Page:A Treatise concerning the Use and Abuse of the Marriage Bed.djvu/172

 they confirm the subject, the Story may please, but 'tis the improvement of the Story, that fixes the Truth of the Argument, which it is brought to support: This horrid Practice, I mean, of applying to extraordinary Means to destroy the Conception, has yet many Things to be said to it.

As it poisons the Body, and, as I have said, locks up Nature; so let me remind the Ladies whose Vanity prompts them to the Practice, especially too if they have any such thing as Religion about them, that 'tis a kind of cursing their own Bodies, 'tis Blasting themselves; and as they take upon them to do it themselves, how just would it be, if Heaven, taking them at their Words, lays it home farther than they would wish or intend it? And that feeing they desire to bear no Fruit, Heaven should say, in the Words of our Saviour to the Fig-Tree, No Fruit grow on thee henceforward for ever.

It must be a Temper unusually hardened, that could bear such a Blast from above without some Horror: Let any Lady, I mean Christian Lady, for I direct my Speech now to such, though they may be ignorantly or rashly pushed on by the Folly of their Circumstances; I say, let any Christian Lady tell me, if she should hear those Words really and audibly pronounced from Heaven to her, could she look up with satisfaction, take it for a Blessing, and say, Amen? I cannot but hope we have very few of the most audacious Atheists among us, could go the length.

now I have accidentally named that Word look up, that is to say, look up to Heaver, for so I understand it, however, that Lan-