Page:A Treatise concerning the Use and Abuse of the Marriage Bed.djvu/413

 Treason: If one Age talks Foolish, the next Age talks Mad. So, in the Case before me, if one Generation are Immoderate, the next are Extravagant. If one Age runs to excess in Things lawful, the next pursues the like excesses in Things unlawful, or make those lawful Things Crimes, by those excesses: If one Age are Beasts, the next Age are Devils: To-day Matrimonial Whoredom, To-morrow Unbounded Whoredom. As Vice leads, Fools follow; and where must it end but in Destruction?

is the like in the Contamination of Blood; the fatal Progression shows it self there, as well as in other Parts. Excesses weaken the Body, sink Nature, darken the Countenance, stupify the Brain; To-day they reach the Body, To-morrow the Soul, and, in the next Age, the Race.

lawful Things of this Age will make the next Age lawless; their Fathers conveyed Blood, and they convey Poyson; our Parents handed on Health, and we Diseases; our Children are born in Palaces, and are like to die in Hospitals. Debauchery is the Parent of Distemper; Fire in the Blood makes a Frost in the Brain; and be the Pleasures lawful or unlawful, the effect of Folly is to leave a Generation of Fools.

would be happy, if after having said thus much in general, and after having enter'd so seriously into all the Particulars by which a lewd Generation defile and pollute the Marriage Bed, and ruin both themselves and their Posterity, I could propose some effectual Method for the suppressing the wicked Practices,