Page:A Treatise concerning the Use and Abuse of the Marriage Bed.djvu/318

 always Conceiving, always Breeding, and always Bearing or Bringing forth.

must these gross Ideas lead us? And into what Absurdities must we run in our Thoughts of them? Let those that can conceive thus of such Matters, enter into a Decicision [sic] of the Controversy; I think, our present Subject is no farther concerned to answer them, than only to appeal to Reason and Experience, and to all the learned Anatomists and Accouchers, to judge of it.

I observe, when I hint the Modesty of Mahometan Nations, and other People, who, as I have said, abstain from their Wives as soon as they have Conceived, or, to put it right, as soon as they know they are with Child; I am answered with a kind of eagerness, that it is easy to them, because having Plurality of Women, or being allowed as many Wives as they will, they can lay by one, and take another as they please; so that they are never without a Wife; but as soon as one is with Child, she withdraws to her Apartment, and he knows her no more. But then he calls another to his Bed; and as she may continue four or five Months before he can be sure she is with Child, by that time the first is sure to be delivered, and be ready for his Bed again; and so of all the Wives in their Turn. And thus the Man is never without a Woman for his Convenience.

this be so, all that can be said for it is, that this is a kind of Argument in favour of Poligamy, that is to say, that we make life of it as such. But the Turks are very far from giving this as a Reason for their Poligamy: The Reason of that Practice is taken from the