Page:A Treatise concerning the Use and Abuse of the Marriage Bed.djvu/368

 'tis too foul; I have indeed no Words for it; the English Language is not able to cover such dirty Work, so I must leave it, as I am forced to do several others; but you may depend upon it, if there is such a thing in Nature as that I call Matrimonial Whoredom; it was here in its highest Extent, and in the extreme of Indecency and Immodesty.

is true, these ought to have belonged to the Chapter of Marriages in unsuitable Years; but I rather place them here, because I treat these particular Articles as really criminal in themselves, and in the Nature of them; the other might be unhappy, occasioned by the unsuitable Circumstances; but these were, as I say, criminal; as Job says, they ought to have been punished by the Judge, they stink in the Nostrils of all modest People, and are hateful and odious in the Sight both of and Man.

bring it to the Case in hand: Here was the Essence of Matrimonial Whoredom; the meer incentive to this Marriage must be the wicked Part, the satisfying the brutal sensual Appetite. What can it be less? The Office of Matrimony was made but the Introduction, I had almost said the Usher, to the Whoredom; only that indeed the Matrimony is a passive Circumstance, not a voluntary Act; in a word, Matrimony is abused, and brought into it unjustly; and therefore, I think, they are right in foreign Countries, where, in such Cases, the Persons are liable to Punishment, not for the vitious Part only, which it is hard to come at there, as well as here; but they are liable, I say, to Punishment, for abusing the holy Sacrament, so they call Matrimony, and making it to be a Tool to hand them on to commit the Crime;