Certain Sermons or Homilies (First Book of Homilies)

Is not whoredom an enemy to the pleasant flour of youth? and bringeth it not grey hairs and old age, before the time? What gift of nature (although it were never so precious) is not corrupted with whoredom? Come not the French pocks, with other diverse diseases of whoredom? From whence come so many bastards and misbegotten children, to the high displeasure of God, and dishonour of ⟨image 77⟩holy wedlock, but of whoredom? How many consume all their substance and goods, and at the last fall into such extreme poverty, that afterward they steal, and so are hanged through whoredom? What contention and manslaughter cometh of whoredom? How many maidens be deflowered, how many wives corrupted, how many widows defiled, through whoredom? How much is the public weal impoverished, and troubled through whoredom? How much is Gods word contemned and depraved by whoredom & whoremongers? Of this vice, cometh a great part of the divorces, which (now a days) be so commonly accustomed and used, by mens private authority, to the great displeasure of God, and the breach of the most holy knot and bond of matrimony. For when this most detestable sin is once crept into the breast of the adulterer, so that he is entangled with unlawful, and unchaste love, straightways, his true and lawful wife is despised, her presence is abhorred, her company stinketh, and is loathsome, whatsoever she doth, is de•prap•ed, there is no quietness in the house, so long as she is in sight: Therefore to make short tale, must she away, for her husband can brook her no longer. Thus through whoredom, is the honest and innocent wife put away, and an harlot received in her stead: and in like sort, it happeneth many times in the wife, towards her husband. O abomination? Christ our saviour, very God and man, coming to restore the law of his heavenly father, unto the right sense, understanding, & meaning, (among other things) reformed ⟨image 78⟩the abuse of this law of God.¹ For where as the Jews used, of a long sufferance, by custom, to put away their wives at their pleasure, for every cause:

Is not whoredome an enemye to the pleasaunte flour of youth? and bringeth it not gray heares and olde age, before the tyme? What gyft of nature (although it were neuer so precious) is not corrupted with whoredom? Come not the Frēche pockes, with other diuerse diseases of whoredome? From whence come so many bastardes and misbegotten children, to the hyghe displeasure of God, and dishonoure of