Page:A Treatise concerning the Use and Abuse of the Marriage Bed.djvu/284

 age; and they that make the fairest and most diligent Inquiry, should first be sure they know, and regulate their own Tempers, that the Fault be not at home while they lay it upon their Relatives. But this would require a long Discourse; I have not room for it here.

Principles in Religion would also come in here. But, I think, the People I am describing need not quarrel much about that; for all Principles, all Religion, seems to be burnt up in the impure Flame, and therefore all Care and Concern about them dies with it: How should that Man be supposed to think of Religion, who, in spight of Reasoning, and in a perfect neglect of a Family of seven Children, could plead Necessity of having a Wife; make a thousand Shifts to turn off the scandalous Part, and yet insist upon having such a Wife as should bring him no Children; that he might satiate his Gust of Sensuality without the incumbrance of Procreation; contract Marriage with a Bar only to the original Reason of Marriage, and enjoy his corrupt Pleasures under the disguise of holy Ordinance. Could this Man be supposed to consider the Unsuitableness or Inequality of any thing, much less the Temper or the Principles of the Woman he married.

the Consequence made it appear; for happening to marry a Woman that had neither good Temper, or good Principles, he ruined the Peace of his Family, dispersed and disobliged his Children, thrust them out of his immediate Care, and left their Education and Instruction to other Relations; in a word, he robb'd him-