The reasons of the Christian religion the first part, of godliness, proving by natural…

§. 29. Particularly it telleth us, that we must do nothing injuriously against the life, or health, or liberty of our neighbour, but do our best for their preservation and comfort.

§. 30. Man being so noble a creature, and his education so necessary to his welfare, and promiscuous unregulated generation tending so manifestly to confusion, ill education, divisions and corruption of mankind; and unbridled exercise of lust tending to the abasement of reason, and corruption of body and mind, Nature telleth us, that carnal copulation should be very strictly regulated, and kept within the bounds of lawful marriage; and that the contract of marriage must be faithfully kept, and no one defile his neighbours bed, nor wrong another's chastity, or their own, in thought, word, or deed.

This proposition, though Boars understand it not, is proved in the annexed reasons: Nothing would tend more to household divisions and ill education, and the utter degenerating and undoing of mankind than ungoverned copulation. No one would know his own children, if lust were not bounded by strict and certain Laws; and then none ⟨p. 78⟩would love them, nor provide for them; nor would they have any certain ingenuous education. Women would become most contemptible and miserable, as soon as beauty faded, and lust was satisfied; and so one half of mankind made calamitous, and unfitted to educate their own children: and ruin and depravation of nature could not be avoided. They that think their choicest Plants and Flowers fit for the enclosure of a Garden, and carefullest culture, weeding and defence, should not think their children should be educated or planted in the Wilderness. It is not unobservable, that all flying Fowls do know their Mates, and live by couples, and use copulation with no other: and that the Beasts and more terrestrial Fowl do copulate but only so oft as is necessary to generation. And shall Man be worse than Beasts?