Page:A Treatise concerning the Use and Abuse of the Marriage Bed.djvu/86

 are some of the Things which Modesty and Decency forbids between a Man and his Wife; the contrary is a Debt to conjugal Affection on one hand, and to Laws of Decency and good Manners on the other, both which no matrimonial Familiarities or Intimacies can destroy.

here give me leave to observe, though not with the same Reflection, and without any Satyr upon the Thing as Criminal and Immodest; that, however the matrimonial Intimacies between a Man and his Wife, may discharge them of much of the Bondage of Ceremony in their Conversation, yet I can by no means agree, that because a Woman has given her self up to him without any reserve, all tenderness and regard to her as a Woman, and all distinction in Company should be taken away; that she should have no respect shown to her in whatever Circumstances she is considered, but, on the contrary, that therefore her Husband should treat her with Rudeness and Indecency, want of Manners, and even of Respects ever after. There are some remains certainly of the first Civilities due to the Wife after Marriage, which were paid to her in her distant Circumstances, as a Maid, before, and in the time of Courtship; and unless the Wife her self forfeit them by any brutish disobliging Things on her Side, they are not entirely obliterated by Matrimony, no not to the last.

this Account, though I cannot say that a Life of Ceremony between Man and Wife should be recommended, yet certainly a Life of Civility should; they say that Ceremony destroys Affection, and, in some respects, I don't know but it may, and when we see a Man and his