of a just Satyr in this Work, for want of Expressions suited to the Nature of the Reproof, and the Vileness of the Offence. We shall find Words to expose them, without giving a Blow to Decency in the Reproof; we shall find Ways and Means to dress up surfeiting Crimes in softening Language; so that none but the Guilty need to blush, none but the Criminals be offended.
But the Crime must be reproved; there's a Necessity for the Reproof as there is a Necessity of a Cure in a violent Distemper. Do we reckon it a Breach of Modesty for the Body to be exposed in Anatomies, and published with learned Lectures on every Part by the Anatomists? Are not the vilest and most unnatural of all Crimes necessarily brought before Courts of Justice, that the Criminals may be punished as they deserve? And though it may be true, that sometimes judicial Proceedings are not managed with such Decency in those Cases as others think they might, and which, however, I allow to be sometimes unavoidable; yet notwithstanding all that can be pretended of Immodesty in those Proceedings, the Punishment of the Criminal, or his being sentenced must not be omitted, for the preserving the Modesty of the Trial; an Offender would come well off in many Offences, besides this I am treating of, if he must not be brought to Justice, because the very mention of his Crime would put criminal Ideas into the minds of those that hear of it.
Let it suffice then in the Case before us; I am entring upon a just and needful Censure of preposterous and immodest Actions; I shall perform it in as decent and reserved Terms as I amable
