Page:A Treatise concerning the Use and Abuse of the Marriage Bed.djvu/383

 and ravished, as the Turks take Slaves, and then chusing them for their Beauty, single them out for the Seraglio, to be lain with by the Emperor, or by the Basha or Grand Vizier, whose Serail they are enclosed in, whenever he pleases to demand them.

a word, a forc'd Marriage is a Contradiction in Speech, the Terms are inconsistent; 'tis no Marriage at all, or, if you will call it a Marriage, 'tis no Matrimony. How are the Women so us'd, said to take such a Man to be their wedded Husband? The very meaning of the Word Matrimony, in several Languages, signifies chusing: Can a Woman be said to chuse the Man, when she is dragg'd to his Bed as a Malefactor is dragg'd to Execution, or, as we express it, as a Bear to the Stake? that is to say, to the Place where he is to be Baited with Dogs, and which he knows is to be his Case, and therefore hangs back till he is haul'd along by the Ring in his Nose, and cannot resist it.

this back to our former Test: Every Marriage where the pure and simple End of the Matrimony is not such as agrees with the religious End of the Institution, is, in my Sense, a Matrimonial Whoredom, and no other, and, among all the rest, this of forcing a Woman to be marry'd, is one of the worst.

I must be allow'd here to except Political State Marriages, made for the Interest of Nations, forming Alliances and Friendships, binding or engaging Confederacies and Leagues, between Princes and People.

Family-Marriages for the preserving Estates in the Lines and Blood of Houses, keeping up the Names and Relations, and the like