Page:A Treatise concerning the Use and Abuse of the Marriage Bed.djvu/321

 Demands of Nature, and a necessity for want of a Plurality of Women?

ought such rather to remember, that they are Christians, and that the double Obligation lies upon them to abstain from such Things, by how much they pretend to a greater Assistance in their Mortifications from superior and invisible Helps of Religion? How do we see the Clergy of the Roman Church devote themselves to a perpetual Celibacy, and enter into solemn Vows of Chastity, and perform them too; for tho' some may offend, we cannot, with common Justice, charge it upon the whole Body of the Clergy, and of the Religious People?

shall Protestants only pretend to a necessity of Crime, and that they cannot restrain themselves from secret Lewdness, or keep themselves from shameful Pollutions, but that they must allow themselves to act against Nature, and against Virtue, and even against the Stomach? This is the grossest Piece of confess'd Frailty that one can meet with any where, and nothing that I know in Story can come up to it.

to the Abstinence of those who, in some Countries, are allowed a Plurality of Wives, we are assured that some, yea, many of them, after having had the Knowledge of one of their Women, they knew her no more, till they have an Assurance that she has not conceived, and that she is not with Child. The Grand Seignior, 'tis certain, acts thus among the Ladies of the Seraglio; and, if we may believe some who pretend to know, lives a much more temperate Life, and acts with a great deal more Moderation among three or four hundred Ladies, all at