flatter your Vanity and your Pride but also to engender Lust and Impurity and to inspire those who are your Spectators with unlawful Desires and sensual Thoughts Must you needs be at such riotous expense to cover your Bodies and yet for all that to leave them half naked Is it not in some manner to sacrifice them to the Men of the Age thus to expose them to their sight and lust X. INDEED ought they not to fear lest we reproach them for too much loving the World and for being too passionately desirous to be beloved of it what do not they do to please it they consume the goods of Fortune and when by their splendour and immodesty they sollicit Libertines and profligate Wretches to behold them may it not be said that they are become like to that Woman whom Ezekiel speaks of that by her care and costliness indeavour'd to gain the Friendship of those that regarded her and if it may be allow'd me to make use of those terms to express the thought of that Prophet who bought her Prostitution whereas others took gifts and made a sale of theirs XI THINK think that in your Baptism you have renounced the Pomp and Vanities of the World and make some reflexion with your selves how that by your unprofitable Ornaments shameless Nakedness you practise that which the World teaches and which is most dangerous and impious Alas do not believe it it is a deceitful Syren that labours only to seduce you and that can never make you happy nor contented whatever promise it makes you You ought not to join your Alliance with it since that it is your Enemy And if you are so weak and so unfortunate as to consent to what it demands of you against your Selves if you cannot resolve intirely to quit your Luxury and to cover your nakedness at least make some difference betwixt the House of your Lord which is consecrated by the Celebration of our Mysteries and those which are profaned by the Libertinism of the Age between places destin'd and set apart for Prayer devotion such as are peculiarly appropriated to mirth and gallantry joy and divertisement Wherefore will you so extend the Empire of the Prince of this world beyond his prescribed limits he can only have jurisdiction over places that are prophane and you by your immodesty make him to Reign even in sacred Places XII WHO IS there but knows that God is jealous of the respect one ought to have for his Temples and that the zeal of his house by which he is as it were devoured sayes the Prophet will not permit him to let those go unpunished who prophane it what severity did he not use against those trafficking Merchants that made it legitimate to buy and sell in the Temple of Jerusalem such beasts as were to be employed in their Sacrifices and what chastisement ought not those Women to expect who are vain and loose and who far from doing any thing that may contribute to sacrifices and favour the zeal of those who come to pay their devout adorations to Almighty God as did those Merchants whom Jesus Christ drove out of the Temple do dishonour the most solemnly to be remembred of all Sacrifices and do divert or corrupt the intention of those who are assistant at it and sometimes too of those that celebrate it who expose all their beauty in the Churches in so indecent a manner that they do as it were hold a kind of impure and unchaste commerce between themselves and those that behold them In a word who more guilty than those very sellers in the Temple that only designed at getting money without doing any injury to the Divine Worship do only aim at the acquisition of hearts to ravish them even from God himself XIII BUT let me not only pour out my laments for those who appear vain and light in Sacred Places where they should discover contrition and humility but also let me shew my fear for them who do not fly their company or who turn away their eyes from those places where God more immediately bestowes his gracious presence to cast them upon those Idols that are so gaudily and immodestly dress'd up There is alwayes danger in attentively looking upon a naked Breast and there is not only a great danger but a kind of crime in beholding it with attention in the Churches then when we are most seriously commemorating the Passion and Death of our dear Saviour for Jesus Christ being then in so eminent a manner to be remembred by us methinks to prefer a Woman to him or at least to divide our attention and perhaps our vows between him and her and to remain as it were in suspence to whom we were best to give our desires and mind is without doubt a great injury XIV YET alas once more if we cannot hinder and put a stop to this nakedness however let us not neglect to shew our disallowing of it in our taking heed to shun even the very sight thereof If the honour of Jesus Christ obliges us to it our duty and our interest does likewise ingage us the sight of a fair neck and pretty swelling breasts is no less dangerous for us than that of a Basilisk and it is then we may say with the Scripture that the Devil makes use of the windowes of our bodies for Death by Sin to enter into our Souls if it be true as sayes the Prophet Jeremiah that our eyes do sometimes commit a rape upon the Soul it is then without doubt when they are fastened upon the attractive beauties of a bewitching Face and when they do also in some manner fix there our mind and heart in bringing to it with our looks our affections and desires And I believe that the Patriarch Job had a mind to teach us this Truth when he declares that he had made a Covenant with his Eyes to the end that he might not think on the Beauty of a Maid for it is not the Eyes that think and desire but it is the Heart or Mind wherefore sayes he then that he might remove from his Mind and Heart the Idea and illegitimate Love of Women he made a Covenant with his Eyes rather than with his Mind and with his Heart to hint to us that it is easie not to think of Women when once we have got beyond the prospect of seeing them but that it is next to an impossibility for them not to fill our Minds and Hearts if we doe not make a compact and agreement with our Eyes not to look upon them XV. AND it is so much the more necessary for us to turn away our Eyes from beholding Women whose Necks and Shoulders are naked and bare as according to the thoughts of the same Patriarch it is difficult to conceive what place God can find in a Soul which the Eyes have betrayed and into which those impure objects are entred that do possess and trouble
all its powers Let us remember that Maxime of the Great St. Gregory that it is a mighty piece of imprudence to look upon that which we are not permitted to desire and if we will resolve to conserve the tranquillity of our mind and the innocence of our heart let us never voluntarily and out of choice look upon those nakednesses in what places soever we are but especially in the Church XVI IF Christians ought to make themselves to be known by their modesty according to the Doctrine of the Apostle it is principally then when they are in the House of God where they do not come but because they are Christians it is there that they ought to make a Covenant with their Eyes not only not to look upon Women but not to look upon any thing but to resemble him that runs at the Ring who never turns his Eyes either one way or other but keeps them always fixed and direct at the mark he who prayes in the Church for we ought not to come thither but to pray as none ought to enter into the Lists but to run he Isay who prayes in the Church ought to be so very attentive on what he is doing that he should refrain from looking upon those objects which are nearest to him for fear lest his Heart should run after his Eyes and his Mind insensibly straggle from the work he is about and forget whom he is praying to XVII WE do greatly deceive our selves if we think we are not obliged to regulate our Looks by a wise and modest circumspection and we deceive others if we say that one may indifferently and innocently behold all things David sinned for being too prodigal and free of his Looks and one single glance sufficed to make him fall into sin That Prince was holy and Bathsheba on whom by accident he cast his Eyes was innocent but she was naked David saw her in that posture and there needed no more to make David lose his Holiness and Bathsheba her Innocence Who is this proud One that will refuse to be instructed by so great an Example and who after this example will not avoid with care the sight and address of a Woman that openly exposes all those Charms which she thinks are most beautiful and surprising Who is that confident Man that will believe himself in safety when he is in the same danger wherein David was lost And who will not be afraid to be overcome by the same Arms wherewith he was vanquished XVIII THE Great St. Basil teaches all the Faithful in instructing one of his Disciples with what care they ought to turn away their Eyes from a Woman that mightily affects to appear dazeling and glorious Take you heed sayes he as much as ever you can of considering those false and pernitious Beauties Jesus Christ was only pleased with the Beauty of the Soul and despised that of the Body and you ought only to esteem those things which are pleasing to Jesus Christ Know likewise that that Beauty which they present to you if you behold it with attention will sully your Soul and render it deformed do not credit the report that your Eyes make of it but believe that which Reason and Faith does say to you of it and be you careful that you do not split your selves upon that Rock whereon many persons more wise than your self have run upon and perished XIX LET Men therefore indeavour to make good use of this Advice and let Women know that these instructions and these counsels that are given to Men are for a true reproach and severe reprehension to them let them know that if men do run the hazard of offending God in looking upon them they also do offend him in effect by presenting themselves to men in a manner which may and which in all probability will tempt them or scandalize them In truth when Ecclesiasticus advertized us not to gaze upon a Woman that desires to please all the world for fear lest we should fall into her snares may we not say that he accuses and blames Women for exposing to the Eyes of all the World all those Beauties that are any ways capable to ravish hearts and gain them Lovers that he condemns them for wounding that bashfulness and modesty that is so natural to them that he accuses them of laying Snares to our innocence in losing their own For it is with reason that the Prophet Ezechiel hath told us that a naked and discovered Breast was a Bed whereon impurity repos'd and became fruitful in corrupting her who laid it open and him that beheld it XX. THERE is not any Woman or Maid but knows that Eves nakedness which the Scripture makes mention of was a consequence and mark of her Crime she perceived her self naked because she had sinned and she knew that she had sinned when she saw her self naked Why then will they judge otherwise of themselves than of their common Mother and why will they not infer that from their own nakedness which they conclude from hers that it is a mark of the depravation of their Souls why do they not conclude that they displease God since they see themselves naked Surely they do not care at all how much they are displeasing to God since they do so please and prank up themselves in their nakedness For in that I think they are more guilty than Eve as criminal as she was for she was ashamed of her nakedness and delayed not to cover her self XXI CAN they be ignorant that it is of them principally that the Apostle speaks when he condemns those persons who uncover one part of their Body to yield their Members servants to uncleanness and to iniquity They are servants to uncleanness because with what pretence soever they cover it or what excuse soever they flatter themselves withall the grand motive and design that makes them to be in Love with nakedness is never pure they cannot do it with an intention to please God and therefore necessarily it must be to please the world they cannot do it out of modesty nor from a principle of Piety therefore it must proceed from a want of Shame or from a Spirit of of Vanity and oftentimes of uncleanness and impurity They are servants also to iniquity according to the sense of the Apostle since that they stir up their disorderly motions of Concupiscence and they become the Instruments of the Devil in making men to yield to sin XXII SAINT Jerome reproached Jovinian for having Amazons in his party who with their naked Necks Sleeves of their Arms tuck'd up almost to their Shoulders did excite men to Libertinisme to make them their followers And may not we say with as much justice that our Women whose Arms Breasts and Shoulders are naked and bare are the true Amazons of the Devil who combate and labour as much for him as for themselves and who scarce ever overcome but for
gallantry either of worldly men or women is most usually terminated in the praising of the beauty of those parts which are most open and exposed to common view And both of them know by a fatal experience that prophane Love places it self upon a fair Neck as upon an Eminence from whence it attacques us with advantage that it remains there as upon a throne where it pleasurably exercises its domination that it takes its repose there as upon a bed were it combates without pain and where it triumphs without imploying any other arms than Softness it self XVII MEN do very well know how dangerous it is to look upon a naked bosome and your vain and light Women are sensible how advantagious it is to them to show it Men say and say again to the women how much they are smitten at the sight of their Necks and Shapes the Women know the pernicious effects which the beauty of their Shapes and Necks produce in the minds of men and after that they dare to say they do not believe they do amiss when they study as much as they can how they may bare all their necks and shoulders and so show at the same time and by one and the same address all the beauty of their shapes Ought they not rather acknowledge that they are seduced by the world which they love and ingenuously confess that after it has instructed them of the danger to which they are expos'd themselves and to which they expose others by their nakedness it hides from them that danger when any occasion presents it self to satisfy their vanity and to captivate any heart that to render them the more Criminal it obliges them to feign that they are ignorant of the evils they are the cause of and to indeavour to hide their faults under the umbrage of a false and pretended ignorance XVIII The third Excuse THEY will answer me without doubt that they have not any evil Intention when they make bare their Necks and Shoulders that if there happens from thence any inconveniences they come from the weakness or the incontinence of men And to justify that their design is not to please the world nor to create to themselves any Lovers from those that behold them It is sufficient they say to remark that those who have resolv'd not to go out of their doores and who know that they shall see no body that those who are retired into Cloysters where they commonly converse with none but with their Nuns and Abbesses do yet usually go with their Arms and Breasts uncovered XIX WE MUST confess that all Love which hath only the creature for its object is blind whether it be that whereby we love others or that whereby we love our selves But if ever there be any one love in the world more blind than another it is most certainly that of self-love for it does not only hinder us from blaming our defects but it also does hinder us from knowing them It sees nothing in us but what is pleasing to it and it does still approve of both what we say or do because it does never discover any imperfection to us in either of them 'T is this alone which hath given these Maids and Women this third excuse and which after it has falsly persuaded them that they may without Scandal and Sin appear as it were half naked to the view of all the world makes them believe it is a good reason to say that they have no evil intention XX. THEY dare not maintain that their Intention is good and that the end they propose to themselves is pious and holy since that what they do excites to impurity and is repugnant to all the Maxims of Christian Piety and holiness they cannot say that their Intention is indifferent since that not having any design either to render themselves agreeable to God who has testified his extream aversion to the nakedness which they affect nor to observe the Precepts of the Scripture which they violate nor to conform themselves to the Cannons of the Church which they despise nor to follow the sentiments of the Saints which they condemn They must then necessarily think either of pleasing others or of satisfying themselves unless they will ingenuously confess that they are in that point more deprived of Reason than the brute Beasts and that what they do they do it without any motive and without knowing wherefore XXI IT IS difficult to conceive that they are not desirous either to please Men or Women and that indifferently shewing their nakedness to all the World they do not at all care whether they have the approbation of any or no. But yet for all this I will believe it that so I may please them and suppose with them that it is not so simply but to satisfie themselves Do they think they are less guilty by it and if it be apparently a vanity or sensuality in being willing to make ones own self be beloved or esteemed by the nakedness of one particular part of their body is it not also a secret vanity and sensuality to take a delight and pleasure in this nakeness Shame honesty and chastity are repugnant to it and therefore this pleasure can't be neither pure honest nor chaste so much the more as it is impossible that she who is pleas'd with looking upon her own Bosome should not be at all concerned that others should admire it too she accustoms her self without thinking of it to be seen and so insensibly is disposed to desire that the complaisancy she has for her own Beauty should be confirmed by the whole World so that we may boldly conclude that with what thoughts soever the Women do flatter themselves who love to have their Necks bare their Intention can never be good but is always much worse than they imagine XXII AND though it should be granted that their intention might be really innocent yet would they not thereby be exempt from blame either because whatsoever intention they have we are always to be blamed when we do a thing which we know is condemned by the holy Scriptures by Reason and by the very instinct of Nature or because according to the Doctrine of the Apostle we ought to avoid not only all that is evil but likewise all that hath any appearance of evil And they cannot deny that doing the same thing which even the shameless and licentious Women do their conduct does not bear also the Character of Shamelesness and Libertinisme and that one may without too much rashness suspect them for being of the number of those whose Example they follow XXIII BUT they do not only expose themselves to the loss of their Reputation but they do greatly run the hazard of losing their Innocence too their Chastity is even struck and wounded by every glance of a loose and wanton Eye and their modesty is shockt by the vain approbations which are given them the Idea of their Breasts does not less enter
may be said by way of reproach that the too earnest desire she discovers to be a Woman may make one presume that she is not an intire virgin and that she has already given her self many husbands before any one hath offered to be so to her XLIX BUT can a Christian Maid without forgetting what she is say that she seeks a husband by the nakedness of her body This is to bring to the marriage a disposition absolutely contrary to the purity that it demands since it being a perfect Image of the union of Jesus Christ with his Church it ought not only to be contracted without impurity but to bring it about by ways that are intirely pure and innocent These are the Virgins which chiefly adorn the Church it belongs to the Church principally to adorn them It belongs to Her and to her Ministers rather than to the Mode and the persons of the age to regulate their habits and their Ornaments their meen and conduct because it is Jesus Christ they ought to please rather than the world It is for him that they ought to demand a husband and it is from him that they ought to receive him L. THERE is not one among them but say Marriages are made in Heaven before they are concluded on on Earth But yet they will take care that Heaven shall have no hand as we say in their Marriage if they can possibly help it when they make use of so impure a means to get themselves Married as that of nakedness and methinks it is not from the hands of Jesus Christ but from those of the friend of Leachery Asmodeus that they resolve to take a husband They have recourse to the only Charms of their beauty inst ad of addressing themselves to prayer and from thence no doubt it comes that they lose the esteem and affection of their husbands accordingly as their beauty diminishes How proud and haughty soever they appear yet they discover a baseness and submission when they reduce themselves even to go half naked and all that they may be able to please a man And therefore it is possibly that God to whom this nakedness is so displeasing permitts them to find in that man a Master who treats them ill and not a husband who loves and cherishes them LI. 'T IS from God only says Solomon that men can receive a wise and prudent Woman for their wife and so it is he only that can give a woman a rich a loving and faithful man for her husband and if you demand of me what a Maid ought to do to obtain of God this husband and so to lead a happy life in marriage I will answer you with the same Solomon that she both ought to be and to appear modest Finis Modestiae divitiae gloria vita Prov. 22. 4. LII WHAT then do you think on Christian Maidens when you wound modesty by your naked Necks do you not know that when God makes marriages it is but for the mutual happiness of both the married parties and even as he gave a woman to the first Innocent man to have a care of him and to assist him in his labour to lessen his troubles by partaking of them and to augment his pleasures by participating with him so most commonly he gives a wise and modest Maid a Husband to be a comfort and support to her to be her Protector and her Father Can you be ignorant that Marriages are almost alwayes unfortunate when the World is the Author of them when Voluptuousness or vanity have been as I may so speak the Factors and makers up of them and that the men have not been engaged to them but by some sensual passion which the nakedness of your bodies have stirr'd up in them LIII YOU have only then to choose either to be in all probability happy if you will be mindful to please God by your restrain'd garb and carriage that so you may please a Man and make him the witness and approver of your modesty before he be your husband or of evidently exposing your self to be miserable if without ever taking any heed to gain the esteem of those whom you desire for your husbands you endeavour only to beget in them a foolish love which most an end goes out of the mind as easily as it entred into it and which is almost as soon over as the enjoyment of the pleasure which is proposed LIV. IT IS no difficult thing to judge which side they ought to follow if they are but reasonable creatures and mean to be happy in the Marriages they aspire to And we may be sure of this that they may be so they ought to keep their Arms covered their breasts conceal'd and their shoulders not exposed to the view of men so far should they be from shewing them as now they do Men make a great deal of difference between a Curtisan or a light woman and a Wife they love that nakedness in those whom they look upon as the former but do extremely disapprove of it in those whom they desire to make their Wives Nothing more pleases them in a Maid than a modest gravity and a natural beauty without Art and studied wayes of setting it out 'T is only their irregularity and their passion that sometimes approves of Womens naked breasts and shoulders their reason and their prudence always condemns it they know that that proceeds from one and the same principle of being desirous to look upon a fair Neck and of affecting to shew it and as they are sensible by themselves that it is most difficult to behold it innocently and with pleasure they judge that Maid who is so pleas'd with having it seen by them not to be so innocent as she would fain appear and be thought for And as they cannot doubt but this is a great sign of piety and devotion in a young man when he blushes at the sight of a naked neck and avoids the looking on it they are convinc'd that a Maid is pious and devout when she is asham'd to uncover her breasts and therefore keeps it equally from her own sight and that of others too LV. O PRUDENCE of the Flesh how blind art thou and how deceiving the Maids of this Age pretend to secure and advance their Marriages by the nakedness of their Necks and it is by that they deferr them or it may be totally hinder them they are not careful in pleasing God through the hopes of their being able to be pleasing to man and God suffers them to appear less amiable to that man by that means by which they labour so much to please him they lose his approbation and esteem in desiring to surprize his affection and they discourage him to marry any of them by their ambition to engage him to it LVI THEY know as well as men that the beauty of the bosome hath this property that it almost continually inspires dishonest Sentiments why will they then excite that