Page:The World's Famous Orations Volume 7.djvu/55

 ZWINGLI The third danger is that with foreign money and foreign wars our manners will become corrupted and debased. This we see very clearly, for our people have never returned from the foreign wars without bringing something new in clothes for themselves and their wives, or without importing home some new extravagance in eating and drinking, some new oaths; the bad they see and learn with readiness, so that we have reason to fear, if these wars be not desisted from, we shall be inundated with still worse evils.

The morality of the women, too, is corrupted. A woman is a weak creature, and desirous of new, handsome things, ornaments, fine clothes, jewels (as we see in Dinah, who went to Sechem out of curiosity, and was there humbled), and when such like things are made to flash in their eyes, and offered to them, think you that they will not be moved by these things, and that the temptation will not be too strong for them? It is to be feared, too, that in time the number of the males will be diminished, altho as yet this has been less noticeable. But at least they are unmanned by luxury. Now no one will work to obtain a living, the lands are out of cultivation, and lie waste in many places, because laborers are not to be got, altho there be people enough, and a land that could well nourish us all. If it bear not cinnamon, ginger, malmsey, cloves, oranges, silk, and other such dainties for the palate, it bears at least butter, milk, horses, sheep, VII—3