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372
HISTORY OF THE ROSICRUCIANS.
haunting of dissolute places, or resort to curtizans, are no
more punished in married men than in batchelors ; the de-
praved custome of change and the delight in meretricious
embracements (where sin is turned into art), make marriage
a dull thing, and a kinde of imposition, or tax. They hear
you defend these things as done to avoid greater evills, as
advoutries, deflowering of virgins, unnaturall lust, and the
like, but these vices and appetites
do still remain and
abound, unlawfull lusts being like a furnace ; if you stopp
the flames altogether, it will quench ; but if you give it any
vent, it will rage. As for masculine love, they have no
touch of it, and yet there are not so faithfull and inviolate
friendships in the world as are there. Their usual saying
is, that whosever is unchaste cannot reverence himself, and
that the reverence of a man's self is, next religion, the
chiefest bridle of all vice."
I confessed the righteousnesse of Aquanna was greater
than the righteousnesse of Europe, at which he bowed his
head, and went on in this manner.
"
They have also many
wise and excellent laws touching marriage. They allow no
polygamie. They have ordained that none doe intermarrie
or contract until a month be past from their first interview.
Marriage without consent of parents they
do not make
void, but they mulct it in the inheritours, for the children
of such marriages are not admitted to inherit above a third
their parents' inheritance. I have read, in a book of one
of your men, of a fained commonwealth, where the married
couple are permitted before the contract to see one another
naked. This they dislike, for they think it a scorn to give
a refusall after so familiar knowledge; but because of
many hidden defects in men and women's bodies, they have
neare every towne a couple of pooles (which they call Adam