Page:A Treatise concerning the Use and Abuse of the Marriage Bed.djvu/350

 they are thus daily committing is no Crime, much less Adultery, and that it has a Cover for it, which they make their Refuge, and. under the Protection of which, they run out into all these Extravagancies with a kind of quietness and satisfaction upon their Soul, that is not easily to be described; this Covering is the Article of Marriage, the very Thing I am upon, and 'tis upon this very Account that this whole Book is written.

is under the Cover of Marriage, that these Excesses and Immodesties are committed. But under what Protection are they committed over again with the Tongue, boasting and talking lewdly of the Extravagancies they have committed? Of which I have this double Charge to lay against them, (viz.) In the first they sinn'd with their Wives; in the second without their Wives; nay, to carry it farther, in the first they sinn'd against Heaven, in the second against the sacred Ordinance of Marriage, and against the Wife also.

not to leave them room to Cavil at the Expression, I explain and insist upon it, that a decent concealing the conjugal Freedoms between a Man and his Wife, is a Debt due to Modesty as a Virtue, and to the Wife as she is a Woman. He that exposes those Things deserves no more the Name of a rational Creature, much less of a Man of Modesty, nay, hardly of a Man. In a word, he Sins against his Wife, and exposes himself, and the last most abominably.

will his Marriage cover either of these Crimes, but rather aggravate them, for, as I said, he Sins against the very Marriage it self: Marriage is a Contract of Liberty to lawful