bodies And sure since it cannot be denied but a vertue that overcomes the highest difficulties fiercest inclinations and most youthful passions must needs excel all others then it cannot be in the least doubted but that a young handsom Widow that leads a retir'd strict and unmarried life must needs in that kind surpass all other Women because she practises more the vertue of continence than any of them can I mean as to the outward mark of our knowledge since a Widow that lives in a true conformity to such a strict pious life resembles most and approaches closest to the heavenly one which must needs be the best as coming nearest to perfection for she declines the natural commerce of the body to enjoy the better and Spiritual Contemplation of the Soul. And 't is most certain the more Women keep their thoughts and desires from worldly delights and vanities the more their minds will be fortified against them and the more ready they 'll be to embrace true felicity We read in Scripture that the Womans subjection to the Man was laid on her as a penance and punishment for her disobedience to her God. Truly most of the young Married Sparks of our Age are very active in observing Gods pleasure herein yet not at all on the account of the Almighty's design but the worlds practice which is for such Sparks to make Marriage a punishment to the Woman as much as they can that is as much as some Wives will for serve honour and obey are grown but words of course which all Women must repeat after the Minister at Marriage but few will perform after they are Married and their promise of obedience till death them do part is seldom in their thoughts as long as they live Indeed I have known some young handsom Widows who have lov'd their own Reputation and their Husbands Memory so much as to continue some years in a strict deep Mourning as well in their Life as Dress And I have also known other Widows of the wild brisk London brood that have not so much Complemented their Husbands death as to hold out one year a Widows Life tho contrary to the Custom of the Country and the common Rules of decency and civility And as shewing so little a concern for a Husband is very unbecoming and highly immodest not to speak worse so on the other hand overmuch grief and despair are both imprudent and irreligious But I need not speak much of this overabundant Mourning for a Husband since 't is a distemper of mind very few Widows of our age are inclin'd too and therefore not in danger of being infected with for most Widows can tell us that they are so well read in the brave Roman Story who though they had no other bounds to their aspiring hopes than the Conquest of the whole world yet they still placed their glory and praise as much in suffering well as in doing so saying as they ought not to be overmuch exalted by prosperity so they ought not to be too much depressed or cast down by adversity but to observe the Golden Rule of Mediocrity in both Cases and therefore 't is not ill Wife-like but brave Roman like to suffer all losses with Courage and Patience And 't is from these Considerations that many of our fine young gay brisk Widows say They esteem more the Phylosophers Wit than his Wisdom who being in great affliction and weeping most bitterly for the death of his Wife one of his friends told him his crying could do neither him nor her any good Therefore said the Philosopher I Cry. But this is a kind of doleful Logick that suits ill with the sprightly gaiety of our fine young Widows and therefore it must be needless as well as troublesom to mind them of it it being a very unmodish doctrin to preach to such young Widows that because their Husbands are out of the world therefore they ought to live as if they were not in it and bury themselves alive in a strict solitary retirement which they will tell you savours more of great folly than true wisdom since no Woman by her Matrimonial Vow is engaged to Love her Husband longer than till death them do part and indeed as Wives now go I think 't is very extraordinary to meet one that truly loves her Husband half so long In a word she that gives her Husband a more lasting Love than she promised is generously kind but she that pays him as much as she ingaged for is truly just Next 't is most certain that all extreams are bad and therefore Widows ought to avoid them on both sides either by shewing too little a Concern or too violent a Grief for their Husbands death I know I need not travel your thoughts so far as the East-Indies to shew you the barbarous examples of Womens love to their dead Husbands bodies by sacrificing themselves to the Devil by burning themselves alive soon after their Husbands death we have examples enough in the History of our Neighbouring Princes of their Wives barbarous Cruelty committed against their own Lives for their Husbands loss of theirs but then do not mistake me so as to think I believe there are any such kind of fond foolish Wives in our age as Adymond Queen of Sweedland who when she heard her Husband was kill'd by the Danes said she would soon follow him and presently stabb'd her self I might name you many more of this bloody Nature but surely such kind of Tragical examples are to be look'd upon but as the vile and wicked effects of madness or a devilish despair and not at all the motions of a pious vertuous love since good Wives may shew their kindness without shedding their blood and may mourn heartily without dying Cruelly for such unnatural deaths utterly destroy that great Christian vertue of well regulating their passions And certainly no Widow stands more engaged to her Husbands memory either by the Laws of outward Civility and good manners or by the inward effects of true love and real esteem than to observe those kinds of measures and degrees of mourning for their Husbands which are usual according to the rules of custom and decency which is to live a strict religious and unmarried life for some considerable time or longer as some Women do and among those many who continue so to the end of their days and so are Widows indeed according to S. Pauls phrase and so deserve his character of honour And among those I cannot omit a just commendation of the three most Excellent vertuous Ladies and kind Sisters who live together near London I need not name them because I am sure there are not three Widow Sisters of their high Quality great Vertue and clear Reputation that live together in all England for which as they have the just admiration and praises of all true Lovers of Vertue so I wish all Widows would strive to imitate their religious example that so like them they might
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 the present being the only time you can properly call yours for God well knowing what great Prodigals you are of it is so providently merciful as to trust you only with a Minute at a Time for as he gives you one so he still takes away the other as a Lesson of instruction not to rely on any time but the present and to perform all your Christian duties in it as the only time appointed you by God for it And Ladies if you will but employ this present time as you ought you will certainly find time enough in it to enjoy both the delights of this World and to secure you the felicities of the next By this all our vain Ladies may easily know and joyfully conclude that there needs no great difficulty in obtaining Heaven since it only requires as I have told you a strict pious and vertuous life to compass it which may easily be done if you will but spend half so much time in serving your God as you daily wast in looking on your Glass in praying for your Soul as in setting out your Face which must certainly nay perhaps suddenly stink rot and be eaten up by nasty Worms And really supposing there was no such place of Bliss as Heaven for the Godly nor yet of Torment as Hell for the wicked yet a pious vertuous life cannot but be more healthful for the body and more satisfactory to the mind than excess pride and vanity can be to either Next 't is worth your consideration to think how little true content most of you can find in this World and how little time 't is you can enjoy that little you do desire for such considerations cannot but render you somewhat sensible of your great and extravagant folly in all your ludicrous sports and pastimes unskilfully gaming away your souls so as in a manner to set Eternity against a Moment I mean the Momentary pleasures of this life which cannot last before the joys of Heaven which are everlasting and sure there can be nothing more foolish than to rely on the duration of your abode on Earth as any solid and lasting possession there being nothing more frail and tottering than the Basis your life stands on for tho you are never so healthful yet you cannot but find in your self some marks and symptoms of Mortality which may serve as Advertisements of the instability of this your earthly being which is subject to a thousand Diseases and a torrent of Accidents especially in you fine young Ladies whose bodies are so tenderly built and nicely composed as the leaving off a Hood or wanting of a Skarf the least crum of Bread that sticks in your Throats or the smallest stop in the course of your Blood I had almost said or motion of your Tongues puts the whole Oeconomy of your body in disorder if not utter ruin witness as an instance of this accidental mortality Pope Adrian who as story says was choaked with a Flie nay your very food the support and maintainer of your life ought to be a Memorandum of your Mortality since you cannot live without it and if sleep be the Image of death you are by the very necessities of your nature to die every night during the few days you live But whether you live long or die early you must certainly Die and you are in this as well as in all things else to submit your will to Gods and to bend your greatest endeavors and fix your strongest resolutions in an intire obedince to it which if you truly and heartily do you must learn the great vertue and Christian perfection of self-denial and despise all those worldly flatteries and enjoyments mortifie all your excess of vanity and extravagant pleasures that you may become truly amiable pure and holy in the sight of God when you live in compliance to his holy Laws and submit in all things to his good will and pleasure who is all love and beauty itself in the highest measure and perfection and therefore the least spot or impurity in your lives is a direct violence and contradiction to the most excellent nature and being of an infinitely pure and holy God. And now before I quite finish this Discourse let me beg one of you Ladies to suppose your ' self to be in the actual possession of all the worldly pleasures you can fancy that you enjoy as great honours as your ambition can aspire unto and as much Beauty and Riches as your vain and Covetous humor can thirst after and as many rarities as your appetite can wish for and that your Gallant was as kind handsom and constant as you could wish In a word that you thought him as beautiful as you think your self pray do but now consider what all these will amount to at the hour of death and in order to it reflect a little seriously what a weak Basis your life stands on for according to the common Law of the Land a Life is valued but at seven Years purchase and many times by the course of Nature a Life does not last half so long Next if you will but condescend so far to mortifie your self as to go and visit one of these Lovers of vanity and railliers of Religion
and the Center point where all the Lines of his happiness did meet She in whom he could find no discontent with or content without She whose presence made a Village as agreeable as London and her absence London as doleful as a Village In short this very She whose Company he esteem'd his Heaven upon Earth no sooner was the flower of her fair and youthful beauty worn off but his fickle passion assoon decays and grows languid and this late Soul of his soul and Joy of his heart turns to be the very clog and burden of his life and from all Mistris becomes all Wife that is she falls from the top of all admiration to the depth of meer misery and from an extraordinary charming delight to an ordinary necessary evil called a Wife And such Husbands commonly call such Wives and so do Wives such Husbands the Yoaks of Liberty and the Stocks of Love and all know that neither of them can be easie or pleasing in such a bondage being an enemy and destroyer of sweet variety so that the Husbands love being decay'd with his Wives beauty he grows weary of her she of him and both of one another And as to a young Mans Marrying an old ugly Wife meerly for her Mony all I shall need say of it is that often such young Men fancy such Mony Wives to be of the same Nature of Mony it self whose vertue consists not in keeping of it but in parting with it and so commonly use such Wives accordingly and thus this wild passionate Love or meer Mony Marriages like wild-fire soon devours and consumes it self in its own flame and Torrent like instead of refreshing it destroys and by over-pressing too violently the course and streams of its Waters soon Ebbs and runs it self dry Therefore that Man that will sell his sweet Liberty and enslave himself into Matrimonial Chains meerly to enjoy a Womans beauty sure he does not know or at least does not consider that still the richer the Metal the heavier the Chain and therefore though his Mistris be never so much the admired object of his present fancy and that I should allow her golden Chains to weigh as long light on his mind as she continues beautiful to his sight yet to bind himself to her in a Matrimonial Vow only on the account of her beauty till death them depart on assurance that he shall feast on her beauty as long as he lives is just such a kind of folly as if a young Man that were a great Lover of Sweet-meats should leave all his business imployments and pastimes to bind himself an Apprentice for seven Years to a Confectioner meerly on the account and assurance that during that time he should every day feast himself on them when very common Experience is able to inform him though his confidence be never so great his inclinations never so eager and his stomach never so good yet 't is natural for him to eat so fiercely at first falling on that like a greedy Hawk he soon over-gorges himself with his own Prey and after having taken a full draught of that sensual delight seeing them continually exposed to his sight and prostrate to his will he comes to hate them as much after enjoyment as he courted them before for though the Fire of Love still burns for enjoyment yet enjoyment still quenches if not extinguishes the fire of Love and he grows in a little time so cloy'd as he wants not only appetite to eat them but almost patience to see them Then when t is too late he accuses the unreasonableness of his prefancied delight on which he built his confidence of a lasting pleasure and allows it to be not only a great folly but sin against reason in any Man to believe that his sensitive nature ought to be gratified when it proposes only a bare satisfaction to the Appetite and cannot secure any durable happiness or content to the reason and judgment of mankind And this is really the cause why so many of our young Gallants now adays make Marriage a kind of Paradox in Love for one of these to obtain the Woman he is in Love with turns his Mistris into a Wife and then t is two to one in a little time to get rid of his late beautiful Mistris being shrunk into the shape of a meer Domestick Wife he parts for ever with his late Mistris to get free from his present Wife and note that tho many Mistrisses turn to Wives yet no Wives ever turn to Mistrisses Wife and Mistris being of the same differing nature as Water and Wine 't is common to drink Wine with Water but of Water to make Wine to Drink was never done but once and that by the first Miracle of our Saviour so that in effect they did but seemingly agree really to fall out piece together to fall asunder and Married to get rid of one anothers Company And 't is some of these unfortunate disagreeing Husbands that says the Translator of S. Pauls Epistles hath left out the word well in one of them for where the Apostle says He that gives in Marriage does well it should have been He that gives well in Marriage does well for all know there are more bad Wives than good and sure all believe that S. Paul was too wise to write or think that any Man could do well in Marrying ill so that I am of opinion the sum of the Apostles meaning by saying He that Marries well does well but he that abstains from Marriage does better has some reference to that good plain English saying That next to no Wife a good Wife is best which occasions my pitying the many Husbands that have bad Wives and the many Wives that have ill Husbands and to wish those few that fancy they have good ones as truly content in their Marriages as I am in my Resolution of never Marrying and I am sure none can deny but that I have this advantage by the Bargain that 't is impossible for me to meet a bad Wife that does not Marry but 't is very possible and common for him that does THE SIXTH DISCOURSE Against Maids Marrying for meer Love or only to please their Parents Inclinations thô quite contrary to their own I Am against Maids Marrying for meer Love because they that Marry for meer Love Marry in a manner for meer fancy and so to feast their sensual appetite on what they then like they often starve the body of what it will hereafter need for tho your fancy may tell you that beauty great store makes Love a feast yet truth can tell you 't is too slender a Diet to make a livelyhood on therefore in my poor opinion 't would be a much wiser course for Maids to make up their Marriages with a good share and large proportion of interest and conveniency to mix with their Love-liking and present fancy for the true and durable content of Marriage is so founded on these two great
offering is to be led by Love not drawn by the Cords of Wedlock for the Will is a free faculty and consequently cannot be forcibly determined to any act but yet is capable of admitting perswasions and inducements and so may be by them inclin'd but without them cannot be forced And therefore tho Maids ought not to Marry without their Parents consent yet they ought not to be compell'd against their own 'T is true indeed that large Estates can produce a plenty of Livelyhood but 't is as true that Content only can produce happy Living for Content and Riches prove often to be no a kin to one another but Content and Happiness are Twins and ever inseparable friends and like Water and Ice one still makes the other Content is certainly the greatest worldly happiness for it makes the poor Rich with it and the Rich poor without it and very common experience tells us that many poor Men are made happy by their unrich Wives and many wealthy heiresses are made miserable and unfortunate by their rich Husbands for 't is not much but enough that satisfies and the Weekly Bills of Mortality inform us that more die with Surfeits than starve with Hunger the true Measures of Contentment not consisting in quantity but quality for many have much that have not enough and many have enough that have not much some young Women being composed of such distempered Hidropick feaverish humors as there 's no quenching the Thirst of their hot ambitious desires others are so temperately minded and healthfully wise as a moderate and indifferent kind of condition satisfies them and those are happy in such a moderation to a high degree Content being the Throne of happiness the very top of our ambition and the end and accomplishment of all our desires the sole want of which is like that of wanting health which is sufficient to unpleasure all our other enjoyments in a word Content is of such an obliging generous Nature and of so universal value as it furnisheth us with every thing that either our real necessity wants or our vain desires fancy And as Content is thus pleasing so discontent is little less unpleasing and therefore I cannot but highly blame and Censure such Tyranical ill natur'd Parents as because they like such a Mans fortune therefore they will make their Child Marry such a ones person tho 't is as odious to her sight as pleasing to her fathers Covetous humor and so to satisfie his will must force her inclinations to Marry him tho utterly against her own Indeed 't is such kind of forc'd Marriages that drives young Women into a double evil and that of the worst sort too being those of Perjury and Treachery for how can you make it less than Perjury in a young Woman to make a solemn Vow in the face of the Congregation to Love that Man her whole Life whom she knows she cannot Love a piece of a day nay not so much as that very time of her Life she is vowing to Love him till death them depart And surely there is no less Treachery in such a Marriage Vow that must be a kin to that black one of Judas who under pretence to kiss his Lord and Master brought a band of Soldiers to seize him so averse forced Marriages under pretence of long continuing friendship and kindness by shaking hands but not joyning hearts do often bring Bands of discontents and miseries to each others Lives and Liberties Therefore to conclude this Discourse my opinion is that Parents may choose their Daughters wealthy Husbands to live with but 't is only themselves that can chuse Husbands to be delighted in and therefore those Maids do well that Marry with their Parents liking and they do ill that Marry against their own THE SEVENTH DISCOURSE Against Widows Marrying WHen I consider truly and reflect seriously how many Widows have made themselves miserable by Marriage and how few make themselves happy by Marrying methinks it should be now as needless a Task to disswade such from Marrying as to advise them not to eat again of that Dish they came just from surfeiting on for sure she that makes her self unhappy by a second Marriage deserves as much her own misery and merits as little others pity as the Man that steals again after having been burnt in the hand does the Gallows for a repeated fault is a twofold Crime and deserves a double punishment I know I need not mind the Reader of the old and common fable of two Women that went assoon as they died to S. Peter to get admittance into Paradise the first assured him that her Husband was such a devilish wicked ill natured Man that he made her life a kind of Hell on Earth upon which account S. Peter thought it reasonable that since she had suffer'd a Hell in this World she should not endure another in the next and so admitted her into Paradise The other Woman observing this thought she had a double Key and Ticket for she was not only tormented with one but two bad wicked cross-grain'd Husbands which render'd her life most miserable but S. Peter answer'd her that since she was so very simple as not to think one bad Husband enough but she must have two he bid her be gone for Paradise was no place for fools indeed that Widow must be extravagantly foolish and unreasonable that did not think the misery of one base Husband sufficient but she must try the experiment of a second I confess I cannot at all agree in opinion with that Writer who says a Woman is but an imperfect Creature whilst she is without a Husband but had he said a Widow was not come to her full perfection of misery 'till she had one I fancy he had given a truer Character and taken a more just measure of most Widows lives that Marry since common experience may assure all Wives and Widows that there are generally ten bad Husbands for one good one and I believe there are few Widows in our age that are so perfect Disciples of Seneca's wisdom as to extract satisfaction out of misery it being an Apostolical vertue to be satisfied and contented in whatsoever condition it pleaseth God to place one to But I am rather of the belief that a young beautiful Widow that leads a strict vertuous unmarried life leads a kind of Miraculous one in as much as she being born a Subject to the Law of Nature and to the Lustful frailties of it having not only tasted but probably delighted in them and yet can contain her self so in the bounds of such a vertue and pious Mortification as to be so much Mistris of her self and of her own youthful temper and inclinations as to resist the pressing temptations of young handsom Men with an unmoveable vertuous constancy such young Widows do really live in this world as the Papists say the Nuns do in their Nunneries That they live in the flesh as if they had no
of a Tulip only pleasant to the Eye for a little time and there 's all or the maker of it which is no other than the various opinion of every gazers inclination beauty having almost as many Fathers as there are Men Judges of it Surely these vain proud Creatures have read the Story of Theodosius a Spanish Prince who was raised to be Emperor for his good Face and therefore think they may well hope to be raised not only to an Empire over Men for their great beauty but that they do well deserve a great transcendency over the ordinary rate of Women-kind but indeed such high beauties are at very best but like Meteors which are exhaled but a little above the Earth and are yet a great deal below the Heavens But suppose I should be so highly Complemental as to allow these great beauties the full Swing and extravagant range of their own vain proud and lofty fancies that they are as far above the ordinary sort of Women as the Skie is above the Earth and that their motions were very generous and sublime imitating the Sea which impatient to be confined by the bounds which God has given is still swelling and striving to mount and raise it self above the surface of the Earth yet I would gladly learn because I can no way fancy how they will pretend to be begot there except it be by the Man in the Moon and indeed that may possibly be some reason why our great beauties are generally so fickle and inconstant in their Love as receiving their great mutability from the influence of the Moon as their immediate Parent 5. Therefore my next Advice to the vain Ladies is still to remember that though your beauties may be extraordinary yet your lives can never be Immortal on Earth and that your great beauty and proud thoughts must both perish with you for it may be truly said of great beauties what the Psalmist said of great Princes Though you are stiled Gods yet you must die like Men so though you may be called Goddesses yet you must die like Women and though your beauty could make as great a Conquest of hearts as ever Alexander did of Kingdoms who had no more to subdue yet as death has certainly put a period to his success and life so he will certainly do the like to your beauty and days For indeed the greatest beauty is but like the finest Glass the more clear the more frail and easily broken for alas take beauty in its very highest Altitude and greatest vigour 't is a fabrick composed and made up of so many tender pieces of such brittle ware and delicate Contexture as the least spot or flaw in any one part spoils or at least blemishes the lustre of the whole and as the Poet says One that is all over Heart Every place proves a Mortal part Now Ladies if you resolve to be all over vertuous and discreet in Reputation so as to live Shot-free from all the wounding Darts of censure you must arm your selves with a clear and innocent complexion of vertue to procure which you must not only abstain from evil but the very appearance of it not only from doing bad Actions and keeping ill Company but even the hearing much less receiving vain praises and as you ought to shew a general civility to all so you ought not to give a particular freedom to any In a word you must manage all your actions with a strict prudence a perfect modesty a real humility a vertuous behaviour and a constant fear of God in all you say and do and these will gain you praises and make you well deserve to be admired for Solomon says Prov. 31.30 'T is the Woman that feareth God shall be praised and by such a blessed and holy kind of life you will secure your self against all the Censorious talk of envious bablers against the venom of those lying malicious Tongues who are not fit to be believed nor worthy to be feared Indeed Ladies the best way to make your earthly beauty continue good and lasting is to be humble in your own thoughts and not to pride or value your selves more than you ought since 't is so vain and uncertain in its most lovely colours and complexion for this will give Men a just admiration of your prudence and modesty and preserve the vertue of it Immortal beyond the duration of this fair and naked substance which some sudden accident or disease can soon blast and rob of all its blooming and youthful vigour strip it of all its gay attirement and you of that vain delight in your own self-admiration so then beauty is only less commendable in her who makes it her only pride and concern to set it off and such a Lady thus trigg'd up and furnished out by great art and invention by glittering apparel and proud ostentation is but like a fire of Straw it may blaze much but it cannot last long and whilst it lights others it consumes it self But a handsom Lady that 's free from affectation and pride and is blessed with great Piety and true Humility is like the Heavenly fire in Moses Bush which burnt and lighted others and yet never consum'd it self A handsom woman that is very proud does but enjoy her beauty as the Miser does his Wealth who does not so much possess it as it possesses him and therefore your truly pious Ladies do but use their worldly beauty as the Apostle says we are to use this World that is as if we used it not by a godly habit of mind consuming all the usual vanity affected by others in the pious reflection that there 's no true vertue or durable satisfaction in it We read in Genesis that good old Abraham made no other use of all his wealth than to purchase him a Grave O why should not all proud Women imitate him and though they be never so rich in beauty employ it all in Purchasing a Grave of Humility to bury the dust of their Pride in and by so doing they will certainly find a Resurrection of true Glory out of it which will raise to them Garlands of perpetual Praises of so Heavenly a nature and vast an extent as they will as much excel all the false vain glittering splendor of this World as the noon day brightness of a Summers Sun does the small glimmering light of a little Glow-worm which cannot be seen but by the help of darkness 6. I shall next advise the vain Ladies to resolve to new mould their Lives in this Spiritual frame of Reformation and to square out all their actions by the Golden Rules of Piety and Vertue I heard of a Gentleman that being dangerously ill of a Dropsie went to a famous Physician for his Advice who bid him abstain from all Drink for a Twelve Month and it would Cure him I am confident the like kind of Remedy would cure the fine Ladies let them but abstain from all vain thoughts on themselves and