Page:A Treatise concerning the Use and Abuse of the Marriage Bed.djvu/299

 her, or drew her in; those Things are all forgot; or, if remember'd, amount to no Excuse. The Breach in the Woman's Virtue being once made, he must be a Man of uncommon Temper, and of a great deal of good Humour, that does not one time or other throw it in her Face, and load her with the Reproach of it.

the next Place, the hazard on the Woman's Part is unequal, extremely unequal; for she runs the hazard of Mortality. Suppose the Man would be just to her, and marry her; but then, as I once knew to be the Case, suppose he falls sick and dies; the Woman is undone, she is left with Child; she cannot claim the Man, nor the Child inherit from him as a Father; she has not only no right to any Thing he has left, but, for want of a Power to make such a Claim, she discovers that she is not a legal Wife, but was his Whore; and this in spight of ten thousand Promises of Marriage; ay, though there were ten thousand Witnesses of those Promises. So certain is it, that no Promises of Matrimony make a Marriage, and that a Woman cannot expose her self with greater Disadvantage, than to take Matrimony upon trust; that all the Assurance that it is possible for a Man to give her, cannot be an equivalent to the sacrifice of her Virtue, besides the risque of Mortality, as above, in which Case she is inevitably ruin'd.

after all, what Pretence is there for the thing, since Matrimony is the Matter treated of? Why is not the Treaty finished? and if the Treaty is finished, why in such haste for the Consummation? or why the Consummation without the Ceremony, or before it? Horrid unrestrained Appetite! Why must the brutal Part