Page:A Treatise concerning the Use and Abuse of the Marriage Bed.djvu/110

 tion of one Sex is laughed at and bantered, and the Dominion of the other abused and turned into Tyranny and Oppression; how the Women, instead of Submission, reign; and the Men, instead of a Government in Love, and a superiority of Affection, in which that Government should chiefly consist, insult and oppress their Wives; how the Obligation of forsaking all other, is ridiculed and made a Jest of, and that of keeping your self only unto her, declared to be a meer Church Imposition, a Piece of Priestcraft, and unreasonable.

you think, says blushing G to his poor subjected but modest Wife, Do you think that ever I intended to meddle with no more than one Woman? No, no, I never promis'd any such Thing; if I did I never intended to keep to it, then he turns and sings a scandalous Song out of Rochester too gross to repeat:

But to live with her all a Man's Life, Till she grows Good faith, Mr. Parson, I thank you for that, I thank ye for that:

whence comes this Contempt? I say, it does not proceed so much from the Wickedness, as from the Ignorance of the Age; Ignorance of the real Felicity of their very Kind; how all that can be called happy in the Life of Man, is summ'd up in the state of Marriage; that it is the Center to which all the lesser Delights of Life tend, as a Point in the Circle that, in short, all the extraordinary Enjoyments of Life are temporary and trifling, and consist chiefly in the strange and uncouth Plea-