Page:A Treatise concerning the Use and Abuse of the Marriage Bed.djvu/419

 they cannot do the first, and yet contemn the last, I declare War against them; and if I live to appear again in the Field, let them expect no Quarter; for the Satyr has not spent all its Artillery, or shot all its Shafts. My next Attack shall be personal, and I may come to Black Lists, Histories of Facts, Registers of Time, with Name and Sirname; for no Man sure, in a Christian Government, as this is, need be afraid of laying Hell open, or drawing the Pictures of Men when they are turn'd Devils.

I might say a Word or two more with respect to Style. I think I can have given no Offence in Decency of Expression: If any Thing has, notwithstanding the utmost Care, slipt my Pen, let it be a Defence, that I profess it is undesign'd; the whole Tenour of the Work is calculated to bear down Vice, vitious Practises and vitious Language; and, I think, I may claim a favourable Construction where there seems a Fault, if it were really a slip of the Pen: I may claim it as a Debt due to a modest Intention; declaring again, there is not one Word willingly pass'd over that can be Censured, as evidently leading to or encouraging Indecency, no not in Thought. An evil Mind may corrupt the chastest Design; as in reading the explanation of the Words I WILL, in the Marriage Covenant, which, I say, is a solemn Oath, and that as plain as if it had been express'd, as swearing by the Name of. Sure none can be offended as if I put the sacred Name of into the Mouths of the Readers upon a light Occasion, making them take the Name of  in vain, or making them repeat an Oath in the most vulgar and coursest way. But if any Man