gain,
who is addressed by the man she loves, makes no objection,
and feels little uneasiness, even at the certainty of his
prostituting his person to all the women of the town. Nay,
if he has the reputation of having ruined two or three of
rank and character, so far from hurting, that generally
recommends him to her favour. These are facts incontestable,
they can be accounted for by no principle in nature, they
are quite contrary to all the maxims of delicacy, but prove
at the same time the prodigious force of habit and custom.
This is a thing undoubtedly wrong, and perhaps the women are
rather more to blame than the men. In all general affairs,
indeed, in all matters of consequence, the male sex must
ever lead, and the other follow; but surely they have
something in their power, were they to exert themselves.
They ought never, by a silent approbation, to encourage
looseness and profligacy among the men, and thus be
accessary to the prostitution of numbers in the lower rank
of their own sex; and if they have it not in their power to
reform their gallants altogether, they can at least make
them throw the mask of decency over their vices.

There is another species of chastity, which may properly
enough be stiled religious, and is equally obligatory on all
ranks; but is only found among those nations where the
Christian system is established. The founder of our religion
was himself a bright and a shining pattern of this virtue,
and he and his immediate disciples recommended and enforced
it strongly, both by precept and example. It was this,
chiefly, that, in the first ages of the church, filled the
mountains and desarts with hermits of all sexes and ages; it
was this that gave rise to the religious orders of monks and
nuns, and the celibacy of the clergy, which still subsist in
Popish countries. But these consequences were pernicious to
the publick good, they discouraged marriage, and established
that ecclesiastical tyranny, under which all Europe groaned
before the reformation and the resurrection of letters. But
as these precepts and examples are now applied in protestant
countries, they are useful and proper; they are only applied
to recommend conjugal fidelity and continence before
marriage, and thus in some measure supply the deficiencies
of the political chastity, among women of the lower rank, to
whom that does not extend. And even though it were to be
granted, that Christianity is no divine institution, yet,