Page:A Treatise concerning the Use and Abuse of the Marriage Bed.djvu/126

 to her upon honourable Terms, as they are corruptly called, that is, he will marry her; she neither enquires of her self whether he is the Man of her Choice, whether she loves him, and upon what Reason and Foundation the Love subsists, whether upon his Person as a Man, or his Merit as a Man of Virtue and Sense. But she ignorantly passes over these Things, and does not see that she lies open to all the Censure, which, I say, is justly due to such a kind of Matrimony.

is saying as much in her Favour as the Case will admit, as much as indeed it is possible to say for her: But let her strip the Case naked of all the false Glosses which 'tis perhaps covered with, and then look upon it; or let her look into it after a Year or two, worn out in the odd, uncouth, retrograde Wedlock that she is engaged in, and then she will see with other Eyes; then she'll see she wedded a worthless, senseless, vain and empty shadow of a Man, in gratification of the Humour which she was at that time in for a Bedfellow; that she has the Man, and no more, and that now all the rest is wanting; that she has the Man but not the Husband, not the Companion, not the obliging, affectionate Relative that she ought to have looked for, and to have fixed her Choice upon; and what bitter Reproaches does she load her self with when she sees her self in the Arms of a Fool instead of a Man of Sense; of a Brute and a Boar instead of a Man of Breeding and BehavourBehaviour [sic]; of a Churl and a Fury instead of a Man of Humour and Temper; and all this occasioned by her following blindly and rashly that young wanton Inclination, which she knew not how to govern.