Page:A Treatise concerning the Use and Abuse of the Marriage Bed.djvu/264

 But to marry, and yet resolve to make it impossible to have Children; there's nothing of the Christian in that; any more than you may call your self a Christian, and live like a Heathen.

Jack. You are very severe, Tom; very rigid.

Tom. I love plain Dealing; I am for your doing honestly, either one Way or t'other. If you are in a streight for a Woman, take one in the Name of, and in the Way which has appointed. But to pretend a thousand Things, and then marry with Views contrary, and inconsistent with the Ordinance it self, that's all Grimace; the visible Occasion is Lewdness; scandalous Lewdness, and you cannot carry it off, let your Pretences be what they will.

Discourse ended soon after this. But the Citizen was not so convinced of the Justice of his Friend's Reasoning, as to guide him to the wiser Medium, and not to marry at all: But, on the contrary, he pursued the brutal Part, took the Woman, gratified his grosser Appetite, in spite of Argument. In a word, he committed the Matrimonial Abomination I am so justly exposing. And he felt the Consequences of it many Ways: As, (1.) He destroyed his Constitution, ruin'd his Health. (2.) He was Blasted, as it were, from Heaven; for he got a Woman of an unquiet furious Temper, that harass'd him with her Tongue, made a Bedlam of his House, and broke the Peace of his Family. (3.) Endeavouring to oblige One that knew not how to be obliged, he disobliged all his Children; proved an unkind Father, and that drove them from him, some one Way, some