall prove to you presently but it is moreover god s holy ordinance now if it be a holy ordinance the married life has a sanction too and ought to be preserved sacred not be debauched with criminal excesses of any kind much less should it be made a cover and screen for those matrimonial intemperances which i now speak of and which i shall prove to be not only scandalous to but unworthy of matrimony as a sacred state of life as it is god s ordinance and a holy ordinance so it is an honourable state the apostle says marriage is honourable heb xiii 4 but then you are to observe also that it is immediately added and the bed undefiled now this nice term of the bed undefiled requires some explanation and in that perhaps we may differ they that think the marriage-bed cannot be defiled but by adultery will greatly differ from me and it is my business to prove they are mistaken which if i do not i do nothing but that i may do it with the more clearness and leave no room for dispute i therefore set apart this first chapter to consider matrimony in general what it is how we ought to understand it and what the end and design of god s appointment in it was and still is and by this i think i may make way for a more exact observation of those duties which the matrimonial vow is said to bind us to and expose the scandalous mistakes of those who make it a cloak to all licentiousness as soon as our mother eve was first formed had just found herself in being and though she had seen nothing about her yet had a soul as capacious of knowledge as the man she was made for the text says god brought her to the man gen ii 22 that is in short god married them adam himself expresses it cap iii 12 the woman whom thou gavest me n.b god gave the bride hence i observe by the way though with all possible brevity that they are certainly wrong who challenge the clergy for engrossing the office of marrying as if it did not belong to them but was a mere civil contract and therefore was no perquisite of the church but the business of the magistrate i say it is a mistake for as it was instituted immediately from the divine authority so it was solemnized by him who having alone instituted it had a right to perform the ceremony for this reason it is called god s holy ordinance and though i do not think it ought to be called a sacrament yet without doubt god himself put a sacred character upon it as he honoured it with a particular law the second law given in paradise namely that the man should leave his father and his mother and cleave unto his wife gen ii 24 after which as god who was the father of eve gave her in marriage so the paternal authority preserved the right of marriage ever after as they did the priesthood for the patriarch was the priest and had it by the same authority hence the parent giving the bride is to this day a remainder of that authority the ceremony then being truly religious and an ordinance of god it goes with god s other ordinances away to the priest whose business it is to exercise all religious offices and this among the rest also here if you will allow me to preach it shall be against the plurality of wives from this pattern in paradise polygamy seems to be utterly condemned and though in the times of after ignorance many things were practised which as the text says god winked at yet in the beginning it was not so and we may as well argue for marrying two sisters as jacob and perhaps several others did till it was especially prohibited as for marrying many wives at once which it is evident our saviour forbids and the argument against them is alike as i said above viz that in the beginning it was not so i know it is alleged that the increase of mankind in those early ages of time made it necessary but might it not be much more a reason in adam s case when he was alone and why did not god for the immediate propagation of the kind and increase of the world make his rib into half a dozen wives for adam or as many as he had pleased but it is evident one wife to one husband was thought best by his maker who knew what was best and most calculated for his temporal felicity as to the increase of people it was evident the race soon multiplied and after the interruption of the first growth and the disaster of abel s death the long life of the antediluvians also considered the numbers of people soon increased and that in a prodigious manner for if

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you will believe the learned author of the theory of the earth it is probable there were much greater numbers of people alive at the deluge than ever were in the world at any one time since or than are now though the world is thought to be more populous now than ever it has been since the deluge the argument for the increase of people could not be greater since than it was in paradise and had god approved of it or thought it reasonable he would certainly have given adam more wives than one at first besides one wife was given him as a help meet by which it is evident the original understands it a help sufficient to him intimating that they were in everything sufficient to one another and not to enter into that part of it which respects their sexes which my lewder readers will perhaps look for it is evident that a single-handed matrimony is many ways adapted to the felicity of human life more than a state of polygamy the effect of a plurality of wives having always been family strife envying and quarrelling between the women especially no part of which could much add to the felicity of the husband and often did embark the husband in the breach as in the examples of sarah and hagar leah and rachel hannah and penninah and many others on the other hand we see the most eminent of the patriarchs had but one wife at least we read of no more even abraham except in the case of hagar who was but a concubine at most had but one wife at a time isaac had never any but rebecca joseph moses aaron and several others the grosser use of women came in with david as the setting up a seraglio of whores did with king solomon but to repeat our saviour s words again in the beginning it was not so but i shall speak of that part again in its course what i have now said is but a digression made necessary as an observation on the manner of the first wedding the man and the woman as i have said were single and separate but god made them to associate together to he brought the woman to him and gave her to be with him that is as above god married them god having thus ordained matrimony and solemnized the first nuptials in paradise it cannot be denied to be as our office of matrimony declares it god s holy ordinance how our notions of it are degenerated the bonds of it disregarded and the whole institution abused is the subject of this whole undertaking but especially of this chapter what the true intent and meaning of matrimony in its first institution was and what the nature of that contract points at i shall leave in better hands the learned fathers of the church have in all ages taken pains to explain those things to you nor am i going about to preach as a reverend divine lately did to the surprise of his auditory on gen iv i adam knew his wife eve but there are a great many civil views in the institution of matrimony which the propagating of the kind has little or no concern in and the ordinance of matrimony suffers as much by our scandalous notions of it as a state of life as it does in any other part nor is the subordination any part of the case i am upon i am so little a friend to that which they call government and obedience between the man and his wife especially as some people would have it be understood and as the common talk a managed when such things come in our way that the ladies will take no offence at me i dare say i do not take the state of matrimony to be designed as that of apprentices who are bound to the family and that the wife is to be used only as the upper servant in the house the great duty between the man and his wife i take to consist in that of love in the government of affection and the obedience of a complaisant kind obliging temper the obligation is reciprocal it is drawing in an equal yoke love knows no superior or inferior no imperious command one hand no reluctant subjection on the other the end of both should be the well-ordering their family the good-guiding their household and children educating instructing and managing them with a mutual endeavour and giving respectively good examples to them directing others in their duty by doing their own well guiding themselves in every relation in order to the well guiding all that are under them filling up life with an equal regard to those above them and those below them so as to be exemplar to all this is matrimony in its just appointed meaning whatever notions our fashionable people may have of it what import else can those words have in them which we find so carefully placed and so openly repeated in the office at the time of marriage wilt thou love her live with her comfort her honour keep her and again to love and to cherish and afterward it is added that you will do all this according to god s holy ordinance which if i may expound in very plain words is according to the true intent and meaning of the first institution and that is in the sense of god himself to be a help meet to one another upon the whole the matrimonial duty is all reciprocal it is founded in love it is performed in the height of affection its most perfect accomplishment consists not in the union of the sexes but the union of the souls uniting their desires their ends and consequently their endeavours for completing their mutual felicity all the subjection and subordination in the world without this mutual affection cannot give one dram of satisfaction or enjoyment how remote our notions of marriage in general are to these things and how little the present age seems to understand them or at least to regard them i need not inquire it is too visible in almost every family nor indeed can it be otherwise except by some rare example of virtue and good humour meeting on both sides which as marriages are now made is very unlikely to happen it is a lottery of a thousand blanks to a prize not one in five hundred of those that now marry really understand what they marry for i cannot give the detail of their general account and of the answers they would give to the question without blushes not at them but for them i do not mean blushing in the sense that i generally take the word in this book but i mean blushing for the folly and ignorance of the people ask the ladies why they marry they tell you it is for a good settlement though they had their own fortunes to settle on themselves before ask the men why they marry it is for the money how few matches have any other motive except such as i must mention hereafter and indeed will hardly bear any mention at all for many known reasons how little is regarded of that one essential and absolutely necessary part of the composition called love without which the matrimonial state is i think hardly lawful i am sure is not rational and i think can never be happy hence it follows that we have such few happy and successful matches how much matrimony how little love how many coupled how few joined in a word how much marriage how little friendship o friendship thou exalted felicity of life thou glorious incorporation of souls thou heavenly image thou polisher and finisher of the brightest part of mankind how much art thou talked of how little understood how much pretended to how little endeavoured for where does the kind expecting husband find a sincere friend in his bosom how seldom does the tender affectionate wife take a friend into her arms even though she does take the person she takes the man without the husband and the husband without the friend not virtue not fidelity to the marriage bed not conscience of the conjugal duty not religion will do it no,

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not religion how many husbands and wives will go to heaven from the arms of the wives and husbands they had no friendship for how miserably do the pious and the devout the religious and the conscientious live together the husbands here the wives there by jarring tempers discording affections and in short mere want of love and friendship grow scandals to the married life and set themselves up for beacons and lighthouses 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 in decent 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 placed 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 cases to those laws and limits if i am speaking to christians i need not explain myself but as i am to speak to some people who though the world calls them christians can hardly without blushing call themselves so i must be forced to speak as plainly as the laws of decency will allow in reproving their conduct i refer to the particulars in the following tract where they who are guilty may find room to blush it were to be wished that all people that marry were to be asked beforehand if they really understood what matrimony meant and what the true intent of a married life was as well in its institution as in the grand design of family felicity the married couple are young their blood warm the youth fired with the blooming beauty of his bride thinks of little all the while the apparatus of the wedding is in hand nay perhaps all the while he is feigning i should say making love to her as we weakly call his courting her i think we should rather call it all the while he is talking in jest to her i say all this while he is thinking of little but getting to bed to her what engages her thoughts i say nothing to for reasons given already thus coming together without thought we are not to wonder they go on without conduct that they act a thousand weak and wild things afterwards such as they often live to be ashamed of and to blush at as they allowed themselves to think no farther than the wedding week so how awkwardly do they behave when they come to the graver part of life matrimony is not a branch of life only but tis a state tis a settled establishment of life and an establishment for a continuance at least of the life of one of the two how unhappy are those married people who rashly coming together as i said just now and perhaps with mean and unthinking views i think i may say views unworthy of the dignity and honour of a married state seem surprised and disappointed when they come to enter upon the subsequent more weighty and solid part of the married life how often do we hear them say if i had known what it had been to be a wife if i had known what it had been to be a husband and to have the care of a family upon me and a house-full of children to provide for and take care of i would never have married some indeed repent upon a worse foot but i am speaking of it now even where the article of a bad husband or a bad wife are not concerned marriage is an honourable state or station of life but it is not a thoughtless idle unemployed state even where the concerns of the family are easy where plenty flows and the world smiles yet a married life has its cares its anxieties its embarrassments which the young lady knew nothing of in her father s house where she lived without care without disturbance slept without fear and waked without sorrows but married she is a mistress she is a mother she is a wife every one of which relations has its little addenda of incumbrance and perhaps of uneasiness too be her circumstances as good otherwise as she can or would suppose them to be we have an english saying they that marry in haste repent at leisure now though my design is not to run down the married state and raise frightful ideas in the minds of those that are to enter into it so as to prevent their marrying yet i hope i may hint to them that they should look before they take this leap in the dark that they should consider all the circumstances that are before them that they may have no reason to repent when they shall be sure to have no room for it now it is not the matrimony but the abuse of matrimony which is our present subject nor let the ladies be offended as if i was persuading folks not to marry at all it is not refusing matrimony that i persuade to in order to prevent those abuses but a considering and weighing the circumstances of matrimony before it is consummated i agree with the maid s catechise where the first question is what is the chief end of a maid and the answer is to be married but i am arguing to remove the occasion of those abuses which make the matrimony ruinous and a disaster both to the man and to the maid this would secure the affection of the parties before they marry they would be united before they were joined they would be married even before they were wedded the love would be possessed before the persons and they would have exchanged hearts before they exchanged the words of i m take thee n in short matrimony without love is the cart before the horse and love without matrimony is the horse without any cart at all marrying is not such a frightful thing that we should be terrified at the thoughts of it yet it is far from being such a trifling thing either that we should run headlong or blindfold into it without so much as looking before us twas a prudent saying of a young lady who wanted neither wit nor fortune to recommend her that marrying on the woman s side was like a horse rushing into the battle who depending upon the hand that rules him has no weapon of his own either offensive or defensive whereas on the man s side like the soldier he has both armour to preserve himself and weapons to make him be feared by his adversary i know not by what degeneracy in our manners or corruption of principles it is come to pass but tis too general in practice that matrimony is now looked upon only as a politic opportunity to gratify a vicious appetite the form how sacred soever graver heads may pretend it is in its institution is now become our jest and not only ridiculed and bantered in our discourse for that might be borne with but tis become a jest in practice all the solemn part is dropped out of our thoughts the money and the maidenhead is the subject of our meditations not only the divine institution is made a stalking-horse to the brutal appetite but indeed the best of women are betrayed by it into the hands of the vilest of men and in the grossest manner abused nay which is still worse this is done with a banter and a jest all the sacred obligations the indissolvable bands of religion and virtue are trampled under foot the modest and most virtuous lady is impudently defloured and the

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night s enjoyment boasted of the next day in the arms of a strumpet the innocent bride is poisoned with a disease and the detestable wretch is a bridegroom and an adulterer in the first four-and-twenty hours of his engagement a b was a gentleman of figure and fortune in his coach and four and with a suitable equipage he made his addresses to a wealthy citizen and proposals of suitable settlement for his consent to court his daughter nothing appeared but what was fair and honourable he is accepted the young lady virtuous modest beautiful finely bred in the bloom of her youth wheedled with his tongue and deceived with the appearance of a fine gentleman and a lover yields to the proposals and throws herself into the arms of the worst of monsters the very first moments of his embraces fright her with something inexpressibly nauseous about him yet innocence and virtue had no power to make a judgment of things but like the chaste roman lady whose husband had a stinking breath innocently answered that she thought all men were so in short the lady is ruined the first night the v boasted among his viler companions that he had given her something that would soon dispose of her and it was too true in less than a month she was in a condition not fit to be described in about two more the ablest physicians shook their heads and voted her incurable in eight mouths she was a deplorable object and in less than a year lodged in her grave the murderer for he can be no other putting on black for a show but when charged home by the friends of the ruined lady answered with a kind of a laugh that he thought he had been cured if this unhappy story were a romance a fiction contrived to illustrate the subject i should give it you with all its abhorred particulars as far as decency of language would permit that the abuse of matrimony which is the subject i am now to enter upon may be exposed as it deserves but when facts however flagrant are too near home and the miserable sufferers already too much oppressed with the injury we must not add to their afflictions by too public a use of the calamity to embellish our story the murdered lady rests in her grave we must leave the offender to the supreme justice and to the reproaches of his conscience sad examples of conjugal treachery might be given of this kind and i might make the whole work a satire upon those who abusing the marriage bed have prostituted the sacred institution to their vice and made it a covering to crime a snare to the person drawn into it and a cheat to devour their fortunes as well as persons the lady pardon my concealing names is a person of good birth of a family in good circumstances and passed with all that knew her for a woman of virtue her modest behaviour gave such a credit to her and established her character so well that it would have looked like malice and been received in all company with a general disgust so much as to have dropped a word that looked like detraction or in the least touched her fame she is admired and courted by several and after some time married by a person of good fortune and even superior birth a man of honour and of quality and yet which is now very rare a man of virtue he is pleased with his bride to the last degree vain of her beauty boasts of her as a prize carried by his good fortune from so many pretenders but alas what chagrin covers the usual smile that sat upon his always pleasant countenance what torment swelled his breast when within the compass of half a year he finds the virtuous charmer the mistress of his chaste affections not only with child but not able any longer to conceal that by the unalterable laws i of nature it could not be his he is surprised he charges her with it she confesses it with the utmost testimonies of penitence and regret for the injury done him and with the force of an inimitable conduct re-engages him he forgives her but finds out the man lights him wounds him and is killed himself in the unequal quarrel miserable effect of abused matrimony but even all this is not the great point aimed at in this work our view is the criminal use of the lawful liberties of matrimony and that i shall come to in its place among these however this is not the least and therefore proper to this place viz that we find wrong notions of the matrimonial vow wrong thoughts of the conjugal obligation have possessed the minds of both men and women and they marry now merely to gratify the sensual part without the views which the nature of the thing called matrimony ought to give them this is what i call making a jest of the institution that marry in sport and like the little children who not knowing what they are doing say to one another come let us play at man and wife they that make a jest of marrying generally live to be the jest both of the married and unmarried world when they marry in jest they come to mourn in earnest they tie themselves in bonds resolving not to be bound by the obligation and where is the honesty and justice of this they that have no sense of the matrimonial obligation can have no sense of the conjugal duty they marry to lie together and they satisfy the appetite in the pleasures of the marriage bed but when that s over all the rest which they had no view of before is a force a bondage and they as heartily hate the state of life as a slave does his lot in algiers or tunis let me go on a little then to furnish the growing world with better notions of the thing i say let me take up a little of this work in the needful inquiry of what matrimony is and how we ought to understand it the ladies indeed run the greatest risk in marrying but the men cannot be said to run no hazard or to have nothing to lose a little consideration beforehand would lessen the hazard on both sides and not only remove the dangers but prepare the minds of the marrying couple to act their parts wisely and prudently and to suit themselves to the particular circumstances of the condition which is before them this due preparation of the mind for the married state would prevent all the abuses of it which i complain of in this book when they come together affectionately they will live together affectionately at least they will not abandon all affection to one another afterwards or not so soon nor will it be so likely that they should declare open war against one another so soon as when they came together without any previous kindness except only from the lips outward when they come together deliberately they will keep together deliberately they will not be so ready to curse the rashness and hurry of their

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marriage or be so easily disappointed in one another again and which is especially to the purposes mentioned hereafter in this work when they come together coolly and modestly they will not be so apt by immoderate and furious excesses to dishonour the marriage bed and abuse one another as too many do matrimony is a solemn work tis proposed as a sacred institution and the conjugal state is upon all occasions looked upon by those that consider and understand it as a kind of civil establishment in life to engage in it rashly and without consideration is perfectly inconsistent with the nature of the thing and with all that is proposed in it or expected from it at least by wise and sober people i cannot enter here upon a description of all the several incidents which render a married life happy or miserable they are innumerable and too long to meddle with in a work so short as this but as i am moving all those young people especially who design to marry to consider sedately and calmly and weigh well the circumstances and all the particulars of what they are going to engage in as well of persons as things so i must add that let the circumstances of the married couple be what they will i believe it will be universally true that those matches succeed best which are entered into with the most serious and thorough deliberation duly debating all the particulars of the persons seriously engaging the affections on both sides by mutual reciprocal endearments and unfeigned sincere love founded on real merit suitability and virtue these confirm the felicity if they may not be said really to constitute it nor in a word is there one match in fifty happy and successful without it now to come to the last clause in the title of this chapter it is for want of these calm deliberate proceedings in the apparatus of matrimony for want of weighing circumstances and suiting persons to one another that matrimony is so often abused suitability of persons is one of the greatest and most important difficulties that lie before the marrying couple for their consideration the temper of the person is not easily discovered nor does it require a little judgment and discretion to dive into the disposition of the person looking too narrowly for defects since all tempers may have failings may be injurious on one hand as covering the infirmities which discover themselves too evidently may be injurious on another i knew a certain lady in the critical time of courtship mighty inquisitive about the qualifications the temper and the merit of the gentleman and it was thought she showed abundance of prudence and caution in her observation of his conduct and her inquiries into his character it happened one particular person who was very intimate in the family of the gentleman and knew him more particularly than most did had so much integrity as to inform the lady s friend who she gent to inquire about him that he was a hard drinker and that particularly he was very ill-humoured and quarrelsome when in drink though twas allowed that he was very well tempered when sober and in general had the character of a good-humoured man it seems nobody else was so kind or so just to her or so well acquainted with his humour as to acquaint her of this part but that one person and the lady either liking the man or having particularly a mind to be married or what else over-ruled her i know not but she took this account which was the only faithful and sincere ono that she had given her to be malicious and false so she went on with her affair as before giving no heed to what she had been so kindly informed of but a little while after as if providence had directed it for her more effectual information and particularly that she might have no excuse and none to blame but herself i say a little after this he happens to be very drunk and in his drink he not only takes care to give the lady a visit but goes from her to the house of one of her nearest relations and shows himself there too the lady surprised not at his visit but at seeing him in that condition as soon as she could decently dismiss him went big with her discovery and greatly exasperated as well as disappointed to make her complaint and give her passions vent at her relation s who i mentioned above but if she was vexed and disappointed before she was both angry and ashamed now to find he had so little discretion in his wine as to go and show and expose himself there so that when she saw it she could not forbear reproaching him with if and that in the bitterest terms imaginable the gentleman stood pretty patiently a good while and bore it all better than they that knew him expected he should considering he was very drunk till the lady giving her passions a full vent fell upon him in a downright scold and ended it with a forbidding him to wait upon her any more that is to say bade him give himself no farther trouble about her for she had had enough of him and the like thug far i say he held it very well considering his condition but when she came to that part he looked steadily at her and with a smiling pleasant countenance contrary to his usual custom when he had been drinking he turns to her ha madam says he are you so hot and in such a rage pray have you been drinking too that put her quite mad and she reviled him told him she scorned him and his question too that she would have him be informed she was no such person and a great deal more no madam says he are you not in drink and yet can be in such a rage are you so passionate as this when you are sober whereas you see i can be such a patient dog when i am drunk why then madam says he in good faith i ll take you at your word for you are not fit to make a wife for me so he takes a glass of wine and drinks to her better fortune bade her good bye and immediately paying his respects to the gentleman of the house he walks out and goes away if she was angry before she was calm perfectly calm and surprised to the last degree to see herself treated so soberly by a man that was hardly himself and that she was rejected in earnest whereas she had rejected him but in a kind of a passion and did not intend to be taken at her word however notwithstanding all this and notwithstanding she saw him in drink several times after that and sometimes when he did not preserve his temper as he did then yet this lady married him after it all and what followed as she had reason to expect so it proved she was as completely miserable in a husband as a married life could well make any woman be for he proved not only drunken but a passionate outrageous wretch in his drink and that to her in particular it is true he was very obliging and good tempered out of his excesses but then as he grew older the vice increased upon him till at last so little made him drunk and he was so seldom sober that she had the most vexations and the least intervals of quiet that ever lady had and all this for want of obeying not only the intelligence of her faithful friend but even the kind discovery which providence made to her as it were on purpose and past her being able to doubt the truth of it so that indeed she had nobody to blame.

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but to return to the case and not to insist upon the drunkenness of a particular person here or there which may be said to be an accident to the temper but without this the discording tempers of the party is as great and as effectual a cause of the abuse of the matrimonial peace as anything else can be i have mentioned the sad consequences of discording constitutions in a chapter by itself and which often occasions a great abuse of the matrimonial duty and particularly of the marriage bed but that is not the point i am upon here the difference of tempers is yet a thousand times worse for this makes a continued breach in everything they do or say ruins the whole family peace destroys the comfort of life expels religion and every good thing for as the scripture says where there is strife and contention there is every evil work tis the horror of matrimony when two contrary tempers come together when fire and tinder meet they certainly blaze together when the spark and the gunpowder touch the whole house is blown up tis a great pity to see in some families a patient wife and a furious husband or a patient sober husband and a termagant fiery scold because there is the utmost oppression on one side and the utmost rage and violence on the other but to have two devils together in one house what can be expected but ruin and confusion to the whole family and at last either separation or destruction it is merely for want of a suitability of temper that the peace of so many families is lost and destroyed and matrimony abused and that so many once happy people are made miserable but i shall say more of this still matrimony is a state of union tis the nearest union that the sexes can be placed in this union is appointed in order to the mutual felicity of the parties tis then a state that both parties should be particularly careful of and of their conduct in that they may make it answer the end for which it was so appointed namely to preserve and indeed to procure the mutual happiness to the parties and make that union effectual how impossible do we make this to ourselves when we invert the great end and design even of god himself who instituted and appointed it and when we make the sacred ordinance a retreat for crime a cover for our excesses and a protection to the most abominable practices this is what i call abusing the state of matrimony as well as dishonouring the contract matrimony is not a single act but it is a condition of life and therefore when people are new-married they are said to have altered their condition it is a series of unity contracted by and should be made up of agreeing habits where the harmony is broken the state of life is abused when the parties cease to be united and to be united too in that which is right the life is no more matrimonial tis a jargon of speech a word without signification to call it a matrimonial life in the contract the parties bind themselves to live in this harmony and state of union what else is understood by living according to god s holy ordinance how do they live according to a holy ordinance whose conversation even towards one another and with one another pollutes and defiles the state of life and would the very ordinance too if that were possible how the conversation between a man and his wife may and does pollute and defile the matrimonial state however strange such a thing may be is the subject of the following chapters where the affirmative will i doubt not be clearly made out chapter ii of matrimonial chastity what is to be understood by the word a proof of its being required by the laws of god and nature and that wrong notions of it have possessed the world dr taylor s authority quoted about it i am yet settling preliminaries the work i am upon will have so many opposers such cavillings and quarrellings as well at the subject as at the manner of handling it that i am obliged to provide my defences in time against all the batteries of the enemy i have this to boast of for encouragement viz that i know my argument to be invulnerable all the arts of hell cannot evade the force of it if there is the least defect it must be in the weakness of the performance good weapons may be rendered useless or insufficient in an unskilful hand but as no man else has ever undertaken it i must venture i ll manage it as well as i can in the former chapter i have explained the matrimonial obligation what i mean by the word matrimony how it should be understood and in what sense i understand it in the following work i repeat nothing i am now to explain another term equally significant though little taken notice of among us a word thought to be difficult but is not difficult absolutely necessary to be understood towards the right reading this book and particularly useful to its explanation i mean matrimonial chastity tis the breach of this chastity that is the subject of the whole work and tis therefore i say absolutely necessary to understand what it is the exercise of lawful enjoyments is one of the greatest snares of life where men seem to be left to their own latitudes tis too natural to think they are not obliged to any restraint but tis a great mistake christian limitation is the true measure of human liberty where heaven has had the goodness to leave us without a limitation he expects we should limit ourselves with the more exactness and perhaps tis the intent and meaning of that seeming unlimited liberty for tis no more that our virtue may have a fair field for its trial and that we may more eminently show our christian temperance in using those liberties with the same moderation where we have no positive restraints imposed as we would others where we are under a direct and absolute command being therefore about to reprehend the breaches of this moderation and in a word to combat the exorbitances of unlimited life tis absolutely necessary to know what they are and to lay down with the utmost plainness that decency will permit what it is i am to engage against and for what reasons chastity is a virtue much talked of little practised a great noise is made with the word chastity and on many occasions where little true regard is had to the thing and perhaps where tis little understood tis taken among us for a mere regulation of manners and a kind of

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government of life but the definition is infinitely short of the thing itself which is of a high and superior kind it is a rectitude of nature an inherent brightness of the soul i ll give you a better description of it presently and a better describer also for i must speak with authority if possible where i have so much to say and which you will like so little if chastity in general be so little understood the chastity i speak of is infinitely more out of the way of your ordinary thinking matrimonial chastity tis a new strange term said one of my critical observers before i published this work you must be sure to tell us what you mean by it or it will not be intelligible what says he are you going to lay down rules and laws for the marriage bed are you going to enclose what heaven has left free and pretending to show us the deficiency of god s laws supply that deficiency with some wiser rules of your own tis against nature as well as against heaven but this reproof is misplaced and the reprover mistaken i am far from adding to the restraints that nature and the god of nature have laid upon us but am for showing you what restraints they are and particularly to let you see there are some restraints where you suggest and perhaps believe there are really none you acknowledge that chastity in general is a virtue and a christian duty and i affirm there is a particular chastity that is to say a limited liberty which is to be observed and strictly submitted to in the conjugal state this i call matrimonial chastity and the breach of this i call as in my title matrimonial whoredom let others call it what they will i can give it no other name than what i think it deserves tho they re called misses which lewd men adore i cannot guild their crimes a whore s a whore having thus entered upon the difficult task of reproving those criminal practices of men which are acted under the shelter of supposed lawful liberty i must state the due bounds and extent of that liberty that we may the better ground our future censures and be able to justify the reproof from the rules established in the foundation now that i may do this with the better authority i begin with quoting the late pious and reverend dr taylor in his book of holy living he has a whole chapter upon this very subject i mean of chastity and i cannot take my arguments from a better beginning chastity says the doctor is the circumcision of the heart the suppressing all irregular desires in the matter of carnal and sensual pleasures here the doctor has made a provision to encounter the merry disputants of this age as pungent and as natural as if he had been now alive and knew the height to which the corrupt imaginations of men have carried those irregular desires what do you pretend to call irregular said a cavilling favourer of vice to me once also before this book was thought of what can be irregular between a man and his wife i shall have more to say to that question in the next chapters and doubt not to speak to the conviction of reasonable creatures as to human brutes i am not looking towards them much less talking to them in a discourse of chastity let them alone to their irregular desires and let the success of those gratified desires be their reprover they generally end in repentance or which is worse self-reproaches but i come back to dr taylor i call all those desires irregular says the reverend doctor 1 that are not within the holy institution or within the protection of marriage 2 that are not within the order of nature 3 that are not within the moderation of christian modesty in this last head he includes to use his own words all immoderate use of permitted beds which is exactly to the purpose that i am speaking of and upon which subject the second chapter of this book is chiefly employed concerning which says the same worthy author judgment is to be made as concerning meats and drinks there being no certain degree of frequency or intention prescribed to any person but it is to be ruled as the other actions of man s life are ruled viz 1 by the proportion to the end 2 by the dignity of the person as a christian 3 by the other particulars of which he speaks afterwards chastity says he is the grace which for bids and restrains all these keeping both the body and the soul pure in the state god has placed it whether of a single or married life 1 thess iv 3 4 5 and now having quoted so eminent an author as dr taylor whose works are so well known let me put all my good friends who watch for my halting in mind that the doctor having this very article upon his hands and being resolved to speak critically and yet fully to it he takes all due caution in the doing it just as i have done first he cautions the reader against unjust censure and reproach second he then fortifies himself against the fears of it and lastly speaks boldly and plainly where duty calls upon him to do so just in this manner you may expect me to act in that critical article of liberty which is before me the doctor it appears knew how the world was vitiated and the minds of men corrupted even in his day and that it was a most dangerous thing to speak of such things as these in the ears of a lewd set of people which the world was then full of that they would corrupt the most sanctified advice and insult the adviser and therefore as i have done here so the devout doctor gives caution and enters his protest against misconstruction and misunderstanding of what he was to say this he does with infinite modesty and reserve but ventures for all that upon the reproof as a necessary work his example is highly useful to me in this equally necessary work of laying open the crimes of the present age which it must be acknowledged is much further advanced in wickedness than the times the doctor lived in his words are these dr taylor s preamble to his chapter upon the subject of chastity.

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reader stay says he and read not the advices of the following section unless that thou hast a chaste spirit and in another place he says unless thou hast a chaste spirit and unless thou art desirous of being chaste or at least art apt to consider whether thou oughtest or not for there are some spirits so atheistical and some so wholly possessed with the spirit of uncleanness that they turn the most prudent and chaste discourses into dirty and filthy apprehensions like choleric stomachs changing their very cordials and medicines into bitterness and in a literal sense turning the grace of god into wantonness these men study cases of conscience in the matter of carnal sins not to avoid them but to learn ways how to offend god and pollute their own spirits searching their houses with a sunbeam that they may be informed of all the corners of nastiness i have used all the care i could in the following periods that i might neither be wanting to assist those that need it nor yet minister any occasion of fancy or vainer thoughts to those that need them not if any man will snatch the pure taper from my hand and hold it to the devil he will only burn his own fingers but shall not rob me of the reward of my care and good intention since i have taken heed how to express the following duties and given him caution how to read them thus far dr taylor he had but one chapter or section as he calls it upon the subject of chastity and yet you see how wary he was lest the ill digesture of the times should turn that which he designed for the wholesome nourishment of the mind to a corrupt and unclean purpose how much more have i just ground to warn the reader of this work that he may forbear reading it with a design to gratify or please a tainted and vitiated imagination let him rather prepare to read a just reproof of the vilest actions with the same detestation and abhorrence that i write it with and with such clean thoughts as becomes a mind seasoned with virtue awed by religion and prepared by a due reverence to the divine command to the pure all things are pure to the unclean all things are unclean they that are disposed to ridicule and make a jest of the just satire here pointed at crime will but make a jest of themselves since nothing can be more evident than the offence nothing can be more just than the reproof if men will defile themselves as the scots say no man can dight them it is very strange a man should be afraid to expose a crime for fear of increasing it as if the very shame should excite to the sin but i must keep to the point and to which i resolve to confine myself chastity is no popular subject it is so broken into upon all hands and with such a gust of general desire that to rake into the filth must be disagreeable to the generality of people and though i do not let it alone for that reason being not at all reluctant to an attack upon a crime because grown flagrant and universal yet at present i am upon another subject i am attacking a crime equally odious but which is not equally acknowledged to be a crime a wickedness which even some that pretend to purity of life will not allow to be wicked so much more is the danger when men walk among barrels of gunpowder and know it not to be gunpowder who shall be cautious of his candle it is not so hard to persuade such men to shun the evil as to convince them that it is an evil they cavil at the very title of this chapter matrimonial chastity it is nonsense they say in the nature of the thing virgin chastity indeed and chastity of a single person is something and would bear to be exhorted to but married chastity is what they will by no means understand or bear a reproof about but because i have as i said above a whole chapter upon this very subject and only mention it here with respect to opinions of good men about it give me leave to quote the reverend person just now named upon the same subject and refer you afterwards to my own opinion in the following discourse dr taylor in his discourse of chastity mentioned above after having spoken of virgin chastity and vidual chastity comes of course to mention the very thing i am now upon and in the very same terms viz matrimonial chastity and i choose to give it you in his own words because before i remembered that the doctor had mentioned this case i had finished the next chapters viz of the bounds and limitations which modesty and decency had placed to the liberties of the marriage bed and which the doctor s opinion so far confirms that i could not but subjoin his thoughts after my own was gone to the press the doctor s rules for married persons are thus expressed concerning married persons besides the keeping their mutual faith and contract with each other these particulars are useful to be observed 1 although their mutual endearments are safe within the protection of marriage yet they that have wives or husbands must be as though they had them not that is they must have an affection greater to each other than they have to any person in the world but not greater than they have to god but that they be ready to part with all interest in each other s person rather than sin against god 2 in their permission and licence they must be sure to observe the order of nature and the ends of god he is an ill husband that uses his wife as a man treats a harlot having no other end but pleasure concerning which our best rule is that although in this as in eating and drinking there is an appetite to be satisfied which cannot be done without pleasing that desire yet since that desire and satisfaction was intended by nature for other ends they should never be separate from those ends but always be joined with one or all of those ends with a desire of children or to avoid fornication or to lighten and ease the cares and sadnesses of household affairs or to endear each other but never with a purpose either in act or desire to separate the sensuality from these ends which hallow it onan did separate his act from its proper end and so ordered his embraces that his wife should not conceive and god punished him 3 married persons must keep such modesty and decency of treating each other that they never force themselves into high and violent lusts with arts and misbecoming devices always remembering that those mixtures are most innocent which are most simple and most natural most orderly and most safe 4 it is a duty of matrimonial chastity to be restrained and temperate in the use of their lawful pleasures concerning which although no universal rule can antecedently be given to all persons any more than to all bodies one proportion of meat and drink yet married persons are to estimate the degree of their licence according to the following proportions 1 that it be moderate so as to consist with health 2 that it be so ordered as not to be too extensive of time that precious opportunity of working out our salvation 3 that when duty is demanded it be always payed so far as in our powers and election according to the foregoing measures 4 that it be with a temperate affection without violent transporting desires or too sensual applications concerning which a man is to make judgment by proportion to other actions and the severities of his religion and the sentences of sober and wise persons always remembering that marriage is a provision for supply of the

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natural necessities of the body not for the artificial and procured appetites of the mind and it is a sad truth that many married persons thinking that the flood-gates of liberty are set wide open without measures or restraints so they sail in that channel have felt the final rewards of their intemperance and lust by their unlawful using of lawful permissions only therefore let each of them be temperate and both of them be modest thus far the reverend doctor a man whose character gave him an undoubted right to the title of a true spiritual guide thoroughly qualified in his time for a teacher of holy living i add nothing only that here is a confirmation indeed unexpected of all the principles which i have advanced in this work here is a full concession to the real occasion and even necessity of my present undertaking the doctor grants that married persons even at that time thought the flood-gates of liberty were set open to them and that as i said modesty and decency were at an end after marriage and there was no more restraint between a man and his wife but you will find the doctor quite of another opinion as i also am and i am very glad to have so unquestioned an authority for my opinion chapter iii of the end and reason of matrimony and that there is a needful modesty and decency requisite even between a man and his wife after marriage the breaches of which make the first branch of matrimonial whoredom the ends and reason of matrimony are assigned by our church in the office or introduction to the office for marrying such persons as may be lawfully joined together if i repeat them i hope no reproof can lie against me there the modest virgin submits to be told that the reason of joining herself to a man is principally for the procreation of children tis the law of generation given both to the man and to the woman at first tis twisted with their very natures and placed among the first principles of life and tis also the law of god given to man imperatively at the same time that he joined to it his blessing gen i 28 and god blessed them and god said unto them be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth in this great law of matrimony is founded the utmost intercourse and familiarity of the sexes by which all that shyness that modest reserve and restraint all that which is called shamefacedness and blushing even in the most modest and chaste virgin is taken away that is to say so far only and no farther as respects her immediate intimacy and conversation with her own husband she freely strips off her clothes in the room with him and whereas she would not have showed him her foot before without her shoe and stocking on she now without the least breach of modesty goes into what we call the naked bed to him and with him lies in his arms and in his bosom and sleeps safely and with security to her virtue with him all the night and this is her place her property her privilege exclusive of all others for he is her own and she is his he is the covering of the eyes to her and she is called in the sacred text the wife of his bosom she has the only right to lodge there it is her retreat the repository of her cares as well as of her delight and of her affection and if it is not thus with both or either of them nay if it was not thus before they married let them flatter themselves as they please with the formal marriage or the formality of matrimony i insist they have violated the laws of god and man in their coming together violated their solemn oath and covenant to one another after coming together and whatever they are in the sense of the law they are really no man and wife at all in the sense which i am giving of things whether i am in the right or no i refer to the judgment of the impartial part of sober mankind having said thus much by way of advance i think tis necessary to take notice here how just it is and indispensably nay absolutely necessary to the happiness of a married life that the persons marrying should have not only an acquaintance with one another before marriage but that they should be engaged to each other by a solid and durable affection professing to love and not only professing but sincerely loving one another above all other persons choosing and being the real choice of each other this is not a small and trifling thing it is the chief article of matrimony though not included and asserted in the contract tis a thing of the utmost consequence to the future happiness of the parties however as i purpose to speak to it again fully and at large in a part by itself i only leave it here as a memorandum proper to the place and reserve the rest to what shall come after i return now to the case of matrimonial liberty having advanced thus much in favour of the utmost freedoms between man and wife and which i might enlarge upon but that i believe there is really no occasion i think i grant as much in it as i need to do in condescension to the proposition mentioned in the introduction namely that there can be no offence between a man and his wife modesty is at an end that tis cancelled by the very nature of the thing that all things are decent all things modest all things lawful between a man and his wife all which in a few words i deny and insist that there are several things yet remaining which stand as boundaries and limits to the freedoms and intimacies that are otherwise to be allowed between a man and his wife and first i insist that these limitations of the conjugal liberties are placed in the open view of both the man and his wife by the laws of nature so that both of them are furnished with principles of reluctance and aversion sufficient if duly listened to and if the laws of nature are obeyed to arm them against any breaches of those laws it is evident in many cases too many had it not pleased god to suffer it to be so that the laws of nature have a much stronger influence upon us than the laws of our maker and this is especially remarkable in those cases where the laws of nature seem to give some latitudes which the laws of god and institutions of his providence have thought fit to limit and restrain for example the laws of nature dictate the propagation of kind by the intercourse of sexes the laws of god subsequent to those of nature limit and restrain the particulars of this propagation namely that the man by man there is to be understood man or woman should be allowed but one woman at a time that they be bound together by the sacred bonds of matrimony indissolvable after once engaged in and therefore sacred and to be inviolably adhered to and preserved by both parties it is true that there is a corrupt principle inbred and indwelling taking a kind of possession too much in man s nature degenerated as it is by the fall this corrupt principle dictates the propagation of the kind that is as a law of nature but does it without regard to the limitations imposed by heaven upon the branches that is to say without entering into the engagements of matrimony and this makes those actions

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