before Company and act like a Miss in private for many handsom Women that are of a good coming and melting nature assoon as you are a little advanced into their acquaintance and favour yet seem very coy and severe at first entrance into it imitating the Sea which tho never so quiet and calm in the main yet still casteth out rough waves near the shore And now whatsoever men may think of me I am sure my meaning is truly friendly in advising them that if they are in the happy state of freedom not to yoak their Liberty in Marriage for meer Beauty or bare Mony but chiefly for vertue and goodness for if you but consider seriously you will find certainly that the misery of an ill Wife is no new affliction but as very an old one as Marriage and almost Nature it self witness Adam who lived in a continued innocency and felicity whilst he remained in the Paradice of a single Life but he was no sooner Married to Eve but he was cast out of both And 't is most certain let your Love range over Court Town and Country nay ramble over the whole World you can never choose a Wife that is not her Daughter and common experience tells us that there are few Daughters that do not favour something of their Mothers humor as well as nature and therefore 't will be highly prudential in this sad and weighty affair to consider that Marrying a bad Wife as 't is more than an even Lay one does has something in it of the nature of that sin for which men can have no repentance or pardon no more than they can have any ease or relief for it while they live for one may as well pretend to free Deaths Prisoners from the Grave as unchain the Married during their Lives no Skill of the greatest Artist nor yet Argument of the most subtile Socinian can ever evade or loose a Wedding Knot it being of an extraordinary lasting Union quite differing from all others for Men can unbind all others whilst they live but a Marriage Vow can only be unbound by death it self And now I have given you this part of my Opinion as to meer Mony or beauty Marriages which many Husbands may truly call in the Apostles phrase tho spoke in another and more divine sense That Labor of Love I hope 't will not appear an extraordinary fault in saying it S. Paul had foreseen the Romantic Gallantry and extravagant folly I think I might have said madness of many Marriages made now adays which some of our vain inconsiderate Ladies are drawn into by the common report that such a Man has a great Estate which suits well with her eager desire to keep a Coach and six Horses which she vainly fancies will not only carry her thorow all the miseries of Marriage but into the Towring pastime of the Park without the least concern of getting a good prudent sober religious Husband many of them not valuing or at least not considering other than the keeping a splendid Retinue and glittering train of Liveries than wearing rich Clothes adorn'd with Gold and costly Pearl when there are a hundred more weighty concerns that are more needful Appendencies to compleat a happy Marriage Really this is one of the chief Causes why such Marriage Love decays and wears out with their Wedding Coaches and is as often out of order as they 't were well if they still could be as easily mended which none ought to wonder at it being but natural for effects to follow their Causes Among all the great and extravagant follies that are used in the inequalities of Marriages in our days there 's none appears to me more irrational and unnatural than an old Mans Marrying a young Woman which in my Opinion seems a Match fitter to make sport for others than to raise joy to themselves for an old Man is to his young Wifes Bed but like juice of Orange to her Stomack it may create in her an Appetite but of it self can never satisfie it such an old Man being not only unsuitable undecent but unwholesom too being to her like a March Sun which all the great Physitians concur in opinion to be very unhealthful as having only strength to exhale Humors but wants force to dissolve them so that such a Match is so great a folly as I shall only here need name one shameful misery that commonly attends it and indeed I need name I think no other either to fortifie my opinion against it or to set out ones misery for doing it which is this That an old Man that Marries a handsom young Woman tho his Wife may be so vertuous as not to Cuckold him yet the world is so wicked in its reports to Censure him so as it will always which minds me of a story of a Gentleman whom both his Wife and Neighbours agreed to proclaim the truth of his being a Cuckold and she dying he Married an old ugly rigid Puritan that was so odiously deformed as he was satisfied she wanted Power and the world Charity enough to Cuckold him for 't was impossible there could be a spark of Love or liking in the Case and he did believe that this Wife would not only be a perfect Antidote against horns for the time to come but a Remedy for what was past but one of his Neighbours being of a contrary belief call'd him Cuckold upon which he repaired to his learned Counsellor in the Law to know if his present Wife being honest though his former was not so whether he was still a Cuckold or not to which his learned Lawyer gravely answered him That tho he was not one in pure strictness of Law yet being once so the Custom of the Country was so civil as to give him the Title during his Life And now I have given you my opinion and told you the usual fate that attends old Mens Marrying young Women next comes that of young Womens Marrying old Men and tho they appear both alike foolish yet there 's great difference in their folly for as by this sort of Matches old Men glut themselves with much more of the Woman than their age wants so young Wives if vertuous stint themselves with much less of the Husband than their Youth needs and besides tho Marriage has the power tounite two Bodies into one Flesh yet it wants that of uniting the two Fleshes into one temper or Constitution for a young Wife that is in the Spring of her age is like the Sun in the Spring of the Year it not only gets the ascendant every day higher and higher but grows every day more strong and vigorous but an old Husband is like Autumn whose strength goes only downward Therefore I fancy an old Man Marrying a handsom young Lady has nothing to plead but Guilty but a young Lady for Marrying an old Man may have some colourable excuse to moderate the folly and lessen the shame of such an unequal Match for perhaps
The Second Discourse 〈◊〉 meer beauty-Beauty-Love with some of the vile Arts and wicked Deceits many Gallants use to ruin their Mistresses Reputation under a false pretence of true Friendship And of the great folly of such VVomen who delight in censuring others but slight all others censuring them because they fancy they do not deserve it with some useful Advices thereon p. xxxii The Third Discourse Of young Mens great folly in adoring and over-praising all young handsom Ladies and their greater vanity in receiving it and believing them p. 1 The Fourth Discourse Of the extraordinary governing power VVomens Beauty now exercises over most young Men. p. 21 The Fifth Discourse Of the Inconstancy most Ladies especially such as are cry'd up Beauties and the folly of any Man that believes he 's fully acquainted with and soley possess'd of a vain Beauties Heart and can give good reasons for the various Motions of her Love-changes p. 42 The Sixth Discourse Of Marriage and of VVives who usurp a Govering Power over their Husbands which is now so common as 't is almost become the general Grievance of the Nation p. 5â— The Seventh Discourse Of the inequality of many Marriages awd of the Inconstancy of most VVives that Men Marâ—â—â— for meer Beauty or their Parents Match forbaâ— Mony with the sad end that usually attends suâ— Matches p. 6â— The Eighth Discourse Against Maids Marrying for meer Love or only 〈◊〉 please their Parents Inclinations tho' quite contrary to their own p. 8â— The Ninth Discourse Against VVIDOVVS Marrying p. 9â— The Tenth Discourse Against keeping of MISSES p. 11â— The Eleventh Discourse Of the vain Folly of such VVomen as think to sheâ— their VVit by Jeering at and Censuring of their Neighbours p. 12â— The Twelfth Discourse Of the French Fassions and Dresses lately us'd 〈◊〉 England by the modish Ladies and your sparks p. 13â— The Thirteenth Discourse Of VVorldly Praises which all Ladies love to receive but few strive to deserve and the sad eâ— of it and them when they come to Die p. 15â— The Fourteenth Discourse Vseful advices in order to the vain modish Ladies we Regulating their Beauty and Lives p. 17â— THE FIRST DISCOURSE Of some of the common ways many vertuous Wives take to lose their Reputation tho' they keep their Chastity being vertuous in their inward Intentions but indiscreet in their Talk and outward Actions and Men judge by what they see not by what Women say they mean I Shall not here Reader pretend to present you with the Sum Total of the numerous and various Ways many handsom Women take to be ill talk'd of for that I am sure would be a Task as much above my Power to write as I fancy 't would be above your Patience to read and he that can perform that great work must need at least a Prophet's Knowledge and a Job's Patience and truly I pretend to neither Nor have I so much as a Thought of undertaking singly to tell you all the Faults Arts Deceits and Indiscretions of all Wives much less of all Women since I fancy if all the Husbands in the whole World were assembled in one general Council they could no more sum up all their Wive's Faults than cure all their Vices for Miracles are ceas'd to the whole World but the Papist of whose Faith I thank God I am not of But of this opinion I am that 't is sufficient for every Married Man to carry his own Burden and Proportion in the Matrimonial Yoke with Discretion and Patience which latter is a Vertue their Wives will be sure to make them practise if they be not more fortunate than the generality of Husbands are and I think ever will be if one may judge of the future by the present I shall name but few and write but little of the many and several ways diverse virtuous I do not say discreet Wives take to be ill talked of and shall here skip troubling you with a Character of a vile sort of scandalous Wives that are commonly known and publickly branded for such who have by their wicked Lives render'd themselves so contemptible as they are to be us'd by all vertuous Women as we do persons infected with the Plague We are not bound to go see how they do but we are oblig'd to avoid coming where they are both for our own sake and the sake of others and to remember to observe Solomon's good Advice as to a vertuous Woman's carriage towards an ill scandalous Woman Remove thy way far from her and come not near the door of her House These are a sort of beastly Women that take upon them the vile employment of common censuring and publick rayling at all strict Vertuous Women arming themselves with downright Impudence having lost all their shame with their Vertue for they that part with the one soon casts off the other And because they have render'd themselves contemptible by their ill Lives they strive to make good Women appear bad by their foul Tongues scandalizing the Vertues by all the ill Reports they can invent being like those Solomon names Who cannot sleep without having done some mischief being so abominably bad as their very Parents for Friends they have none want Confidence to excuse them and they Impudence to justify themselves These Herd of beastly Women the Vertuous are bound in Charity to pity their bad Condition but in Prudence to shun their ill Company and so I 'll leave them with a red Cross on their Door and a Lord have mercy on their bad lives The first sort of Wives I shall here name and but name are a kind of Wives that have the Happiness to be thought vertuous by many but the Unhappiness to be esteem'd vain and indiscreet by most they are careful to keep themselves Chast but careless of what others say against their being so and because they think they do no ill value not what ill others say they do which is but a sad sort of Logick and an ill way of managing their Reputation since tho' a Wive's Innocency may satisfy her own Conscience yet it cannot protect her Husband's Honour nor secure her own since publick Censure may blemish both if an outward discreet carriage doth not prevent Therefore doubtless a Wife who is truly vertuous and truly desires to be esteem'd such is as much concern'd in Honour to keep a good Name as she is bound in Conscience to lead a good Life and the Wife which in point of Reputation values little what others say seldom care much what she her self doth for what bad Censures she casts on others or others cast on her and a Wife or Woman of that ill Temper usually loves more to commit a hundred faults than to repent of one or be told of any never considering that a handsom Woman's leaving a Vice argues no defect in her Body but a vertuous inclination in her Mind For the very best Women in the World are subject to Faults and Errors as well
strict examination satisfy her self that she 's able in this case to alledg more Reason and produce better Arguments to justify her Chastity than her Enemy can bring to accuse her Vertue before unconcern'd and unbyass'd Judges Let her therefore suppose the worst of her late dear Friend but now great Enemy that he should swear That he came often into her Chamber when she was alone in it in Bed and that she order'd and assign'd him that opportunity and conveniency that they might enjoy one another as they then did and to confirm the Truth of this Accusation he says she that was certainly so indiscreet as to allow the one might possibly be so unvertuous as to admit the other and alledges his being alone with her to back the Truth of what he now Swears and to publish the Folly of that she then did and farther adds That he can prove this her Indiscretion by her own act But she can never prove her Innocency when they were so alone by her own Words Therefore let her seriously reflect and consider how weak and slight her Defence must be against her Enemies sworn Accusation let her Wit be never so great and her Innocency never so clear since she cannot produce so much as one single Witness to confirm the Truth of what she says or to contradict the Truth of what he Swears having only her own bare Word and that in her own Cause and to defend her own Honour and Reputation which she has expos'd to Censure by the imprudent liberty she allow'd her then Friend either on the account of her too little Wit or too much Love or at least too great want of Discretion and Consideration I suppose she may make to his Accusation some kind of Defence of this nature That in the first place for his accusing her of suffering him to visit her at unusual visiting hours when she was alone in her Chamber in Bed that part she does not deny because she cannot well do it says 't was never but once and that once was meer accidental Secondly At the time he so visited her he swore he was and she verily believed him to be an honest Man and her real Friend as well as her long and intimate Acquaintance Thirdly She takes God The Searcher of all Hearts to be her Witness that she did not then or ever before or after act any thing with him in Thought Word or Deed that was not truly vertuous and purely innocent which his Heart knows to be a real Truth as well as he knows what he swears to the contrary to be an errant malicious Lie And Lastly she says That scandalous Reports against Women of Quality and Reputation ought only to be credited by sober and prudent Persons but according to what they see themselves and not according to what they hear from others because 't is in the power of any wicked Man to raise and cast scandalous Reports on the most vertuous Woman in the World All this I grant a Woman may alledge in her own Defence and Justification which I cannot esteem much because she could not well say less First as to his Accusation of her suffering him to visit her when she was alone in Bed at unusual visiting hours as to her Answer that 't was altogether undesignedly and accidentally and that 't was never but once and that she was fully resolv'd it should never be so a second time To this part of her Justification it may be answered That granting the Judges should take her own bare Word For she can give no more that what she says is a real Truth yet it may be objected That a Woman that will allow her self to do one act of Indiscretion in her carriage towards a Man it may be indeed a reasonable inducement to believe she may be perswaded to commit another But to draw an Argument that tho' she committed one act of Indiscretion yet we are to credit her bare word that she will never be brought to commit a second is but a weak and an irrational Conclusion for if a pure sense of Honour and true Love of Reputation regulates all a Woman's Actions and Carriage towards all Men as certainly it ought that Woman would never be so imprudent as to allow one freedom to her favorite Friend at any time which she could not honourably own and publickly justify at all times and in all Places and Companies in case her Friend should become her Enemy but indeed most Women are too apt to mistake the difference between the word Lover and the thing Friend for they will have them to be both one and the same thing when in deed they are very oft'n far from being so for tho' every true Friend must be a true Lover yet every pretending Lover is not a true Friend as many Ladies can Witness by woful Experience But if Venus Love had then the predominant Power over her Inclinations as it certainly has over many Women towards the favourite Man of her present fancy it may be better and much more rationally argued That the same amorous Inclination which at that time over-ruled her Discretion by admitting him one freedom more than she should might as well at another time over-power her Discretion by admitting him a second liberty more than she ought for she that commits one act of indiscretion shews by it a probability that she may be prevail'd with to act a second but no impossibility against her being perswaded to commit a third Next as to that part of her justification That the Man that did visit her when she was alone in her Chamber in Bed at an unusual visiting hour 't was never but once and that once was by one she verily believed to be her true faithful Friend as well as her long and old Acquaintance But to this it may well be answered That 't is very common for great Friends to prove great Enemies and often the greater Enemies for having been great Friends as the Weight of a Pendulum Clock falls the more backward for being shoved the more forward And this I am sure that there can be no Friendship in the whole World that is so loosely Tack'd on as that between a Man and a Woman on a meer Beauty Account which must of course be destroy'd by Death impair'd by Sickness and may be broken in pieces by a Thousand Accidents Witness that common one of a Man growing to like another Woman better than his Mistress or she to fancy another Man better than him a common Fate that attends most Beauty-Lovers and so they grow to dislike one another for great Beauty tho' it often creates great Fondness yet it seldom contains a long constant Love For as Beauty is pleasing so 't is Clogging and we know that the finest Sweet Meats make the foulest Surfeits For there we find it very usual among our young Gallants that tho' one of them has in a manner forsaken his Mistress yet that Man cannot indure to
for they will tell you That the pure state of Innocency was never but in one Woman which was the first of her Sex and will be the last of that Kind And as it begun soon so it lasted not long for it left her before she left the World Now it may be argued That if the Nature of the Mother of all Women-kind when she was in perfect Soundness and Strength would then yield to an Enemy in Paradise what may be now expected from her Daughters in this wicked World and vicious Age If a Woman could stumble then in a pure Light why should any wonder that many Women should fall now in this our Age of Sin and Darkness And if a Woman could not defend her self against one Tempter then why may not many Women yield to divers Tempters now that there are near as many young Men that are Seducers as there are young Women that are hansom Especially considering in what a superlative Degree Vice Vanity and Idleness possesses most of them and that our vain Ladies Love to their Gallants is now as very much in Use as great Beauty is in Esteem and strict Piety out of practice And if when there was but one Man and one Woman in all the World so that sweet Variety could not be then in fashion yet all know That one Woman could not then be true to that one Man but did deceive him meerly for deceiving-sake for she could not then leave one Man for another which is now grown a common Womanish Practice Therefore it may be argued That by the same Rule and Parity of Reason That as the Woman did deceive the one Man when she was in Paradise so may many Wives now deceive many Husbands whilst they are here out of it for as there are plenty of Eve's Daughters that still retain the Subtilty of their Mother so there will be ever plenty of Adam's Sons that will still retain the Folly of their Father and be beguiled by their Wives which is a Weakness and Distemper that 's now grown so common and infectious as 't is like the Plague that reign'd so universally in Egypt as it overspread the whole Land And all our most Learned Doctors are so very weak and ignorant in the means of prescribing a Remedy for this Distemper to others as they cannot so much as compose an Antidote against it for themselves tho' they shou'd all joyn in a Consultation And as the World is now more increased in Men and Women so 't is also in Sins and Vices Women having a thousand Arts Cheats and Allurements to decoy Men with which were not known then tho' commonly practised now Therefore all Women not only of the vain modish Brood but of the most vertuous and pious Kind are in Duty oblig'd to make it their constant Endeavours and hearty Prayers to the Almighty That he will please to repair the Defects of their Earthly Nature by the Supplies of his Heavenly Grace that the Strength of this latter may conquer the Weakness of the former and that as they are by Nature frail and inclin'd to do what 's ill so they may through Gods Mercy love to practise what 's Good and to shake off the wanton and vicious Inclinations of the Flesh to put on the heavenly Motions of the Holy Spirit which will certainly make a Woman love God and keep his Commandments which will give her a happy Content of Mind whilst she lives and a blessed Peace of Conscience when she comes to die And I am sure neither a vain Life nor a Fop of a Gallant can ever bring either It may be farther ask'd Where is the great Difference between a meer Beauty-Lover and a meer Gallant 's Friendship when 't is only the Womans Beauty that creates and maintains the Gallant 's Love and his false subtil Craft that nick-names his meer Venus-Love by miscalling it real Friendship And as many vertuous Wives deceive and flatter themselves in the Title of their Lovers by calling their Gallants their Friends so many Women are cozen'd in the Nature and Measures of their Love They 'll tell you and with reason too a thing not very common among Women That 't is immodest and scandalous for a Wife to admit a Man to make Love and publick Courtship to her But they 'll tell you at the same time That a Wife is not bound to take notice a Man makes Love to her till he tells her so which in my Opinion is a very senseless fancy since that makes the fault of a married Womans admitting a Mans making love to her not to consist in her receiving it from him but in his telling it to her not in her suffering him to do it but in his acquainting her that he do's it Sure that Woman's Judgment must be very dull and her Eye-sight very dim that can be so grosly mistaken as to fancy a Man's making love to her is not to be taken notice of by seeing it her self but by her hearing it from him when 't is most certain that the Eye is a much quicker and surer Witness than the Ear as may be observ'd in firing a Cannon the Flame of the Powder comes to the Eye before the Noise of the Gun do's to the Ear and that Woman must be strangely dull that cannot discern a man's amorous Looks and passionate Actions and Carriage towards her that he is in love or at least pretends it by acting as if he were without his downright telling her he is A Woman may possibly hear and yet not believe what she hears but 't is impossible she can plainly see and not believe what she plainly sees for seeing is believing and if we should deny Sight to be a sufficient credible Witness we must by it deny the Foundation of all Christian Religion for the Apostles seeing our Blessed Saviour's Miracles that he did in his Life-time and both seeing of him and conversing with him after he was risen from the dead is the great Security we have that he is so I grant 't is not in a Wive's Power to hinder a Man from liking loving and esteeming her but sure 't is in any Wive's Power to avoid receiving or at least countenancing a Man's private Visits and entertaining his publick Courtship And really it cannot possibly enter into my Belief how a Woman that 's certainly assur'd that such a Man loves her passionately well on the account of her Beauty and who confirms it in all his Words and Actions and by his high Concerns for her and abundant Courtship to her which she receives with great Kindness Freedom and Satisfaction seeming to be abundanly confirm'd of his great and passionate Love and that she cannot but be assur'd that he knows she knows so much and yet that I must believe at the very same time that she can be so very fierce and barbarously ill-natur'd as if that Man she knows so highly loves her should yet dare to tell her he do's so she should
from that moment shun him and forsake him This I confess seems to me such a Paradox in Love and is so extravagant so extraordinary and so highly impracticable as 't is much fitter for all Mens Wonder than any sober Man's Belief Therefore let such wild Romantick humour'd Ladies say what they will I am sure all Vertuous Women are to consider as they ought which is That few young Men make Love to a Woman I mean upon meer Beauty-account but on this score that either he fancies she likes him and so is inclin'd to be civil if not kind to him or he has some hope that in time she will be both or else he must be a great Fool eagerly to strive for that he never expects to obtain and fiercely to besiege that Place he never hopes to take and so might as wisely build in the Regions of the Air or employ his time in weighing of Flames or making his study to answer Solomon's Question What Profit hath he that laboureth for the Wind I am sure if he thinks there may be some Solomon thought there was none Really I have often entertain'd my self with the Thoughts of what a strange Brood of Lovers our next Age will produce considering the Temper of our present one in which many I think I might have said most handsom Womens Pride Vanity Idleness and Inconstancy reign in them so powerfully and is practised by them so commonly as nothing is more common except the Debauchery of their Gallants and how Excellent and Religious a Brood Vice Idleness and Vanity will produce the next Age will be able to tell you more if possible than this I 'm sure in this 't is become common I had almost said natural for most of our handsom Women to be more inclin'd to Vice than Vertue and for our young Men to be readier to speak ill than well of them and to be more apt to credit all malicious Reports than to search into any real Truths to believe what Men say than to examine what Women do and what Character they justly deserve And if in their Love-Rambles and Beauty-Chace they meet with a handsom Woman that 's truly vertuous which is a kind of Rarity they usually avoid her because she is so and if they light on a handsom Woman that is unvirtuous which is far from being a Rarity they despise her for being such many of our young Gallants being grown such subtile Logicians in the Politicks of making love as to form to themselves this manner of arguing That a handsom Woman that can be perswaded to become too kind to one Man may by the same Rule of Folly and Wickedness be perswaded to grow too common to many And as a virtuous Woman still carries in her mind the agreeable Satisfaction of doing what she ought to do so an unvirtuous Woman often carries in her Body the sad Effects for doing what she ought not to have done which great ill in some Women often occasions some good in many Men by terrifying them from acting that common English Sin for fear of meeting that common French Punishment that usually attends it for many of our fine young Gallants tho' they do not fear the Sin of the Act yet they dread the Sting of the Disease the Pain of the Body here tho' not the Torment of the Soul hereafter To conclude in a word The present modish superficial Love of most of the fine young Gallants to their Mistresses is become like our present Coin which either is so false or so clipt as there remains little of its outward Size or inward Value So most of our young Gallants pretended Love to their present Mistresses is so falsified and debased by their brutish Lust and unvirtuous Designs as they only cry up Women for their Beauty not Goodness most of them praising the latter but in hopes to enjoy the former most valuing their Mistresses Bodies more than their Souls or indeed their own either Therefore a young Gallants swearing to his Mistress that he loves her as well as his own Soul tho' it be a Compliment that sounds great yet in effect 't is an Expression that means little because he loves his own Soul so THE SECOND DISCOURSE Of meer beauty-Beauty-Love and of some of the vile Arts and wicked Deceits many of our Young Gallants use to ruine their Mistresses Reputation under a false Pretence of true Friendship and of the great Folly of such Ladies who delight in Censuring others but slight all others Censuring them because they fancy they do not deserve it with some useful Advices thereon I Shall begin this Discourse with my Desire to to the Reader that he will please to believe this great Truth That 't is far from my Opinion to think there can hardly be a pure virtuous and innocent Friendship between a beautiful young Woman and a handsom young Man except grounded upon a Marriage-account or a near Relation-score for tho' I confess I esteem any other some a-kin to a Rarity yet I am far from believing it an Impossibility tho' I look on meer Beauty-Friendship to be very fickle and undurable in most because it seldom lasteth longer than the Womans Beauty that createth it But where a Friendship is justly grounded well suited and vertuously fixed between a Man and a Woman such a Friendship is certainly one of the greatest and most lasting Satisfactions of this Life since it may and in some do's last as long as life it self and is the high Advantage a rational Man hath over a Beast who tho' he can love a Companion to eat with yet he cannot chuse a Companion-Friend to converse with to rely in and make use of And I am sure none allows nay loves and esteems more a well-qualified Friendship than I do I mean such a sort of Friendship between a young Man and Woman as is contracted and maintain'd upon a lawful and honourable Account being founded on vertuous Addresses as those of true Friendship Kindred-kindness Marriage-design or for Obligations done to ones Family in general and Obligations of that nature every one of that Family is to acknowledge as done to himself in particular and accordingly endeavour a Requital or upon any other handsom or lawful Account for doubtless a Friendship that 's vertuously qualified and piously grounded is altogether lawful and unscandalous as well as highly satisfactory but my Design is here only to write against the common modish and meer superficial Beauty-Friendship that our young Gallants usually have or pretend to have for their Mistresses springing out of a meer amorous fit without any good Reason or true Consideration growing up Mushroom-like on a sudden and rais'd only by a sight of a handsom Face at a Play Park Court c. which sort of Love or rather Fancy for a Woman I esteem to be only great because her Beauty is so he only loving her well because she looks so And sure none can deny but meer Face-Beauty is shallow frail
inconstant and undurable being as very fading as the Complexion 't is much compos'd of and chiefly illustrated with I wish this sort of Lovers would take into their serious Consideration where 's the real Satisfaction a Gallant can any way propose to himself to take in gazing on his Mistresses Beautiful Face since at best it can be but a momentary Eye-pleasure a thing next to nothing and as little lasting as 't is little worth so slight and sandy a Foundation is meer Beauty built on it being indeed only a fine bright burnish'd Clay inamell'd with pure white and red which by many of our fine Ladies now a-days is oftner bought with Money than given them by Nature and do but unmask the Skin of one of their Faces whether her Beauty 's bought or given and 't will certainly at first sight prove loathsom to ones Eyes and in a very little time noisom to the Smell being only fit for nasty Worms not fine Gallants Next let us suppose that an amourous young Gallant should be so prosperous and fancically happy as by the Expence of much time many Oaths and the Trial of a Thousand costly Effays to gain not only her free leave to behold her beautiful Face but to enjoy her beautiful Person In the first place 't is most certain That a Beauty-chase after a handsom Face is but like a Fox hunting Recreation which tho' you follow never so eagerly yet the pleasure lies only in the pursuit not in the taking of the Game Next I shall desire the young Gallant to ballance with the Pleasures he enjoys the many Troubles he must suffer by the several Fears Doubts Jealousies and vexatious Disappointments he must rencounter in the keeping and securing his new Conquest and sure there needs no stronger an Argument to prove both the uncertainty and difficulty of keeping his Mistress constant to himself than the easiness he found in perswading her to prove inconstant to another for on the same score that she left another for him she may leave him for another Next I shall desire this Beauty-Lover but to look into common Experience and 't will tell him That as he will certainly be soon cloy'd with her Face so he will be soon weary of her Body since he loves the last but for the first and sure no Man can be so ignorant in our wife amorous and Romantick Age as not to know that sweet Variety is now all in fashion and that Love like Beauty cannot always last because great Beauty it self never did nor never can And tho' most of our fine modish Ladies are as to the Gallantry of having a Gallant very constant yet as to the person of one Gallant most of them are very inconstant and changeable because one suits not with sweet Variety which is now become the common Mode great Delight and usual Practice of most young Gallants and their Mistresses Now last of all and indeed what 's worse and most strange of all let us suppose that our young Gallant 's Mistress should chance to prove vertuous which indeed is a chance and is fully and unalterably resolv'd to continue still so then must our hot fierce fiery Lover's eager desire after the enjoying her render his enflamed Heart to be here on earth as Dives his Soul was in Hell tormented with a Thirst never to be quenched that is whilst her Beauty lives or till his Love dies and indeed the best of it is both are mortal and neither long-liv'd In a word If we seriously search into the true Nature and common Effects that meer beauty-Beauty-Love usually produces we shall find 't is ordinarily accompanied with great Fears constant Jealousies and daily vexatious Disappointments which this sort of Beauty-Love is usually attended on tormented with and commonly expires in And truly Reader 't is only this sort of noisom venus-Venus-Love and meer Beauty Friendship that I exclaim against having as I said before no mixture of Marriage-design Family-Obligation well-grounded Friendship or so much of Kindred-pretence as that of a Welsh Cousin to shelter and countenance their long Visits and great Familiarity But many Women fancy that the vertuous Name of Friendship excuse the scandalous one of Gallant never reflecting on the vast difference there is in the Carriage between a true pure Platonick Lover and a meer Beauty-Gallant's Friendship towards the Woman they pretend a real kindness to and a concern for since he that 's a Woman's true Friend indeed must make it his main Business and great Care so to order all his Looks Words and Actions that any way relate to that Woman he pretends and vows a true and vertuous Friendship for as to avoid giving all Persons the least Occasion or Umbrage to suspect he has any Design to be esteem'd her Beauty-admirer or pretended Gallant which is a Title a real Friend on the account of his true Friendship ought as much to avoid as a truly vertuous VVoman on score of her good Reputation ought truly to detest since 't is an undeniable truth That no Man can heartily loves a Womans Person that does not truly love and heartily endeavour to preserve her good Name and make her Honour part of his own Nay I am farther of opinion that no Man does love a Woman as a real perfect Friend that does not love her Reputation as much as if she were his real Wife that is to be a true Partner and joint-sharer in her good and bad Fame Whereas on the contrary a meer amorous Gallant is a Friend to a Woman meerly because she 's handsom and only loves her because her Beauty likes him and so is a concern'd party only as to her good or bad look's not her bad and good actions therefore he uses all his Arts and employs all his skill and endeavours to accomplish his wicked ends on her he so eagerly Courts and if her Piety and Virtue is so great as she will not suffer him to enjoy her yet his wicked design is so vile as to strive to make all Men believe he does it In a word this is the great difference between a true Friend and a Fop Gallant the first makes it his real design and hearty concern to preserve her Reputation whereas the Amorous Gallant makes it his grand business and sole aim to destroy it But most Ladies are so vain I had almost said foolish as to fancy they can defend themselves against all scandalous reflections on their Reputation by the great Strength of their Wit but really the strength of such vain Wit springs often but from the Weakness of their Judgment therefore I shall Caution that Woman who depend so much on the greatness of her own Wit to beware of two things the first is Not to rely too much on her own Wit The second not to depend too much on her Gallants Oaths lest both fail her For indeed 't is very common for young Women to have a better opinion of their own Wit than they ought and
for the best Woman and truest Friend in the whole World That her beauty is charming her Carriage Civil and obliging her Converse most agreeable her Wit quick her Motions taking which make all that see her admire and praise her and all that know her love and esteem her in a word she s Mistress of all the Perfections of all Kinds Degrees and Qualities that belong to the compleatment of the most perfect of her Sex which makes her Gallant Swear He is so far from being able singly to express all her Merits as 't is not in the power of all the greatest Wits in the World together to extract out of the 24 Letters so many Praises as her Merits justly claim and truly deserve Now her Lover hath told her what she now is his next part is to Swear to her what he now is and ever will be in all his Pretences and Addresses to her which is that they shall be all ever pure innocent and unbyas'd free from all Self-interest and ill Designs or so much as any unhandsom Thoughts and so takes upon him whether she will or no or at least she knows not why the officious office of serving her in all her concerns that is in serving himself for he designs they two shall be all one This part I believe he means really but for that of his constant Love and unalterable Friendship tho' he Swears to its Truth a thousand times yet as to that I fancy he only deals with his Mistress as a Cheat does with a Merchant that is Fool enough to trust him he promises him any thing because he resolves to perform nothing and defies the Ware he takes to be so bad as the Payment he means to make So these sort of Beauty-admirers love in effect but after this rate Vowing to his present Mistress tho' he knows she hath crowds of Adorers yet none of them are to be compared to him for he loves her not only above the World but he love the World only for her Swearing to her That what she dislikes he hates what she loves he is fond of and that her Will is his Will in all things he being to her just like Clay in the Potters Hand which she may Work into what shape she pleases These are his ordinary Protestations I do not say real Meanings and is the common Prelude to the Tune of his making love or rather practising deceit since usually all his large repeated Oaths only aim to make his Mistress to him as a Wife is to a Husband which is That they two should be but one Flesh Marriage still excepted for he will be to her Beauty only a Tenent at Will not for Life and in order hereunto he ventures telling his Mistress That the Tye of Friendship is much more natural and agreeable than the dull heavy Chains of Matrimony for the first is made wholly and and soly by the Womans own voluntary choice the other usually by the advice and persuasion of Friends nay often by the terrible and powerful awe and threatnings of Parents and sure such a Match as is made up by fear or force and no Love nor liking a Wife cannot but esteem such a Husband to be rather a Trouble to her Days than a Comfort to her Life And now I name Marriage give me leave by the by to tell you in a word my Opinion and Observation on Heiresses of great Estates That they are generally more unfortunately married than other Women that have but small Fortunes because rich Heiresses are commonly sold by their Guardians or betray'd by their Kinsmen or Favorite Waiting-Woman for 't is a fatal consequence that usually attends great Heiresses that because they have greater Fortunes than they really need they must have less content than they truly want and must enjoy little Comfort because they possess much Riches And as many Heiresses are render'd unfortunate by having very large Fortunes so many young Women suffer many fowl Censures for having a large proportion of Beauty whilst other Women that are very far from being handsom live very far from Scandals tho' perhaps not free from deserving them And now Reader I have mention'd a few of the many Arts and deceitful words young Gallants use to deceive their Mistresses with give me leave but only to name a few of the ordinary excuses or rather justifications divers of their Mistresses tho perhaps other Mens Wives alledg in their own Defence and Justification and with them seem fully satisfied tho' their Friends and Relations are far from being so to whom they owe a respect and ought to have a concern for tho' they receive no Maintenance from and when once an Amour between a Mistress and her Gallant comes to flame out to publick view and so makes common Discourse it must come at last to her Friends and Kindreds Ears for they cannot but hear what all speak aloud to her Shame and their Discredit which must make them troubled at it and be much concern'd for her tho' perhaps she s not in the least for her self and therefore when her Friends and Kindred come to discourse and argue with her about it and assure her tho' her Intentions be never so innocent and virtuous yet her keeping so much Company with such a Man cannot but raise scandalous Censures and ill Reflections upon their Credit and her Reputation but she to this part of their Accusation seems more incensed at what they say than at what she does and instead of sinking into a Fit of Repentance for her own Deeds she swells into a Fit of Anger at their Words in questioning her virtuous Life and discreet carriage protesting she does not in the least deserve her Friends ill Opinion or the Worlds bad Censure and therefore says she has good reason to exclaim against their unjust Jealousy of her and sharp Language to her vowing she never led but a pure innocent Life in all her Thoughts Words and Actions with that Man they accuse her of and condemn her for there having never been other than a pure Platonick Love and Friendship design'd by her and she verily believes intended by him and therefore instead of excusing her carriage to him she falls upon extolling and magnifying his great Civility to her how obliging and friendly he still shewed himself in all her Concerns on all Occasions and that with much Frankness high Discretion great Reality and abundance of Generosity and as long as his Visits were kept in the bounds of strict Virtue and true Civility she cannot any way conceive how her keeping company with him can in the least bring a dishonour to her Self or Family and therefore she ought not to be so barbarously ill-natur'd and ungratefully unjust as to withdraw her harmless Conversation and justifiable Friendship to this her Friend by forbidding him visiting her since that were in effect to proclaim to the World the falseness of his Love and the scandal of his Company and by it all may
conclude That he has either spoke ill of her Reputation or has acted some rudeness to her Person already or that she hath reason to fear he will do it hereafter and therefore has for bid him her Company either upon the account of revenge for what 's past or by the way of prevention for the time to come therefore I am clear of opinion a Woman ought not to forbid an old Friend and Acquaintance visiting her except it be upon one of these two nam'd Accounts or else upon the score that she has reason to believe her Husband does not well rellish his coming so often to her and if that be the Business if this her Friend be what he really pretends to be and she seems to believe he is he cannot justly take it ill that she freely tells him That his visiting her so constantly tho' their Converse be never so Vertuous and Innocent yet she has some cause to fear it has or may if long continued raise her Husbands Dislike and the Worlds Censure therefore to prevent both and secure her own Quiet and good Reputation she friendly desires him for the future to make his Visits shorter and seldomer to stop all busy ill-natured Censurers Tongues and any Jealousies their malicious Twatlings might raise in her Husbands Mind And sure if this her dear esteemed Friend truly deserves that Title he must value her Honour as part of his own and make her Content his Satisfaction since she freely and heartily assures him 't is not at all upon the account of her lessening her true Esteem and Friendship for him but meerly to secure her Husbands Love and Kindness to her that she desires this of him Next I shall advise that Woman who stands so much on her inward Vertue as to slight her Friends Advice and the Worlds Censure for keeping her Friend so much company seriously to consider That 't is above the power of any Mortal to dive into a Womans inward Thoughts and that Men can only behold her outward Actions not inward Intentions For tho' Men can see her Lips move when she whispers yet they cannot tell what she speaks when she does so Much less are they able to dive into either of their Meanings for that 's so great a secret as one of them may deceive the other with for all their Vows and Oaths of an open Heart a true Love and an unalterable Friendship I could name a thousand Arts Slights and Deceits that many Gallants use to their Mistresses but I am sure I should sooner tire my Readers Patience with their great numbers than by their great numbers to confirm his belief of their great Truth except it be the Truth of their great Folly and vile Falsity for indeed most of the young Gallants of our present sober and Vertuous Age do commonly in their Courtship to their present Mistresses carry little Truth in their Heart but many more Romantick Lies on their Tongues than Teeth in their Mouth And now Reader pray give me leave to change a little the Scene of my Discourse of the great Beauty of the Mistresses to add a word of the great and wicked actings of some of their Gallants who having tried all arts and means they could invent to gain their Mistresses Heart I still except Marriage and after all their Essays find it so strongly fortified and fully Garrison'd with Vertue and Piety as they see it impregnable against all their Batteries and Assaults so as to cast themselves into an utter despair of ever gaining their wicked ends on them I say can any Man of common Sense not think it full time for him to found a Retreat as to following their Persons tho' he cannot leave admiring their Beauty Indeed I have ever observed that Importunity still breeds Trouble but I never heard it ever created Love in a Mistress Yet this sort of wicked foolish Gallants are so indefatigable in the folly of their endless Pursuit after their Mistress as they will not believe they hate them tho' their Words and Actions declare their scorn and aversion to them but they will tell you what 's three Kicks of denial to a Lover that has read the Patience of Job or the sober Temper of Seneca or has often experimented the Inconstancy and Fickleness of an ill humored Mistress which perhaps exceeds both And therefore by way of Revenge he quickly resolves rather than be publickly ridiculed for missing his aim losing his time and not gaining his Mistress since he cannot enjoy her fair Person he will endeavour blasting her good Name and make the World believe she 's kind to him tho' she 's only really so to her own Virtue and Reputation by despising him and all his Courtship and the better to accomplish his base and treacherous Design on her he alters his Course changes his Battery and comes and throws himself at his Virtuous Mistresses Feet with the greatest seeming Joy imaginable That God has so blessed him as he is now become an intire religious Convert who has abandoned all the vain Pleasures of this World to contemplate the pure and endless Felicities of Heaven and that now instead of being a Slave to the Beauty of her Body he is become a devout well-wisher to the good of her Soul And intends to be so vile an Hypocrite and wicked a Sinner that since he could not gain her Body by all earthly means he resolves to flie to Heaven it self for a religious disguise to ruin her Reputation and satisfy his Revenge since he could not his Love and therefore he now only pretends to pure Piety strict Virtue true Humility much Gravity and great Penitency in all his Discourses and Actions I mean before her only and seriously and devoutly protesteth to her for in this Disguise he dares not Swear that he highly rejoyceth that all the Courtship he made and Perswasions he used served only to try her Humour not tempt her Virtue which he now highly rejoyces to find proof against all Temptations Vowing to her he is now more delighted with the true Virtue of her Mind than ever he was formerly taken with the great Beauty of her Face for the first is pure and Heavenly the last meer sensual the first relisheth of angel-Angel-Love the second may and often does savour of meer brutal Lust And thus whilst he makes up all his Discourses in praising and magnifying her great Virtue to her self he uses all base oblique and subtle Endeavours and underhand Arts of Defamation to brand and blemish her good Name to all others and thus hopes to obtain his base revengful Ends by a Holy and Heavenly means And in pursuit of this his base wicked and Treacherous Design he entertains her with how highly he is delighted that he has quite stript himself of the Fools-Coat of a vain amorous Lover to Cloath himself with the pious sober Dress of a holy Convert and a Devout Christian and that he now does and ever will make it
his hearty Prayers real Endeavours and main Concern to keep her as well as himself always full of Heavenly Contemplations of the other World by an intire forsaking and abominating all the Wickedness and Vanities of this and by this mounting her mind above he hopes the easier to delude her Thoughts here below and so to make her not to value any of this World 's concerns and to over-look earthly Censures as being things all pious Christians must of course meet with in this their earthly Pilgrimage not on the account of any particular affliction and punishment for their own private Faults but as the common Frailty appertaining to all human Being And thus he entertains her or rather amuzes her with heavenly Contemplations and a meer seeming pure religious Platonick Friendship that he may by his good and pious conversation repair often talk much and vifit long unmistrusted by her but much observ'd and highly censur'd by all others who see his long and often Visits to her but hear not her religious Discourses with him or his to her and by this base treacherous Disguise he hopes others will think him Master of her Body whilst he pretends to her to be only a devout Servant to her Soul and pleaseth himself by putting a religious Cheat on her pious Meanings and virtuous Actions and makes use of God's good Name only to procure her a bad one There is a remarkable Story something of this nature to be read in Josephus of a most rare Lady in Rome called Paulina who was much renown'd for her high Birth great Virtue admirable Wit charming Beauty abundant Wealth transcendent Wisdom and Discretion and as an addition to all these she was in the very prime and Blossom of her Age and what 's yet stronger than all these she was reverenc'd by all as a Mirror of Chastity and that so many rare Qualities should all center in one Woman where there 's hardly one of them to be found in many Women I am sure is not one of the smallest Miracles in Rome which could never be nam'd the Holy City upon the account of the many holy and virtuous Women in it for in Rome all know Miracles are very plenty but chast Women very scarce and so are indeed chast Clergy-Men for the younger fort of them love more to make many handsom Women unvirtuous but reprove few if any for being so or Penancing them that they are so This admirable Paulina was married to a young Noble Man that well match'd her in all her Excellencies and Virtues He was called Saturnam There was a person of great esteem nam'd Decius Mundus that fell desperately in love with her but could not corrupt her so as to enjoy her one Night with all the Arts he could use and vast Proffers he did offer to the value of two hundred thousand Drachmas which in our Mony amounts to about six thousand Pounds but after having found all his Essays of gaining her fruitless her Heart being impregnable he fell into so great a Melancholy and so deep a Despair as he resolved since he could not feast himself on her Beauty he would Starve himself to Death to be deliver'd from the Tyranny of his violent Love-passion for her that so tormented him but a Woman call'd Ida being much troubled he should undergo such a sad Death went to him and desir'd him not to die with Despair for she had thought of a means that for fifty thousand Drachmas which she would so dispose as a Bribe that he should enjoy his dear Paulina To accomplish which she practised this subtil but wicked Policy by addressing her self to a Priest of the Temple who upon her large Promises and Offers of great Sums which is still a prevailing Argument among the Popish Clergy she laid him down 25000 Drachmas and ingaging to him as much more as soon as he had perform'd what she desired She then acquainted him with the violent Love-passion Mundus had for Paulina begging him to contrive some way that he might enjoy her or else he could not long enjoy his own Life The Priest possessed with the great Sum she gave him and the much more that she engaged to give him promised That Mundus should enjoy Paulina for a whole Night And he having free access to her desired he might speak with her in private which she readily granted him who told her he was sent by the God Anubis who was much inamored with her charming Beauty and desired that she would give him a meeting that night This Discourse so pleased Paulina as she could not forbear telling some of her intimate Friends how she had been honoured with an amorous sollicitation of a God for tho' she was an excellent Woman yet she was still a Woman and consequently vain and proud of her Beauty Paulina thought fit in the first place to acquaint her Husband how God Anubis had sent that he would come to her which her Husband consented to relying on her great Chastity she therefore after she had supp'd at her usual hour repair'd to the Temple and in the Priest his House she went to bed and the Gates being by the Priest shut and the Lights in her Chamber taken away Mundus that was hid in the Chamber failed not to accost her who she thought was God Anubis By this art of his and mistake of hers Mundus satisfied his wicked lustful desire of her all that Night and early in the morning before the Priests were stirring who were privy to the Treachery he retired himself and Paulina also returned early in the morning to her Husband and acquainted him how God Anubis had appeared unto her and made her boast to some of her familiar Friends what conference he had used with her which some of them could not believe others were amazed at it considering her great Chastity About three days after Mundus meeting Paulina told her she had saved him two hundred thousand Drachmas which she might have put in her Treasure but said he I am not much troubled that you contemned me under the name of Mundus since I have satisfied my desire by enjoying you under the Name of Anubis and so left her She amazed at his high Impudence and vexed at her own Misfortune tore her Garments and went and told her Husband of Mundus his base wicked and subtile Deceit and begged his assistance in the prosecution of her Revenge and presently acquainted the Emperour Tiberius of every particular of their vile Treachery who after a strict examination of the Priests concerning this base foul Fact he condemned them and Ida the contriver of the Plot against Paulina to be all hanged the Temple to be pulled down the Statue of Anubis to be cast into the River of Tiber and Mundus to be banished This sad Story teacheth all Women this good Doctrin That they are not to grant a Man extraordinary Opportunities tho' upon never so extraordinary Pretences witness this wicked Cheat practised on the Virtuous Paulina
find that the effects of Anger kill many more than the passion of Love Men being often Angry with many Men at once but never in Love with more than one Woman at a time and that one it self is too many by one But my design being not to Court the young Ladies with high Complements but to serve them with great reality I must assure them that these high praises the more they are trusted the more they 'll betray and the more you Ladies confide in their worth the more you 'll be deceiv'd in their value so that it follows by the plain Rule of common reason that so much as you deduct of Mens overpraises so much you lessen of your own self deceivings Indeed these poysoned Darts of praises have got such a predominant power over most young handsom Women and the most handsom are most subject to them that most of them are in danger of being wounded by them because the peril of flattery still mounts with the degrees of beauty as the Suns heat still increases proportionable as it rises Flattery and vain-glorious praises are both insinuating Devils two Twins begot by the father of Lies and these not only attempt all but possess most vain handsom Ladies and therefore they ought above all to be very strict and diligently active to shun such tempting discourse and avoid such dangerous Company or at least when with them to be sure still to carry about them S. James his good direction and antidote resist the Devil and he will flie from you Really if young Ladies would but take a steddy resolution to resist and slight all young Mens vain Courtships and place no such high estimation on their own beauty they would easily do the like on mens praises and by this means young Gallants would slacken in their Courtships proportionable to the young Ladies cooling in their receptions of it and so make Men despise Womens beauty suitable to their slighting Mens Love and thus Womens prudence would become Mens wisdom for in real truth 't is hope of gain makes love Merchants as well as others none watch Bees but for their Hony and few Court fair Ladies but for some hopes of a return and therefore you never hear of any of the young Sparks that plant their Love Batteries against Nunneries not because they think the young Women in them have too little beauty but because they believe they shall meet there with too great a resistance by the care they take and strictness they use to prevent Mens making any Addresses and near approaches to them for as Mr. Cowley says a well govern'd heart like rich China admits Men only to the Frontier part for a strict vertue sets certain bounds to young handsom Womens carriage and behaviour towards Men which they are not to exceed as the Almighty gave to the Sea so far you shall go and no farther And though I know there 's no such thing now adays in practice among our young Men as Angel Love which is the pure Commerce of the Souls yet I believe Venus Love does not rage so very much nor is its infection so very strong and rife as Censurers would fain have it making our Age much worse than 't is when God knows 't is but too bad at best as if the youth of both Sexes were now so corrupt as that a young Gentleman cannot visit a young Lady nor a young Lady receive visits from a young Gentleman without imputation of scandal or the censure of ill and vicious designs on both sides tho I verily believe some young Men I do not say all nor yet many love Womens company and Women Mens on no other account than for their great wit good humor and agreeable Conversation without any farther ends And now I am beginning to enter into that part of this Discourse which principally addresses it self to the handsom young Maiden Ladies and chiefly among them to such as are innocently and modestly bred for such sort of young Women often entertain discourses and make acquaintances with young Men without the least thought of love or design of ill many of them looking civilly and talking freely to them on no other account than to shew and exercise their wit and that may be more to please their own fancy than on design to take that of others but yet I must advise such young Women to consider that meer civil looks often tempt and refusals may be given after such a manner as may rather embolden one to ask more than to beg pardon for having asked too much for as one well observes of strict vertuous Women That Man comes too near to them that comes to be denied by them Indeed 't is not very rare now a days for civil looks in young Women to breed Adulterous thoughts in young Men for the Gospel tells us that there is an Adultery of the Eye and I am sure we ought all to remember with grief of mind that assoon as the Serpent had perswaded that the forbidden fruit was pleasant to the Eye it soon follow'd that it became delightful to the Tast if Mens Vows of Love and Oaths of Constancy can but once tempt young Maids appetites to taste 't will soon make them anticipate their fears to eat Therefore Ladies have a care of receiving Mens praises and flatteries and though you believe your own Vertue never so strong and yours Lovers Courtship never so innocent as possibly they may be at first received by you and design'd by him only as the effects of pure civility and not of any ill intention yet praises are so naturally agreeable to vain handsom Ladies as they often unperceiv'd insinuate and wind themselves so about their hearts as to kindle there by degrees Love likings though perhaps they do not feel so much as the least slight atome Love to creep on the superficies of their heart Love sometimes like a Tortoise makes its way though it does not seem to stir or like the hand of a Watch which though you cannot perceive to move yet you may plainly see its hourly advances Love often growing in young Womens minds as Diseases do in their bodies without ever giving the least Alarm or Advertisement of its approach till it breaks out into a dangerous fit of Sickness Solomon says a soft word breaks the Bone therefore no wonder if smooth praises and complements should charm a young Ladies tender heart for sure 't is no wonderful operation in our times for small freedoms like little Thieves to open the Doors to great Liberties and venial wantonness to turn to modish wickedness Therefore let me advise the vain Ladies not to deceive themselves in fancying that they are more invincible in their Love railleries in receiving praises from young Men than King Solomon was with dallying with strange Women which drew him into the Sin of Idolatry This example may serve as a Caution to young Ladies not to relie too much on their own strength for many Maids
satisfaction in the thoughts that others believe they enjoy their Mistrisses than they themselves do in the actual enjoyment of them our young Men retaining still so much of the old Roman pride as to love the Triumph more than the Conquest and indeed I am of opinion that on the bragging account of enjoying Mistrisses now so much in fashion among the late Debauchees those Men that boast they do though they do it not are not so bad as those that boast of it in so vain-glorious a manner as to act a real Sin Then the young Gallant can tell their enjoy'd Mistrisses that meer love of beauty is but a meer amorous desire and that none but fools desire what they possess possession being the full end and accomplishment of all desire and consequently of all beauty Love and so laugh at the simplicity of those that will endure long the scorching flames of a violent Love passion fancying none but the foolish barbarous Persians can long adore that Sun which burns them And our young Gallants are now generally grown so very nice that they cannot feed on any thing but sweet variety which makes them rant in the Hectoring Language of the Times and say that 't is as unmodish to have but one Mistris as to have none at all and therefore Swear that Mistrisses enjoy'd though never so young and beautiful are but like Romances read and Plays once seen and indeed methinks enjoy'd Mistrisses ought not to wonder at their Gallants sickleness it being not at all strange that an unvertuous Love should make an inconstant Lover And now I must beg leave to glance my discourse a little on a Fault which some young Ladies commit without ever considering 't is one which is sometimes to exercise their wit shew their pride and vanity or gaity of humor or what else you please to call it to make themselves sport and entertainment spread abroad their fine silken nets of inticing arts and attracting allurements to incourage and invite some young Fop to become fond of one of their Company as his dearly beloved and highly admir'd Mistris only that they may have thereby the better means and occasion to railly and make pastime with him never considering that by making him thus to fall in love with one of them he is obliged by the general Rules and common practices of our Modern refin'd Lovers to magnify and extoll her beauty and never to be sparing of his Oaths and Lies in praising her perfections and his own overflowing passion and so cause him to sin in earnest though probably design'd by the Lady as a Jest but 't will be no sufficient excuse in this bad kind of raillery to say your intention was innocent since its effect is culpable for we are not to do ill that good may come of it and sure much less to do ill where no good can come of it and I am sure this is an undeniable truth That she who makes another do an ill thing does an ill thing her self by her making another to do it Therefore Ladies whether in Jest or Earnest if you are truly vertuous and desire really to continue so and that the world should esteem you such as designing to admit men only to admire your Persons but never to ruin your vertue the best way to effect it is never to let them Court your beauty for remember that the Fire of Love is like that of Anger a short but fierce madness for a Man that 's in Love during the raging fit of his enflam'd lustful passion talks light and idly for a Lovers heart rises and falls is happy and unhappy according as his Mistris is kind or unkind it being indeed but very suitable to the folly of being in Love that such a Lovers heart should never move according to the dictates of his own reason but the vain motions of his Mistrisses fickle fancy and therefore because such Men know not what the do their Mistrisses ought not to mind what they say nor admit their Addresses though they pretend them in jest or for meer pastime and not to kindle their hopes when they mean never to feed their desires but avoid conversing with them and entertaining of them for surely all persons ought to avoid mad Bedlam acquaintances and young Men during their distracted Love passion value not what Praises they present what Offers they make nor indeed what price they give to purchase the enjoyment of their dear Mistrisses though it be at the damnable rate of long continued Idolatry and often repeated Perjury O strange and wicked madness that these kind of Lovers cannot be content to give their Mistrisses their heart for a little time without giving their Souls to the Devil for ever and fancy he is as very obliging as they are foolish and inconstant and that the Devil will as easily forget the Oaths they made to him as they do theirs they made to their Mistrisses which were intended but as meer Courtiers Complements which are meant no longer than they are speaking and therefore ought to be thought on no longer than they are hearing but though such Lovers fancy they give their Souls to the Devil but in jest yet he will be careful to keep them in earnest for if they will commit the sin of making such Oaths let them have a care the Devil be not permitted to make them endure the Hellish Penance of keeping them God will not be mocked I have enlarged this Discourse on the folly of Mens overpraising and Courting Women with great Confidence because I fancy with much Experience though I am sure with little Prudence for I confess such experience was bought too dear yet I have this satisfaction that the fault of committing a vice do's not consist in the confession of it but in the yeilding to it and therefore I own I have served much more than a thrice seven years Prenticeship in the Trade of Love and its foolish appendant Train of Fopperies which was I confess a great fault against the well spending of my time which might have been much better employ'd in the duties of Religion than in the pastimes and vain company of modish Women but I have now serv'd out my Time in that foolish Trade and am become a perfect freeman as to that folly of Courting all modish Ladies not that I am at all grown a Woman hater or a precise Puritan or such a true Disciple of Job as to make a Covenant with mine Eyes not to behold a handsom Woman for I shall still own I look upon all beautiful Women to come nearest of all Creatures in brightness and splendor to the glorious Angels and am very much pleased when I can pass away an hour or two in an afternoon among such of them as are not irreligious but of a vertuous reputation and are good Wits free humor'd and of pleasant Converse for 't is not keeping company with but paying an adoration to Ladies beauty that makes the crime
hot there 's no touching it in any part without burning one finger 't is like a Hedge-Hogg all over prickles so that 't will be almost as hard a task for me to know how to hit upon a safe good way to begin this Discourse as to find a sure means to put an end to Womens governing power But since I must begin I will as all Builders do never mind to have the first foundation stone cut into any shape so I am resolv'd to lay my first entrance into this Discourse on the Courtships and power of the Welch Ladies for there I fancy the Men take no pains nor use any arts to square or polish their Addresses but only take what comes uppermost as they arise out of pure Natures Quarry And truly I am of opinion that according to the Rules of sober reason and naked truth the Welch ought to be esteem'd the more for it since as 't is a general approv'd Rule that of evils we ought still to choose the least so sure by the same rule of proportion we ought of troubles to choose the shortest which being granted we must necessarily come to own that the Welch Courtship and manner of making Love must needs surpass our great Masters of that Trade the French for the Welch are all plain honest dealing Men and good kind friends who are well acquainted with one anothers humors and therefore esteem it superfluous to make many words to a Bargain which makes them railly both the English and the French who they say dare not approach their Mistrisses but with humble looks and obedient postures speaking as Solomon says Prov. 6.13 With their feet by making so many Legs before they come to them and those with as much exactness as Poets make Verses where every syllable must be weigh'd that they may keep just Measures and true Cadence as well in their approaches as addresses Nor dare they speak to them but with large Harangues of Praises still besieging their Mistrisses with Armies of Complements in admiration of their beauty and perfections and most of these fierce great Lovers I had almost said worse differ and excel one another in their manner of Addresses means of Approaches expences in Presents degrees of Courtship and ways of Treating and the like whereas the plain dealing honest Welch-men are most of an equal kind of breeding and birth being all Gentlemen of Wales and most of them high born which is a truth all that have Travell'd thorow their Country will easily believe since really in one sense few of them can be other considering the many elevated Mountains their Country is made up with and yet I often observ'd in my Travelling through it that the Men of that Country are generally of a very plain breeding and much of a level Capacity for though Wales is highly seated yet 't is but of a short extent which occasions the whole Country to lie under the same degree of Elevation And as the Welch Gentry have for the most part an aversion to the Roman Doctrin so they have no fancy for Romance Courtship few studying the one and fewer practising the other and yet for all they are both great Vertuosos and expert Soldiers in the Art of expeditiously managing a Venus War and can sooner take by storm the Fort of their Welch Mistrisses heart than the English or French can finish their Approaches to gain so much as the outworks of their Mistrisses civil and favourable Looks But I am stray'd from my Theme and therefore I 'll conclude my Welch Travels and Interloping Discourses of Wales leaving the Welch Cavaliers to the power of their own Country Mistrisses And take notice how we are now in England shrunk into such a Brood of unmasculine Petticoat Men that are such adorers of their Mistrisses beauty as they cannot behold them but through the magnifying Prospective of their own enflam'd lustful passion and amorous folly which renders their Mistrisses beauty so large and Charming and their Power so high and Mighty that like the possessed man in the Gospel they will run thorow fire and water in their Love fit and to feed their momentary flames will venture those of everlasting Burning This wretched sort of Slaves to Womens Power who in their Courtship and Addresses to gain their Mistrisses hearts do so desperatly hazard the loss of their own Souls by offending God in their words and actions resemble exactly those People of Jerusalem and Judah which the Prophet Isaiah cap. 3. v. 8. speaks of They are fallen down because their Tongue and doings are against the Lord provoking the Eyes of his Glory And now the Prophet has told you their fault he will also tell you their punishment The Lord of Host will take from them the Judg and the Prophet the Prudent and the Ancient and will give Children to be their Princes and Babes to be their Governors and pray what is the consequence of this noble Infant Government why the Prophet tells you Vers 5. And the People shall be oppressed one by another every one by his Neigbour the Child shall behave himself proudly against the Ancient and the base against the honourable c. And as 't is a practical Art in Oratory to keep the best Arguments to bring up the Rear of the Discourse to leave the strongest Impression at the last so God is pleased to reserve for the last the greatest punishment of all which he here threatens by the Prophet when he tells men verse 12. And Women shall rule over them Really 't is a sign the Peoples stay and strength are gone and their prudence out of Power when Women are placed to Rule over them from whence without the help of Philosophy I can easily extract this Observation That the Almighty who sure best knows the abilities of his own Creatures places Women in the same Rank with Children thereby plainly denoting That a Nursery kind of Government suits best with Womens Power and this kind of doctrin is in some manner confirmed by S. Paul though in a larger Character for he ascribes to Women as their fit sphere and proper imployment the guiding of the house that is the Women in it There is an Author who in his discourse of Women very well observes that they have but three States of Life Virginity Marriage and Widdowhood for the first two they are or ought to be states of subjection to Parents and Husbands and for that of Widdowhood God himself counts that state of life to be desolate and sad the Almighty having design'd them for subjection and therefore accounts Women most miserable when most at liberty from Mans Power And now surely out of these reasons and considerations of his I may here safely because truly draw this undeniable Argument and conclusion That it cannot but be very bad for Men to be under Womens Government when God says 't is very sad for Women to be under their own And so I have done with the time when 't was
that is not the Earth being not more variable in all her Properties nor the Heaven in all its Influences than most of the vain great beauties are in their Love-fancies and sure if the Basis and ground-work of their whole Love-nature be sandy the more Men foundation on their Constancy I mean only in point of Love the more they expose themselves to their deceit and consequently to creating their misery Therefore I am clearly of opinion that as to Ladies Constancy when the greatest Criticks have made their most studious Observations and Essay'd their most subtil experiments on all the points of Loves Compass they must own their Ignorance touching the various ways and diversity of motions of Womens minds since Love often works upon their Imaginations and flies to their Hearts as Blushes do to their Faces which they can neither command their going or hinder their coming since they still go and come at their own rate therefore I am fully of opinion that the most able Artists Naturalists and Venus Philosophers with all their speculative Rules and Measures ought to strike Sail and yield to common practical experience as to the Choices of young Womens several fancies in their Love-likings and to grant that Mens best Logick will be to Argue in most young Womens way of Arguing 'T is so because 't is so Since then the discovery of the Ebbing and Flowing of young Womens hearts and minds are like that of the Sea a wonderful Motion exposed to the publick view of all but conceal'd from the true knowledg of any for one may as rationally hope to find the Philosophers Stone that turns all Metals into Gold as to find the Art of turning all young Ladies Love-fancies so as to meet in one Centre of Constancy which is as impossible as to be able to measure the Sea with your Span or what 's as feasible to fathom the depth of a young Womans inclinations with the Plummet of your reason their changable Love being as very far from true certainty as almost the drop of Ink that writes this is from the Ocean Therefore I shall end this Discourse with this serious Consideration and Resolution that since 't is not in the power of Man to find it out fairly to leave it as such and hereafter only to wonder at ones wondring at my not being able to discover the various humors and intricate windings of young Womens minds at all times when few of them know their own at any time THE SIXTH DISCOURSE Of Marriage and Wives who usurp a governing Power over their Husbands which is now so common as it 's become almost the general grievance of the Nation THere are of Wives as of most other things two sorts the good and the bad the good presents the Husband with much happiness and great Content and the bad creates as much misery and dissatisfaction The first is a kind of Heaven the second a sort of Hell upon Earth for there can be no Purgatory seated in the mid way between them for out of Purgatory 't is possible to be redeem'd for Mony but from Marriage 't is impossible to be ransom'd but by death All I shall say of Purgatory is that if there 's such a Place which I cannot believe tho' it may be much visited yet I fancy 't is little inhabited because such as have Mony may buy themselves out of it and those that have none are not worth keeping in it I shall here only name some of the main ingredients that go to make up the Composition of a real happy Marriage to compleat which there must be on both sides hearty love and true liking that so they may joyn their Hearts as well as the Minister does their Hands and as their Marriage Vow makes them tho two but one Flesh so it must make them both to be but of one Mind and one Concern which is to please one another and to this good Consort of Humors and Inclinations there must be added a like degree of Age and a suitable manner of breeding as well as an equality of Families and Fortunes and all these Flowers are to be bound up into a sweet and well made Nosegay by a fervent Zeal and a holy love to Piety and Vertue for without a mixture of these the Married Couple do but found their happiness on the Sand and build all their hopes of Content with untempered Mortar for tho 't is as true as common that meer beauties do often breed great fondness yet it can never create true Love for beauty is but the slight fading varnish of the Face which soon wears off but Vertue is the substantial lasting beauty of the Mind and makes a handsom fine Lady like the Kings Daughter all glorious within and preserves her Marriage Love in a sweet and perfect Harmony without which it can have no duration but must soon fade and ravel out into change and inconstancy And now I must tell you I know not certainly where to direct you to find the great rarity of such a happy well match'd Couple but this I know that where e'er they are to be found about this Kingdom 't is a thousand pities that death should ever take them out of it because they are so very hard to be found in it And now I have nam'd some of the principal Ingredients that are absolutely necessary to compleat a happy Marriage I hope I shall not need here name any of those great Faults and ill Humors which go to the making up the Composition of a bad Wife but shall refer you to the next Husband you meet and know who can certainly tell you by woful experience some of them that his Wife has and the next you inquire after may tell you more for every Husband can tell you more or less of his Wives faults for there is no Husband but knows some and 't is well if she has not some more than he knows so that I shall only need tell you here by whole-sail that as many Figures joyn'd together make a great Sum so many great Faults and cross peevish ill humors united in one Woman make an ill Wife Now if you would know the difference between such Husbands who esteem themselves in their Wives very happy and those that believe themselves to be made by them very miserable Of the first kind the Husband thinks as good as his Wife is that there cannot be a Wife that has no fault the other thinks that there can be no fault but what his Wife has so that the sum total of this difference is easily cast up in these few words as to the belief that good and bad Husbands have of their Wives faults that all Wives have some and some Wives have all But this truth neither the good or bad Husband can deny that tho there are as well bad as good successes in Mens choice of Wives and Wives choice of Husbands yet that does not at all lessen or take from the holy
their Parents Match for bare Mony with the sad end that usually attends such Matches IN my Opinion the great reason why disagreeing Marriages are now grown so rife is because unequal Matches are now become so common most Parents making it more their business to Match well Portions and Estates than Sons and Daughters and so their Fortunes do but suit well no matter if their Age Humors and Inclinations agree ill many Parents making it more their concern to provide their Children plenty of Livelihood than contentedness of Living being much more taken with a great Gingling of Guinnies than with a Sweet Consort of Vertues or a good Pedigree of Gentility which occasions some fine great Ladies to have rich Husbands and fair Estates and yet but bad Fortunes to be well Married and yet but ill Match'd because they do not fancy and so are not satisfied with one another Content and Happiness are Twins born out of the same Womb and spring out of the same Root and none can be content with what he does not like no more than discontented with what he does for if he likes he must be content else he does not like And 't is also the same where there 's no Content there can be no Love for if he loves he must be content with what he Loves else he does not Love and where there 's no Content and liking there can hardly be any true Constancy for none can affect a Constancy to that they do not like but their Mind is still in pursuit after that they do Most Parents in Marrying their Children are sure to remember Solomon's saying That Mony answers all things but forget his meaning that is purchasable with it for several young Ladies that are richly Married can tell by woful experience that much Mony cannot still buy true Content since many of them have little content in the midst of their much Mony And farther common experience which is usually the effect of reason assures us that it cannot purchase many things as to give sight to the Blind or Youth to the Aged or what 's equally impossible as both to create Love against liking 'T is true indeed that Guinnies do often tye a fast Matrimonial Knot but of themselves can never tye a true Lovers one since no Medicine that has not a mixture of the Sympathetick Powder can operate kindly on young Womens minds for as nothing can force a Mans belief contrary to his own reason so nothing can compel a Womans Love against her own liking 'T is true one may be forced to obey at the rate of a Tyrants Will but 't is as true that none can believe or Love but proportionable to their own reason or fancy which made the great Tyrant Nero say that he had much rather be fear'd than lov'd because said he they that fear me fear me after my rate but those that love me love me after their own Indeed most of these Matches that are made up on the account of Interest and not Love their kindness is but like a Winters Sun faint and of no duration and tho it may now and then in some time of the Day shine bright and clear to the Eyes of Spectators yet it carries no true heat with it and therefore can never bring forth any ripe fruit of true content or satisfaction and indeed no wonder since such a Winter Sun's Love can produce none of the pleasant Fruit of Marriage delights when the Days civilities between them are very Faint and the Night Embraces very Cold for these Matches of meer Conveniency that are made up only for great sums of Mony or meer fanciful beauty no sooner that the Wives beauty is gone or the Husbands Mony spent they being the only Cement that fastned a common civility between them but the unbeautiful Wife appears disagreeable to her Husband And the Monyless Husband seems contemptible to the Wife and both Husband and Wife become not only unpleasing but despisable the one to the other There was an Italian that writ a great Book in praise of good Wives and concluded there was but one good Wife in all the world and said that was enough for all since every Husband that truly lov'd his Wife might fancy 't was her but by the Italians leave tho one good Wife that is trusted abroad is more by one than is in all Italy for no Husband in that Jealous Country will venture on the desperate Experiment of trusting his Wife abroad in Mens Company to try whether she be vertuous or not much of the Wives Chastity there depending on their Husbands strict watchfulness over them the Italians esteeming it a most excellent and Sovereign Antidote to hinder their Wives from becoming kind to Men is to prevent Mens being able to come to be kind to their Wives for every Italian carries still about him this old English Proverb That 't is the occasion makes the Thief nay and observes it with more reverence and punctuality than all the Proverbs of Solomon together But in England there are many vertuous Wives that go where they will and keep what Mens company they please but this great trust of free liberty is not convenient to be extended to all Women since sometimes Husbands by it shew more confidence in their Wives than discretion in themselves and as too much liberty spoils some Wives so a strict watchful Jealousie makes many Wives worse than they would be by believing them worse than they truly are for doubtless many Husbands make their Wives dishonest by mistrusting them for that breeds anger and hatred and they often create revenge which some hot Womanish spirits will act upon any account tho they themselves are the greatest sufferers by it I esteem Jealousie to be a most ridiculous folly not only because Jealous Men eagerly seek what they highly dread to find but if a Man had more Eyes than Argos yet as Argos was he may be deceiv'd by a simple Woman for if a Woman will but put on the wickedness of the Devil she will not fail being furnished with the subtilty of the Serpent And therefore it often happens that great and wise Statesmen in the Politicks of Marriage who trust in their Wives vertuous words great modesty and strict outward behaviour may be deceiv'd for unvertuous thoughts and designs are usually disguised and set out in finer expressions than plain honest dealing and those commonly promise most that mean to perform least because they intend to pay in no other Coin than bare words and false assurances and therefore none ought to wonder if great Politicians as well as others are now and then deceiv'd in their Wives vertue We read that Sampson with all his Strength tho he could not be out-witted by all the Philistines was over-reached by the subtilty of a Woman A strict seeming outward modesty is not still an infallible sign of a Wives true inward Vertue since 't is not extraordinary to see a Woman look like a Saint
experience tells us there 's only Labour Infirmity and Sorrow young Husbands and old Wives being but meer names things of form not use only made to torment one another Living in one House but Lying in two Beds for the old Wife would have what the young Husband will not give and the old Wife cannot give what the young Husband would have in short a bad Wife at Land is like a Storm at Sea which because a Man is so unhappy to be engaged in and cannot be rid of it must be suffer'd out with patience And so I have done with old Wives for I am certain the Reader must be weary of them as well as I am sure the Writer is and therefore I will leave this extream of old Age and treat on that of young beauty and the folly of them that Marry meerly for it and here set you down in a few Lines the common degrees usual accesses and woful events of such hot rash hasty meer beauty Marriages as are now in fashion among many of our young Gallants who choose Wives as the silly Indians do our Merchants Tynsel and Bawbles who value their real worth only by their glittering show The first steps and degrees of a young Gallants growing love and fancy to his Mistris are generally these first he likes the Woman as we say in a Lump or by whole-sale then he admires her beauties apart courts her person loves her humor thinks all she says is witty and all she does is graceful and becoming and all her actions agreeable and excellent though possibly not one of them are so for you must know that beauty in Love is like Charity in Religion it covereth a multitude of faults Then he presents his heart and she becomes the sole Mistris of it and as his passion increases so he fancies her beauty does till at last he believes the scorching flames of her beauty to be more insupportable than a Midsummers Sun in its full meridian heat and strength and therefore resolves to follow S. Paul's advice 'T is better to Marry than Burn but then pray take this Caution with you that tho of two evils 't is best to choose the least yet that argues neither to be good as indeed it was not when S. Paul first spoke those words and in some sense may not be so now yet however our fierce Lovers heart being all a fire his mind thereby grows restless and as very much out of order as his reason if a Man in Love has any for to say a passionate Lover that has lost his heart and can yet keep his reason is the greatest of follies next to that of being so in Love But since our Amorous Gallant is so furiously smitten rather than not quench the Amorous scorching flames of his lustful passion she resolving not to admit him to her Bed in any other shape than that of a Husband not confiding at all in his Vows of speedily Marrying her possibly because she had tried anothers word before and he broke it and deceiv'd her and therefore she resolv'd not to be cozened so a second time by a second Tryal our hot Politick Lover to enjoy the momentary delight of embracing her beauty does with much desperatness and little consideration cast himself down that dangerous Precipice of Matrimony and long-liv'd trouble of a Wife tho he buy her at the dearest rate of Purchasing and it may be worse sort of sooling an ill Marriage a very sad bottom to Insure the content and happiness of a Mans life upon since he who only Trades to get the Merchandise of beauty may become a sad looser tho he gets his whole Adventure since such a sort of Matrimony does usually bring the Husband and often the Wife Springs of misery and inconveniencies but seldom so much as any drops of the Oyl of pure gladness and true satisfaction And indeed one of the great reasons why Men that Marry for mere beauty are commonly so unhappy in their Choice is That as their Mistrisses beauty is but a mixture of flashy and glaring colours so is in a manner their reason for not considering that beauty Love is but like Gunpowder which as it flames at the first Spark so it sets forth all its strength and fierceness at its first firing and then soon expires into meer smoak and air The first falling in Love of an amorous Man being just like the first surprize of Anger in a Cholerick Person it runs on so violently as it stays not to attend reason nor consult discretion or conveniency and so strips it self of true understanding and therefore assoon as such a Husband has cloy'd his sensual Appetite on that surfeiting Dish of a meer beauty Marriage his stomack being used to feast on sweet variety longs for other food and then first Love grows indifferent his passion soon cools his eager fiery fancy grows quickly dull and his mind suddenly changes so that he presently forms a new desire or passion of love and loaths his former beauty Companion as the most irksom deformity and she whom he was so lately fond of as the most pleasing Charm and Converse of his life who was a kind of Elixir salutis to his very heart and soul 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 herin 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 Howk 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 see mingly 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 EIGHTH DISCOURSE Against Maids Marrying for meer Love or only to please their Parents Inclinations tho' 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 Marriages is so founded on these two great Pillars that without them Marriage-content can never flourish much or last long for a good sufficient Estate of Land is as necessary to buy rich Clothes and maintain a handsom plentiful way of Living as the Foundation under the Ground is to support the fine Rooms above it Beauty is a fine Flower but it must soon fade and a young Womans Love fancy may often change but can never long hold but a good Estate may continue longer than you can love or live and last after you are dead to your Childrens Children to the worlds end but a meer naked Love-match is at very most but a Tenant for Life and usually not near so long a good Estate can keep you in sickness and in health but a Love fastned on meer beauty or fancy never can for such a fancy-Love still fadeth away with the beauty that occasions it since assoon as the flower of beauty begins to wither at the top the admirers Love begins to die at the root Yet indeed I cannot think it very strange that young Maids should be deluded with the delightful thoughts of pleasing and satisfying their present beloved fancy of enjoying the Person of their inclinations since in most young Maids their fancy makes their Reason and not their Reason governs their Fancy and therefore 't is not to be wonder'd that they should esteem it reasonable that there is great happiness and that there will be long content in such meer and bare love Marriages because they never tried the sad experiment of such a rash hasty Marriage and therefore their want of experience may well serve for some kind of excuse to moderate their want of Consideration but after a dear bought Tryal too many of them find by woful
experience that a Marriage Love built on bare beauty or meer fancy which are much alike can never stem the Tyde of the troubles of disappointments and inconveniences the usual Issue of want that commonly attend such hot and hasty Love-Marriages since they cannot fancy so well of it as they will find ill in it yet there 's so great a Charm in this thing call'd a Husband Maids representing the Man as they would have him without considering what he really is as poor silly Maids dance about him as merrily as they do a Maypole on a Summers day and one Sisters sad and unhappy Marriage will not serve the other for a Caution and Warning against it because she fancies her wit is quicker her humor better her beauty greater and her person more taking so easily young Maids believe what they desire and therefore doubts not but her Fate will be kinder and her Husband better than her Sisters but 't is more than an even Lay she will soon after her Marriage experimentally find she had more faith in believing her good fortune than she had reason for depending on it since she had on that account more danger to fear than happiness to hope for or at least to rely on Thus such Marriages are to most young Maids like the forbidden Tree in the midst of Paradise pleasant to the Amorous Eye and therefore they will be tasting of it tho they are almost sure to be ever after miserable by it by their abandoning and ever after losing their great Virgin prerogative the Apostle Paul ascribes them of being exempt from the troubles of pleasing their Husbands and being in subjection to them And sure none that 's Master of common reason can deny but a Virgins life is much happier because more innocent than any other and as 't is much nearer the blessed state of Innocency in this World so also 't is much more secure as to the felicity of the next especially in this one particular That 't is much easier for a Virgin to keep her self vertuously Chast than either a Married Woman or Widow because both natural reason and common experience teaches us this plain Philosophy that 't is much harder to abstain from a pleasure one has often tasted than 't is to live without a delight one has never enjoy'd it being such a certainty as none can deny that 't is less difficult to keep ripe Fruit that 's fair and sound and was never touch'd than 't is to keep any such after they have been so Therefore in a word you Virgins that are so much in the State of happy freedom as not to be yoak'd in such a sort of Marriage and to the pinching troubles of want for fancy can only feed the mind not the body and possibly to the sottish humors and impertinent follies of a jealous Husband for want is apt still to create jealousie I say if you Virgins truly desire to continue in your freedom and happy Life never allow Men to become your Masters by swearing they are your humble servants and by calling you their Queens make you their Subjects for by Marriage you make your Servant your Master and from being Mistris of your self you become little better than a Slave to your Husband Therefore as an Antidote against this misery I shall advise all young Virgins to carry still this Memorandum in their minds That tho beauty is still taking yet 't is never lasting sweet but frail and that all Husbands love Sovereignty much but few own beauty long especially in the domestick face of a Wife And because 't is great pity these sort of unhappy Marrying Maids should have no companions to solace them in their fad penitential state of Mourning give me leave to introduce some Married Women into their dismal Society for as many Maids make themselves miserable by Marrying for meer Love so many are also made unfortunate in Marrying meerly to please their Parents not at all to satisfie themselves for really most Parents make it more their concern to match Fortunes than Children or to suit inclinations or ages when 't is but a kind of Reversing Nature it self it being as feasible to unite two contraries and make Fire and Water agree and May and January meet as by the Magick of Matrimony to make a very old Man and a very young Woman to be but one flesh and temper for youthful beauty to the mind is as cold old Age to the body Heat penitrates the pores of the body easily because they expatiate themselves to receive it but when Cold approaches and attacks it presently it closes as being contrary and averse to it Yet many Parents think to deal with their Childrens Marriages as they do with their Fruit-Trees and think they can Graft humors and inclinations between Husband and Wife as they Graft different kinds of Fruits on one another and by their Grafting and binding them together they make their differing Natures to become but one by Marriage but upon serious Consideration which does not always attend Marriage they will soon find that the Minister can only joyn their hands but 't is the free-will offering of the heart that can only unite and Graft their affections together and this free-will 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
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 enjoy comfort of true devotion and felicity upon earth as an earnest of more blessed comforts and happiness they do expect in the other World And who by leading such a constant religious and unmarried Life the world must plainly see that such Widows have no particular fondness for any Man in the world since their dear Husbands are out of it and that they do still shew a constant affection real esteem and memory of their Husbands vertues and reputation and by a particular kindness continued to all their Husbands Relations and Friends as much as if they had been now actually living and could be made sensible of the effects of their good or ill nature towards them I say such a vertuous and discreet carriage in Widows is a most clear demonstration that Loves do not expire with their Husbands Lives and certainly such an affection must be more real and less by assed as to all appearances than the love of any living Wife can possible be since that may only look counterfeit and be disguised by wearing a Mask of self-interest or design rather than of true affection or value and may be reckoned on the account of living in good esteem or reputation as to the world or be counterfeited for an outward seeming kindness to her Husband tho she has no real inward one in order to live at peace and quiet at home both for her Childrens good and for her own and families ease But a Widow that continues as I have said consonant kindness to her Husbands memory and Relations and lives in the state of a private and religious widowhood such a one can expect no return or hope for any praise or advantage but from the just commendation of her vertue while she lives or
indeed the more certain comfort and assurance of her eternal happiness when she comes to die But mortifying Discourses of this nature I am sure must be far from making any agreeable musick to the fine young Widows but it may be sound harsh and unpleasant as well as useless and unliking many of the fine gay young Widows making the day of their Husbands death the joyful Birthday of their own freedom And there are few of these brisk witty sort of Widows that are not so great Philosophers in the Politicks of Marriage and so perfectly read in all parts of Scripture tending to that point as to be wisely able to extract out of it the vertue of Patience and to possess it in so high a degree and great measure as to be able to raise to themselves satisfactory Arguments of all sizes degrees and qualities whatsoever to arm themselves against the loss of a Husband of any kind be he good or bad poor or rich so as to render his death at least easie if not pleasing by arguing and reasoning with themselves after this manner If my Husband was good and vertuous and made a holy end suitable to his religious life sure I ought not to mourn for it but rejoyce at it that he is gone to Heaven and that I have in a manner half my self there before-hand and therefore it must argue want of Charity kindness and good nature to lament and mourn for his happiness in living and dying so well If my Husband was wicked lewd and prophane I have a double reason to rejoyce for his death first that the world is rid of so bad a Man and I of so ill a Husband and am no more oblig'd to lie every night with so much wickedness in my bosom and that we are now no more one flesh who were so far from being of one mind and humor and I have also this second means of extracting this heavenly advantage by it that having experimented the slavish misery of serving the Creature I am now or at least ought to be the more ready and willing to dedicate all my remnant of Life only to the service of my Creator whose service is still perfect freedom and everlasting felicity If my Husband was poor and needy I have reason to be glad he is intirely delivered from the great misery of want and that his poverty is dead and buried with him for none ever feels want in the Grave But if my Husband died Rich I have great reason to rejoyce that he has left me so and has given me by his death what he denied me all his life the incontroulable Treasure of his Wealth and that I have now the range of the whole Kingdom to ramble over and spend it after what kind of manner and with what sort of Company as I fancy most and love best and by being a Widow I am become the perfect Empress of my own Will instead of being confin'd at home a Subject to my Husbands and sure none can relish with more gusto the ease and liberty and the many pleasures of freedom than she that 's newly deliver'd from the bondage of a Marriage confinement and therefore what Seneca said of Vertue that there 's no Passion or Affliction in the World that Vertue has not a Remedy for The same may be said in reference to most young Widows love to their Husbands let their passionate kindness for them be seemingly never so great whilst they live yet they will be sure to find Remedies for their overmuch mourning for their death And therefore I shall advise Husbands never to Antidate their trouble by fearing that their death will produce a long sadness in their Wives at the common rate marriage-Marriage-Love now goes there 's no great fear of it since in most Wives their good Jointure-Rents outweigh their Love-sighs or at least Counterpoise all their formal Mourning for there is really so little pure Love in many of our Marriages now adays as Husband and Wifes Love is but of the same nature of that of great Sovereign Princes whose Love is but meer Interest and a Husbands death to many of our Wives is become as Repentance for Sin which cannot come so soon or late but it still brings Comfort with it And now lest you may take my speaking against Widows Marrying to be but a kind of raillying Discourse fit only to entertain but not to convince and that my reasons against Widows Marrying are but meer Romantick pleasant to be read but needless to be believ'd I will wave my own weak reasonings and quote you some Scripture ones that seem not to favour Widows Marrying but rather the contrary to continue as they are and for their encouragement to it propounds to them great advantages by it which are these The first is out of the Old Testament Lev. 22.13 If a Priests Daughter be Married she must not eat of the Offerings of holy Things but if the Priests Daughter be a Widow she may eat as in her Youth that is as if she had been never Married and was a Maid which was a priviledge Women had by living Widows under the Mosaick Law and which would not have it seems been granted had she been made unclean by a second Marriage And S. Paul speaking of the happiness and advantages Virgins have over Married Women gives this as one of his principal reasons that they live free and exempt from the cares of observing and pleasing their Husbands and being in subjection to them And sure Widows enjoy at least as much if not more on this account than Virgins can for doubtless it must be a far greater degree of pleasure and satisfaction to those that have cast off the Yoke of an ill Marriage than it can be to those that never wore it as a sick Man that recovers his health must needs enjoy more pleasure by it than another can in his health that was never sick and really in my opinion the Penance of an ill Marriage ought to be the best Remedy to make a Widow well savour the happiness of an unmarried life and the most perswasive Argument to make her continue so I shall further observe that the same Apostle in his first Epistle to Timothy chap. 5. vers 5. Seems to divide Widows into two sorts the good and the bad the good he Characterises with the Title of being Widows indeed and gives us this sign to know them by She that trusteth in God and continueth in Prayers and Supplications night and day This is the holy Mark you may know a godly Widow by and this is the Widow that the Apostle calls a Widow indeed and orders Timothy to pay them great honour as such I am sure these are not at all a kin to the race of proud brisk ranting Widows that are in and about London who abstain not from Marriage upon the account of any retired religious Inclinations or upon any want of desires to Marry for most of these Widows desire
the Poet praise and the Players mony rather than to teach the hearers vertue And so of Romances what are they other than a pleasant ingenious mixture of fiction made up in a large Volume of extraordinary Adventures and witty well composed fancies rarely set out and richly adorn'd with pure smooth Romantick Language of strange things done and fierce love made by Knights Errants in the Air where the Lovers perform a thousand Miracles in Fights and single Combats killing Men without ever hurting them or so much as drawing their Sword towards it for all such relations are writ to the height of Invention no matter if it surpasses all possibility of performance for those niceties are needless in Romances and say all the fine things imaginable without speaking aword and follow their Mistrisses over many Kingdoms without so much as stirring one step after them so that I may truly enough say that a Romance is a Monster composed of great contrarieties and high falsities In short when you have once read over a Romance tho it be never so good and pleasant yet 't is but a kind of dull entertainment to read it a second time a Romance being like a Stratagem of War never to be used well but once And yet these Plays and Romances are so many in number and so highly in esteem with our vain young Ladies and fine Sparkish Gallants as among many of them they make it the main imployment of their Study and the Library of their Books except perhaps an old Practice of Piety of the family all mouldy through long keeping and never using being the great Treasury of their Wit and the chief subject of their Discourses Indeed the vain flashy Wit of Plays and Romances is but like sweet Flowers or a fine delightful Voice they can only for a little time recreate and refresh the Senses but can never benefit the Soul or satisfie the necessities of the Body which can never be fully fed either by the Ears or Eyes And as the light of the Sun tho it be of a most excellent general influence yet alone could produce nothing so a general Jeering wit of it self can never bring forth any thing to strengthen the judgment or improve the understanding because it will not make use of the good Guides of Vertue Prudence Sobriety and Piety to direct it on what Subject it may fall on on what occasion it should be imploy'd in and by what degrees and measures it ought to move with fitting considerations of the persons time and place and such Wits as will not observe these Rules their drolling Wit will work like new Wine in old Bottles which will be sure to burst and flie about to the prejudice of themselves as well as others And now if the vain Ladies will but give themselves the trouble to observe carefully one of these common pretenders to rallying wit for all jeering wits are but pretenders for if they had good wit they would never be jeerers you will find such a one chiefly made up of those four Elements in composition viz. Extravagancy and Dissimulation Cowardise and Indiscretion all which he practises to every point of the Compass guiding all his rambling talk by them which is commonly so rude and abusive as it causes all modest and vertuous persons to shun and detest the company and acquaintance for the hearts and tongues of such Men like ill Neighbours hardly ever meet in Unity and Communion one with another they living in their bodies as their eyes do in their heads which tho still very near yet never see one another in short your Jeerers commonly want justice and consideration either to speak what they think or to think of what they speak shooting their words at meer random and so will be sure to have their share in the Proverb That a fools bolt is soon shot for their Tongue can only abuse themselves not others They hate a quiet setled Life being never at rest but whilst they are rambling from one Company to another and never so well as when in motion like some froward Infants that are never at quiet longer than they are Rock'd in the Cradle and assoon as that is at rest they are not And now I have nam'd a Cradle I cannot but fancy that many of these ignorant pretenders to wit got a knock in their Cradle which has hindered their Brains and consequently their Tongues from being well setled ever since And as one may rationally enough conclude of the common Habit and Dress of a Nation by only seeing one just come out of it that lived long in it so I fancy I may here venture to make a short description of the common nature of most of these drolling abusive Wits by here making a Just representation and giving you a true Picture of one of them tho in little A common publick pretender to Jeer and abuse others with his rallying Wit is usually one who makes it his great delight and chief business to inquire and prie into others Mens words and actions and to make his venomous Reflections on them he only passing through their Discourses as a Spie does an Enemies Country with a mischievous design to observe and return Intelligence of the defects and weakness in it and then to be sure to attack those weaker parts with his sharp abuses for if a Man has never so many vertues and has but one vice he will be sure to skip them all to fall foul on that one as flies leave the whole body to fasten on the least gawl'd patch for such abusive Wits are like Surgeons who live by others hurts and have nothing to do with those parts that are sound A censorious scoffing Wit is ordinarily composed and made up of such a kind of Stuff as Fire-ships are which serve for no other use and are built and kept for no other purpose than to do mischief the only good in them consists in doing harm so the spirit and quintessence of these Mens ill temper'd venom lies chiefly in abusiveness turning all their Notes to the same Tune that the Philistins did Samsons words only to raise and spend their mirth on though to the prejudice of their dearest Friends and nearest Relations which they had rather lose than their Jest A common Talkative raillier ought by his Trade to be so couragiously stout or rather fool hardy as not to fear jeering every one and yet indeed the Generality of them are so tame and Cowardly for a generous mind scorns such a base and mean imployment as to endure as he well deserves the slights and contempts of all he plays upon for tho he makes War against the whole Kingdom with his Tongue yet he dares not fight with one Man in it with his Sword and indeed for this he may well pretend some reason which I am sure he cannot for Jeering all Men first because a Sword is much sharper and can wound far deeper than his Tongue and next if he should
those rare things I am thinking said he what a World of things are here I do not want for what 's more than we use is more than we need I am confident if one of our fine London Ladies had been shewn that sight and asked that question her answer had been what a World of things I want that are not here which much justifies a Writers saying that the ancient Latins called Womens Wardrobe Mundus a World yet I find in the Map of Womens ornamental Dresses reckoned by the Prophet Isaiah the sum total of them there named to be but twenty one which clearly shews the vast difference between the twenty one years of Men and the twenty one Dresses of Women for by the Law of our Kingdoms all Mens years under one and twenty are not allow'd to reach discretion but our Prophet seems here to say that by the Law of God all Womens Dresses that amount to much more that pass beyond twenty one must exceed all discretion for certainly they must be too many for Women to wear whom God declares too many for him to like And tho without any dispute 't is a sin to doubt that those ornamental Dresses which the Creator thinks too many no Woman Creature but ought to esteem more than enough yet so extravagant and phantastical are many of our fine Ladies and Gallants as they are so far from esteeming that Number sufficient as they send almost every week to Paris for such supplies of new fashion Dresses as one might as soon Climb up to the Top of all Numbers as to hope to reckon the numberless variety of Womens Dresses there belonging much more Rigging to set out a young Lady than a Man of War so hard 't is to cast up the variety of parts as now adays belong to compleat a great Modish Ladies Dress and Equipage And therefore I fancy an old Philosopher gave both a good Reason and true Character of the fashion of rich Dresses That 't was the deadly catching Disease of Women and the foolish passion of men Indeed I find no reason to believe any of these kind of Ladies are knowing in Philosophy because they cannot be lovers of Wisdom that are haters of Discretion which makes a main part of it But I have a great deal of reason to believe that they are knowing in Satans Arithmatick and too well understand sinful Subtraction and vain Multiplication since we find so many of them can Subtract the Ten Commandments to the scarce keeping of one and multiply the twenty one ornamental Dresses to the using of hundreds And the worst of it is that not one of these twenty one Dresses are a kin to those S. Peter advised the Women of his time to wear which was not putting on Gold or curling Hair or what is Corruptible but the Ornaments of a meek and quièt Spirit 1 Pet. 3.3 4. which exactly suits the true beauty of Religion which the Apostle says is of great price in the sight of God for that will render Women of so pious a Temper as tho the youthful gaiety of their human Nature may make them think of the vain dresses of the times yet their sanctified minds will never let them forget to be true followers of the state of Eternity Indeed 't is a hard measuring Cast whether their variety of vain extravagant Dresses deserves more Mens sober pity or contempt most I am sure are fitter for either than my description yet I must be Charitable to them tho they are far from being so to themselves as to wish that these our fine young modish Ladies and their Gallants would keep more Commandments and use fewer Dresses that they might thereby lessen their own particular vanities and moderate the general English out-cry against French fashions which many think have not only over-run but near destroyed all our noble ancient great way of Living and grave kinds of sober Dresses Sure if our fine young Ladies and great Modists would but a little seriously reflect of what most of their fine Clothes are made they would not be so proud to glory in what they really ought to be asham'd off for the fine Silks we wear are but the workings of poor little Worms and our finest Cloth is made of the Wooll of Sheep so that our covering was but that of Beasts till our pride and vanity robb'd them of it And indeed our great adored Mistris Mony which all of all sorts receive with so great joy and entertain with so high delight as the only true happy and undecaying Mistris in this World for all Love her passionatly at once and what 's yet stranger than all both Sexes are still constant in their eager love and great fondness of her nay Solomon had so great an esteem and value for Money as he said it answered all things yet if we truly look into its Extraction we shall find it as very mean as that of our Clothes for as Seneca well observes That Gold and Silver were still mixt and never kept better Company than Earth and Dust till avarice and ambition raised and parted them and so they became our Masters as well as Mistrisses O how strangely is Apparel Metamorphosed We read in Genesis that it was first used to hide our Shame but now 't is worn to shew our Pride and God knows if we truly consider we are very far from having any reason to boast of our Apparel since 't is but the cover of Shame and Sin and therefore we ought to wear it but as deep mourning for the great loss of our dear friend Innocency Nor can any deny but that Mourning is a Garment fitter according to the strictest niceties of our very present Modes to denote true sadness than set out vain glory to manifest grief than express joy yet so evil is our present Age as many of the wicked brood of elder Brothers who as one said pray for their Fathers lives but not their living plainly shew at their Fathers death in what a manner they are concern'd for his loss not theirs by their chearful Countenance and Gay Lives which clearly Proclaim that they Mourned rather because their Fathers lived so long than died so soon and so make their long funeral Cloaks which usually weigh heavier on their Backs than the cause of them on their Hearts rather a Habit of great Joy than true Mourning But real Mourning hath nothing to do with our French Dresses therefore this discourse shall have no more to do with it and I will now return to my Subject and mind you that the French have brought into England so many strange Fashions as 't is to be feared our young fry of Nobility and Gentry will esteem piety and vertue as things quite out of fashion and use and indeed their Lives cannot be more extravagant and vain than their Apparel if I can properly say they have any left Certainly if Sir John Suckling had lived to these times he might well have added to
's nothing so wonderful in all that glory as that any one should so much admire it having neither River Wood good Land or pleasant Prospect about it being all round about close besieg'd by great coarse and ragged Hills which cannot add much lustre and glory to the Situation of any place of such vast Expence and Magnificence so as to be Celebrated by some as one of the Wonders of the World We read in History that Alexander the Great expressed much trouble that he had no more Kingdoms left him to Conquer I am sure the French King needs no cause of trouble for want of more Hills to Conquer and site about his Palace of Versaillies as long as he lives tho he had more Men and Mony to employ about levelling them than now he has Indeed such a Royal Building of Magnificence well deserved a most pleasant and Stately Situation but it seems that King thought it more noble better becoming his greatness to make one by the expence of Art than to be beholden to one of Natures free bounty that the World might know he scorn'd so mean an offer whilst he has Armies that can level Mountains as plain as he pleases and Mony to mount Rivers as high as he desires And indeed if we range over not only France and Turky but all the whole World we shall find that Praise is the Butt all Shoot at tho few hit the Mark for if we but look narrowly into Praises and consider the Actions as well as the Persons they are commonly great Flatterers and the breath of such Praises is but like a Rain-bow which is no other than a meer seeming Collection of many bright Colours without any true substance or long duration one day discovering the folly of the other and a few days will shew you your own end and with it the vanity of them all Therefore if the young Ladies could but perswade themselves to think seriously of the little reality there is in the Praises Men present them and the vain pastimes the World deludes them with both Women and Men will find that most of their delights are vain and despicable for the possession of much beauty breeds great pride and high concern and the decay of it creates in such as much discontent and envy at what they then lose and afterwards see others enjoy And so 't is the same with many of Mens Worldly delights which soon become uneasie to the Mind and often destructive to the Body for a debauch of drinking makes most sick and out of order after it and the enjoyment of handsom ill Women causes usually foul Pocky Diseases such French punishment suiting well with such an English transgression for the fondness of an unvertuous Love placed on an unchast Womans beauty is like the Fire of a Candle which lasts no longer than it flames and Candle like assoon as its flame is consum'd it presently expires in a stinking snuff So such a debauch'd Love I should have said Lust commonly ends with the odious detesting thoughts of such a foul and lustful passion which makes him then loath the sinner as he ought still the sin and himself for having committed the folly And if any one of these Venus Courtiers falls in Love with a truly vertuous Beauty hopes to gain his base unchast desires of her by fierce Courtship great adoration large offers of Presents all these thick larded with the common false Oaths of the praises of her great beauty and his great and constant Love the Lingua franca of all Gallants which all still swear to observe but few ever design to perform and therefore handsom Ladies never ought to Credit for surely he that speaks what he does not believe none ought to believe what he speaks but is bound in Conscience and Honour to slight his Courtship and scorn his Offers or else she must do much worse slight her self and reputation too 'T is a Proverbial saying that Love is blind I am sure such a sort of Lover is for he will not see the unjust desires he makes to her but only minds the unkind returns she makes to him without ever considering that they spring from her Love to Vertue and a good Reputation but vainly fancies 't is her Love to some happy Lover that 's in her favour and keeps him out which disquiets and torments his Amorous mind with a fierce Jealousie which Solomon calls the Rage of Love and tho young Men are more naturally enflam'd with eager desires in the pursuit of beauty than old Men are for Age to Love is like Water to Wine the more quantity of Water the less strength in the Wine but t is most certain old Men are as able Courtiers and Lovers of Wealth as any young Men can possibly be Riches being like the Sun agreeable and comfortable to all and indeed nothing is more common than to see Covetousness to grow in most with their Age and the reason of it in my Opinion is that all other youthful sprightly delights but that of gaining Wealth decreases as Age increases but the pleasure of Mony all Men can keep as the Heathen do their Gods they adore under Lock and Key But yet this so adored beauty Riches carries its troubles as well as delights for there 's great labour in procuring Wealth trouble in defending and preserving it and also great Cares in the well spending it whilst one lives and well disposing of it when we die and so if we look over and search into most Worldly pleasures and vanities we shall find them as contrary to the true repose of this life as they are to the felicities of the next Certainly there is some great Charm in this thing called Praise that tickles the ear inflames the heart raises the spirits enlivens the resolution deludes the reason flatters the hopes and deceives the sight by giving a false gloss and making a counterfeit representation of things for the Bait of Praises for which both Men and Women so strive and eagerly pursue is still painted and set out in the brightest and most oriental charming Colours that are imaginable to allure our eyes inflame our hearts and enliven our ambition But the Hook that is hid in this Bait that is the great dangers hardships and thousands of vexatious disappointments that one must necessarily meet and run thorow in the pursuit of this Idol folly is so obscure artificially drawn as 't is not commonly seen but very ordinarily felt by many in some to their loss of Life and to others of their greatest satisfactions in it And now to put my last finishing Touch to this Picture of Praise the Mistris and Darling of the whole World methinks we ought not to wonder that this adored beauty is so Coy in her Carriage and so difficult to be gain'd if we do but reflect tho in a wholesail manner the sad oversights great mistakes and blind pursuits of its followers of whom I shall only
among many of the fine Ladies so richly gilt finely painted and splendedly set out as they are so far from appearing deformed as they seem beautiful and taking to most I mean the inconsidering young Men of the Town Really the Air of London is so infected with Pride Vanity and Idleness that 't is hard for one of you young Ladies to appear in young Mens Company but you must have your Ears furr'd with Oaths and Profaneness or else your person Complemented with vain Romantick Courtship which is not exactly applied and fitted for any one Woman but for all handsom Women in general like false flattering Looking Glasses which Complements not only one but every one that looks on them not staying for a great beauty but still flattering the first comer But Piety and Vertue is still like a pure wholesom Air a comfort to all and an Infection to none and is so far from dislodging or overcasting the lightsomness of any lawful pleasures as it clears and dissipates any dark Clouds of fears that may hang over them for 't is most certain Piety and Beauty Recreation and Devotion may live peaceably together and yield a mutual aid and comfort to one another Indeed if you Ladies would but use to mix Piety with your pastimes you would soon come to make a pastime of Piety and then instead of dividing the hours for vain London pleasures you would make them so many Memorandums of the eflux of time to put you in mind of the duties of Mortality and of the hourly advances you make towards it which requires hourly preparations for it for the same hours serve as well to tell you of your approaches to Death as to divide your pleasures in Life as the same Figures in your Watch serve to tell the hours of the night as well as those of the day Then Ladies you will find that time laid out in Prayer and Devotion is not spending but gaining time and if you will but seriously reflect and heartily practise this great Truth you will soon find that Piety is as to advancing of worldly delights and pastimes but as Ballast to a Ship which does not hinder but only regulate its motion not flackning but steddying its Sayling A fine Lady whose mind is only fraighted with the Airy Cargo of pride and vanity can never steer steddy in her heavenly Course but is still tossed from one side of folly to another extremity of vanity for the want of the true blessed Ballast of godliness which will Calm and dispossess your mind of all modish vanities and irregularities and will allay all kinds of immoderate heats raised by the Feaverish distempers of Womanish Passions and will fix your affection on what is immovable and perpetual and will soon cause you to abandon the vain empty undurable pastimes of London for the true endless felicity of Heaven and this is a Heaven upon Earth To love God and keep his Commandments for then you will truly love Vertue and constantly practise Piety and only delight in the beauty of holiness which as it transcends much so it differs far from all Earthly love for that 's seldom or never enjoyed with true quietness long satisfaction or just and equal returns for the most passionate Love we can fancy as a Mistris to her Gallant or a Gallant to his Mistris is commonly of so fickle volatile and inconstant a nature as if a Woman thinks her Gallant loves any other Woman she grows Jealous and if he fancies his Mistris loves another Man as 't is ten to one she does he becomes inrag'd for as Solomon says Prov. 6.34 Jealousie is the rage of a Man here on Earth tho most are Lovers yet many are false ones but in Heaven all are Lovers and are true ones since in your Heavenly Love your act of loving is the certain fruition of your Love a Woman by loving Vertue it becomes hers but by loving a Gallant you become his for she that is under a Gallants command cannot truly say she is under her own In a word all the Riches and Pleasures imaginable that you abandon for the love of God you enjoy them all in loving God above them all And you may be certain Ladies if you can but thus love God as you ought you must despise the World as you should and then you will take more true delight in the title of a good Christian than you did ever before in the vain praise of a great beauty and slight this in comparison of that for a handsom Woman like the Sun is to be esteemed more for her Vertue than Splendor Beauty is but a fine outside Skin but true Godliness is all glorious within and will bestow on you more Celestial beauty in the other World than all your false Glasses and Gallants falser Tongues can flatter you with in this 3. My next advice to your vain Ladies is when you are putting on your fine rich Gowns which so many of you adorn your selves with every day with so great care high excess and vast expence as well of time as mony which makes many of you by being so over careful in setting out your body to be over careless in looking after your Soul in not allowing it perhaps so much as a clean shift of Repentance once a Sunday I mean a penitent Sigh or Tear in a Week to blow off and wash away your Sins and Vanities which your own corrupt Natures and idle Company breeds in you every day Therefore when you are putting on your new rich Gowns if you could but remember at the same time to Lace about your hearts this Memorandum of the Prophet That Worms are breeding under your Covering doubtless such mortifying reflexions would humble your pride and abate your vanity and not only hinder you from leading such vain Lives but wearing such rich Clothes which though they may exactly suit with the Rules of the Modists yet I am sure 't is quite contrary to the Precepts of the Apostle who orders Women not to adorn themselves with rich but modest Apparel as if rich Apparel was not modest nor to use painful Dresses which is an excess of folly of another kind by squeezing your selves into a fine slender shape by pinching in and thereby tormenting of your bodies by lasing your selves so streight to take Mens sight as you can hardly take your own breath and if this be not great pride and high folly I confess I know not what is 4. My next advise to the vain Ladies which I am sure is of great use and high advantage in order to their living vertuously and dying religiously is this Not only to shun but totally to banish that familiar companion of your Sex Pride I shall not strive here to dive far into the depth of this vast Ocean of iniquity though all our actions run as naturally to it as Rivers do to the Sea Nor do I here pretend to make a subtile penetration into any hard Conceptions of the
sinful nature and wicked consequences of this common I had almost said Womanish Vice of Pride my design being not to enlarge on it but only to present you with some plain useful advices and directions how to destroy or at least Countermine this raging Sin which must be done by a common practice of humility which if young Women would but consider truly and follow carefully it would soon perswade them to lay aside their Delilah Creature of vanity and to call in a more vertuous acquaintance of humility and make her their bosom friend for Pride is one of the seven Sins Solomon tells us God abominates and Scripture assures you That God still rebuketh the Proud and ever giveth grace to the humble Pride is now turned into a Cancerous humor very apt to grow in all young handsom Womens brests and in most it swells and rankles so as to become noysom not only to humility and piety but indeed to very common Society and 't is easie to observe that many handsom Women whom Nature hath presented with a large proportion of beauty which of it self had been able to render them agreeable and taking to all persons yet many of them do so fully and overcast the glory of it with Pride and self conceitedness as to give it a disagreeable Air and relish to most of its admirers by their too apparent proud affected estimation of it And 't is observable Ladies that such of you as are always ready to place too high a value on your selves are still apt to cast too low an esteem on others and so cause most to undervalue you for your slighting them Whereas the vertue of true humility ascends by the means of descending as Trees mount and flourish upward by rooting and growing downward Pride is a distemper of the mind which most young Ladies are naturally inclined to and easily infected with for the least enflaming their beauty by Praises presently turns to the filthy ulcer of pride which is of such an extraordinary malignant nature as low birth little wit no beauty great want nay very ugliness it self is not a sufficient Cure and Antidote against it Solomon says Want of Bread will not starve Pride and I am sure experience reacheth us that want of beauty will not starve some Womens proud fancies of being handsom tho they have not the least feature of it so over-apt are young Women to believe themselves so that if Men will be so great lyars as to tell them they are beautiful they will be so great Fools as to believe them and rather credit other Mens words than their own Eyes sure Women so blinded ought above all things to beg of our blessed Saviour as the blind Man did in the Gospel Lord grant me my sight that they might clearly come to see themselves and their own folly and ugliness Sure 't would be impossible that handsom Women could so delight in this Devilish sin of Pride if they would but remember that humility is as well a certain improvement of beauty as a constant inhabitant with vertue for humility makes a little beauty appear great but Pride makes a great beauty to appear little the first being taking to all the second odious to every one The more beauty a pious young Lady has the less pride she will shew like a Pyramid that still lessens as it rises and as a Philosopher said He is a brave Man indeed whose wealth honour and power makes the least part of his greatness so that young Lady is a real perfect beauty indeed that makes the handsomness of her face the least pride or concern of her mind so vast a difference there is between the vertue of the Soul and the beauty of the Face as Seneca well observes That Vertue is the only Immortal thing that belongs to Mortality and we may also well observe that the beauty of the Face is the most fading thing that belongs to frailty Methinks our proud Ladies ought to remember the humility of David who though a great King was yet so humble as to stile himself a Worm and no Man but most of our celebrated beauties are so far from the humble thoughts of esteeming themselves Worms and no Women as they are so highly proud and ridiculously foolish that like the Babel projectors they hope to Toure themselves as high as the Heavens for some of them fancy themselves to be Stars of the first Magnitude a kind of Goddesses raised up to the Skie but if you ask me how I can but tell you they were only raised there by the lofty Muse of their own vain imagination and therefore such proud puft up beauties are really but like your School-boys Paper-Kytes which are only mounted into the Skie by the Wind and fall to the ground again assoon as it ceases to blow them up Really if I durst venture to give my free vote as to my opinion of beauty I should tell the Ladies that I think 't is a measuring cast and a disputable Question which is most unsolid and unlasting either the matter of this fine composition called beauty which is in the handsomest Woman but like the fading colour 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
whose mind is truly sanctified will extract uses of vertue out of such extravagant Womens vanities like the Bee that sucks Hony out of all sorts of venomous Herbs and like Fire that turns all things within its compass to its self and such a Ladies holy course of Life will be steady and certain in its progress like the Sun in his daily motion nothing of Storms or changable weather can ever hasten or retard its regular course for a Lady that 's in the holy state of true Mortification her constant Piety will so purifie and draw off her inclinations from all vain pastimes and modish vanities and from those foul dregs of impurity that are the usual attendants of a vain idle London Life that by this Transfiguration of Mind and pious habit of Life her Conversation will be as the Apostle says fixed up in Heaven and we all know that the upper Region of the Air it self will admit of no Storms or Thunder for they are all formed below it And farther that Lady who is so blessed as to have her heart touch'd with this Magnetic vertue of true godliness her thoughts will be elevated to such a heavenly pitch of spiritual vertue and religion as she will despise all the young Gallants fine words deep sighs and languishing looks with all their high Praises and showers of Complements which will work no more on her sanctified Mind than showers of Hail on the tops of well covered Houses which fall off as soon as it falls on without ever touching any of the inward part And whereas our vain Ladies receive the extravagant encomiums and flatteries I might have almost said Adorations of their vain Gallants as the Lawful Issue of their own applauded Merit a truly pious Lady will only hearken to all the Airy Praises young Men ascribe to her beauty to be but the Bastard brood of their own abundant sin and folly and she will make such pious reflections on such young Mens overmuch praises grounded on a sense of her own unworthiness of them as she will not only despise their extravagant speeches but themselves for speaking of them which doubtless cannot but be very acceptable to God the searcher of all hearts who still giveth grace to the humble Therefore Ladies if you really desire true piety and humility I must advise you again and again never to hearken with delight or hear with belief or indeed suffer with patience but shun with diligence young Mens airy praises and Complements nor yet countenance their flatteries for multitude of Praises cannot but perplex young Ladies Minds as many Lights still confound the Sight and therefore when you hear young Men give their Tongues such loose liberties and over large ranges in magnifying your beauty remember such high Complemental expressions are to be trusted no more than the Christian Flag of a Turkish Pyrat which he only hangs out that you might esteem him your friend that thereby he may make you become his Slave Therefore Ladies keep still about you this preservative of your vertue that you look upon on all the vain Gallants that Court you with high Complements and great praises to be but so many Judas's that come to betray you with a kiss and do not believe their Oaths either on the account of what they swear as to your great beauty or their own true Love for really flattery and vain praises are now grown such common Arts among fond Lovers as well as great States-men and Complemental Courtiers as we often meet the truth of their meaning in the contradiction of their words 7. My last concluding advise to the vain modish Ladies is when one of you is curiously beholding and admiring your fine Face in your Glass and find that the great beauty of it raises proud thoughts in your heart which is almost as common among handsom Ladies as 't is for them to look in their Glass which nothing can be more common humble your pride with these mortifying reflections that this very fine Face of yours that you like so much love so well and are so taken with and fond of must unavoidably in a little time become loathsom rottenness stink and corruption turn odious either to be seen or smelt which is as very certain as mortality it self and death you know is not only sure to meet you but your are exposed by a thousand accidents to meet it whilst you are travelling in this Earthly Pilgrimage for the spritely gaiety of your blossom youth can only let you know how long you may possibly live but can give no advance security how long you certainly will therefore young Ladies as well as old Men ought still to march under the safe Conduct of a vertuous Life and not to trust to the temptation of a long Life but to rely only on the blessed security of a good one I shall conclude this Discourse and Book with the good saying of an excellent religious person That the vainest beauty on Earth cannot justly deny this great Truth that beauty is not absolutely necessary to the good of this Life but that Piety is essentially necessary both to the good of this Life and the next too since one may live well without beauty but one can neither live or die well without Piety FINIS