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Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
cause_n	good_a	great_a	let_v	3,168	5	4.0636	3	true

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ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A59539	Discourses useful for the vain modish ladies and their gallants under these following heads, viz. I. Of some of the common ways many vertuous women take to lose their reputation, &c. II. Of meer beauty-love, &c. III. Of young mens folly in adoring young handsom ladies, &c. IV. Of the power womens beauty exercises over most young men. V. Of the inconstancy of most ladies, especially such as are cry'd-up beauties, &c. VI. Of marriage, and of wives who usurp a governing power over their husbands. VII. Of the inequality of many marriages, with the sad end that usually attend such matches. VIII. Against maids marrying for meer love, &c. IX. Against widows marrying. X. Against keeping of misses. XI. Of the folly of such women as think to shew their wit by censuring of their neighbours. XII. Of the French fashions and dresses, &c. XIII. Of worldly praises which all ladies love to receive, but few strive to deserve. XIV. Useful advices to the vain and modish ladies, for the well regulating their beauty and lives. By the right honourable Francis Lord Viscou	Shannon, Francis Boyle, Viscount, 1623-1699.	1696 (1696)	Wing S2963A; ESTC R222490	137,565	280

that indeed the best and most prudent Course is that of persons you cannot speak well of be silent and rather make their Faults the subject of your Trouble than that of your Discourse or the exercise of your Wit which is in truth but the practice of your Malice And as Cheating can never make a part of true Wisdom so ill Nature can never make a part of good Wit and indeed Women may rely upon this as almost an infallible Rule that those that delight in Censuring others before you will as well delight in censuring you before others assoon as your back is turned In a word those that take pleasure in scandalizing others whether it be to make Discourse or to shew Wit or to vent Malice 't is not only Unjust and Unhandsom but 't is what 's worse than both irreligious and deceitful if you will take St James's word for it for he says If any among you seemeth Religious and bridleth not his Tongue he deceiveth his own Heart and his Religion is vain James 1.26 Lastly give me leave to mind you again that she that will censure others must expect others will censure her and you know that one that fights many must needs fight upon great disadvantage so in matter of Censures and Scandals she that provokes many Tongues to Shoot at her own single Reputation those many are much likelier to wound her than she to wound those many since she that shoots at the Reputation of great numbers of Women 't is improbable she should hit all but if great numbers shoot all at one 't is very improbable that one should be missed by all so that 't is unfafe as well as unreasonable and imprudent for any one Woman to provoke many Women Certainly to cast sharp Censures on her meerly out of her uncertain hopes to cast Scandals on them And Censurer disguise your malicious ill nature with the purest Gloss and the best Wit you can You shall never make it pass for true Wisdom and good Policy to forfeit your Judgment to exercise your Wit Therefore if your Prudence and Discretion cannot hinder you from ingaging in such an unequal Cambat as one Tongue must be to fight against many pray let Self-interest upon the account of self-preservation dissuade you from it and remember to be worsted in fight is still disgraceful as well as to be victorious is ever glorious Therefore rather follow Prudence than practise Malice and rather conceal your Wit than divulge your Envy or exercise your ill Nature and since foul censuring is ever bad still remember you can never shew good Wit by doing an ill thing And now Reader to conclude all in one word for I know I have reason to believe that I have already writ too many to tire your Patience tho' perhaps not to convince your opinion that a virtuous Woman ought to avoid publick Censures as well as private Sins and to shun as much getting an ill Name as committing a bad Act. Now to prevent both let all your Thoughts be good and all your Words and Actions discreet and Un-censorious that tho' the Beauty of your Person may cause some that are unvirtuous to wish you so yet let the Piety of your Life and the Prudence of your Carriage cause all such that are truly Religious and strictly Virtuous to report you to be the like and make it always your great care and constant concern that you never scandalize any and your great trouble that any should ever scandalize you for let a Woman be never so purely virtuous and free from deserving bad Censures yet she must be unfortunate in receiving them for scandalous Reports must hurt a good Womans Reputation tho' she does not deserve them as well as wound a wicked Womans Conscience that does THE THIRD DISCOURSE Of young Mens great folly in adoring and over-praising all young handsome Ladies and their greater folly in receiving it and believing them 'T IS not more natural for heat to attend Fire nor more common for the Sun to exhale vapours from the Earth than 't is for great Beauty to attract high Praises from young Men and truly such of them as have wit to spare time to lose favour to hope for and no other world to think of are fittest to Court their Beauty in this which is but modish breeding and suitable to most mens practice and all handsom Ladies expectation I do not say merit And such Men as are pretenders to raillying wit and French breeding may shew both by entertaining them with Courtly Harangs all set out with high Praises and great Complements which few Men speak as their belief but most Ladies receive as their desert and with such Idolizing postures and Dying expresons as if they design'd their fellow Creatures to be perfect Goddesses who were made like Nebuchadnezzar's golden Image only to be worshipped so naturally agreeable are such sinful adorations to vain Ladies as the first temptation we read of in Scripture that ever prevail'd on Woman was that of being made like to God and that Woman then compriz'd in her self the whole species of Women kind and indeed 't is very probable that her aspiring presumption then to more knowledge than she ought does still punish most of her Sex with less Wisdom than they need Really if handsom Ladies had but that share of Prudence which they ought to have as good Christians and to use in the practical part of Christianity to which all Women are called though few strive to be chosen they would never endure much less countenance such young Men to Court and magnifie them at such an extravagant rate as to present them with that Composition of Praises meerly for vain pastime or what 's worse evil ends which ought to be attributed to divine Worship only nor can there be a more clear and plainer Argument to prove Womens want of wisdom then that many of them will receive such profane Praises not as the vain Effects of young Mens wicked folly but as the deserved Trophies of their own conquering beauty and merit All I shall say is that such courtly Incense suits well with such a vain false Deity and that such young Women are as foolishly guilty in receiving such vain Attributes as such young Men are highly profane in offering them Thus Men by the deceitful reflexes of high praises divert young Women from remembring their Creator in the days of their Youth and possibly all the time of their Life by Charming them with their own Charms and disguising themselves to themselves and by telling them so often what they are not makes them forget what they really are and by these means they advance their minds so far above any dismal thoughts of their own mortality that truly few of our young cry'd up beauties now adays scarce hears any thing of Death but what they are Romanticly told their own killing beauty does occasion though in truth if we read the Weekly Bills of Mortality we shall

sinful as 't is not making Images to adorn Churches but building Churches to worship Images that makes the Idolatry And since Recreation for the mind is as well necessary as Exercise for the body I see no reason why it may not be lawful for me to recreate my self now and then in an afternoon in such good young Womens company and conversation to hear their opinions and discourses which the rude sort of Men call Twatlings on the Stories of the place and their several fancies and judgments on the divers Fashions then worn who are the Women most talk'd of for whom and what beauties are highest cried up and which of them loves most and carries on an Intrigue best lives highest wears the richest Clothes keeps the finest Equipage and has most Gallants and this Gentlewoman is to be Married to that Gentleman who in a little time will find her Debts much greater than her Beauty or Portion either and such a pretty Maid is to be Married by a Match of her Parents making to such a one in whom she will be very unhappy her heart being prepossessed by another and such an old Man is jealous of his young Wife without a Cause and such a young Man is not jealous of his handsom Wife with one and the like Subjects which I grant in severe strictness may be truly call'd an omission in not spending our time so well as we ought which I look upon to be more a venial vice than an unpardonable sin and therefore do not believe that the knowledge of my infirmity ought to be the despair of my Recovery but I am truly pleas'd that all unlawful designs and unchast desires as to Women are banished from my heart and that Vertue has made me quite leave them before Age has made them quite leave me But 't is more than time to finish this Discourse for I have dwelt longer on it than I intended but the trouble of it I hope the Ladies will the more easily pardon since 't is not only a fault but a habit that I have been much subject to and long infected with which is to be loth to part with young Womens Company when I am once got into it and therefore I will conclude this Discourse with this Complement to the Ladies that I heartily wish it may prove as satisfactory and advantagious to them as to make them all now as fond of piety as I was once of beauty and that they may continue to love it as many years as I did them and then I dare assure them this double blessing That they shall neither live ill nor die young THE FOURTH DISCOURSE Of the extraordinary governing Power that Womens Beauty now exercises over most Men. BLess me and deliver me What a strange Subject do I now fall on and into what a vast Sea am I now Imbarking The Bay of Biskay with all its proud swelling waves is but as a calm pond to it for that only tosses Ships into the Air and presently brings them down again but this Subject elevates my Pen above the Skie and there leaves it for Womens governing Power has no certain Top nor Bottom but Circle-like is without beginning or end How can it possibly be then describ'd it being a meer Maze of difficulties and a Labyrinth of Confusions in which it has made so many cross Paths of pride and folly vanity and power as I know not which to take or which to leave where to advance or how to retreat And yet I find in my self an earnest inclination to venture on it though I am sure to be lost in it for I must expect that this dull and short Discourse on the voluminous Subject of beauties mighty power can have no other fate than that of Rivers which still run with an eager haste though it be only to plunge themselves into the Sea in which they are presently lost Story tells us of some English Frigats that sail'd up to Constantinople and were there so generally admir'd that the great Turk himself went to see them and was very much taken with their beauty shape and strength and being told there were hundreds finer in England he commanded that the Map of the World should be presently brought him that he might see that brave Kingdom which produced such gallant effects the Map being come he laid his finger carelesly on it and ask'd whereabouts England was but the person that was to shew it him told him he could not do it till he took off his finger for it quite cover'd that Kingdom Thus one Inch of the Worlds Map serves to set out all Englands Confines but a hundred sheets of Paper cannot half describe the extraordinary bounds of Womens usurping power If I look up towards the height of it I am confounded at the sight of so bright and clear a Scene of meer sanciful Splendor and if I look downwards on it I meet in my Compass crowds of Adorers and Suitors thick prostrate at their feet some courting their great beauty others admiring their high power some begging their favour but most bribing their interest But though their beauty cannot at all dazle my sight yet this Subject do's indeed puzzle my Pen for really I am so far from knowing how to end this Discourse as I profess I know not yet where to begin it and indeed when I have writ all I can on it I fancy I can make no other than this whole sale judgment of it That beauties universal governing Power is of a miraculous nature like that of the Ebbing and Flowing of the Sea every body may daily see its strange effects but none can give a good reason for the true cause therefore I am sure my weakness ought not to attempt what the strength of wit and Philosophy could never perform So that I am resolv'd to venture on this Subject but as little Boys do on a great River not hazard far on it for fear of being lost in it but content themselves with wading a little on the Brink of it and there to dable and wash them out of the reach of its great depth and fierce stream And though I know that the cause of Mens so enslaving themselves to handsom Womens power cannot spring but from a mean slavish nature and so ought not to be look'd upon better by any considering Men than a kind of Kingdom in the Moon or Fairy Land only hatch'd by the fiery amorous Love of a high lustful and enflam'd distemper'd passion seated in the vain Aiery Region of meer foolish imagination being not grounded on any foundation of true reason or good consideration Yet I cannot imitate the Map makers who still leave a blank for their Terra Incognita but I must fill up my Paper and rather than not write more of it I will leave of scratching my head and breaking my brain any longer about it to find out how and where to begin this desperate Subject it being like a Coal all over red

little tho they are giving us never so much but commands us not to rail and jeer at them that jeer and rail at us but to pray for our Enemies and to do good to those that spitefully use us God having instituted it as a Fundamental Law to Mankind not to do our Neighbours any harm in Body Goods or good Name but to do them all the good we can in every of them In short this is the sad and unequal deportment of most vain handsom Ladies both as to themselves and others which is to be angry with their Neighbours without a Cause and never to be angry at themselves tho they have one many of the vain Ladies esteeming it a sufficient ground of quarrel and anger at other young Ladies for being more handsom than they but forget at the same time to be offended at themselves for being less pious than them in not loving their Neighbours as themselves for if they did they would never offer what they would not take But so vain and wicked is our Age as common Custom and little Consideration makes many of the vain witty Ladies to fancy that Romantick Lies and detracting Jeers are but Wind which if granted yet it cannot be denied but the often repetition may unite them into a storm of sins for does not experience teach us that light flakes of Snow that singly scarce weigh any thing being but a kind of half congealed Atoms yet do often by their long united Confluence swell into an ability of destroying Houses and Families in spite of their greatest resistance Solomon says Prov. 16.27 That an ungodly Mans lips is as a burning fire and in the very next Verse seems to explain what he means by a burning fire a froward Man soweth strife and a whisperer separateth chief Friends as I said before how common is it among the vain Ladies of the times to lessen their handsom Neighbours beauty meerly on design that by Eclipsing it they might make their own shine out the Clearer and often to raise scandalous Reports to blemish her Reputation among her Friends and Lovers it being indeed too common a practice among them to whisper about ill Reports of their Neighbours as told them abroad from others when really they were Coin'd at home by themselves O vain Ladies if you will not for your own and shame sake at least for vertue and honour sake abandon raising all wicked scandals on your Neighbours and banish from your practice all impertinent senseless strifes all censuring twatles and sharp offensive scoffs which tho a mode vice is so great a Crime as it truly requires a strict Repentance and a high Reparation for the offence to the Persons so injured and that such scandalous Jeerers would for the future as David says Keep a Bridle in their Mouth that they offend not with their Tongue and so new mould and well regulate it as instead of using it as an Engine to rack their Neighbours Reputation with they may henceforward employ and consecrate it to the setting out and stretching forth their vertue and good name and let all your strife be in a pious Emulation of vertue and holiness and in religious endeavors who shall excel and take place in the true and constant practice of them in their lives and conversation for in them consists not only the greatest wisdom highest wit but also the best breeding and most sublime and splended beauty being the everlasting one of holiness besides that of pure honour indeed for Gospel Heraldry must ever be the very best for the greatest Monarch in this World must live a sinner but the meanest Woman in it by her living a godly and vertuous life may die a Saint and therefore it must certainly be much better to live well and so die happily than to be born great left rich or look handsom for the beauty of a fair delicate Complexion may be a Womans own purchase not Natures gift and her high Title and great Estate may be left her by her friends without being in the least merited by her self but to be highly pious and truly vertuous must most certainly be the true and lawful Issue of a Womans own Religious inclinations Therefore I shall conclude this Discourse with this undeniable Truth That true goodness is true greatness and that Lady will be the greatest in the other World that lives the best in this THE TWELFTH DISCOURSE Of French Fashions and Dresses now used in England by the modish Ladies and young Sparks DIvines tell us that perfect life may be seen in short measures Painters assure us that exact beauty may be drawn in small proportions and experience shews us that an infinity of words is made of a few letters and 't is approv'd by the great Wits and Poets of the Stage that a short Prologue may suit well with a long Play and since I do not here pretend nor indeed so much as ambition to keep company with their great Wit I hope they will admit me to follow their short measures and by their example justifie this my small discourse from appearing very unsuitable to this large Theme Solomon in his Character of a Covetous Person says He is one whom God hath given riches and honour to so that he wanteth nothing of all that he desires but God giveth him not the power to eat thereof which is an evil Disease because such a Man wanteth even what he hath what can such a miserable be call'd better than a sad wretch that makes himself a voluntary Slave to labour in the Mines of his own wealth and Vassal-like only to enjoy the drudgery part for his own share making his wealth a burden without reaping any true pleasure or advantage by it so that such a Man tho' he be never so rich must die in debt to himself for he strips himself of necessaries during his own life to make his Children a Wardrobe after his death I am sure the prodigality of our London Gallants is after a quite different Manner for so they can but make a Wardrobe for themselves and Misses during their own lives many of them care not tho' they leave their Children in a condition to want necessaries after their death which too many of them can justifie by woful experience several of their Fathers Estates that did belong to them as their Birth-right by their Parents luxury pride and folly have been made a sacrifice to the extravagant expences and vain profuseness of their Mistrisses pride and their own sottishnefs as that they have left nothing to their Heirs of Inheritance but the wind as Solomon expresses it Prov. 11.29 The certain loss of their fathers Estate and the uncertain getting another for themselves if they can I have read of a Philosopher that was perswaded by his friends to leave his retirement for a little time to see a fine Shop plentifully stor'd with all manner of rich things and fine knacks and being asked what he thought of all

say in general that some are so eager in gazing at it others so over earnest in their seeking it as really most oversee the right way to it which is by true Piety constant Charity and a daily practice of Vertue and Godliness in all their actions And no wonder that such as will not take these blessed Guides should miserably miss their way to it and be sadly defeated in their hopes of it And now having done with my Discourse of Praise give me leave to change the Scene and to pass by the uncertainty of your meeting it tho to reflect on the certainty of deaths meeting you and the terrors that then appear at the end of a vain wicked life and to beg the vain young Ladies Company for a little time that I might lead their thoughts into the sad and dismal Regions of Mortality that they may now consider it to prevent it hereafter from surprizing them and that they may carry their thoughts to the Grave before their friends carry their Bodies The Seasons of our Lives resemble exactly those of the Year the Summer of our Life swallows up the Spring of our Youth and the Autumn of our Age makes us to decline as the Sun does daily of its vigorous heat and influence till all the fair days and various productions of natures beauty at last yeild to old Age Winter as their Grave for as the Apostle says 'T is appointed for every Man once to die and one day is still the death of the other and tho many things may keep back the thoughts of deaths coming yet nothing can retard the time of his approach And now I must humbly beg our vain modish Ladies pardon if I here a little mind them of the sad concluding Scene of their Life and in how miserable a condition some of them must necessarily be in when they come to die and have wasted all their Life in Vanity and Sin little considering Reputation and less fearing Scandal little valuing Conscience and less esteeming Eternity It has often come into my mind that the sad end of such vain Womens Lives is like the last Scene of their Loves to their Gallants which is just as an Ague turned upside down the cold fit after the hot for when the fiery passions of youthful Love are changed through their Inconstancy or worn out by Age or wasted by Sickness for you know that Loves-vanity is but of a short date it either vanishes in the act and is nipped in its gay and vigorous blossom like the tender-leav'd Plants by a cold Northern-wind or else grows wrinkled and impotent like crooked and deform'd shrubs for want of fap and moisture and so grows loathsom and deformed as the grim Jaws of Death that will too at last come with a dreadful stroak to level all our fair Cedars to the ground and make your beauty Ladies to consume away like a Moth fretting a Garment every Woman is therefore but vanity and when you are thus brought to your Death-beds of pain and languishing O then Consider what a sad condition you must needs be in when you will find all your fond beauty and vanity going off the Stage when your life is just expiring when the scorching thoughts of your past vain life come to inflame your mind more fiercely than the burning Feaver can your body and that the remembrance of your past extravagant pride and vanity will torment your troubled Conscience more than ever before they pleased your sensual appetite and that the shivering fit of guilt not only seizes your heart but pierceth your very soul with sad and sober thoughts of your past sins and the strict account that you must soon give of them and of the terrible punishments that you must justly suffer for them when perhaps you cannot comfort your afflicted Conscience with the assurance of having so much as performed in your whole life one pious act or charitable deed when you had both time and means to have performed thousands and so as too many of you do lose the blessings of the other World meerly for slighting Gods mercies in this And farther 't will be well worth the consideration of our vain Ladies that when they lie a dying the sins of their life will flie about their troubled minds as naturally as sparks do about fire and will lighten them to a clear sight of their pride and vanity and their greatest trouble when they are leaving this World is what will become of them when they are out of it and truly it will not be without great cause since their Consciences will then assure them that their Bodily pain in this Life will be but the Prologue or first step to their Souls eternal misery in the next Whereas a pious young Lady who with holy David makes a covenant with her Eyes that they should not behold vanity but observe Gods commandments as her chief study and delight by truly living in his fear she will certainly die in his favour and will find at her death that her good Conscience will be her real friend and true comforter and furnish her with a chearful readiness to submit her will to Gods which will never fail to protect her against all those spiritual conflicts and temptations of Conscience which still rack and torture ill Womens minds when they come to die for tho God casts her on her Bed of sickness and pain yet he will be sure to lift her up with the arms of mercy and bless her with the assurance of a perfect state of Bliss after her painful life is ended for tho Death be the wages of Sin yet a Pious death is but the passage to a Heavenly Life And a Religious vertuous Woman at her death will as certainly enter into a state of eternal Felicity as an impious vain and wicked one will into that of deserved misery Solomon says That the fear of God is not only the beginning of wisdom but the end of it for it teacheth you to regulate your desires and purifie your actions as it will make you live well in order to die so So that indeed our good actions concur in their influence towards the happiness of our souls as the Sun does in motion to the Dial the Dial is not the true cause of the Suns motion to it yet by the Suns shining on the Dial you may truly Judge of the true motion of the Sun But leaving aside that dispute whether good works can only merit Heaven or not as the Papists teach I am sure living a pious vertuous life in the faith of the holy Jesus will certainly carry you there this all Ladies know but few will practise or so much as think of I mean as you ought for you usually defer all thoughts of the other World till you are just parting out of this when alas the time present is only yours for that past is no more and that to come is not yet so that you do but live between them both