Page:A Treatise concerning the Use and Abuse of the Marriage Bed.djvu/91

 Family-Conversation? This is a Reason why it is so essential to Matrimony, that the Persons should be Lovers as well as Relatives, that there should be an engaged assured Affection before there be a Political Union between them: Without this 'tis very difficult to render the married State a Scene of happy Circumstances, and a Condition truly calculated for humane Society; but of that also in its Order, for I must give you a whole Chapter upon that Head.

is another of the Particulars which Decency still requires between a Man and his Wife; he is far from acting decently with a Wife that will not on all Occasions do her Justice: To be injurious to a Wife destroys all Family-Peace between them; and whether this Injustice be occasioned by and relating to Matters of Property, or Matters of Duty, 'tis all the same; there is no Decency can be preserved where Justice is not done; if the Wife be oppressed, if her Right and Allowances expresly capitulated for are unjustly detained from her, or if she be any way stript, either of her Ornaments, or of her Settlements, these are injurious things which destroy Affection, and the destroying of Affection ruins the Peace of the Family.

I am a little gone beyond my Subject, which relates only to personal Virtue, and the Reserves which Modesty still makes necessary between a Man and his Wife; and there are some Things even of that kind which still remain. It is true, some of them are such as cannot bear the mentioning without Breach of the Modesty which I am speaking to protect, and breaking into those Bounds which I re-