beauty than they should which makes it common for such Women to ruin their Lovers liberty to proclaim their own Soveraignty over it and therefore sure it cannot appear very unreasonable that such Men as will make themselves Slaves to Womens beauty should pass for fools in sober Mens thoughts Indeed there 's one Law and but one Law I know which though a French one yet as great lovers as our English Ladies are of the French fashions they are so far from esteeming or allowing it as they will not endure so much as to hear it nam'd and that 's called the Salick Law which in France prohibits the female Sex from wearing the Breeches and Reigning which our high spirited governing Women in England so hate the Name of as there was a report they were about calling a Parliament of Women to vote it high Treason against the Power of their present Government to but name bringing that Law into England but as good fortune would have it they could not agree among themselves about chusing a Speaker for every one would be one and knowing where all will speak aloud none can be heard they were necessitated in Prudence to dissolve that Parliament design But truly in my opinion at the high rate of power Womens beauty now Governs the Ladies have no cause to be concern'd that the Breeches are not given to them by Act of Parliament since it is freely bestowed on them by the Custom of the Country and Custom you know makes Laws and those as binding as any she Act of Parliament since they are ratified and confirmed by the Major part of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal as well as the Knights Burgesses and Commons who by many Signs and Tokens give great cause of fear that they have submitted in a perfect obedience to beauties Soveraign power and Wives Government over their Husbands Indeed for the Protestant Clergy they must be concern'd parties and fellow sufferers in the general Calamity of having Governing Wives but for the Roman Clergy they are quite free from that misery and servitude because they must never Marry so that they can be no concern'd parties as to their own Wives and therefore may be aiding and assisting in promoting and confirming Wives in their Universal Monarchy over their poor Husbands which they are briskly sayling towards with a too prosperous Gail But I hope the Fates will protect poor Husbands from such an unnatural shameful and Tyrannical kind of Government for if ever all Wives should attain to that Supremacy of Power which but too many have already Wives would then make such a total destruction of all Husbands authority over them as the Wives Monarchy would be then as absolute in England as that of the French King is now in France and would make then their Husbands as great Fools as that King do's now his ordinary Subjects Slaves In short I really fancy English Wives would be then as very resolute in maintaining their new Franchises over all their Husbands in England as the Pope is now steady in destroying the old Franchises of all Ambassadors in Rome Then we must conclude that Diogenes his Prophecy is fullfill'd who order'd himself to be buried with his Face downward saying The World will turn upside down and then he shall lie in his right place Then we shall reckon as the old Germans and Gauls did by Nights not Days Then we shall look on all Government as we read Hebrew that 's backward Then that Verse shall be razed out of the Bible that says the Woman is the weaker Vessel Nor shall S. Pauls instruction to Titus when he left him in Crete pass for good practical Doctrin 1 Tim. 12. That young Women are to be sober discreet and obedient to their Husbands the Apostle thereby plainly implying That a Wives obedience is a Wives discretion Then shall the old Men see Visions and the young Men especially the married dream Dreams And now I would gladly hear what sort of answer and interpretation the governing-Governing-spirit Ladies will make to the Question of our blessed Saviour Can the Servant be greater than his Lord For surely Wives assuming power cannot render them so over senseless as to fancy he ask'd it as a Question of doubt but spoke it as a thing of impossibility that a Servant can be greater than his Lord any more than a Son elder than his Father And now Women are about impossibilities and vain dreams methinks they ought to endeavour getting the Philosophers stone for that would be very convenient to carry about in their Breeches Pockets so that as they have now got the powerful knack to change Men into Women and their poor Husbands Rentals into Shop-books so they may then by the vertue of the same Elixir and the more powerful Charms of their own killing beauty turn all Metal into Gold as well as too many Wives now a days turn their silly Husbands Lands and Woods into rich Gownes and fine Coaches 'T was the saying of a great Roman who I fancy Married a kind of an English humor'd Wife that the Womens rich Gowns destroy'd more Men than all the Enemies Arrows And now Reader I am sure you must be tir'd as well as I am of this Subject of Womens Power tho many Men are not of their subjection to it and therefore I will now take leave of these great beauty adorers for I cannot as they do Dream with my Eyes open nor can I spare them so much of my patience as to wait for the Chimera issues of their Dreams my design being only to write of not to dwell on this Subject and perhaps I have already not only writ more on it than I should but sharper of it than I ought for considering how generally as well as powerfully Women now wear the Breeches 't is dangerous provoking them especially having now in my mind the saying of a great Philosopher Those that consider little as most Women do are apt to be angry soon And sure if wise Solomon in his days when certainly the Women did not then pretend to half the power they now usurp could prefer dwelling in a Wilderness before living with an angry Woman how cautious nay fearful ought the writers of this subject to be in offending them when their Anger is as fierce as their power is great and in some Women their passionate revengeful humor suitable to both Therefore if the Apostle thought he had good reason to pray to be deliver'd from unreasonable Men sure Men may also pray to be deliver'd from unreasonable Women And doubtless as it suits well with all the measures of true Reason and good Policy that those who Command ought to be wiser than they who are to obey And therefore Women ought not to use a Soveraignty over Mens Actions whilst they are Subjects to their own Passions and sure none can deny this Truth that she who cannot Rule her self is very unfit to Govern another But 't is full time for me to
perfect Antidote against horns for the time to come but a Remedy for what was past but one of his Neighbours being of a contrary belief call'd him Cuckold upon which he repaired to his learned Counsellor in the Law to know if his present Wife being honest though his former was not so whether he was still a Cuckold or not to which his learned Lawyer gravely answered him That tho he was not one in pure strictness of Law yet being once so the Custom of the Country was so civil as to give him the Title during his Life And now I have given you my opinion and told you the usual fate that attends old Mens Marrying young Women next comes that of young Womens Marrying old Men and tho they appear both alike foolish yet there 's great difference in their folly for as by this sort of Matches old Men glut themselves with much more of the Woman than their age wants so young Wives if vertuous stint themselves with much less of the Husband than their Youth needs and besides tho Marriage has the power tounite two Bodies into one Flesh yet it wants that of uniting the two Fleshes into one temper or Constitution for a young Wife that is in the Spring of her age is like the Sun in the Spring of the Year it not only gets the ascendant every day higher and higher but grows every day more strong and vigorous but an old Husband is like Autumn whose strength goes only downward Therefore I fancy an old Man Marrying a handsom young Lady has nothing to plead but Guilty but a young Lady for Marrying an old Man may have some colourable excuse to moderate the folly and lessen the shame of such an unequal Match for perhaps she 'll tell you she has heard a story which if as true as strange is a rare one That the reason that Stags live so very long is that when they find themselves to decay they swallow a live Serpent and as it consumes in their body they revive in their strength and Spirits So possibly a young Woman will say That she did not Marry an old Man for being rich in Years but Mony and because she found her Fortune decaying and almost quite decayed therefore she swallowed a Marriage with an old Man as the Stag does a Serpent in hopes that as her Husband consumes and dies in her bosom so she may revive in her sprightly gay humor and please her self with the delightful thoughts of the wealth he will leave her and the ways she will Intrigue to spend it in the fanciful hopes she has of suddenly gaining a young Husband suitable both to her Youth and aicry Inclinations There is another sort of Women but indeed their number is very small who being not handsom in their own opinion and therefore may be safely concluded very ugly in that of all others who to supply the defects of nature and age give out they are very rich and that they hope will make amends for all Gold being always young handsom and taking to all sorts of Men and Ages for Mony answers all things and by these reports of their Wealth tho often false they decoy young Fops who have lost their Annuity at Play or spent it in Debauchery to Court them for their fame of having much Mony and too eagerly press the Marrying them for it Swearing that they Love their persons more than their Mony valuing them a thousand times before it and no wonder that they that swear so commonly for nothing should now lye for much Mony for in real truth they only put the Widow before the Mony as we do in common speaking the Box before the Jewels which though first is altogether inconsiderable to the latter as only containing that Riches which it self makes no part of And many of these old rich Widows are so doatingly senseless that because their Mony Courters swear they are handsom they verily believe they are so and credit others words before their own eyes tho their spectacles are on which renders some so sottishly impudent as to tell their Gallants that tho their beauty is in the fall of the Leaf yet Autumn can breed Lovers as well as the Spring does when in truth an old withered Autumn face does but Chill the blood and dispirit the vigour of the most active and resolute Courtier and therefore a Spring beauty can only enflame the heart and tho possibly a young Man may be sometimes foolishly taken with an old Womans great wit good humor or rather greater riches yet 't is I think impossible he can be really in Love with her deform'd face person or age which must quench the fire of any amorous flames in a youthful or vigorous-heart Therefore I shall advise all such Women to be so prudent as to yield to the seasons of Age as they must to that of the Year and not hope to turn Winter into Summer or Autumn into Spring but instead of striving for what 's impossible yield to what 's reasonable and submit to these true Measures That Eighteen is the gay sprightly blossom age that a young Womans Life shines out in its brightest splendor and beauty That Thirty is the stale year of a Maid and the worst age of a Wife I mean that 's an ill one because a Wife at Thirty is old enough to be ugly and young enough to live long but a Woman that is so far advanced in years as the frigid Zone of Sixty ought in all reason to banish all vain Love thoughts as to the youthful pleasures of this world and to fix them on the other so as to live only in order to die imitating the good old Woman named in the Gospel Luke 2.37 Who kept in the Temple who fasted and prayed to God night and day Indeed it becomes old Women much better to frequent the Church with the good old Godly Matrons so renown'd for gravity and religion in former days than to visit the Park or the Play with their vain young Gallants lest their old Dress and Antick Faces should make Men say such a one is more fit to be a Spectacle than a Spectator wants good Mens Prayers rather than young Mens Praises and is more apt to create thoughts of Mortality than to raise motions of Love really I am of opinion that if 't were possible to turn beauty into the same nature of content that the little Kingdom of England would swarm now more with handsom Women than the Country of Palestine did ever with fighting Men of which Scripture makes mention of many hundred thousands for than every ugly Woman young or old as thought her self handsom as most do must be really handsom only for think it as well as all those that believe themselves Content must be Content or else they could not believe themselves so therefore all old and ugly Women that are not past all years of discretion tho they are of beauty should never strive for impossibilities
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
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