A Just and Seasonable REPREHENSION OF NAKED Breasts AND SHOULDERS Written by a Grave and Learned Papist Translated by Edward Cooke Esquire With a Preface by Mr. Richard Baxter LONDON Printed for Jonathan Edwin at the three Roses in Ludgate-street 1678. LICENSED RO. L'ESTRANGE October 25. 1677. THE BOOKSELLER TO THE LADIES Ladies THE Prerogative of your Sex together with the indulgent Civility of England which entitles you to the greatest Respect and Deference obliges me to the Ceremony of this little Address both as a vindication of my self from any Design of affronting you and a demonstration that the following Discourse is the pure Effect of the most real Tenderness for your Honour Fame and Reputation I cannot conceive my intentions being wholly innocent that this will displease the Vertuous who must of necessity abhor both the Infamy and the Reproaches of those who are the blemishes of their Sex from which this is intended to secure them And for the Vitious my Concern as well as Esteem runs too low to afford them any Apology since I am satisfied that however they may admire their own Nakedness and Undress they are not capable of a Passion for the greatest Beauty in the World Naked Truth And now fair Ladies that my Visit may not importune you I submit the following Papers to your censure with some degrees of confidence that your own Innocence will approve them and their Innocence and great Devotion to serve you will at least obtain a pardon for their want of what the World calls Courtship but what is in truth most commonly designing Flattery as well as for the Confidence of Ladies Your most humble Servant Jonathan Edwin THE PREFACE IT will be perhaps objected upon the first view of this following Treatise why does this man Preface to that which is written by a Papist I answer Both because it is not Popery but Gods truth and because it shall shame you the more if you disobey Will any of you now that profess the Protestant Reformation and pure Christian Religion at once cry out against Popery and all that you think doth savour of it and also wilfully continue in such shameful Practises as Papists thus honestly write against Will any that pretend to Christian Discipline and to have Church-Communion to be kept pure come thither in such a Dress a Papists drive men for from their Communion O self-condemnation is commoner than many think I have been long blamed my self for not preaching and writing more against such sinful Fashions My Reason was that our Hearers have still greater things to hear of and most that are guilty of these are guilty of so much greater heart-distempers as must orderly be first healed Could we bring them to the true fear and love of God and sense of their everlasting concerns and the Vanity of the World they would easilier correct their Fashions of themselves And we have so many quarrelsome Hearers that I am still afraid of so preaching as may tempt the ungodly to think that such Fashions are the chief matter in which we differ from them It is to the Faith of Christ in seriousness and to the love of God and Holiness and to the practical Belief of the life to come to the contempt of the opposing tempting World and the mortifying of sinful fleshly Lusts and to love and do good to all men to their power and all their life to prepare for death and judgment it is to this that we earnestly perswade men And I am afraid lest when I mention some Fashion Recreation or controverted thing they should think that this is all our difference But yet no sin is to be made light of especially when it is grown common and more when people otherwise sober are defiled by it and yet more when it is grown into the reputation of Innocent and defended against all motions to repentance and most of all after God's dreadful judgments yea and while they still continue I confess I have said and written over and over abundance more against mens greater and more dangerous Pride viz. Pride of seeming Wisdom of seeming Holiness and of worldly Greatness Wealth and Honours than of these little feminine and childish sorts of Pride of Fashions and Apparel For I thought these below the temptations of such as pretend much to Reason and it irked me to talk much of this in Books or Pulpits to persons of such childish toying dispositions while they and others wanted the deep sense of those greater matters which would best call off their minds from these But being invited to preface this Treatise translated by another out of French I shall trye your patience with my in this kind unusual freedom of speech I must say that had I my will four sorts of Fashions should be altered viz. 1. The nakedness of Women treated of in this Book 2. Their monstrous superfluity of Cloth or silk that must drag after them or be carried by another or fardelled behind them 3. Their inordinate late Pride and laced gaudiness 4. And especially the monstrous Periwigs of men with somewhat like them now also used by Women As to the three first as set together besides what is said in the following Treatise I humbly desire all that believe the sacred Scriptures seriously to think of these things following 1. How unlike is such a Garb to that of Christ and his old Disciples Is it the Badge of one that taketh up the Cross or ever well knew a crucified Christ 2. It is not the discovery of a sinfully diseased mind It is not without a cause And what inward cause would you have men think that it proceeds from Out of the abundance of the heart come out actions as well as our words Doth your inordinate gaudery signifie mortification gravity a continual regard to the eye of God or a regard to grave and holy persons more than to the eyes of the proud worldly or lascivious I know young people will say They must be married and therefore may invite desires and I know that God hath put some degrees of natural lust into Men and Women for the continued propagation of Mankind But our highest Faculty Reason with all wise men will here claim the last judgment and the mastery of sense and therefore you should recommend your selves principally to mens Reason and our highest interest holiness and salvation must make all fleshly interest vail And therefore if you would be desirable to any wise man it must be most by wisdom meekness and a holy frame of mind and life and not by any thing contrary hereto 3. Let but your own consciences judge of those words 1 Pet. 3. 1 2 3 4 5. Wives be in subjection to your own Husbands that if any obey not the word they also may without the word be won by the conversation of their Wives while they behold your chaste conversation coupled with fear whose adorning let it not be that outward adorning of plaiting the hair and of
flatter your Vanity and your Pride but also to engender Lust and Impurity and to inspire those who are your Spectators with unlawful Desires and sensual Thoughts Must you needs be at such riotous expense to cover your Bodies and yet for all that to leave them half naked Is it not in some manner to sacrifice them to the Men of the Age thus to expose them to their sight and lust X. INDEED ought they not to fear lest we reproach them for too much loving the World and for being too passionately desirous to be beloved of it what do not they do to please it they consume the goods of Fortune and when by their splendour and immodesty they sollicit Libertines and profligate Wretches to behold them may it not be said that they are become like to that Woman whom Ezekiel speaks of that by her care and costliness indeavour'd to gain the Friendship of those that regarded her and if it may be allow'd me to make use of those terms to express the thought of that Prophet who bought her Prostitution whereas others took gifts and made a sale of theirs XI THINK think that in your Baptism you have renounced the Pomp and Vanities of the World and make some reflexion with your selves how that by your unprofitable Ornaments shameless Nakedness you practise that which the World teaches and which is most dangerous and impious Alas do not believe it it is a deceitful Syren that labours only to seduce you and that can never make you happy nor contented whatever promise it makes you You ought not to join your Alliance with it since that it is your Enemy And if you are so weak and so unfortunate as to consent to what it demands of you against your Selves if you cannot resolve intirely to quit your Luxury and to cover your nakedness at least make some difference betwixt the House of your Lord which is consecrated by the Celebration of our Mysteries and those which are profaned by the Libertinism of the Age between places destin'd and set apart for Prayer devotion such as are peculiarly appropriated to mirth and gallantry joy and divertisement Wherefore will you so extend the Empire of the Prince of this world beyond his prescribed limits he can only have jurisdiction over places that are prophane and you by your immodesty make him to Reign even in sacred Places XII WHO IS there but knows that God is jealous of the respect one ought to have for his Temples and that the zeal of his house by which he is as it were devoured sayes the Prophet will not permit him to let those go unpunished who prophane it what severity did he not use against those trafficking Merchants that made it legitimate to buy and sell in the Temple of Jerusalem such beasts as were to be employed in their Sacrifices and what chastisement ought not those Women to expect who are vain and loose and who far from doing any thing that may contribute to sacrifices and favour the zeal of those who come to pay their devout adorations to Almighty God as did those Merchants whom Jesus Christ drove out of the Temple do dishonour the most solemnly to be remembred of all Sacrifices and do divert or corrupt the intention of those who are assistant at it and sometimes too of those that celebrate it who expose all their beauty in the Churches in so indecent a manner that they do as it were hold a kind of impure and unchaste commerce between themselves and those that behold them In a word who more guilty than those very sellers in the Temple that only designed at getting money without doing any injury to the Divine Worship do only aim at the acquisition of hearts to ravish them even from God himself XIII BUT let me not only pour out my laments for those who appear vain and light in Sacred Places where they should discover contrition and humility but also let me shew my fear for them who do not fly their company or who turn away their eyes from those places where God more immediately bestowes his gracious presence to cast them upon those Idols that are so gaudily and immodestly dress'd up There is alwayes danger in attentively looking upon a naked Breast and there is not only a great danger but a kind of crime in beholding it with attention in the Churches then when we are most seriously commemorating the Passion and Death of our dear Saviour for Jesus Christ being then in so eminent a manner to be remembred by us methinks to prefer a Woman to him or at least to divide our attention and perhaps our vows between him and her and to remain as it were in suspence to whom we were best to give our desires and mind is without doubt a great injury XIV YET alas once more if we cannot hinder and put a stop to this nakedness however let us not neglect to shew our disallowing of it in our taking heed to shun even the very sight thereof If the honour of Jesus Christ obliges us to it our duty and our interest does likewise ingage us the sight of a fair neck and pretty swelling breasts is no less dangerous for us than that of a Basilisk and it is then we may say with the Scripture that the Devil makes use of the windowes of our bodies for Death by Sin to enter into our Souls if it be true as sayes the Prophet Jeremiah that our eyes do sometimes commit a rape upon the Soul it is then without doubt when they are fastened upon the attractive beauties of a bewitching Face and when they do also in some manner fix there our mind and heart in bringing to it with our looks our affections and desires And I believe that the Patriarch Job had a mind to teach us this Truth when he declares that he had made a Covenant with his Eyes to the end that he might not think on the Beauty of a Maid for it is not the Eyes that think and desire but it is the Heart or Mind wherefore sayes he then that he might remove from his Mind and Heart the Idea and illegitimate Love of Women he made a Covenant with his Eyes rather than with his Mind and with his Heart to hint to us that it is easie not to think of Women when once we have got beyond the prospect of seeing them but that it is next to an impossibility for them not to fill our Minds and Hearts if we doe not make a compact and agreement with our Eyes not to look upon them XV. AND it is so much the more necessary for us to turn away our Eyes from beholding Women whose Necks and Shoulders are naked and bare as according to the thoughts of the same Patriarch it is difficult to conceive what place God can find in a Soul which the Eyes have betrayed and into which those impure objects are entred that do possess and trouble
into their imagination than into that of the men who consider it attentively and commend it and as they most commonly do joyn the Idea of all the body to that of their Breasts being persuaded that they shew the Beauty of the one to make that of the other be better judged of they easily cause them to be of those sentiments they would inspire them with and so only fill their minds with their own image but with an Image that is sensual which imprints in their Souls by little and little the Inclinations of those Libertines that behold them The Chastity of a Woman sayes Tertullian when it is true and perfect does not fear any thing so much as her self she cannot endure the eyes of other Women she trembles when she meets with those of men and she does so much more apprehend her own eyes as according as she is habituated to see her self naked she loses the liberty of being able with Justice to blame those who take pleasure in seeing her nakedness and in the same manner as Libertines do onely imitate her in being pleas'd to behold her uncovered Breasts so does she imitate the Libertines and beholds them as they do with sensuality XXIV I DOUBT not but many among them may tell me they do sufficiently know themselves not to fear any such thing But I will answer them that this very confidence they have of their vertue is a great disposition to them not to be much longer vertuous she that does not fear to lose her Innocence will not be over curious and watchful to preserve it and the less precaution she takes the greater danger she runs and the more she neglects the danger to which she exposes her self she is the less capable to get out of it with success But how can they without presumption believe they will not consent to any thought that shall be against purity when by the nakedness of their Breasts they labour to imprint impure sentiments in the hearts of many persons One always participates a little of the fault which one causes others to be guilty of and therefore they cannot be perfectly chaste if they favour impurity at the same time as they make their boasts of having a horror for it Do not they know by their own experience that corporal Beauty is only fit to awaken Lust in us that it easily excites and augments all the Ardours of it and to speak the Language of the Fathers that it invites us to sinful Volupty and provokes us to dishonest Love and are they ignorant that their own Beauty may become as fatal to them in inspiring and swelling them up with vanity as to those who thereby are inflamed with Love for who can believe that a Woman shews her Neck and Breasts for any to despise them XXV 'T IS most certain then that they do run the hazard of losing their Innocence when by the nakedness of their necks they lay snares for the Innocence of others and whatever they may say it is very plain that they do expose themselves to Sin by either a motion of pride or of impurity Possibly some may be found who by a particular happiness are able to secure themselves from either of these Sins but yet they shall not exempt themselves from the reproach of being too hazardously expos'd to commit them And though as it is impossible their Intention should be good and their self-nakedness irreprehensible though they should remain pure and humble among the vain applauses and unchast regards of dissolute Libertines yet they would still be guilty of those beastly and nauseous thoughts which they inspire them withall and of those evils which they cause XXVI 'T IS THE Doctrine of Tertullian and of the great St. Cyprian after whom I may certainly with Justice address these words to them If your gait be too full of pride if you adjust your self with too much artifice if you do dress your self in such a manner as to draw upon you the eyes of young wantons know that you having given them the killing glance and the venome that poisons them are not innocent of their loss although you have not at all desired it You are criminal although you have not committed any crime your selves under pretence that your Soul hath not been sullied with any impure thought since that your undecent garb and cloaths accuse you and your nakedness so fatal to many young men does condemn you You are the sword which hath given death to that man who seeing your naked breasts hath fell under the temptation and yielded to the Sin you are as the stains and corruption of his blood wherefore then do you flatter your selves with the thoughts that you are not tainted but are innocent will it be permitted you after you have been advertised of the dreadful effects which your nakedness causes to render your selves voluntarily the homicides and murtherers of a Christian Soul without our being able to impute any fault to you whilest that those are taxed as Criminals who are but the Murtherers of bodies and who do it only through imprudence and without any design XXVII PRAY Remember that God heretofore ordained by the mouth of Moses that if any one kindled a fire which by an unexpected accident and against his Intention did burn the corn and fruits of his neighbour he should be oblig'd to give him a full satisfaction for his dammage and therefore consider and acknowledge your selves to be always responsible for all the evils which the fires you kindle by your nakedness do cause in the hearts of those who behold and admire you XXVIII SAINT Jerome goes further and in his Commentary upon Isaiah he assures us that if a Maid or Woman dresses her self in so extravagant and vain a manner as to attract the Eyes of Men and stirr up unlawful desires she committs a Crime which sometimes deserves a severe punishment although indeed she does not actually her self commit any crime because she prepares and presents a poison that may give death and it is otherwise than she intended or at least contrary to all probability if no body drinks of it XXIX ALAS according to the Doctrine of St. Clemens Alexandrinus there are many occasions in which a Christian sins only because he does not live in such a strict and modest manner as might be sufficiently exemplary to restrain and curb the libertinisme of Sinners and to inspire in them a shame and horror of their crimes or a fear of the Judgments of Almighty God What can we think of those Maids and Women who by their immodest nakedness do become a very strong and pressing occasion of Sin who far from going about by their modesty to suppress the impure and filthy sentiments which their sight may beget in the hearts of Men do renew and bring a double accession to them by their immodesty who far from doing any thing to shew their repugnancy to Libertinism do favour