Page:A Treatise concerning the Use and Abuse of the Marriage Bed.djvu/130

 prudence directs them to reject every Offer where Love does not concur with the other Circumstances, and make the Person perfectly not agreeable only, but the Object of their sincere and compleat Affection, and that upon good Foundations too.

these Things happen, then they marry; if the Person thus marry'd meets with a Disappointment, as how often is the sincerest Affection abused, be it that the Lady marries a bad Husband, is mistaken in the Object, fixes her Mind upon an unworthy Fellow that feigned Love, and Honour, and Vertue, in his Addresses, and proves a Hypocrite in them all; what is the Consequence? She is made miserable indeed, and wretchedly so; But we do not see the House made a Bedlam; it is not Fire on one Side and Tinder on the other, it is not Sulphur and Nitre, which meeting makes Thunder; the Brute behaves as Brutes will; but the poor Lady mourns, sees her self made miserable by the Man she loves; bears it as Christians bear remediless Sorrows, perhaps pines under it and dies, as is the fate of many a faithful, tender, affectionate Wife: And 'tis the same thing in the Man, he takes a Lady, in appearance good; she is to him the Wife of his Youth, of his Affection, of his first and purest Love, whom he made his Choice before Marriage, and places his Delight in afterward: But as none can see the Inside and Soul of the Object, she proves a Piece of Froth and Vanity; is idle, luxurious, expensive, thoughtless in her Affairs, cold and indifferent in her Affection, and, at last, loose and light; and, in a word, any thing, or every thing, that is foolish and wicked.