Page:A Treatise concerning the Use and Abuse of the Marriage Bed.djvu/81

 Potiguara's of Brasile, nay, to the very Hottentots of Monomotapa, and the Cape of Good Hope; they will find Reason and Nature too prevails among them to act quite otherwise, and that while Reason and Nature concur in arming them against it, so they more punctually obey the command of both, and have this horrid Practice in the greatest detestation. But here, let us blush, and say no more, for no modest Language can fully express it.

return to the Principle, which is the Proposition in this Chapter, That there is a needful Modesty and Decency requisite even between a Man and his Wife after Marriage, and not destroyed by their Matrimony. Certainly People do not by Matrimony cease to be Men and Women, nor do the Man and Woman cease to be rational Creatures, much less do they cease to be Christians: let every marry'd Couple remember those three Things, and I am fully assured they will take care not to deserve the Reproof of this Chapter.

is then that Circumstance in the married State, where, I say, a Reserve is placed between the Sexes, even between the Man and his Wife; where that which we call Modesty remains as an indelible Bond upon them both, even after Marriage: They that say there is no Modesty to be named after Matrimony, but that there is a perfect unlimited and unbounded Liberty on both Sides, either do not know, or do not rightly consider the Laws of Nature, the Constitution Bonds, which, as Matrimony does not remove from the Sexes, so neither does it remove the Obligation from either Sex to regard them. One would think indeed the Power of Nature should be such, and the Sense of these things