n, Philters, Stews, to marry one equal in years, fortunes,
of a good family, education, good place, to use them well, &c._

Of such medicines as conduce to the cure of this malady, I have
sufficiently treated; there be some good remedies remaining, by way of
prevention, precautions, or admonitions, which if rightly practised, may do
much good. Plato, in his Commonwealth, to prevent this mischief belike,
would have all things, wives and children, all as one: and which Caesar in
his Commentaries observed of those old Britons, that first inhabited this
land, they had ten or twelve wives allotted to such a family, or
promiscuously to be used by so many men; not one to one, as with us, or
four, five, or six to one, as in Turkey. The [6217]Nicholaites, a set that
sprang, saith Austin, from Nicholas the deacon, would have women
indifferent; and the cause of this filthy sect, was Nicholas the deacon's
jealousy, for which when he was condemned to purge himself of his offence,
he broached his heresy, that it was lawful to lie with one another's wives,
and for any man to lie with his: like to those [6218]Anabaptists in
Munster, that would consort with other men's wives as the spirit moved
them: or as [6219]Mahomet, the seducing prophet, would needs use women as
he list himself, to beget prophets; two hundred and five, their Alcoran
saith, were in love with him, and [6220]he as able as forty men. Amongst
the old Carthaginians, as [6221]Bohemus relates out of Sabellicus., the
king of the country lay with the bride the first night, and once in a year
they went promiscuously all together. Munster _Cosmog. lib. 3. cap. 497._
ascribes the beginning of this brutish custom (unjustly) to one Picardus, a
Frenchman, that invented a new sect of Adamites, to go naked as Adam did,
and to use promiscuous venery at set times. When the priest repeated that
of Genesis, "Increase and multiply," out [6222]went the candles in the
place where they met, "and without all respect of age, persons, conditions,
catch that catch may, every man took her that came next," &c.; some fasten
this on those ancient Bohemians and Russians: [6223]others on the
inhabitants of Mambrium, in the Lucerne valley in Piedmont; and, as I read,
it was practised in Scotland amongst Christians themselves, until King
Malcolm's time, the king or the lord of the town had their maidenheads. In
some parts of [6224]India in our age, and those [6225]islanders, [6226]as
amongst the Babyloni