Page:A Treatise concerning the Use and Abuse of the Marriage Bed.djvu/313

 is enough to tell you, that the very Thing I complain of in the Head of this Chapter is one of them: It is enough, that the Woman has conceived, and is with Child. What can be desired of her more, is, in the Language of Mahometan Modesty, a Violence, nay, an unnatural Violence; and the Woman complains of it as highly injurious.

Woman has indeed a strong and unanswerable Argument against the Man in case of this Complaint, which, 'tis true, we cannot plead here; namely, that she holds up two, or three Sticks, which are given her by the Officers, intimating, that her Husband can plead no Necessity for his using her in that manner, for that he has one, two or three Wives besides her, according to the Number of Sticks which she exposes, or holds up, and that therefore he ought to let her alone to go on in her Pregnancy, that he may bring forth a Man Child without danger of Miscarriage, which, 'tis suggested, might otherwise happen to her by that Violence.

I very much doubt this will be called a new Doctrine here, and I have been told already (by a Man of Modesty too) upon reading it in the Manuscript, that I shall never persuade Christians to believe it Criminal, whatever the Turks may do. But why should I suspect this, where, as I said before, it is not the Law of Matrimony, or the Law of Turks and Pagans that I am mentioning, but the Law of Nature; though Custom may be argued to be a Law, or as a Law, and that in many Things. Custom is a Tyrant; Nature is a just and limited Government. Custom is Anarchy and Confusion;