Page:A Treatise concerning the Use and Abuse of the Marriage Bed.djvu/92

 sοlve not to offend against: Other Things may be so explained as to be understood by those, especially to whom they belong, for the guilty will see the Arrow shot at them which others cannot perceive.

Indecencies and Immodesties of the Tongue deserve a Place here, and I insist that, even between a Man and his Wife, there are due Bounds to be observed in both these, especially when they speak not only to, but of one another in the hearing of others.

is a Modesty of the Tongue which never forsakes a Woman of Virtue, no not in her most intimate conversing with her own Husband, but much more at other times; all Breaches of this kind touch even her Virtue it self, and are Branches of that which I call conjugal Lewdness, which is to be carefully avoided among Christians.

is the Man exempted from this Modesty of the Tongue, not only with his Wife, but especially when of or to his Wife before Company: Nothing is more unworthy a modest and Christian Man than to talk lewdly of, or to his Wife before Company; a Man ought never to force Blushes from his Wife on account of their own Privacies and Intimacies; this is to make those Things criminal which in themselves are lawful. I know not any one Thing that fits worse upon a Man's Tongue than to laugh at, jeer, and flout his Wife with what had pass'd between them in their retired Conversations, and this before other People; 'tis the most odious, hateful, and, to a modest Ear, nauseous, of all Discourse, and yet nothing is more frequent, and even among People of Figure too, which, I must confess, I have often