bodies And sure since it cannot be denied but a vertue that overcomes the highest difficulties fiercest inclinations and most youthful passions must needs excel all others then it cannot be in the least doubted but that a young handsom Widow that leads a retir'd strict and unmarried life must needs in that kind surpass all other Women because she practises more the vertue of continence than any of them can I mean as to the outward mark of our knowledge since a Widow that lives in a true conformity to such a strict pious life resembles most and approaches closest to the heavenly one which must needs be the best as coming nearest to perfection for she declines the natural commerce of the body to enjoy the better and Spiritual Contemplation of the Soul. And 't is most certain the more Women keep their thoughts and desires from worldly delights and vanities the more their minds will be fortified against them and the more ready they 'll be to embrace true felicity We read in Scripture that the Womans subjection to the Man was laid on her as a penance and punishment for her disobedience to her God. Truly most of the young Married Sparks of our Age are very active in observing Gods pleasure herein yet not at all on the account of the Almighty's design but the worlds practice which is for such Sparks to make Marriage a punishment to the Woman as much as they can that is as much as some Wives will for serve honour and obey are grown but words of course which all Women must repeat after the Minister at Marriage but few will perform after they are Married and their promise of obedience till death them do part is seldom in their thoughts as long as they live Indeed I have known some young handsom Widows who have lov'd their own Reputation and their Husbands Memory so much as to continue some years in a strict deep Mourning as well in their Life as Dress And I have also known other Widows of the wild brisk London brood that have not so much Complemented their Husbands death as to hold out one year a Widows Life tho contrary to the Custom of the Country and the common Rules of decency and civility And as shewing so little a concern for a Husband is very unbecoming and highly immodest not to speak worse so on the other hand overmuch grief and despair are both imprudent and irreligious But I need not speak much of this overabundant Mourning for a Husband since 't is a distemper of mind very few Widows of our age are inclin'd too and therefore not in danger of being infected with for most Widows can tell us that they are so well read in the brave Roman Story who though they had no other bounds to their aspiring hopes than the Conquest of the whole world yet they still placed their glory and praise as much in suffering well as in doing so saying as they ought not to be overmuch exalted by prosperity so they ought not to be too much depressed or cast down by adversity but to observe the Golden Rule of Mediocrity in both Cases and therefore 't is not ill Wife-like but brave Roman like to suffer all losses with Courage and Patience And 't is from these Considerations that many of our fine young gay brisk Widows say They esteem more the Phylosophers Wit than his Wisdom who being in great affliction and weeping most bitterly for the death of his Wife one of his friends told him his crying could do neither him nor her any good Therefore said the Philosopher I Cry. But this is a kind of doleful Logick that suits ill with the sprightly gaiety of our fine young Widows and therefore it must be needless as well as troublesom to mind them of it it being a very unmodish doctrin to preach to such young Widows that because their Husbands are out of the world therefore they ought to live as if they were not in it and bury themselves alive in a strict solitary retirement which they will tell you savours more of great folly than true wisdom since no Woman by her Matrimonial Vow is engaged to Love her Husband longer than till death them do part and indeed as Wives now go I think 't is very extraordinary to meet one that truly loves her Husband half so long In a word she that gives her Husband a more lasting Love than she promised is generously kind but she that pays him as much as she ingaged for is truly just Next 't is most certain that all extreams are bad and therefore Widows ought to avoid them on both sides either by shewing too little a Concern or too violent a Grief for their Husbands death I know I need not travel your thoughts so far as the East-Indies to shew you the barbarous examples of Womens love to their dead Husbands bodies by sacrificing themselves to the Devil by burning themselves alive soon after their Husbands death we have examples enough in the History of our Neighbouring Princes of their Wives barbarous Cruelty committed against their own Lives for their Husbands loss of theirs but then do not mistake me so as to think I believe there are any such kind of fond foolish Wives in our age as Adymond Queen of Sweedland who when she heard her Husband was kill'd by the Danes said she would soon follow him and presently stabb'd her self I might name you many more of this bloody Nature but surely such kind of Tragical examples are to be look'd upon but as the vile and wicked effects of madness or a devilish despair and not at all the motions of a pious vertuous love since good Wives may shew their kindness without shedding their blood and may mourn heartily without dying Cruelly for such unnatural deaths utterly destroy that great Christian vertue of well regulating their passions And certainly no Widow stands more engaged to her Husbands memory either by the Laws of outward Civility and good manners or by the inward effects of true love and real esteem than to observe those kinds of measures and degrees of mourning for their Husbands which are usual according to the rules of custom and decency which is to live a strict religious and unmarried life for some considerable time or longer as some Women do and among those many who continue so to the end of their days and so are Widows indeed according to S. Pauls phrase and so deserve his character of honour And among those I cannot omit a just commendation of the three most Excellent vertuous Ladies and kind Sisters who live together near London I need not name them because I am sure there are not three Widow Sisters of their high Quality great Vertue and clear Reputation that live together in all England for which as they have the just admiration and praises of all true Lovers of Vertue so I wish all Widows would strive to imitate their religious example that so like them they might
and the Center point where all the Lines of his happiness did meet She in whom he could find no discontent with or content without She whose presence made a Village as agreeable as London and her absence London as doleful as a Village In short this very She whose Company he esteem'd his Heaven upon Earth no sooner was the flower of her fair and youthful beauty worn off but his fickle passion assoon decays and grows languid and this late Soul of his soul and Joy of his heart turns to be the very clog and burden of his life and from all Mistris becomes all Wife that is she falls from the top of all admiration to the depth of meer misery and from an extraordinary charming delight to an ordinary necessary evil called a Wife And such Husbands commonly call such Wives and so do Wives such Husbands the Yoaks of Liberty and the Stocks of Love and all know that neither of them can be easie or pleasing in such a bondage being an enemy and destroyer of sweet variety so that the Husbands love being decay'd with his Wives beauty he grows weary of her she of him and both of one another And as to a young Mans Marrying an old ugly Wife meerly for her Mony all I shall need say of it is that often such young Men fancy such Mony Wives to be of the same Nature of Mony it self whose vertue consists not in keeping of it but in parting with it and so commonly use such Wives accordingly and thus this wild passionate Love or meer Mony Marriages like wild-fire soon devours and consumes it self in its own flame and Torrent like instead of refreshing it destroys and by over-pressing too violently the course and streams of its Waters soon Ebbs and runs it self dry Therefore that Man that will sell his sweet Liberty and enslave himself into Matrimonial Chains meerly to enjoy a Womans beauty sure he does not know or at least does not consider that still the richer the Metal the heavier the Chain and therefore though his Mistris be never so much the admired object of his present fancy and that I should allow her golden Chains to weigh as long light on his mind as she continues beautiful to his sight yet to bind himself to her in a Matrimonial Vow only on the account of her beauty till death them depart on assurance that he shall feast on her beauty as long as he lives is just such a kind of folly as if a young Man that were a great Lover of Sweet-meats should leave all his business imployments and pastimes to bind himself an Apprentice for seven Years to a Confectioner meerly on the account and assurance that during that time he should every day feast himself on them when very common Experience is able to inform him though his confidence be never so great his inclinations never so eager and his stomach never so good yet 't is natural for him to eat so fiercely at first falling on that like a greedy Hawk he soon over-gorges himself with his own Prey and after having taken a full draught of that sensual delight seeing them continually exposed to his sight and prostrate to his will he comes to hate them as much after enjoyment as he courted them before for though the Fire of Love still burns for enjoyment yet enjoyment still quenches if not extinguishes the fire of Love and he grows in a little time so cloy'd as he wants not only appetite to eat them but almost patience to see them Then when t is too late he accuses the unreasonableness of his prefancied delight on which he built his confidence of a lasting pleasure and allows it to be not only a great folly but sin against reason in any Man to believe that his sensitive nature ought to be gratified when it proposes only a bare satisfaction to the Appetite and cannot secure any durable happiness or content to the reason and judgment of mankind And this is really the cause why so many of our young Gallants now adays make Marriage a kind of Paradox in Love for one of these to obtain the Woman he is in Love with turns his Mistris into a Wife and then t is two to one in a little time to get rid of his late beautiful Mistris being shrunk into the shape of a meer Domestick Wife he parts for ever with his late Mistris to get free from his present Wife and note that tho many Mistrisses turn to Wives yet no Wives ever turn to Mistrisses Wife and Mistris being of the same differing nature as Water and Wine 't is common to drink Wine with Water but of Water to make Wine to Drink was never done but once and that by the first Miracle of our Saviour so that in effect they did but seemingly agree really to fall out piece together to fall asunder and Married to get rid of one anothers Company And 't is some of these unfortunate disagreeing Husbands that says the Translator of S. Pauls Epistles hath left out the word well in one of them for where the Apostle says He that gives in Marriage does well it should have been He that gives well in Marriage does well for all know there are more bad Wives than good and sure all believe that S. Paul was too wise to write or think that any Man could do well in Marrying ill so that I am of opinion the sum of the Apostles meaning by saying He that Marries well does well but he that abstains from Marriage does better has some reference to that good plain English saying That next to no Wife a good Wife is best which occasions my pitying the many Husbands that have bad Wives and the many Wives that have ill Husbands and to wish those few that fancy they have good ones as truly content in their Marriages as I am in my Resolution of never Marrying and I am sure none can deny but that I have this advantage by the Bargain that 't is impossible for me to meet a bad Wife that does not Marry but 't is very possible and common for him that does THE SIXTH DISCOURSE Against Maids Marrying for meer Love or only to please their Parents Inclinations thô quite contrary to their own I Am against Maids Marrying for meer Love because they that Marry for meer Love Marry in a manner for meer fancy and so to feast their sensual appetite on what they then like they often starve the body of what it will hereafter need for tho your fancy may tell you that beauty great store makes Love a feast yet truth can tell you 't is too slender a Diet to make a livelyhood on therefore in my poor opinion 't would be a much wiser course for Maids to make up their Marriages with a good share and large proportion of interest and conveniency to mix with their Love-liking and present fancy for the true and durable content of Marriage is so founded on these two great
chief Doctrin in that good Book called The Ladies Calling and tho we read that S. Paul recommends the Doctrine of Silence yet 't is not a Modish precept for this Age because not according to the French-belle-assurance so much in fashion among the Ladies who cry up Confidence to so high a degree in all they say or do that it passes now for good behaviour and much pratling for great Ingenuity when to talk much tho to no purpose is to be witty Therefore Ladies for you who affect this vanity I pray reflect a little on the great difference between the French breeding that teacheth you to talk much and S. Paul's Lesson that orders you to learn Silence if it were indeed possible to argue you Talkative Ladies into this belief for many among you rally at S. Paul saying Tho he was called a Saint yet he was never bred a Courtier and tho he ended his days at Rome yet he never spent any of his time at Paris or London and therefore his Doctrin of Silence is as much out of fashion among the witty Ladies of the Age as vertue is among our young vain Gallants or indeed a strict pious life with both Really among most of you Ladies Religion is grown but a meer Sunday Devotion or little else than an outward Church Ceremony where I am afraid many of you go more out of Custom than for Devotion more for Companies sake than to praise God more to see the young Men than to hear the Preacher minding more how they look than what he says If an old Man prays with Zeal he is gazed on and often scoffed at for an antick piece of mortality if a young Man appears devout he is presently Censured formal or that he counterfeits Piety to decoy some rich Puritan Widow for a Wife or an old Presbyterian Parent of an Estate or upon any account you please except that of sincerity and conscience which you vain Ladies allow to be only fit for morose spirits or dying persons and so not to be thought on till long sickness or grey hairs But 't is now Ladies more than time to end this and your trouble by a Conclusion having already made the Porch too large for the Building and therefore I should have Complemented you with a short Dedication which as I know in Plays sounds modish in the Ladies Ears so doubtless in Books of greater size it would have been no less graceful and obliging but having now no design to entertain you with any vain Praises or yet Complements of flattery I must beg Ladies your Excuse and hope your good Nature and Charity will be pleased to pardon me for the trouble of this which is the first of this kind that I ever gave you and on my Credit shall be the last And therefore if your kind Hearts will do nothing for my sake yet I pray do something at least for your own and consider as it would be thought madness to fight with the wind you cannot see so it would be esteemed no less folly to quarrel with you know not whom and I wish I could truly say for you know not what And therefore pray Ladies follow my Advice and since this little Brat of a Book has no Father that will own it if after Reading you do not find it worth your keeping e'en leave it on the Parish for that 's bound to maintain it and remember that Civility still sets off Beauty and cruelty belongs only to the ill natured therefore let me beg you not to use these poor Discourses worse than some of you do the common Beggars that is if you want Charity to relieve its wants do not so abound in ill nature as to jeer at its defects THE CONTENTS The First Discourse OF Young Mens great folly in adoring and overpraising all young handsom Ladies and their greater vanity in receiving it and believing them page 1 The Second Discourse Of the extraordinary governing Power that Womens Beauty now exercises over most Men. p. 21 The Third Discourse Of the Inconstancy of most Ladies especially such as are cried up Beauties and the folly of any one that believes he is fully acquainted with and solely possess'd of a vain Beauties heart and can give good reasons for the various motions of her Love-changes p. 42 The Fourth Discourse Of Marriage and Wives who usurp a governing Power over their Husbands which is now so common as it is almost become the general grievance of the Nation p. 52 The Fifth Discourse Of the Inequality of many Marriages and the Inconstancy of most Wives that Men Marry for meer Beauty or their Parents Match for bare Mony with the sad end that usually attends such Matches p. 65 The Sixth Discourse Against Maids Marrying for meer Love or only to please their Parents Inclinations when quite contrary to their own p. 88 The Seventh Discourse Against WIDOWS Marrying p. 97 The Eighth Discourse Against keeping of MISSES p. 113 The Ninth Discourse Of the vain folly of such Ladies who think to shew their Wit by Jeering and Censuring their Neighbours p. 121 The Tenth Discourse Of French Fashions and Dresses now used in England by the modish Ladies and young Sparks p. 139 The Eleventh Discourse Of Worldly Praises which all Ladies love to receive but few strive to deserve with the sad end of it and them when they come to Die. p. 154 The Twelfth Discourse Useful Advices in order to the vain modish Ladies well Regulating their Beauty and Lives p. 176 THE FIRST DISCOURSE Of young Mens great folly in adoring and overpraising all young handsom Ladies and their greater folly in receiving it and believing them 'T IS not more natural for heat to attend Fire nor more common for the Sun to exhale vapours from the Earth than 't is for great Beauty to attract high Praises from young Men and truely such of them as have wit to spare time to loose favour to hope for and no other world to think of are fittest to Court their Beauty in this which is but modish breeding and suitable to most mens practice and all handsom Ladies expectation I do not say merit And such Men as are pretenders to raillying wit and French breeding may shew both by entertaining them with Courtly Harangs all set out with high Praises and great Complements which few Men speak as their belief but most Ladies receive as their desert and with such Idolizing postures and Dying expressions as if they design'd their fellow Creatures to be perfect Goddesses who were made like Nebuchadnezzars golden Image only to be worshipped so naturally agreeable are such sinful adorations to vain Ladies as the first temptation we read of in Scripture that ever prevail'd on Woman was that of being made like to God and that Woman then compriz'd in her self the whole species of Women kind and indeed 't is very probable that her aspiring presumption then to more knowledge than she ought to have had does still punish
most of her Sex with less Wisdom than they need to have Really if handsom Ladies had but that share of Prudence which they ought to have as good Christians and to use in the practical part of Christianity to which all Women are called though few strive to be chosen they would never endure much less countenance such young Men to Court and magnifie them at such an extravagant rate as to present them with that Composition of Praises meerly for vain pastime or what 's worse evil ends which ought to be attributed to divine Worship only nor can there be a more clear and plainer Argument to prove Womens want of wisdom then that many of them will receive such profane Praises not as the vain effects of young Mens wicked folly but as the deserved Trophies of their own conquering beauty and merit All I shall say is that such courtly Incense suits well with such a vain false Deity and that such young Women are as foolishly guilty in receiving such vain Attributes as such young Men are highly profane in offering them Thus Men by the deceitful reflexes of high praises divert young Women from remembring their Creator in the days of their Youth and possibly all the time of their Life by Charming them with their own Charms and disguising themselves to themselves and by telling them so often what they are not makes them forget what they really are and by these means they advance their minds so far above any dismal thoughts of their own mortality that truly few of our young cry'd up beauties now adays scarce hears any thing of Death but what they are Romanticly told their own killing beauty does occasion though in truth if we read the Weekly Bills of Mortality we shall 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 know '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 hearts like strong Fortresses have been lost by too great a dependency upon their own strength and too mean an undervaluing of others attempts against them I shall therefore advise all young Ladies especially Virgins by no means on any account to suffer their beauty to lie under the pressing temptations of young Mens high praises and constant Courtship which often enflames them beyond their own natural temper and strength for continual blowing is able to kindle in time a great Fire out of a little Spark And also young handsom Women ought to avoid giving or receiving any favourable attracting looks from young Men for the Eye is as well the Pulse of the Mind as the Door of the Heart and no Love flames can enter into the heart but it must first enter the Eye as we see the Sun it self still sends his light before he brings his heat Next Ladies remember that the Scripture couples with the lust of the Eye the pride of Life as a lesson to teach you that you ought as much to well order your looks as to regulate your lives which you may perform much the easier and better if you will but seriously reflect on the ways and means young Gallants use in making their approaches towards gaining their Mistrisses I do not here intend as to the making them Mistrisses in order to being Wives but Misses which is usually after this kind of manner first they present them with swarms of Praises and Complements thick garnished with great Oaths and repeated Vows of a never dying love and a never failing constancy and all attended with sad looks deep sighs and humble postures no matter though there be not one grain of reality among them all and if these Countersits can but work so powerful an Operation on their Mistrisses soft good nature as to make them receive the constant repeated Oaths of their highly adoring them with some kind of delight they are then in a sad yielding condition for such Womens hearts cannot pretend to be stronger than fortified Towns which when they once come to admit of frequent parlies seldom hold out after long Sieges but yeild to a Surrender Certainly if young Gallants can by their eager courting their Mistrisses but gain of them some returns of compassion and esteem next of course follows a favourable liking of them and then there 's no very great difficulty after such prosperous advances to create in them the beginnings of a Love fondness and fondness in a young Womans heart like a weighty body down a steep Hill it seldom stops till it runs to the very bottom and when a Gallant has work'd his Mistris into such a yielding temper as to credit his Oaths and be pleas'd with his Company as believing he truly loves her and highly admires her and so grows delighted with the Repetition of them esteeming all his Courtship real then surely they cannot on the account of good Nature and pure Civility forbear presenting their Gallants though to their own ruin this new Article of their Faith that they believe their Oathes and love their Persons and when once they declare that common experience may soon teach them this that 't is no great rarity in young Maids by liking of young Men to stray into vicious actings with them and thus by these kinds of degrees and steps Gallants commonly mount to their Mistrisses ruin for as the Poet says Long waiting Love doth still a passage find to the most unbelieving mind at least to the blasting her Reputation if not the utter undoing of her vertue fortune and freedom for when once a Gallant is become Master of his Mistrisses heart he commonly swells to a Monster and governs like a Tyrant and instead of treating you like an ador'd Mistris he uses you like a conquer'd Captive Now I have told the young Ladies some of the common ways their Gallants use to gain them by give me leave here in a word or two to tell you their usual manner of treating them after they have gain'd an entire Conquest over their hearts which is very bad and sinful in then to suffer Therefore let me advise you to carry still this Memorandum about you That all your Gallants dying expressions Love-Oaths Idolizing postures and often repeated Vows that their admiration and love for you shall be as lasting as their Lives which translated out of the Lovers Language into true plain English is no more but just as long as they shall fancy your Beauty for usually as fast as their Mistrisses beauty breaks so do their Oaths of Love and Constancy which they think they are bound to keep no longer than their Mistrisses keep their beauty as being but the meer effects of that cause and the cause being remou'd the effect must of course cease and besides there 's nothing more certain than that skin deep beauty seldom creates better than meer sensual love which never contains reality or long duration But Ladies if this were all it would not be so very bad or indeed this is only the least part of it and when your Gallant has enjoy'd you methinks you ought not to wonder that he honours you no longer as his Mistris when you dishonour your self by becoming his Miss
for fancy what you please an enjoy'd Mistris is no better let her Quality be never so good and her beauty never so great and there 's no Woman ought to think it strange that her Gallant after enjoyment undervalues her when by it she shews him the way by fiirst undervaluing her self and so ought to expect little Love and less Courtship but rather much slighting if not aversion for this is most certain Ladies that though your Gallants use all flattering means and arts not sparing their Oaths or Money Soul or Purse to purchase your good Nature I should have said sinful folly to bless them as they call it with the enjoyment of you that is to curse your selves by admitting it which when your Gallants have obtain'd on any terms Swearing and forswearing not excepted they presently like greedy Hawks who assoon as they have fully gorg'd themselves on their Quarry slight and turn Tail to the very same Game which just before they flew so eagerly after and grow soon as weary of an enjoy'd Mistris as most eldest Sons are of their long long liv'd Fathers or their ugly monied Wives in a word our Amorous Age is so very wicked and unchast that really most of our young Mens fiery Love to the thing call'd a Mistris is by our present mode become of the same nature of Fire it self which all know cannot subsist long if not often recruited with fresh matter And I have yet Ladies something more to add which is of a much worse consequence than all before which is this that after your Gallants have enjoy'd you though never so much in private they will not be satisfied unless they may boast of it in Publick so vain are our young Sparks as to take more 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 fickleness 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 sinful as 't is not making Images to adorn Churches but building Churches to worship Images that makes the Idolatry And since Recreation for the mind is as well necessary as Exercise for the body I see no reason why it may not be lawful for me to recreate my self now and then in an afternoon in such good young Womens company and conversation to hear their opinions and discourses which the rude sort of Men call Twatlings on the Stories of the place and their several fancies and judgments on the divers Fashions then worn who are the Women most talk'd of for whom and what beauties are highest cried up and which of them loves most and carries on an Intrigue best lives highest wears the richest Clothes keeps the finest Equipage and has most Gallants and this Gentlewoman is to be Married to that Gentleman who in a little time will find her Debts much greater than her Beauty or Portion either and such a pretty Maid is to be Married by a Match of her Parents making to such a one in whom she will be very unhappy her heart being prepossessed by another and such an old Man is jealous of his young Wife without a Cause and such a young Man is not jealous of his handsom Wife with one and the like Subjects which I grant in severe strictness may be truly call'd an omission in not spending our time so well as we ought which I look upon to be more a venial vice than an unpardonable sin and therefore do not believe that the knowledge of my infirmity ought to be the despair of my Recovery but I am truly pleas'd that all unlawful designs and unchast desires as to Women are banished from my heart and that Vertue has made me quite leave them before Age has made them quite leave me But 't is more than time to finish this Discourse for I have dwelt longer on it than I intended but the trouble of it I hope the Ladies will the more easily pardon since 't is not only a fault but a habit that I have been much subject to and long infected with which is to be loth to part with young Womens Company when I am once got into it and therefore I will conclude this Discourse with this Complement to the Ladies that I heartily wish it may prove as satisfactory and advantagious to them as to make them all now as fond of piety as I was once of beauty and that they may continue to love it as many years as I did them and then I dare assure them this double blessing That they shall neither live ill nor die young THE SECOND DISCOURSE Of the extraordinary governing Power that Womens beauty now exercises over most Men. BLess me and deliver me What a strange Subject do I now fall on and into what a vast Sea am I now Imbarking the Bay of Biskay with all its proud swelling waves is but as a calm pond to it for that only tosses Ships into the Air and presently brings them down again but this Subject elevates my Pen above the Skie and there leaves it for Womens governing Power has no certain Top nor Bottom but Circle like is without beginning or end how can it possibly be then describ'd it being a meer Maze of difficulties and a Labyrinth of Confusions in which it has made so many cross Paths of pride and folly vanity and power as I know not which to take or which to leave where to advance or how to retreat and yet I find in my self an earnest inclination to venture on it though I am sure to be lost in it for I must expect that this dull and short Discourse on the voluminous Subject of beauties mighty power can have no other fate than that of Rivers which still run with an eager haste though it be only to plunge themselves into the Sea in which they are presently lost Story tells us of some English Frigats that sail'd up to Constantinople and were there so generally admir'd that the great Turk himself went to see them and was very much taken with their beauty shape and strength and being told there were hundreds finer in England he commanded that the Map of the World should be presently brought him that he might see that brave Kingdom which produced such gallant effects the Map being come he laid his finger carelesly on it and ask'd whereabouts England was but the person that was to shew it him told him he could not do it till he took of his finger for it quite cover'd that Kingdom Thus one Inch of the Worlds Map serves to set out all Englands Confines but a hundred sheets of Paper cannot half describe the extraordinary bounds of Womens usurping power if I look up towards the height of it I am confounded at the sight of so bright and clear a Scene of meer fanciful splendor and if I look downwards on it I meet in my Compass crowds of Adorers and Suitors thick prostrate at their feet some courting their great beauty others admiring their high power some begging their favour but most bribing their interest But though their beauty cannot at all dazle my sight yet this Subject do's indeed puzzle my Pen for really I am so
far from knowing how to end this Discourse as I profess I know not yet where to begin it and indeed when I have writ all I can on it I fancy I can make no other than this whole-sale judgment of it That beauties universal governing Power is of a miraculous nature like that of the Ebbing and Flowing of the Sea every body may daily see its strange effects but none can give a good reason for the true cause therefore I am sure my weakness ought not to attempt what the strength of wit and Philosophy could never perform So that I am resolv'd to venture on this Subject but as little Boys do on a great River not hazard far on it for fear of being lost in it but content themselves with wading a little on the Brink of it and there to dable and wash them out of the reach of its great depth and fierce stream And though I know that the cause of Mens so enslaving themselves to handsom Womens power cannot spring but from a mean slavish nature and so ought not to be look'd upon better by any considering Men than a kind of Kingdom in the Moon or Fairy Land only hatch'd by the fiery amorous Love of a high lustful and enflam'd distemper'd passion seated in the vain Aiery Region of meer foolish imagination being not grounded on any foundation of true reason or good consideration Yet I cannot imitate the Map makers who still leave a blank for their Terra Incognita but I must fill up my Paper and rather than not write more of it I will leave of scratching my head and breaking my brain any longer about it to find out how and where to begin this desperate Subject it being like a Coal all over red 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
as 't is never to be altered or worn out but by death forgetting all the Changes they formerly made and by the same Rule of Inconstancy they may hereafter make according to the taking objects which new conversation may present and that 't is possible if not probable that their present passion of Love that is so newly kindled and fully lighted may in some farther time be swallow'd up and extinguished by a more inviting beauty that may present more charming and agreeable and 't is most certain that the Love which possesses and inflames a young Ladies heart last Eclipses all former fancies as the Suns appearance darkens all other Lights the Sun being to be seen by no other light but his own In short most Womens hearts and Love vows of Constancy are to be read but like strange Prophecies which are to be understood not by their Words but by their Events Indeed most of our airy Ladies are so volatile and fickle in their Amours as not only their Eyes hearts and inclinations but their whole nature is so addicted to change and variety as one might as easily fix Mercury or make brickle Glass malleable as to fix a young Womans humor and love-fancy so as not to break out into change and inconstancy they being more sickle and changable than the very Wind it self for there are Trade Winds that blow still certainly one way all the Year without ever altering from the same Point and Place but a vain Ladies Constancy is not certainly to be found at any time or in any place their Love-humors being like the Camelions Colours whose property is to have no certain one So that 't is no wonder to find a young Woman that is inconstant but a greater one to find one 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 slies 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 knowledge 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 FOURTH 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
themselves and so their great noble Estates would soon be wasted and moulder away into a foolish and shameful ruin which by their Wives wise and discreet management is prevented To which I answer that there 's no general Rule without an exception and besides I do not design this Discourse against such governing Wives as find their Husbands fools but against those Wives as make their Husbands such meerly by their governing them but if a Husband be so foolishly blind in his Judgment as he cannot see the right way to order his Person and Estate 't is a necessary duty and kindness of his Wife to govern him and his fortune and to lead him out of all the dangers and inconveniencies he might run both it and himself into and such a Wife deserves no more blame for governing such a Husband than a Servant does for leading about his Master and shewing him the way when he cannot see to find it being quite blind But yet this governing power a Wife must perform with great respect and civility to her Husband by lessening and sheltering his weakness to all persons as much as possibly she can that all may see the occasion of her Governing is not an Act of Pride but a Work of pure necessity not her delight but trouble In a word she must be very far from saying of her Husband what a ranting Widow did that had three Husbands and govern'd them all and for her fourth she chose a meer Fool and being ask'd her reason she answer'd she was grown Lazy and therefore Married a Fool to save her self the trouble of making him one THE FIFTH DISCOURSE Of the Inequality of Many Marriages and the Inconstancy of most Wives that Men Marry for meer Beauty or 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 Lively hood 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 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 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 savour 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
for youth will assoon come to the aged as beauty to the ugly but since beauty will not come to content you be you content without it and strive for that you may obtain which is the beauty of holiness which infinitely excels all others it being much better to live well than look so and to have a good soul than a fine face that being earthly and ever fading but a pure soul is heavenly and never decays being everlasting In short that Man who is so simple to Marry great Age for meer Mony when that 's spent and you know that Mony like Love cannot always last all the use of consolation I can think of is to send for a Minister to give him some spiritual advice of which he may perchance receive some to ease the trouble of his mind but as to the bodily distemper or plague of his broken infirmity I am sure there can be no remedy but that of death for indeed it may be fitly said of a young Mans Marrying an old ugly Woman what the Apostle said of a greater folly in another sense he that doth so offends against his own body and truly such a one hath in my opinion no other plea left him to excuse his folly than Adam had to excuse his first Sin The Woman beguiled me I say in Cases like this possibly S. Paul might have thought it equal for so indeed it is things rightly considered for such men to suffer or rather indeed conquer the disturbance of a lustful burning than endure the plague and continual misery of an ill old ugly Wife that can neither please the fancy nor satisfie the appetite and therefore coming to such a sad Marriage is like coming to the age of fourscore after which 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 fooling 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
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 sad 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
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 byassed 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 persectly 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 Touth 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
honour to so that he wanteth nothing of all that he desires but God giveth him not the power to eat thereof which is an evil Disease because such a Man wanteth even what he hath what can such a miserable be call'd better than a sad wretch that makes himself a voluntary Slave to labour in the Mines of his own wealth and Vassal-like only to enjoy the drudgery part for his own share making his wealth a burden without reaping any true pleasure or advantage by it so that such a Man tho he be never so rich must die in debt to himself for he strips himself of necessaries during his own life to make his Children a Wardrobe after his death I am sure the prodigality of our London Gallants is after a quite different Manner for so they can but make a Wardrobe for themselves and Misses during their own lives many of them care not tho they leave their Children in a condition to want necessaries after their death which too many of them can justifie by woful experience several of their Fathers Estates that did belong to them as their Birth-right by their Parents luxury pride and folly have been made a sacrifice to the extravagant expences and vain profuseness of their Mistrisses pride and their own sottishness as that they have left nothing to their Heirs of Inheritance but the wind as Solomon expresses it Prov. 11.29 The certain loss of their fathers Estate and the uncertain getting another for themselves if they can I have read of a Philosopher that was perswaded by his friends to leave his retirement for a little time to see a fine Shop plentifully stor'd with all manner of rich things and fine knacks and being asked what he thought of all 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 â—â—pe 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 quiet 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
do you no real good therefore to apply to your self the right use of both instead of being angry at others for accusing you of some vices you do not act be angry with your self for acting the many you do which is the true way of having Praises and deserving them too Praise is not only the dearly beloved Mistris of Christendom but also of Turky for 't was Praise that was the occasion of making the grand Vizier Mustapha lose so many Men before Vienna for his Story tells us that he did not attempt that Siege so much to serve his Master as to Court his Mistris more out of design to gain her than out of hopes to take it but Mustapha was as much mistaken in his measures of Conquering his Mistrisses heart as in those of taking Vienna for by destroying her Husbands life he totally destroyed her Love and so made his Mistris to revenge her Husbands death to beg the Grand Seignior to take away Mustapha's Life which he did and by it she shew'd her kindness to her Husband and the Grand Seignior his Justice to her 'T is desire of praise and ambition that makes the French King imploy such vast Sums of Mony and Armies of Soldiers to work about his Palace of Versaillies which is rather a Prodigy of Riches than a Miracle of Nature fitter to be wondred at for the vast expences laid out on it than to be praised for any agreableness about it except the Gardens and Water-works which indeed excel all either of Rome or Florence and consequently the whole World but for the House it self I could observe nothing in it extraordinary except the rich Gildings both within and without and therefore as to my own opinion of the Place I think there '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 Love 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
your ability and conveniency always giving place to the duties of Religion the first and principal part in all your designs and actions still beginning the day with Prayer and praises to your Creator who made both it and you in order to your worshiping and serving him and by so dividing the day into so many several parts and Stages of hourly employments the changeable variety that 's in them will afford you variety of pleasure as well as business to entertain and direct you and prevent you Ladies from complaining as I have heard many of you O what shall we do to pass away this afternoon since you will see all the days business and divertisments marked out before you and really nothing more distracts and vitiates vain young Womens minds than emptiness of business and employment the want of which fills you up with the ill vapours of idleness that old Mother of wickedness whereas certain hourly employments fill and replenish your fancy with such diversity of change and business as is able to suppress and allay all fumes of vain idle thoughts from arising in your minds and save you the expensive trouble of imitating many of the fine gay modish Ladies who by chargeable means and studied Arts purchase ways vainly to pass away their time which by the course of nature without their help and beyond their power runs away but too fast of it self 2. My next Advice to the vain Ladies tho I am sure 't is very good yet I doubt 't will be little lik'd and less follow'd which is to shun the infectious temptations of a vain London life which often gets many young Ladies bad Reputations but seldom good Husbands London being become the very Center-point and Rendezvous where all the vices and vanites of the Kingdom meet yet these vices and vanities are 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 slackning 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 you 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
of a Tulip only pleasant to the Eye for a little time and there 's all or the maker of it which is no other than the various opinion of every gazers inclination beauty having almost as many Fathers as there are Men Judges of it Surely these vain proud Creatures have read the Story of Theodosius a Spanish Prince who was raised to be Emperor for his good Face and therefore think they may well hope to be raised not only to an Empire over Men for their great beauty but that they do well deserve a great transcendency over the ordinary rate of Women-kind but indeed such high beauties are at very best but like Meteors which are exhaled but a little above the Earth and are yet a great deal below the Heavens But suppose I should be so highly Complemental as to allow these great beauties the full Swing and extravagant range of their own vain proud and lofty fancies that they are as far above the ordinary sort of Women as the Skie is above the Earth and that their motions were very generous and sublime imitating the Sea which impatient to be confined by the bounds which God has given is still swelling and striving to mount and raise it self above the surface of the Earth yet I would gladly learn because I can no way fancy how they will pretend to be begot there except it be by the Man in the Moon and indeed that may possibly be some reason why our great beauties are generally so fickle and inconstant in their Love as receiving their great mutability from the influence of the Moon as their immediate Parent 5. Therefore my next Advice to the vain Ladies is still to remember that though your beauties may be extraordinary yet your lives can never be Immortal on Earth and that your great beauty and proud thoughts must both perish with you for it may be truly said of great beauties what the Psalmist said of great Princes Though you are stiled Gods yet you must die like Men so though you may be called Goddesses yet you must die like Women and though your beauty could make as great a Conquest of hearts as ever Alexander did of Kingdoms who had no more to subdue yet as death has certainly put a period to his success and life so he will certainly do the like to your beauty and days For indeed the greatest beauty is but like the finest Glass the more clear the more frail and easily broken for alas take beauty in its very highest Altitude and greatest vigour 't is a fabrick composed and made up of so many tender pieces of such brittle ware and delicate Contexture as the least spot or flaw in any one part spoils or at least blemishes the lustre of the whole and as the Poet says One that is all over Heart Every place proves a Mortal part Now Ladies if you resolve to be all over vertuous and discreet in Reputation so as to live Shot-free from all the wounding Darts of censure you must arm your selves with a clear and innocent complexion of vertue to procure which you must not only abstain from evil but the very appearance of it not only from doing bad Actions and keeping ill Company but even the hearing much less receiving vain praises and as you ought to shew a general civility to all so you ought not to give a particular freedom to any In a word you must manage all your actions with a strict prudence a perfect modesty a real humility a vertuous behaviour and a constant fear of God in all you say and do and these will gain you praises and make you well deserve to be admired for Solomon says Prov. 31.30 'T is the Woman that feareth God shall be praised and by such a blessed and holy kind of life you will secure your self against all the Censorious talk of envious bablers against the venom of those lying malicious Tongues who are not fit to be believed nor worthy to be feared Indeed Ladies the best way to make your earthly beauty continue good and lasting is to be humble in your own thoughts and not to pride or value your selves more than you ought since 't is so vain and uncertain in its most lovely colours and complexion for this will give Men a just admiration of your prudence and modesty and preserve the vertue of it Immortal beyond the duration of this fair and naked substance which some sudden accident or disease can soon blast and rob of all its blooming and youthful vigour strip it of all its gay attirement and you of that vain delight in your own self-admiration so then beauty is only less commendable in her who makes it her only pride and concern to set it off and such a Lady thus trigg'd up and furnished out by great art and invention by glittering apparel and proud ostentation is but like a fire of Straw it may blaze much but it cannot last long and whilst it lights others it consumes it self But a handsom Lady that 's free from affectation and pride and is blessed with great Piety and true Humility is like the Heavenly fire in Moses Bush which burnt and lighted others and yet never consum'd it self A handsom woman that is very proud does but enjoy her beauty as the Miser does his Wealth who does not so much possess it as it possesses him and therefore your truly pious Ladies do but use their worldly beauty as the Apostle says we are to use this World that is as if we used it not by a godly habit of mind consuming all the usual vanity affected by others in the pious reflection that there 's no true vertue or durable satisfaction in it We read in Genesis that good old Abraham made no other use of all his wealth than to purchase him a Grave O why should not all proud Women imitate him and though they be never so rich in beauty employ it all in Purchasing a Grave of Humility to bury the dust of their Pride in and by so doing they will certainly find a Resurrection of true Glory out of it which will raise to them Garlands of perpetual Praises of so Heavenly a nature and vast an extent as they will as much excel all the false vain glittering splendor of this World as the noon day brightness of a Summers Sun does the small glimmering light of a little Glow-worm which cannot be seen but by the help of darkness 6. I shall next advise the vain Ladies to resolve to new mould their Lives in this Spiritual frame of Reformation and to square out all their actions by the Golden Rules of Piety and Vertue I heard of a Gentleman that being dangerously ill of a Dropsie went to a famous Physician for his Advice who bid him abstain from all Drink for a Twelve Month and it would Cure him I am confident the like kind of Remedy would cure the fine Ladies let them but abstain from all vain thoughts on themselves and
not hearken to the vain flatteries and praises of others but for one Year and 't will certainly cure them of that Devilish distemper of Pride for by one Twelve Months banishing it and conversing only with vertue and humility which are inseparable friends they will certainly make them so religiously prudent and happily vertuous as to hate and shun all proud desires and flatterers Praises and cause them to love only those that Court them in the holy Language of Truth to the Love of Godliness which is the very best way they can express their Love to you or you your Love to your selves and truly Ladies I cannot see the least reason why you should be against this holy change since it will not be a parting with nor so much as a Retrenching of your love delights but rather be a better means to enlarge and improve them by placing and fixing your mind on a much more noble object and a far finer entertainment by transplanting your affections into a far richer soil from Earth to Heaven from the fading vanities of this World to the never decaying felicities of the next and when once a young Ladies Inclinations are firmly rooted in a real desire and hearty endeavour for this blessed Change she will soon find that her Love will become so piously purified that instead of her fixing it on mortal Man she will only dedicate it to the service of the ever living God whose service is still true happiness and perfect freedom Then such a Lady will be happy above the low Region of all worldly flatterers and the more vain concerns of a fading beauty she 'll not value the rallying scoffs and contempts of those who deride her humble and strict deportment now so much out of fashion among the vain Ladies of our times for such a reformed Lady 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 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 you are exposed by a thousand accidents to meet it whilst you are travelling in this Earchly 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