our of families, unsettles the titles to kingdoms,
honours, and estates; for if the actions from which such settlements
spring were illegal, all that is built upon them must be so too; but
the last is absurd, therefore the first must be so likewise. What is the
cause that Europe groans at present under the heavy load of a cruel and
expensive war, but the tyrannical custom of a certain nation, and the
scrupulous nicety of a silly queen in not exercising this indispensable
duty, whereby the kingdom might have had an heir, and a controverted
succession might have been avoided. These are the effects of the narrow
maxims of your clergy, 'That one must not do evil that good may come of
it.'

"The assertors of this indefeasible right, and jus divinum of matrimony,
do all in their hearts favour the pretenders to married women; for
if the true legal foundation of the married state be once sapped, and
instead thereof tyrannical maxims introduced, what must follow but
elopements instead of secret and peaceable change?

"From all that has been said, one may clearly perceive the absurdity
of the doctrine of this seditious, discontented, hot-headed, ungifted,
unedifying preacher, asserting 'that the grand security of the
matrimonial state, and the pillar upon which it stands, is founded upon
the wife's belief of an absolute unconditional fidelity to the husband;'
by which bold assertion he strikes at the root, digs the foundation, and
removes the basis upon which the happiness of a married state is built.
As for his personal reflections, I would gladly know who are those
'wanton wives' he speaks of? who are those ladies of high stations
that he so boldly traduces in his sermon? It is pretty plain who these
aspersions are aimed at, for which he deserves the pillory, or something
worse.

"In confirmation of this doctrine of the indispensable duty of change,
I could bring the example of the wisest wives in all ages, who by these
means have preserved their husband's families from ruin and oblivion
by want of posterity; but what has been said is a sufficient ground for
punishing this pragmatical parson."

CHAPTER XIV. The two great Parties of Wives, the Devotos and the Hitts.*

*Those who were for and against the doctrine of
nonresistance.

The doctrine of unlimited fidelity in wives was universally espoused by
all husbands, who went about the country and made the wives sign papers
signifying their utter detestation a