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Modesty to Men of Modesty; the great Law of Matrimony is a strict Union of the Persons; this Union extends to many other Things, as well as to the Union of Sexes, and, among the rest, there is, or should be, a Union of Kindness moving to a gentle and tender using one another in Matters of Civility and Courtesy, as well as in Matters of Modesty. Certainly the Rules of Civility are not abolished by Matrimony; Should not the Man and his Wife be civil and just to one another, because they may be free? That's a strange Freedom that obliges us to be rude and disobliging.
Now these Rules of Decency which, I say, are not destroyed by Matrimony, extend to many things even between a Man and his Wife, which I have not yet mentioned, and which I have with regret observed to be broken into by some who had been better taught, and who ought to have known by the Laws of good Manners how to have acted after another sort; the Branches I point at now may be touched more closely, and will admit of speaking plainer English than those I have just now mentioned; and though the Immodesty may in many Things be as great, and that it comes from, the same corrupt, vicious Original, either in the Man or the Woman, yet they are not express'd in so open and so scandalous and offensive Terms.
The first Case is, when either the Man or Woman make injurious Reproaches upon one another for natural or accidental Infirmities, incapacitating them to answer and satisfy mutual Expectation; that is to say, to answer conjugal Duties; and this more especially when those Infirmities have not been Ante-matrimo-
