Page:A Treatise concerning the Use and Abuse of the Marriage Bed.djvu/65

 the devout Doctor gives caution, and enters his Protest against misconstruction and misunderstanding of what he was to say; this he does with infinite Modesty and Reserve, but ventures for all that upon the Reproof as a necessary Work, his Example is highly useful to me in this equally necessary Work, of laying, open the Crimes of the present Age; which, it must be acknowledged, is much farther advanced in Wickedness than the Times the Doctor lived in. His Words are these:

", stay, says he, and read not the Advices of the following Section, unless that thou hast a chast Spirit; and in another Place he says, unless thou hast a chast Spirit, and unless thou art desirous of being chast, or at least art apt to consider whether thou oughtest or not. For there are some Spirits so Atheistical, and some so wholly possess'd with the "Spirit of uncleanness, that they turn the most prudent and chast Discourses into dirty and filthy Apprehensions; like cholerick Stomachs, changing their very Cordials and Medicines into bitterness, and, in a literal sense, turning the Grace of God into Wantonness.

Men study Cases of Conscience in the Matter of carnal Sins, not to avoid them, but to learn Ways how to offend and pollute their own Spirits; searching their Houses with a Sun-beam, that they may be inform'd of all the Corners of Nastiness." Rh