LONDON:
Printed in the Year M.DCC.XL.
TO THE
SOCIETIES
FOR
Reformation of Manners.
Gentlemen,
THE great Pains and Diligence You have employ’d in the Defence of Modesty and Virtue, give You an undisputed Title to the Address of this Treatise; tho’ it is with the utmost Concern that I find myself under a Necessity of writing it, and that after so much Reforming, there should be any Thing left to say upon the Subject, besides congratulating You upon Your happy Success. It is no small Addition to my Grief to observe, that Your Endeavours to suppress Lewdness have only serv’d to promote it; and that this Branch of Immorality has grown under Your Hands, as if it was prun’d instead of being lopp’d. But however Your ill Success may grieve, it cannot astonish me: What else could we hope for, from Your persecuting of poor strolling Damsels? From your stopping up those Drains and Sluices we had to let out Lewdness? From your demolishing those Horn-works and Breast-works of Modesty? Those Ramparts and Ditches within which the Virtue of our Wives and Daughters lay so conveniently intrench’d? An Intrenchment so much the safer, by how much the Ditches were harder to be fill’d up. Or what better could we expect from Your Carting of Bawds, than that the Great Leviathan of Leachery, for Want of these Tubs to play with, should, with one Whisk of his Tail, overset the Vessel of Modesty? Which, in her best Trim, we know to be somewhat leaky, and to have a very unsteady Helm.
An ancient Philosopher compares Lewdness to a wild, fiery, and headstrong young Colt, which can never be broke till he is rid into a Bog: And Plato, on the same Subject, has these Words; The Gods, says he, have given us one disobedient and unruly Member, which, like a greedy and ravenous Animal that wants Food, grows wild and furious, till having imbib’d the Fruit of the common Thirst, he has plentifully besprinkled and bedewed the Bottom of the Womb.