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
offering is to be led by Love not drawn by the Cords of Wedlock for the Will is a free faculty and consequently cannot be forcibly determined to any act but yet is capable of admitting perswasions and inducements and so may be by them inclin'd but without them cannot be forced And therefore tho Maids ought not to Marry without their Parents consent yet they ought not to be compell'd against their own 'T is true indeed that large Estates can produce a plenty of Livelyhood but 't is as true that Content only can produce happy Living for Content and Riches prove often to be no a kin to one another but Content and Happiness are Twins and ever inseparable friends and like Water and Ice one still makes the other Content is certainly the greatest worldly happiness for it makes the poor Rich with it and the Rich poor without it and very common experience tells us that many poor Men are made happy by their unrich Wives and many wealthy heiresses are made miserable and unfortunate by their rich Husbands for 't is not much but enough that satisfies and the Weekly Bills of Mortality inform us that more die with Surfeits than starve with Hunger the true Measures of Contentment not consisting in quantity but quality for many have much that have not enough and many have enough that have not much some young Women being composed of such distempered Hidropick feaverish humors as there 's no quenching the Thirst of their hot ambitious desires others are so temperately minded and healthfully wise as a moderate and indifferent kind of condition satisfies them and those are happy in such a moderation to a high degree Content being the Throne of happiness the very top of our ambition and the end and accomplishment of all our desires the sole want of which is like that of wanting health which is sufficient to unpleasure all our other enjoyments in a word Content is of such an obliging generous Nature and of so universal value as it furnisheth us with every thing that either our real necessity wants or our vain desires fancy And as Content is thus pleasing so discontent is little less unpleasing and therefore I cannot but highly blame and Censure such Tyranical ill natur'd Parents as because they like such a Mans fortune therefore they will make their Child Marry such a ones person tho 't is as odious to her sight as pleasing to her fathers Covetous humor and so to satisfie his will must force her inclinations to Marry him tho utterly against her own Indeed 't is such kind of forc'd Marriages that drives young Women into a double evil and that of the worst sort too being those of Perjury and Treachery for how can you make it less than Perjury in a young Woman to make a solemn Vow in the face of the Congregation to Love that Man her whole Life whom she knows she cannot Love a piece of a day nay not so much as that very time of her Life she is vowing to Love him till death them depart And surely there is no less Treachery in such a Marriage Vow that must be a kin to that black one of Judas who under pretence to kiss his Lord and Master brought a band of Soldiers to seize him so averse forced Marriages under pretence of long continuing friendship and kindness by shaking hands but not joyning hearts do often bring Bands of discontents and miseries to each others Lives and Liberties Therefore to conclude this Discourse my opinion is that Parents may choose their Daughters wealthy Husbands to live with but 't is only themselves that can chuse Husbands to be delighted in and therefore those Maids do well that Marry with their Parents liking and they do ill that Marry against their own THE SEVENTH DISCOURSE Against Widows Marrying WHen I consider truly and reflect seriously how many Widows have made themselves miserable by Marriage and how few make themselves happy by Marrying methinks it should be now as needless a Task to disswade such from Marrying as to advise them not to eat again of that Dish they came just from surfeiting on for sure she that makes her self unhappy by a second Marriage deserves as much her own misery and merits as little others pity as the Man that steals again after having been burnt in the hand does the Gallows for a repeated fault is a twofold Crime and deserves a double punishment I know I need not mind the Reader of the old and common fable of two Women that went assoon as they died to S. Peter to get admittance into Paradise the first assured him that her Husband was such a devilish wicked ill natured Man that he made her life a kind of Hell on Earth upon which account S. Peter thought it reasonable that since she had suffer'd a Hell in this World she should not endure another in the next and so admitted her into Paradise The other Woman observing this thought she had a double Key and Ticket for she was not only tormented with one but two bad wicked cross-grain'd Husbands which render'd her life most miserable but S. Peter answer'd her that since she was so very simple as not to think one bad Husband enough but she must have two he bid her be gone for Paradise was no place for fools indeed that Widow must be extravagantly foolish and unreasonable that did not think the misery of one base Husband sufficient but she must try the experiment of a second I confess I cannot at all agree in opinion with that Writer who says a Woman is but an imperfect Creature whilst she is without a Husband but had he said a Widow was not come to her full perfection of misery 'till she had one I fancy he had given a truer Character and taken a more just measure of most Widows lives that Marry since common experience may assure all Wives and Widows that there are generally ten bad Husbands for one good one and I believe there are few Widows in our age that are so perfect Disciples of Seneca's wisdom as to extract satisfaction out of misery it being an Apostolical vertue to be satisfied and contented in whatsoever condition it pleaseth God to place one to But I am rather of the belief that a young beautiful Widow that leads a strict vertuous unmarried life leads a kind of Miraculous one in as much as she being born a Subject to the Law of Nature and to the Lustful frailties of it having not only tasted but probably delighted in them and yet can contain her self so in the bounds of such a vertue and pious Mortification as to be so much Mistris of her self and of her own youthful temper and inclinations as to resist the pressing temptations of young handsom Men with an unmoveable vertuous constancy such young Widows do really live in this world as the Papists say the Nuns do in their Nunneries That they live in the flesh as if they had no
beauty Riches carries its troubles as well as delights for there 's great labour in procuring Wealth trouble in defending and preserving it and also great Cares in the well spending it whilst one lives and well disposing of it when we die and so if we look over and search into most Worldly pleasures and vanities we shall find them as contrary to the true repose of this life as they are to the felicities of the next Certainly there is some great Charm in this thing called Praise that tickles the ear inflames the heart raises the spirits enlivens the resolution deludes the reason flatters the hopes and deceives the sight by giving a false gloss and making a counterfeit representation of things for the Bait of Praises for which both Men and Women so strive and eagerly pursue is still painted and set out in the brightest and most oriental charming Colours that are imaginable to allure our eyes inflame our hearts and enliven our ambition But the Hook that is hid in this Bait that is the great dangers hardships and thousands of vexatious disappointments that one must necessarily meet and run thorow in the pursuit of this Idol folly is so obscure artificially drawn as 't is not commonly seen but very ordinarily felt by many in some to their loss of Life and to others of their greatest satisfactions in it And now to put my last finishing Touch to this Picture of Praise the Mistris and Darling of the whole World methinks we ought not to wonder that this adored beauty is so Coy in her Carriage and so difficult to be gain'd if we do but reflect tho in a wholesail manner the sad oversights great mistakes and blind pursuits of its followers of whom I shall only say in general that some are so eager in gazing at it others so over earnest in their seeking it as really most oversee the right way to it which is by true Piety constant Charity and a daily practice of Vertue and Godliness in all their actions And no wonder that such as will not take these blessed Guides should miserably miss their way to it and be sadly defeated in their hopes of it And now having done with my Discourse of Praise give me leave to change the Scene and to pass by the uncertainty of your meeting it tho to reflect on the certainty of deaths meeting you and the terrors that then appear at the end of a vain wicked life and to beg the vain young Ladies Company for a little time that I might lead their thoughts into the sad and dismal Regions of Mortality that they may now consider it to prevent it hereafter from surprizing them and that they may carry their thoughts to the Grave before their friends carry their Bodies The Seasons of our Lives resemble exactly those of the Year the Summer of our Life swallows up the Spring of our Youth and the Autumn of our Age makes us to decline as the Sun does daily of its vigorous heat and influence till all the fair days and various productions of natures beauty at last yeild to old Age Winter as their Grave for as the Apostle says 'T is appointed for every Man once to die and one day is still the death of the other and tho many things may keep back the thoughts of deaths coming yet nothing can retard the time of his approach And now I must humbly beg our vain modish Ladies pardon if I here a little mind them of the sad concluding Scene of their Life and in how miserable a condition some of them must necessarily be in when they come to die and have wasted all their Life in Vanity and Sin little considering Reputation and less fearing Scandal little valuing Conscience and less esteeming Eternity It has often come into my mind that the sad end of such vain Womens Lives is like the last Scene of their Loves to their Gallants which is just as an Ague turned upside down the cold fit after the hot for when the fiery passions of youthful Love are changed through their Inconstancy or worn out by Age or wasted by Sickness for you know that Loves-vanity is but of a short date it either vanishes in the act and is nipped in its gay and vigorous blossom like the tender-leav'd Plants by a cold Northern-wind or else grows wrinkled and impotent like crooked and deform'd shrubs for want of sap and moisture and so grows loathsom and deformed as the grim Jaws of Death that will too at last come with a dreadful stroak to level all our fair Cedars to the ground and make your beauty Ladies to consume away like a Moth fretting a Garment every Woman is therefore but vanity and when you are thus brought to your Death-beds of pain and languishing O then Consider what a sad condition you must needs be in when you will find all your fond beauty and vanity going off the Stage when your life is just expiring when the scorching thoughts of your past vain life come to inflame your mind more fiercely than the burning Feaver can your body and that the remembrance of your past extravagant pride and vanity will torment your troubled Conscience more than ever before they pleased your sensual appetite and that the shivering fit of guilt not only seizes your heart but pierceth your very soul with sad and sober thoughts of your past sins and the strict account that you must soon give of them and of the terrible punishments that you must justly suffer for them when perhaps you cannot comfort your afflicted Conscience with the assurance of having so much as performed in your whole life one pious act or charitable deed when you had both time and means to have performed thousands and so as too many of you do lose the blessings of the other World meerly for slighting Gods mercies in this And farther 't will be well worth the consideration of our vain Ladies that when they lie a dying the sins of their life will flie about their troubled minds as naturally as sparks do about fire and will lighten them to a clear sight of their pride and vanity and their greatest trouble when they are leaving this World is what will become of them when they are out of it and truly it will not be without great cause since their Consciences will then assure them that their Bodily pain in this Life will be but the Prologue or first step to their Souls eternal misery in the next Whereas a pious young Lady who with holy David makes a covenant with her Eyes that they should not behold vanity but observe Gods commandments as her chief study and delight by truly living in his fear she will certainly die in his favour and will find at her death that her good Conscience will be her real friend and true comforter and furnish her with a chearful readiness to submit her will to Gods which will never fail to protect her against all those spiritual