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136 complete obedience in that organ; for is there one which is commonly more indiscreet and unruly? Moreover, I know one so turbulent and untractable that for forty years it has compelled its master to break wind at every breath, and with a constant and unremitting constraint, and so brings him near to death. And would to God that I knew only by hearsay how often our belly, by a single refusal to break wind, carries us even to the gates of a very agonizing death; and would that the emperor who gave us leave to break wind everywhere, had given us the power.

But our will, in behalf of whose claims we bring forward this reproach — with how much more semblance of truth can we charge her with rebellion and sedition, from her disorderliness and disobedience! Does she always desire what we would like her to desire? Does she not often desire, and to our evident injury, what we forbid her to desire? Does she allow herself to be guided by the conclusions of our judgement? Enfin, je dirois pour monsieur ma partie, que plaise a considerer qu’en ce faict, sa cause estant inseparablement conjointe a un consort, et indistinctement on ne s’adresse pourtant qu’a luy, et par des argumens et charges telles, veu la condition des parties, qu’elles ne peuvent aucunement appartenir ny concerner son dict consort. Car l’effect d’iceluy est bien de convier inopportunement par fois, mais refuser, jamais; et de convier encore tacitement et quietement. Partant se voit l’animosité et l’illegalité manifeste des accusateurs. However that may be, Nature, making it clear that lawyers and judges idly wrangle and pass sentence, will meanwhile go her way, who would have done no more than right had she endowed the male member with some peculiar privilege, the author of the sole immortal work of mortals. For this reason, procreation is a divine act according to Socrates; and love, desire of immortality,