ANSWER.

I Do not onely approve your Ladi­ships friendly freedome, but I take it as some degree of special favour that you speak your thoughts to my face, and not after the secret censurings or back-biting whispers of some, who (less able to confute what they blame, then to justifie what they suspect) ar­raign before the rash Tribunal of their judgements every face whose hand­somness they either envy, if natural, or grievously reproach, if they think it [Page 3] hath any thing artificial beyond what themselves are wonted to or acquain­ted with; who (yet) in other things do as much contend against the defects, deformities and decaies of nature and age, as may be, by washings, anointings and plasterings, by many secret medi­caments and close receits, which may either fill and plump their skins, if flat and wrinkled, or smooth and polish them, if rugged and chapt, or clear and brighten them, if tann'd and freckled: onely in the point of colour or tinctures added in the least kind or degree they are not more scrupulous then censo­rious; as if every one that used these had forsaken Christ's banner, and now fought under the Devil's colours.

Your Nobleness (Madam) is more just and civil, in giving me opportunity to answer for my self, that either I may confess and forsake what you suspect, if you convince me of the evil of it; or continue with a good conscience to doe what you are jealous of, if I can assert it to be lawful and good.

First then, if I should deny what [Page 4] your Ladiship suspects, it would be ve­ry hard to prove it; since what you fancy as additional, is not beyond the ordinary proportion of what is natural to my age and complexion. Besides, the looks (you know) of our Sex, as to paleness or redness, admit as many changes as the Moon, by natural vari­ations; which are many times in wo­men not more sudden, then much to their injury or advantage: So imperti­nent must they needs be, whose eyes are over-curious to find fault at Art there where they have no cause but to commend Nature, unless they were made womens Confessors, which I be­lieve few are in this case; so that they must needs blame most-what rashly, and oft unjustly, because they onely guess uncertainly.

But because I perceive your Ladiship hath a great zeal in this particular, (which I must interpret a commen­dable and Christian tenderness against any thing suspected for Sin, which can­not be small to a gainsaying conscience, whose eye will not endure the least [Page 5] mote any more then the heart can the least wound) I will deal so liberally with your Ladiship as to grant you this supposal, whereupon to fix any dis­course which may (as you think) bat­ter down with a mighty Engine all au­xiliary Beauty or additional Handsom­ness.

And truly it is not my fear, but my request to you, (of whose pious abili­ties the world hath a great and just ac­count) that your Ladiship would let me see, by rational and clear arguings, what you have against it, beyond those vulgar flashes and easie flourishes of some great sticklers and declaimers against all such female arts; (to which I have been much wonted) who with shame and folly, as Solomon sayes, (even Prov. 18. 13. sometimes in the Pulpit as well as in the Press) resolve of matters of sin and cases of Conscience, before they consi­der or understand them, calling for fire Luke 9. 54. from Heaven upon all they dislike, as the Disciples did, without ever advi­sing with Christ: which confidence hath made many well-meaning people [Page 6] very much startle at and condemn all such complexionary adornings, as if they impudently outfaced God and man, as if they fought with an high hand and brazen forehead against Reason and Re­ligion, Nature and Grace, Humanity and Christianity. After this rate of bold Oratory many women have been more scared then convinced, more dis­tracted with scruples and terrours then satisfied with truth, as to the na­ture of many things pretended to be sins and violations of Conscience; which must be measured not by the bulk, but weight, not the noise, but force of mens words: 'Tis not the cry, but the fleece, which sober persons regard.

But I will in this rather suspect at present my own incapacity, then any want of solidity or charity in the Ser­mons and censures of so many as bit­terly inveigh against all Artificial Beau­ty; hoping to learn from your Ladi­ship what may, upon just grounds, make me subscribe to their and your severities in this point: Though, I [Page 7] confess, after some diligent search in­to other books, and chiefly the holy Scriptures, I am as yet so remiss and charitable in my censure of those little artifices used by many sober persons, that, as I will not undertake to justifie all those that use them, so nor dare I condemn all who may use and doe the same things with farre different minds and to very distant ends.

ANSWER.

MAdam, as I allow your Rule, the Word of God, which is the only balance of the Sanctuary where sins are to be weighed; so I am not ignorant of that story to which your Ladiship (as all others in this dispute) doth much [Page 9] referre: nor am I a stranger to that gloss or observation thence made against all painting or tincturing of the face by that most worthy Prelate, with whose so quick and sharp a stroke I was (at first reading that passage) so startled, that I had no rest, till I advi­sed with another person of great judge­ment and sober piety, who made it clear to me, That that excellent Bi­shop, however then he thought fit (af­ter the wonted oratory and freedome of some of the Fathers) to make a po­pular pass or stroke of his potent pen against what he might suspect to be then much used, and abused too, in the English world; yet (for certain) he was too wise and judicious a Divine, to fix that signal and heavy judgement of God onely, or chiefly, (or indeed at all) upon Jezebel's painting, which was an after-act, and as to that time or in­stant in the story, comes at least 14. years behind that dreadful doom which was by the Prophet Elisha foretold up­on the score of Naboth's blood unjust­ly shed, and his inheritance cruelly [Page 10] usurped; which is 1 Kings 21. 23. So 1 Kings 21. 23. that her painting her eyes or face, men­tioned in the place you urge, is indeed (among other occasional circumstan­ces) recorded, but to a farre different end or use, then either to lay the weight of the subsequent punishment, or the guilt of any sin, upon that act more then upon the other concomitant actions therewith recited.

Among which this of her painting is indeed set down chiefly, to shew, That no advantages of outward Bean­ty, natural or artificial, (though set off with the curiosity and Majesty of a Queen) are sufficient to make any per­son the object of either love or pity, where foul and enormous sins have so debased and deformed their Souls to God, as Murther, Idolatry and Oppres­sion had done Jezebel's; for which sins (as is expresly said) that Tragedy befell her (which was foretold long be­fore she is brought in so dressed and adorned.) Which thunderbolt of God's vengeance she in vain sought to disarm or avoid by using any charms, [Page 11] attractives or lenitives of outward beau­ty, if that were her design: which truly is not very probable, at her years; and toward Jehu, a declared enemy. Nor do indeed the actions of Jezebel signify (as that gentleman tole me) any amo­rous intention whereby to allure Jehu; since her words reproach him with so just and bitter a Sarcasme as that is, Had Zimri peace who stew his master?

So that Jezebel at this time seems rather resolved not so much to court, as to scorn, Jehu, disdaining to depre­cate her ruine, or owe her life to such an enemy: and therefore she puts her self into a posture of Majesty; as shewing that height and greatness of Mind, which could own her self in the pomp and splendor of a Princess, even then when she expected her enemy and her end; that she might at least perish (as she thought) with the more repu­tation of a comely person and undaun­ted spirit, which abhorred to humble and abase it self, after the manner of fearful and squalid suppliants, in sack­cloth, or to abate any of those accusto­med [Page 12] ornaments with which she used (as a Queen) to entertain her self in her prosperity.

So that my learned friend concluded (in my opinion very rationally) that the Lord Primate's inference (for which she was justly eaten up by dogs) may no more be applied to this particular of Jezebel's painting her eyes or face, then to her adorning or dressing of her head, or her looking out of a window, or her speaking such words as she did to Jehu's face: all which are recorded in the same story, immediately before her precipitate ruine. Which actions in themselves cannot be branded for sins, nor are they noted there for such, fur­ther then they may be relatively con­sidered as to the mind and end of the doer or speaker, whereby to gratifie pride, passion, or any other wicked­ness. And in this respective conside­ration, not onely Jezebel's painting and dressing, but her very eating and drinking, her sleeping and clothing, her native strength and beauty, her ci­vil honor and power might be rela­tively [Page 13] sins; as the Scripture tells us, the plowing of the wicked is sin, and his Prov. 21. 4. Prov. 28. 9. praying is abomination; so his prospe­rity becomes a snare, and his plenty a poison to his Soul, when the good gifts and creatures of a good God are by evil minds perverted to be weapons of unrighteousness, and instruments of sin, to satisfie those lusts, whose inor­dinateness, 1 Pet. 2. 11. and not their desire, fights against God and the Soul.

So then your Ladiship cannot be so blind, as not to see that the bare histo­rical narration of Jezebel's painting her eyes, among other actions, (which you confess to be innocent in them­selves, and whereof you make no scru­ple) if it did referre to any wanton design (which is very unlikely at that time, in a Queen whose proud and vio­lent spirit might (now) justly be carried away with other passions and transports then those of Lust,) yet it doth no way argue or import the use of that or other things therewith mentioned to be in themselves any sins to all that then did, or after should, use the like [Page 14] applications, words or actions, out of far different minds, and to far different ends; which are beyond all dispute the proper grounds and rules of all moral denominations as to good or evil, in those mediate actions, agents and in­struments, whose freedome in nature falls not under any special restraint of God's command, forbidding them by any positive Law: (as he did many things in point of food, clothes, fashi­ons, and other civil actions among the Jews.)

It is a gross mistake in Architecture, to think that every small stud bears the main stress and burthen of the buil­ding, which lies (indeed) upon the prin­cipal timbers: And it is an horrible wresting of Scripture, to make every recited circumstance in any place to bear the whole weight of the story and event.

You cannot think that Dives went Luke 16. 19. to hell onely because he was a rich man clothed in purple and fine linen, and faring deliciously or sumptuously every day; all which things many per­sons [Page 15] of as good as great quality, of no less vertue and piety then honour and estate, daily enjoy without any blame. Nor was it Lazarus his poverty and dunghil, or his sores and the charitable tongues of the dogs, that brought him to heaven. The luxury, pride, and un­charitableness of the one; the patience, humility, and sanctity of the other, made that grand discrimination of their fates.

Nor may your Ladiship think, that the beheading of John Baptist is any Matth. 14. valid argument (however it be popu­larly used by some) against all Dan­cing, as if it were absolutely evil and unlawful in it self; not onely mixt of both sexes, but alone and single, as that of Herodias was, who is said (there) to have danced, not with, but before Herod and the company, (which yet I know your Ladiship and other sober persons, not onely use themselves, but also ap­prove, as to the breeding and behavi­our of their children.) That sad event (which is odiously, but fallaciously, laid to the charge of Dancing) was the pro­per [Page 16] effect not of the orderly motions of Herodias her feet, but of the inor­dinate strokes of her affections; her wanton pride and impious despite against not so much the person as the doctrine of that holy man, who never reproved (that we read) hers or others Dancing, (as to the civil custome of the Countrey or Court) but her adul­terous compliances with Herod's lust: John was not a stumbling-block to her feet, but an eye-sore to her eyes, and a corrosive to her ears, by his chast monitions and holy severities.

So Herod's sudden crumbling into Acts 12. 22. worms, may be justly urged against the pride and arrogance of any mortal in God's sight: but it is misapplied against the purple, Thrones and orations of Princes. In like sort I believe Jeze­bel's painting, and otherwaies dressing or adorning her self, set down in that place, to be no more prejudice in point of sin, against a sober, modest and in­genuous use of those things, then Le­ah's bargaining with Rachel for her sons Gen. 30. 15. mandrakes was any charm or cause of [Page 17] her conceiving that night with childe by her hired husband.

If all that Jezebel, or other notori­ous sinners mentioned in Scripture, did at any time, in order to accomplish any evil design, is therefore to be branded and avoided as a sin, we may not call a solemn assembly or keep a fast, be­cause Jezebel did both, in order to pal­liate 1 Kings 21. 9. with shews of Justice and prefa­cings of Religion her detestable mur­ther and dis-inherison of Naboth. Nor may we use fair words and affable ge­stures, because Absalom's ambition did 2 Sam. 15. abuse those popular arts. We must not kiss or embrace a friend, because Joab did so when he basely kill'd both Abner and Amasa; as also Judas did when he betrayed Christ: nay staves, and lanthorns, and torches must not be Joh. 18. 3. used, because they sometime waited up­on that ingrateful Traitor. We may not weep, because Ismael's treachery did Jer. 41. 6. so when he intended to slay Gedaliah. In all which cases the designs were ap­parently wicked and base; yet are not all those concomitant actions such, [Page 18] much less these here recorded of Jeze­bel: whose aim (certainly) was not any allurement, but a defiance and af­front to Jehu, shewing how little she was terrified by his presence, power, and success, at which she appeared nei­ther dejected nor deformed, after the manner of those squalid suppliants, who poorly and pitifully stoop below themselves to beg their lives; which she scorned to doe, by any the least di­minution or abatement of her wonted grandeur, glory, or splendour. As the mentioned circumstances receive no credit or honour by Jezebel's name, so nor any disparagement, since different minds make the difference of manners: Nor is it strange for the wicked to doe the same things that worthy persons doe to diverse ends.

ANSWER.

IF these places be all the strength your Ladiship can produce from Scri­pture against any colouring of the face, or helping of the complexion, because this, as other usual waies of comely, curious or stately adornings, are there mentioned as the practices of wanton & imperious women; yet your Ladiship will not hence conclude, That onely such women did then use those things, who are alwaies so cunning, as not to render themselves notorious by any such outward differences from grave and sober women (as they say the common curtisans of Rome are com­manded to doe, for distinction sake:) but rather you must conclude, That wanton women did cast themselves in­to the same outward mould or civil garb and fashion wherein persons of honour and good repute appeared, not with more beauty, state or comeliness, then with chastity, gravity and vertue. [Page 21] For sin is generally so apishly crafty, as to hide it self under the colours and masks of goodness and honesty; as well knowing that it is not onely deformed, but very fulsome, if it ap­pear impudently like it self.

Besides, if your Ladiship thinks the sharp style of that place strikes so se­verely against all painting and comple­xioning as a sin, why may you not also by the same severity destroy and dis­allow all other things there expressed in that same tone and tenour? as dressing and decking your self with any costly and comely ornaments, all sweet perfumes, all sitting on rich and stately beds, with tables before them, &c. From all which I do not find your Ladiship or others do abstain, either as to your persons or your houses; who yet with great eagerness single out and hunt to death that one particular there men­tioned, of painting the face, which seems to have no worser marks on it then the rest of the herd or company, which you are content to spare and preserve for your use.

[Page 22] But (Madam) it is unworthy of your candour and discretion thus to rack and disjoint Scriptures, whose sense for the most part is not to be ta­ken in the broken parts and severed or distracted limbs, but in the juncture and intireness of the whole discourse, which shews the scope and design of the Spi­rit of God; which is not either to condemn or commend every particular mentioned in the procedure of any place, where yet the main design is to commend or condemn something there eminently proposed, and chiefly ai­med at.

We read our Saviour Christ com­mending the providence and self-pre­servation Luke 16. 8. of the unjust steward; but not his falsity and injustice: which yet is there brought in as the fraudu­lent method of this worldly wisdome and forecast. So Jacob by his mothers Gen. 27. craft and imposture obtained the bles­sing from his cheated and aged father beyond any revocation; yet the sini­ster arts there used are not to be imi­tated or approved, however the desire [Page 23] of a paternal blessing (which was then solemn and Sacramental) might be as commendable in him, as the underva­luing of it was a profane temper in E­sau. If commendable ends do not ju­stifie Rom. 3. 8. evil means in any, no more may evil ends in some blemish the use of lawful and permitted things in others, who apply them to sober and good ends.

These places are very general and loose arguments to condemn all inge­nuous arts and helps of handsomness, either to the face and other parts of the body, or to the adorning of civil state & Majesty. Nor do they any way amount to so much as a positive Law, either Ceremonial or Political, such as those were against linsi-woolsie garments, Levit. 19. Levit. 11. sowing with diverse seeds, ab­staining from swines flesh, and other beasts, birds, or fishes, which yet in their nature are not unclean or un­lawful. Acts 10. 15.

How much less can your Ladiship or any other, by the Chymistry of your wits, extract from these places any drop [Page 24] or quintessence of a moral command, which shall be ever binding to the Conscience, as from sin?

Truly, I cannot but believe that the most holy God, who hath not been wanting to reveal his whole will to his Church in his written Word, so farre as is necessary for faith and good manners, who even in very small mat­ters gave an express law to the Jews in things less pleasing to him, not in their nature, but in their use or sig­nificancy among the Jews, such as were, the not cutting the corners of Lev. 19. 27. Deu. 14. 21. their heads and beards, the not seething a kid in its mothers milk, the not cut­ting 20. 19. down fruit-trees in a siege, the not 22. 6. taking the old bird with the young, she not leaving their excrements un­covered, 23. 13. &c. I cannot (I say) but be­lieve that this gracious God would either in the Old or New Testament have positively and expresly forbidden all such additionals to Beauty, or helps to handsomness, both as to the face and other parts of the body, if they had been in the use and nature of [Page 25] the things as abominable to him as Idolatry, Theft, Lying, Murther and Adultery; which some men have passionately, but very impotently, pre­tended.

Certainly his goodness would not in a case of sin, and so high a sin as some clamour this to be, have onely made such oblique and general reflexions upon it in this and other places, not as a thing any where forbidden, but onely as a general custome, used by many, and abused by some; not perstringing the nature of that more then other things there mentioned, but onely set­ting forth how farre vain and vicious minds were prone to abuse those things to God's displeasure, which vertuous minds (no doubt) did according to the modes and civil customes of the times and places use soberly, without any of­fence to God or man.

Who doubts but Queen Esther, a Est. 2. 12. devout and gracious woman, might lawfully use, as we reade she did, all those purifications appointed her? that she applied to her advantage all [Page 26] the attractives of sweet unguents and perfumes, of costly raiment and beai­tiful colours, of rich and accurate dres­sings or lovely adornings, such as were usual to the Persian delicacy, softness and luxury, hereby to win and confirm more the Kings affection and sensual love to her? Her using all these was so far from being her sin, that it had been so far a sin not to use them, as she had rather tempted God then pleased him, by neglecting to use those means which might (most probably) in ordi­nary providence conduce to those great and good ends which her holy, chaste and charitable heart intended to God's glory and the Churches good.

We reade Rebekah (in the primitive Gen. 24. 30. plainness and shepherdly simplicity of those times) accepted bracelets and other ornaments to be put on her arms, neck and eares, without any dis­paragement to her Virgin-modesty: so Solomon's chief wife and Queen, Pha­raoh's Psa. 45. 9. daughter, turning proselyte, is brought in as a type of the Church of the Gentiles espoused to Christ, and [Page 27] adorned with all princely riches and costly curiosities, that the king might take pleasure in her beauty.

That good and lawful things, both in Nature and Art, have been and daily are abused by evil minds to evil ends, is no doubt or wonder, since where­ever God hath his hand, the devil seeks to set his foot: and in that sense or aspect both the things themselves, and the abusive use of them, may be branded with marks of God's dislike. But this rather justifies and approves the sober and honest use of them, as the right end of God's creation and donation for mans use. Our Lord Je­sus bidding us beware lest our hearts Luke 21. 34. be overcharged with eating and drink­ing, and his Apostle forbidding us wine wherein is excess, also unlawful dalliances in chambering and wanton­ness; Rom. 13. 13. yet they do not hereby deny the lawful and loving sportings of Isaac with Gen. 26. 8. Prov. 5. 18. Rebekah, or the rejoycings with the wife of ones youth, or the moderate use of meats and drinks, even to a fe­stival mirth and satiety of wine; which [Page 28] Christs presence and bounty at a wed­ding John 2. feast, supplying, by a miracle, great quantities of excellent and inviting wines, (after men had well drunk) to an holy superfluity, do sufficiently vin­dicate, as allowed to Christians, not­withstanding the morose and cynical severity of some spirits.

The Jews are indeed blamed for Isa. 22. 13. their unseasonable gluttony and Epicu­rean profaneness, under the reproaches of joy and gladness, slaying of oxen, kil­ling of sheep, eating of flesh, drinking of wine, and singing to the viol; Which iniquity (saith God) shall not be purged from them till they die. Yet were not V. 14. these things in themselves unlawful, but therefore evil because unseasonable, and used by unsanctified and impeni­tent hearts, then when God called for fasting and mourning, for sackcloth and ashes: which outward forms and signs of penitence and humility there requi­red, are yet otherwhere taxed and high­ly blamed, when they were but the masks and visards of hypocrisie; as in Ahab and other Jews. Isa. 58. 3, 4, 5.

[Page 29] If we should therefore think all things unlawful to be used because they have been, or are abused, (which is a most pitiful piece of vulgar sophistry and superstitious fear) the devils and wicked mens incroachments would wholly abridge us of all God's bounty and Christian liberty. How have the Sun, Moon, and Starres, yea almost every creature on which are any re­markable characters of the Creatours goodness and glory (in their beauty and usefulness) how (I say) have they been ravished and abused by Idolatry or other sensual excesses? Yet must not wise and good men be therefore wholly divorced or estranged from them; which were as fond and irra­tional a part of superstition, as to forbear to eat beef and veal, or their sawces, garlick and onions, because the Egyptians worshipped the Oxe and those herbs, as the Jews did their golden Calf after that example. Upon this principle all must ab­stain from marrying, because some hus­bands and wives have adulterously pro­faned [Page 30] that holy covenant, and broke Mal. 2. 14. the vow of God which was upon them.

We shall never be able to reconcile the clashings and diversities of the Scri­pture style and expressions, sometime complaining of, otherwhile commend­ing the same things, unless we distin­guish of the same things in their seve­ral uses and abuses, as it were into their cross and pile, their day and night, ac­cording as the mind of the user or abu­ser either lightens or darkens them.

For you cannot but reade in Ezekiel Ezek. 16. 9, 10, 11, 12. that God (on the other side) sets forth his transcendent favour and bounty to the Church of the Jews under all those names and notions, by which either a fond parent or an amorous suitor are wonted to express their loves to any daughter, or spouse and mistress; by bestowing on them all the accomplish­ments and treasures of amorous deli­cacy, as sweet washings, anointings, clo­things with embroidery, silk, fine linen, forehead Jewels, ear-rings, bracelets, neck-lace, crown, works of gold and sil­ver, precious in nature, (at least in hu­mane [Page 31] esteem) and rare for art or work­manship: by all which additional beau­ties provision was made to hide defor­mities, supply defects, and set off the comeliness as of other parts of the bo­dy, so of the Face also:

Which is the chief Theatre, Throne and Centre of Beauty, to which all outward array is subservient; every part of the body studying as it were to pay (by adorning it self to its best ad­vantage) some tribute of comeliness as an homage to the face: which is not onely the Queen and soveraign of hu­mane and visible Beauty, but the Re­gent and directrix of the whole bodies culture, motion, and welfare.

In that place then of Ezekiel, your Ladiship sees the rich Cabinet of femi­nine ornaments and additionals of Beauty set forth as the fruit of divine munificence, and this under the Chara­cter or test of God's approbation; who as he hath made all these things (both for their substance and accidents, their matter and their forms, their mass and their colours) good in their nature or [Page 32] kind; so, as to their use, he hath fitted mankind with invention, knowledge, fancy, skill, curiosity and art, many wayes to apply and improve them: which is also a good gift of God, and peculiar to mankind, unto whom God hath thus manifested, both by nature and art, his special love and indulgence, inviting them by an holy use of his bounty to praise and serve him, as his children, with all faithfulness and chearfulness, even in this valley of mor­tality, which is the Churches continual infancy, and a Christians momentary minority.

Nor do we find the Jewish Church blamed there, or elsewhere, for using and enjoying all these divine donati­ons, even to the renown of her come­liness, and to a perfection of Beauty; but onely for that self-pride and pomp which drew her to trust in her riches and comeliness, so as to seek other lo­vers, and play the harlot against God.

ANSWER.

IF the Lord had a greater displeasure against the use of any colouring or complexioning of the face or skin, it is strange that it is not expressed in this place, which is the Bill of womens or­naments, (and with some special note of dislike) when in all probability the women of Jerusalem did as much use that as any other thing, as more nearly contributing to their Beauty; which appears by those other places you for­merly alledged. So little reason you have to suppose it more offensive then those other things here mentioned, that I may better argue, It is not at all of­fensive in it self, because not at all here expressed, where you think God pur­posely and particularly quarrels with all things that were offensive in femi­nine curiosity: this of complexioning being therefore not mentioned, because it may be used by many as an help of infirmity, without any pride or va­nity.

But I will not make any advantage [Page 35] of God's silence in this particular, but rather answer with more certainty, That God in this place enumerates all those particulars, not as absolutely finding fault with or forbidding the use of them, but as reproaching the in­grateful pride and abuse of them in those to whom he had indulged so ma­ny superfluities. Therefore the Lord, to prevent any mistake, first gives the account of his displeasure, verse 16. Because the daughters of Zion are haughty, and walk with stretched-forth necks, and wanton eyes, &c.

Therefore, that is for their haugh­tiness and abusing of God's bounty in nature and art, he threatens to punish them by depriving them of those things, as he doth otherwhere of his Hos. 2. 9. corn, wine, flax, and oil; which the divine indulgence had afforded, not to pamper wanton and proud minds to rebel against God, but to serve either natural necessities, or civil convenien­cies, or ingenuous delights, or modest decencies, or honorable state, as befit­ted mankind in their sociable, orderly [Page 36] and religious living, to their own con­tent, to others benefit, and to the Cre­ators glory.

God would not have threatned to deprive those women of all those things if they had been evil or poisonous in themselves; for then it had been a mercy to take them quite away, and a punishment to have continued them. Nor is the menace of stripping them of all those ornaments in order to scare them wholly from the use of them (which are otherwhere, as I shewed you, allowed) but to teach them how to prize and use them with more humi­lity and modest piety, as things ap­pointed to farre better uses then to serve sensual, impudent and impious either minds or ends. God asserts his right in all these (even so small bagatellos or toyes comparatively) that we may learn to take heed not to misapply these, or any other the least of God's creatures, to perverse and sinister ends, of which a sober and good use may be made to God's glory as well as our own delight and [Page 37] content, while we own him in all, and bless him for all, even the least help and ornament of life.

It is an undoubted Maxime both in Reason and Religion, That the Devils or wicked Mens usurpation is no pre­judice to God's dominion or donation, nor to that right use and end of all things which he hath granted to man­kind throughout the whole latitude and empire of his visible works. If all things are therefore vain, sinful and unlawful which vain and wicked minds have or do abuse, what I pray will there be left for sober and ver­tuous persons to use or enjoy? They must neither eat, nor drink, nor clothe, nor dress themselves to any decency, sweetness, costliness, or delight. Ta­mar an harlot will dress her self with a vail of modesty, as well as chast Gen. 38. 14. Prov. 7. Rebekah. The wanton and cunning woman, whom Solomon describes so to the life, decketh her self to all extern advantages, applieth with all amorous civilities, perfumeth her bed and chamber, pretendeth great [Page 38] love, offereth her holy festivities and peace-offerings; at last wipeth her mouth with great demureness and so­briety: Yet may we not think all these actions are hereby made scandalous and unlawful to sober women, to chast and loving wives. We may as well forbid the use of a staffe and a signet to honest men, because Judah in his Gen. 38. blind and extravagant desires pawns them as pledges of his love to a woman whom he took and used as an harlot, not common, but incestuous.

Youth, Riches, Honour, Beauty, Strength, Policy and Eloquence might be all arraigned and condemned before such unjust and unjudicious Judges, who would cry down all use of things because of some abuses, which flow not from the nature of the things abu­sed, which are good, but from the ma­lice of the persons or minds abusing that native good which God diffused to every creature.

Nabal's churlish Covetousness, Ab­salom's beautiful Rebellion, Achito­phel's politick Treachery, Joab's vali­ant [Page 39] Cruelty, Jehu's zealous Ambi­tion, Tertullus his eloquent Malice, are all carried upon the wings or wheels of God's gifts and framing. Who sees not that the corrupt hearts of men oft turn God's streams to drive the devils mill? What Truth so glorious which hath not been sometime sullied & ecli­psed by the smoke of the bottomless pit, the prejudices or scandalous impu­tations of some black or foul mouths? On the other side, what Error is so rotten and putrid which some Orato­rious varnish hath not sought to co­lour over with shews of Truth and Pi­ety? It is a great part of calm and so­ber wisdome to resolve all things into their rational and pure principles, of which this is one, That whatever is in nature, is good in its kind; That the goodness of all things in nature is reducible to a good end in Rea­son and Religion; That no person is abridged in a right and holy use of things by anothers abuse of them; That the just use of things may be restrained, though the abuse [Page 40] cals for reformation, and the excess for moderation; That since God doth not annihilate what he hath made (as all) good in nature be­cause of mans abuse of things, no more have we any cause to annul or deny our sober use of any thing for others petulancy and abuse: What things vice or vanity are most prone to usurp, as to the most sweet, fair and inviting delights of life, no doubt vertue and modesty may lawfully challenge, and vindicate to their pro­priety.

We must not pull out our Eyes, be­cause some mens and womens are, as S. Peter sayes, full of adultery; not 2 Pet. 2. 14. think Sight and Light unlawful to be enjoyed, because some imploy them only to objects of sin and vanity: But we must the more cautiously set holy bounds to all our thoughts, desires and actions, which may have their occasion and fewell from the ministry of the Eyes, but their kindling and flames are from the inward inordinacy of the Heart, where sin is (as our Saviour tels Mar. 7. 21. [Page 41] us) first conceived and brought forth, before it is nourished, suckled, or swad­led in the gifts of God, either natu­ral or artificial. Heal that root and fountain, there is no doubt but the branches or streams flowing either from or to will soon be pure and healthful. Whatever God's indulgence offers us in art or nature, ought to put us in mind to ask that grace of God the giver, which may give us the right use of all his sensible gifts, so as not to hinder us of his spiritual and eternal gifts.

Thus have I (good Madam) with all plainness, freedome and integrity, fur­thest from any thing of fallacy and so­phistry, answered as I could what you were pleased to urge from Scripture-instances, which obviously mention painting or colouring the eyes, among other customary ornaments of those times and places, but with no token of God's dislike as to that particular, more then of other wonted adornings of the head, face, and the rest of the body, whereof your Ladiship makes [Page 42] no scruple, as to any sin: So that what­ever frown may seem to be in the face of the words, doth fall only on the abuse of that, as other things, to sinful ex­cesses and inordinate satisfactions, be­yond the bounds of civility, modesty and honesty. But this doth not a­mount to the force of any positive command forbidding the use of that and other helps to handsomness: nor doth it import any dislike of outward comeliness when joyned with humility and holiness, conform to the divine mind, or will; which must be the only touchstone of sin, and test of Consci­ence, wherein no great curiosity is ne­cessary to discern God's meaning as to things importing sin or duty.

Which are (I think) alwayes set forth in the holy Scriptures, not by dubious reflexions, oblique and ob­scure intimations, but by such clear di­rect precepts, and authoritative san­ctions, (in some place or other) as be­comes the majesty of the King of hea­ven, and is most proportionate to the dimness and infirmity of humane un­derstanding; [Page 43] who shall never be char­ged for that as a sin, which he could not either by innate principles of mo­ral light or by Scripture-prescripts evi­dently see to be such. Nor is there almost any thing of gross impiety which doth not discover to us its of­fensiveness against God by that check, regret, and disgust which it oft gives to our selves either before, in, or after the sin done: which I believe this ne­ver did or doth to any modest and ju­dicious users of it, unless they be more scared and guided by the ignis fatuus of popular superstition then the clear and constant light of true Religion, which moves not by Fancy and Opi­nion, (as Puppets do with gimmers) but by Reason and divine revelation, as the Body doth by its living Soul.

ANSWER.

I Most willingly grant that the same pure and perfect God who hath for­bidden all evil ends, or sins of the ri­pest age and highest stature, hath also forbad all means desired by us to those ends, as to the immorality and per­verseness of the agents mind and in­tent, whose first fancies and most in­fant conceptions of sin are sinful, if de­signed, approved, or delighted in; not­withstanding he hath no power either to act, nor yet any matter whereupon to work, for the accomplishing or car­rying on of his sin, but onely from the power, bounty and goodness of the Creator, who is good in all his works: though we have evil hands or eyes, yet doth not God tempt us to evil, by giving us those good things which we abuse to sin by the inordinateness of our minds, more then the activity of our hands or outward enjoyment?

It is indeed a great Truth your La­diship urges, but very little to your purpose, as I conceive; yea it makes [Page 49] directly against you. For if it be (as it is confessed) most unlawful to abuse good things to evil ends, or to gratifie any desire in order to violate God's ex­press Command: then where the heart is upright, without any sinful warpings as to piety, purity and charity, it must follow, that the use of any thing God hath made and given to mankind must needs be good and lawful, both in na­ture and in art. Neither natures bounty, nor the additions of modest and ingenuous art can be blamed, or so much as questioned, where the heart is sound and honest; as in those loves or complacencies whose Chastity useth all kinds of ingenuous Elegancy.

If nothing can be materially evil, ei­ther in nature or in art, but onely as related to the inordinacy of the mind, will and intent of a voluntary and mo­ral agent; it must necessarily follow, that as to the use of colour and comple­xion to the face, there can be no evil in it as against the 7 ^th Commandment, where no adulterous, wanton or evil purpose is harboured in the Soul of [Page 50] those that use it, but it is (as all things ought to be) kept within the bounds of Piety to God, Purity to our selves, and Charity to our neighbours. Which holy limits must be precisely set, as in the use of this, so of all other orna­ments and enjoyments afforded us by the Creator's indulgence in nature, which are as prone to be abused to A­dulterous incentives as this; yea farre more, as being more inviting: yet are they not forbidden to be used or en­joyed, but onely confined to honest, pure and holy ends; not onely the last and highest, of God's glory, but also those of the creatures life, health, de­light and chearfulness.

That in many Countreys, and almost in all ages, something which your La­diship would call painting or complexi­oning, as washings, anointings, fomenta­tions, tinctures and frictions, &c. have been used by very sober, chast and ver­tuous persons, both maids, wives and widows, I think your Ladiship is not so uncharitable as not to grant; since even whole nations (not only the Jews [Page 51] of old, but Christians also) have and do at this day by customary and civil fashions use it, without any reproach, scruple or scandal of sin, any more then it is to wash their faces, to comb their hair or to braid it, to anoint their heads and faces, to perfume their clothes, &c. which things do neither necessarily tend, nor are studiously intended to any sinful end.

The Greek Churches generally, and most of the Latin Casuists (as I have heard from Learned men and Travel­lers) do allow even this complexionary art and use of adorning by some light tincture the looks of women eminent for vertue, modesty, piety and charity, when they are not recluse or votaries: And yet even these are not denied (as I sup­pose) those things which may inno­cently please themselves even in their retirements; where every one is yet a Theatre and society to themselves, and cannot willingly live at any odds with their looks, or dislike of them­selves.

Some use these helps who are rarely [Page 52] seen of any men; others of none but their husbands, in reference to whose honest satisfactions they use these cu­stomable adornings of the Country as a testimony of their love and respect, besides as an attractive or conservative of their affections, which never receive greater Checks then when they meet with any object that represents either sordidness, negligence or undervaluing. Your Ladiship cannot think it unlaw­ful for wives to please and gratify their husbands, no less by quickning their complexion then by hiding any other defect and deformity, or using such ways of sweetness, neatness and decen­cy (which are potent Decoyes to love) as may best keep their husbands from any loathing or indifferency, also from any extravagancy.

To which end I have heard that S. Austin's civility allowed those femi­nine ornaments and elegancies of fine clothes, sweets, dresses and anointings to wives, or such as would be wives, as farre as the limits of chast and conjugal love extended. All which S. Jerom's [Page 53] rigor (who they say more loved then favoured our sex) would less ap­prove. Sure if lewd and wanton women find the use of such ador­nings to be advantageous to vicious ends, (which make all things so ap­plied unlawful) I see no cause why so­ber and modest women should despair, or be denied to turn them to a bet­ter use and honester account; since they are as apt for the one as the other, and fall as much under the power of good as evil minds to have them.

If that oracle hold true (as it must, because Divine) in all things of free and indifferent natures and use, (that is, upon which no restraint of God's spe­cial command is laid; as none is upon the Churches Christian in outward things) That to the pure all things are Tit. 1. 15. Rom. 14. 14. pure, and, That nothing is unclean (that is, morally and sinfully) in it self, as the blessed Apostle was perswaded by the Lord Jesus; these will include in their large circumference whatever is used to advance the complexion, [Page 54] or hide the defects of the face, as well as any other parts of the body, both as to the nature of the things used, and the Conscience of those who purely use them: since we see that the highest abuse of God's creatures to Idolatrous services and sacrifices (which was the most provoking sin) did no way pre­judge or hinder the liberty of a belie­ver to eat or drink of those things to farre different ends. As there was no Idolatry in eating things offered by others to Idols, if there was no regard 1 Cor. 10. 25, 27. to the Idol, whose it properly was not, but to God, whose rightly it was; so nor can I see any Adultery in the use of those helps to handsomness where there is no adulterous intent or evil thought in the heart, whose prime motor or spring (as to its end and purpose) being set true to the measure of God's will, the outward wheels, motions and indi­cations cannot goe amiss; since the end of the command in that, as in all things, 1 Tim. 1. 5. is a pure heart, faith unfeigned, and a good Conscience.

What your Ladiship objects, That [Page 55] the use of any artificial beauty may be an occasion to anothers sin, a snare and temptation to them; Truly so may all outward adornings (which have something in them of a complaisance and takingness) yea and the most in­nocent native beauty may be made a bait to the devils hooks: Yet do I not think your Ladiship will therefore either deform your beauty, or not both own, esteem and improve it to your civil advantages; else in vain had hand­somness been given by God as a fa­vour to so many sober women, who were as conspicuous for their beauty as their vertue, being every way com­pleatly lovely, like apples of gold set in pictures of silver: Such were Sarah, Rebekah, Esther, Job's daughters, &c.

Thus I have (I hope) answered the Weight of your Ladiships Argument drawn from the 7 ^th Commandment, which forbids onely the abuse of things by depraved and adulterous minds, not the use of them to sober and civil ends.

As to the Wit of it, which makes [Page 56] all mending the complexion or looks of our faces to be a kind of Self-adultery, a metamorphosis of God's work, a con­futing of his distinctions set upon his creatures, a re-kindling the fire which God hath quenched, and adventuring again into the storm whence one is happily escaped, &c.

My first Answer is, That it is hard to extract one drop of spirits or quint­essence of reason and right argumen­tation (as to point of sin, and stating the Conscience) from many handfuls and heaps of Rhetorical flowers and parabolical allusions, which are but light skirmishings, and not serious con­tendings in matters of Religion: Such sparks and flashes of Oratory (which are the main stock and strength of most opposers in this case) are rather like the hedge-creeping light of glo-worms, then that celestial vigor of divine Truth, whose beams have a star-like sublimity, and constancy of shining.

As to the change and Alteration which is odiously called a Self-adulte­rating; 'Tis true, there is some little [Page 57] change of the complexion from a grea­ter degree of pallor to a less, possibly to some little quickning of redness; yet not so as to make any greater change on the face or cheeks then is frequently made by the blushings of those that are of most modest looks and tenderest foreheads. This makes no more a new face or person, (so as to run any hazard of confusion or mis­take) then usually befals women in their sicknesses and ordinary distempers, in­cident both to single and married per­sons; who sometimes appear pallidly sad, as if they were going to their graves; otherwhiles with such a rosy chearfulness, as if they had begun their resurrection: so that this artificial change is but a fixation of natures in­constancy, both imitating its frequent essays, & helping its variating infirmities.

Nor doth all this so terrible a change amount to more then a little quick­ness of colour upon the skin; it al­ters not the substance, fashion, fea­ture, proportions, temper or constitu­tions of nature; which is oft done, or [Page 58] at least endeavoured, by several appli­cations, both inward (as to physical re­ceipts of all kinds) and outward, by more gross and mechanick arts, which strive by many ways to conceal, cover and supply natures grosser deformities and defects, even as to the very sub­stance of parts, no less then to the ad­ditions of borrowed ornaments. Thus the baldness, thinness, and (as both men and women think) the deformity of their Hair, is usually supplied by Bor­ders and combings; also by whole Pe­rukes (like artificial sculls) fitted to their heads. Some highly please them­selves in those artificial Eyes, Hands, Leggs, Noses, Teeth and Hair, which make up those breaches of the body which age or sickness or other acci­dents have occasioned, either to the inconveniency of motion, or the de­formity of their aspect. How many both men and women, who pretend to high piety and strictness, do (yet with­out any scruple) by a thrumm'd stock­ing, a bumbast or bolstered garment, by iron bodies and high-heel'd shoes, [Page 59] endeavour to redeem themselves from that may seem less handsome, and (vul­garly) ridiculous or antick; levelling hereby the inequality of crooked backs and crump shoulders, setting up one foot parallel to the other, filling out the leanness of their dwindled leggs, and the like? wherein Art stu­diously and speedily either encounters Natures enemies, or fortifies its out­works against all assaults, or repairs its breaches, and every way kindly comes in as its Second and Auxiliary to assist it against all infirmities original or ac­cidental.

Yet this Quantitative Adultery, which by such patching and piecing of the body makes farre more gross alte­rations and substantial changes of na­ture, your Ladiship and all persons of sound senses do allow in their daily use, (as much as the Romans did Julius Caesar's wearing of a Laurel Coronet, to hide the baldness of his head) with­out any reproach to any ones honour, chastity or piety: yea, how many grave and godly matrons usually graff or re­implant [Page 60] on their now-more-aged heads and brows the reliques, combings or cuttings of their own or others more youthful hair? Whence the weakness & self-confuting invalidity of this flash or flourish against all use of art to the face appears; as if there were more adulterating in colours then in features, in quality then in quantity, in a little tincture then in solid composures. Truly (Madam) a smile or silence were the best and justest confutation of such partial allegations, which allow the greater, and yet scruple the lesser changes.

Nor is there more solidity as to matter of Sin or Conscience in the other popular terror, of adulterating God's and Nature's workmanship to his diminution and reproach: For in­genuous Artifices, honest applications and civil alterations to the advantages of humane nature as single or social, in things placed under our natural power, and left free as to our religious or mo­ral power, (that is, where no divine prohibition intervenes) these are no [Page 61] more to be called or counted any adul­terating of God's works, or reproach to his power and wisdome, then it is to dy woollen, linen or silk, out of their na­tive simplicity; or to wash that scurf and filth off which riseth naturally from our bodies by sweating or evapora­tion; or then the polling of mens hairs, and trimming of their beards, or paring their nails, which suffers not natures excrescencies to run out to that horror and uncomeliness (like Nebu­chadnezzar's when he had run long at grass) to which they would grow; where Art (we see) doth daily turn, ac­cording to the several fancies and vari­ous fashions of times and Countreys, those things which are but excremen­tal, to be ornamental to our bodies.

The same Sarcasm of adulterating nature may be as justly used against all sweet smells or sents applied to our hair, clothes, bodies, or to our breath; not onely as a delight, but as a remedy to the native ranckness or offensive­ness which some persons are subject to both in their breath and consti­tutions; [Page 62] which not to cure or alter by art is to condemn such persons (other­ways not ill company) to solitudes, by reason of those ill savours, which make them fitter for cells then for society. How impertinent and ungrate must that superstition be, which out of a needless nicety of offending the God of nature, (by altering any Characters or Impres­sions he hath set on our bodies, in co­lour, favour, or feature,) dreads to use even those helps and remedies which both God and Nature have prepared and liberally offered to our both civil and religious use of them; not more to our own pleasure and innocent advan­tages, (besides others social content) then to the glory of God? So farre is the use of such helps from any detri­ment or diminution to the Creators glory or work; who oft suffers Na­ture in its ordinary road or tract to erre, or fail of those proportions which are most perfect and agreeable, pur­posely to incite and exercise those gifts of art and ingenuity which God hath superadded in reason to mankind, [Page 63] above all those second causes and ef­fects which are moved by more blind instincts and confused impulses. Nor is the wisdome, power and goodness of God less manifested at the second hand by humane operation upon and alteration of some works of Nature, then in the first productions of things: yea that rational empire, liberty, dis­pose and use wherewith God hath inve­sted mankind over all his works, in the inventions of art and manufacture, doth more magnify and set forth the munificence and indulgence of God, then that substance and subject matter which he offereth to us, as to other creatures, in all those things whose grosseness and confusions are onely to be polished, distinguished, improved and disposed of by the art and industry peculiar to man: wherein if children of the world and darkness are so polite, ingenious and industrious, in order to obtain evil ends; how much more may the children of God use their Fa­thers liberality in order to their own & others honest complacencies and com­pleatings?

[Page 64] Certainly, true piety permits us to pay an honour, love and reverence to our selves, as well as to others; and to our bodies, as well as to our Souls: Nor is the face more to be unconside­red or neglected then other parts of our bodies; which we generally either pro­tect from injury and contempt, or sup­ply their wants, or help in their infir­mity, by whatever art and means we can learn to be proper for their relief, without any fear or suspicion of sin.

As to the jealousy of baiting anew the devils hooks, or leading our selves and others into fresh temptations, when women seem to be in point of Beauty faded and almost out of date; as to the fear of raising up new storms, when the amorous tempest of youth is well allayed; Truly these are as babies or children, rather pretty then strong objections, and are then easily answered and fully confuted, when the heart me­ditating no mischief yet studies come­liness. The honestest beauty in its na­tive simplicity may be as a bait; though it must not purposely set the devils [Page 65] traps or snares: Nay, on the contrary, the use of some pretty artificial reliefs to nature may be a great means to keep, as our selves from the tempta­tions of envy and discountenance, (which is always attended with discon­tent) so others too, whom these honest frauds and pious guiles may hinder from those by-ways and extravagan­cies to which more curious eyes and touchy tempers are prone to run, if they be not happily deceived, and so confined to sober and holy affections.

So that I do not see but that in the ingenuous use of colour and complexion to the face, there may be the wisdome of the serpent, without the least of its poison; where the Dove-like innocen­cy of the users mind preserves not only the native goodness which is from God in all things that can be used, but also the civil and moral goodness of their use, from all contagion of sin, while the heart is kept within the confines of vertue and civility.

Though some vain and wanton minds may turn this, as all things, to a [Page 66] Serpent; yet others of modest tem­pers use it as a staff and stay both to their own minds, and others, whom they most value, and to whom they en­deavour to give all ingenuous content, even to the extent of their curiosity, without being any way injurious to God, themselves, or others.

ANSWER.

IT is most true, that a good Christian, who remembers himself to be as clay in the hands of the potter, ought to car­ry in all things either a thankful con­tentation, or an humble submission to­ward the will of God, (not onely in their natures, constitutions and beings, but also in those external contingencies or events which are as it were the voice and dictates of providence) so farre as not to use any means forbidden by the written Word of God, whereby to re­move or alter what God hath so infli­cted upon them either in mind, body, or estate.

But yet (dear Madam) this patience or contentedness of spirit, which only forbids us all unlawful remedies, or [Page 69] wicked endeavours for relief, is no hin­derance to pious and ingenuous indu­stry, by which we not only may, but ought to use all those means, spiritual, natural and civil, (as prayer, good counsel, physick, and the like applica­tions, which are as holy as they may be wholesome) to remove or remedy any pain, sickness, maim, misfortune or inconvenience which happens to us in our health, strength, motion, or estates; and why not (also) in our looks or beauties and complexions, wherein women do think themselves as much concerned as in their ri­ches, health, or almost life it self; so that many had as lieve dye as be much deformed, and would as wil­lingly part with their bodies as their beauty, which is as the soul of the face and life of womens looks? Certainly those honest endeavours which in fair wayes study to re­lieve or supply our wants in any kind are no rude contestings with God's Providence, nor are to be cal­led crossings or opposings of his will; [Page 70] but rather they are servings and obey­ings of it, in those dictates of reason, prudence and discretion, which God hath given to mankind (as he hath the various motions and instincts to other creatures) in order to preserve our selves from any evils, either falling or resting upon us: which voice of God within us, sounding with both Reason and Religion, is to be listned to and followed, no less then those silent in­timations or blinder characters we read in providential events, which may ad­mit of various interpretations or rea­dings; but never such, as either cross or put stop to those divine directions or permissions which are given us both in prudence and in piety for our ease and help. Else we may not by a sa­crilegious soberness seek to cure those whom God hath seen fit to afflict with the highest temporal misery, which is frenzy or madness, which deprives them of the noblest jewel and ornament of the Soul, Reason; nay, we must not restrain them from any of those despe­rate extravagancies to which their dis­temper [Page 71] (which is natural and providen­tial) doth dispose them: which were indeed to be more mad then those poor creatures are; while having Reason beyond them, we scruple to apply those means which are proper for their good and our own, merely for fear lest we should contest against God, and con­trariate his providential will.

So by this paradox of superstitious submission, a sick man must lie and lan­guish under his sickness, sending a bill of defiance to all Physicians, Chirur­gions and Apothecaries, as so many bold Giants or Cyclopick monsters, who daily seek to fight against heaven by their rebellious druggs and doses, pre­scribed in strange affected terms of art and ill-scribled bills, which seem to be as so many charms or spells and conju­rations. So lame men may not either use crutches to supply the weakness of their leggs, or to shore up the tot­tering frame of their body: nor may they, as the poor man in the Gospel, John 5. 3. covet to have the benefit of any sup­pling and healing Baths, which would [Page 72] by this argument rather seem inchan­ted by some evil spirit or Demoniack Water-nymph, then moved by the hea­ling virtue of any good angel.

By this soft and sensless fallacy of resting so satisfied with the events and signatures of Providence, as to use no lawful means or industry that may seem to traverse the sentence or pre­sent decree, we may not rise out of a ditch or pit when we are once faln in­to it, nor so much as cry to Jupiter to help us; we may not quench those fires which casually seise on our hou­ses, nor extinguish those flames which Incendiaries kindle of Faction and Se­dition in Church or State; we may not row against any stream, nor ascend by any ladder upward, when our na­tive tendency is downward: we must not repair our decayed houses, nor mend our torn garments, or honestly seek to recruit our decayed estates; but content our selves with our ruined and illustrious houses, we must wrap our selves (as we can) in our lazy ragges, with the sluggard Prov. 6. 6. [Page 73] turning upon the hinges of holy idle­ness, as those that are providentially condemned to eternal and irreparable poverty.

After these methods of holy ill hus­bandry, we must let our fields and gar­dens lie oppressed under the usurpa­tions of brambles and the tyranny of all evil weeds, which are the products of providence as well as the best herbs and flowers; yea Nature seems rather a stepmother and dry nurse to these then to the other: nay, you may not by the inventions of artificial day sup­ply the Sun's absence with Candle or Torch-light, nor dispel the horror of that darkness which providence brings over the face of the Earth in the night: you may not seek to obtain your liber­ty, if once cast into prison, which can­not be without a providence, since a sparrow falls not without it upon the Mat. 10. 29. ground, as Christ tells us.

So many absurd and indeed ridicu­lous consequences do follow the fond­ness of this argument, (that we may not seek to mend what God hath [Page 74] made, nor alter what he hath ordered) that it is best confuted by continued sickness, lameness, beggery, baldness, and deformity; under which not to have any sense, or having a quick sense not to desire and endeavour any reme­dy and redress, were such a super- Stoi­cal piece of Philosophy as is not at all of kin to Christianity, whose comple­xion is of a farre more soft and tender skin then that of the Stoick, Cynick, or Epicurean; nor doth Religion require stupor, but onely a patience, so farre as is not transported beyond the holy and allowed bounds granted to humane and Christian industry, to relieve it self by God's permission and blessing.

The Providence of God however it declare at present his will and pleasure to us by those events which are natu­rally less welcome and pleasing to us, yet it doth not so confine and deter­mine either it self or us, as not to ad­mit us to use lawful means of honest variations and happy changes; which your Ladiship sees are not more fre­quently applied by us then prospered [Page 75] by God with desired successes. So farre is it that we should by any sad events be confined onely to a silent and passive submission, (which is neces­sary and just indeed when our afflicti­ons exceed the help of second causes) that we are rather obliged, both in Reason and Religion, to use those means which may obtain blessed reco­veries, without violation of good Con­sciences, which are not injured but there where God is disobeyed. Nor is the divine Goodness less to be seen, venerated and praised, in those emenda­tions which follow to our ease and comfort the lawful applications of art and ingenuity, then his Power and Ju­stice (or possibly his special displeasure) may sometimes appear in those unplea­sing events which some would fain set up (beyond God's intent) as Idols, to such an unmovable fixation, as if it were impious to endeavour to re­move them, because Providence hath once permitted them to take place amidst the changes and contingencies incident to this mortal & mutable state.

[Page 76] There may be holy contradictions and humble contraventions, (as to God's silent providence, so to his de­clared will) either discovered by ef­fects, or by his express word. Thus Ja­cob wrestled with the Angel, and would Gen. 32. 24. not let him go (when he desired) till he had by a pious importunity and holy insolence extorted a blessing from him. So Moses prayes with extraor­dinary Exod. 32. 10. fervency, when God had bid him Let him alone. Hezekiah, though Isaiah 38. under the declared doom of his in­stant and approaching death, yet is not more bold then welcome, when by prayers and teares he seeks to repeal, or at least reprieve, the sentence al­ready passed upon his life by the Pro­phet.

Religion is no friend to Laziness and stupidity, or to supine and sottish de­spondencies of mind, under the pre­tence of compliances with Providence, as afraid to remove the crosses or bur­dens incumbent upon us, (wherein the sluggard might have some plea for his sloth:) For these befall us many [Page 77] times (as indeed all necessities of life do) not more to exercise our patience, then to excite our inventions and in­dustry. Nor doth the infirm life of man require less active then passive graces; the one to remedy what we may, the other to bear what we can­not cure.

But (Madam) in vain do I listen to your words, when I see your contrary actions, by which you give your self the fullest answer, and save me the labour. Who (I beseech you) is more speedily, curiously and earnestly solicitous to en­counter the afflictions and cross events of providence then your love and care is, when any thing threatens or urgeth upon the health, strength, sight, hear­ing, shape or straightness of your chil­dren and nearest relations? yea how auxiliary are you to your servants and neighbours? how importunely do you pray for remedy? how are you (as Martha) incumbred with receits, plai­sters and medicines of all sorts, which you think most potent and soverain to remove any pressure or danger?

[Page 78] Yea, as to those helps which are most mechanick & artificial, having no­thing of native virtue, but merely such a formal application as makes but a shew of help to natures defect; whom did your Ladiship ever blame (if in other things unblameable) for using a glass Eye, which is but an honest mock­ing of the world, while it pretends to the place and office of a natural one, which God saw fit to take away as to our own sight and use? But he did not withall take away either our wits, our hands, or our freedome, to make and use; if we list, a Crystal, painted eye, both to hide our own defect and deformity, also to remove from others the less pleasing prospect of our ble­mish. When was your Ladiship scan­dalized with any grave and sober ma­tron, because she laid out the combings or cuttings of her own or others more youthful hair, when her own (now more withered and autumnal) seemed less becoming her? How many both mens and womens warmer heats in Re­ligion do now admit not onely borders [Page 79] of forein hair, but full and fair Perukes on their heads, without sindging one hair by their disputative and scrupulous Zeal, which in these things of fashion is now grown much out of fashion? Your Ladiships Charity doth not re­prove, but pity, those poor Vulcanists who balance the inequality of their heels or badger Leggs by the art and help of the shoemaker; nor are those short-legg'd Ladies thought less godly who flie to Chopines, and by enlarging the phylacteries of their coats, conceal at once both their great defects in na­tive brevity, and the enormous addi­tions of their artificial heights, which make many small women walk with as much caution and danger almost as the Turk danceth on the ropes. Who ever is so impertinent a bigot as to find fault when the hills and dales of crooked and unequal bodies are made to meet with­out a miracle, by some iron bodies, or some benign bolsterings? Who fears to set straight or hide the unhandsome warpings of bow Leggs, and baker Feet? What is there as to any defect [Page 80] in nature, whereof ingenuous art, as a diligent handmaid waiting on its mi­stress, doth not study some supply or other, so farre as to graff in silver plates into crackt sculls, to furnish cropt faces with artificial Noses, to fill up the broken ranks and routed files of the Teeth with ivory adjutants or lievtenants?

Yet against all or any of these and the like reparative Inventions, by which art and ingenuity studies to help and repair the defects or deformities which God in nature, or Providence is pleased to inflict upon our bodies, no pen is sharpened, no pulpit is battered, no writ of Rebellion or charge of for­gery and false Coinage is brought against any in the Court of Conscience; no poor creature (who thankfully em­braceth, modestly useth, and with more chearfulness serveth God, by means of some such help which either takes away its reproach, or easeth its pain) is sca­red with dreadful scruples, or so terri­fied with the threatnings of sin, hell and damnation, as to cast away (much [Page 81] against their wills) that innocent suc­cour which God in nature and art had given them; from which they part with as much regret, as the poor man did from his darling lamb, which the rich mans insolence, not his indi­gence, not his want, but wantonness, forced from him. Rather we are so ci­villy pious in these cases, as to applaud others no less then please our selves in those happy delusions, whereby we conceal or any way compensate those our deformities or defects in any kind, which seem to us less conve­nient, or to others less comely, in this our mortal and visible pilgri­mage.

Onely, if the face, (which is the Me­tropolis of humane Majesty, and as it were the Cathedral of beauty or come­liness in the little world or Polity of our bodies) if this have sustained any injuries (as it is most exposed to them) of time or any accident, if it stand in need of any thing that our charity and ingenuity in art can help it to, though the thing be never so cheap, easie and [Page 82] harmless, either to enliven the pallid deadness of it, and to redeem it from mortmain, or to pair and match the inequal cheeks to each other, when one is as Rachel, the other as Leah, or to cover any pimples and heats, or to re­move any obstructions, or to mitigate and quench excessive flushings, hereby to set off the face to such decency and equality as may innocently please our selves and others, without any thought to displease God (who looks not to the 1 Sam. 16. 7. outward appearance, but to the heart,) what censures and whispers, yea what outcries and clamors, what lightnings and thunders, what Anathemas, excom­munications and condemnations fill the thoughts, the pens, the tongues, the pulpits, of many angry (yet it may be well-meaning) Christians, both preachers and others, who are com­monly more quick-sighted and offen­ded with the least mote they fancy of adding to a Ladies complexion, then with many Camels of their own custo­mary opinions and practices? Good men! though in other things, not onely [Page 83] of fineness and neatness, but even of some falsity and pretension, they are so good-natured and indulgent as to al­low their lame or their crooked wives and daughters whatever ingenuous concealments and reparations Art and their purses can afford them; yet as to the point of face-mending, they con­demne them like Paul's Church to sink under everlasting ruines.

The most of your plainer-bred and as it were home-spun Professors and Preachers, who never went far beyond their own homes, can with less equal eyes behold any woman, of never so great quality, if they see or suspect her to be adorned any whit beyond the vulgar mode, or decked with feathers more gay and goodly then those birds use which are of their own Countrey nest. In which cases of feminine dres­sing and adorning, no Casuist is suffici­ent to enumerate or resolve the many intricate niceties and endless scruples of Conscience which some mens and womens more plebeian Zelotry makes, as about Ladies cheeks and faces if they [Page 84] appear one dram or degree more quick and rosy then they were wonted; so about the length and fashion of their clothes and hair. One while they are so perplexed about the curlings of Ladies hair, that they can as hardly dis-intangle themselves as a Bee enga­ged in honey; otherwhile they are most scrupulous Mathematicians, to measure the arms, wrists, necks and trains of Ladies, how farre they may safely venture to let their garments draw after them on the ground, or their naked skins be seen. Here, how­ever some men can bear the sight of the fairest faces without so much as winking, (where the greatest face of beauty is displayed) yet they pretend that no strength of humane virtue can endure the least assaults or peepings of naked necks, if they make any dis­covery or breaking forth below the ears. Not that any modest mind pleads for wanton prostituting of naked breasts, where the civiller customes of any Countrey forbids it; but some mens rigor and fierceness is such, that [Page 85] if they espy any thing in the dress, clothes, or garb of women, beyond what they approve or have been won­ted to, presently the Tailours, the Tire-women, the Gorget-makers, the Seamstresses, the Chambermaids, the Dressers, and all that wretched crew of obsequious attendants, are condemned as Antichristian, and onely fit to wait upon the whore of Babylon. Nor do the poor Ladies (though otherwise young and innocent, though as vertu­ous as handsome; or if possibly elder, every way exemplary for modesty, gra­vity and charity, yet they do not) without great gifts and presents, (as by so many fines & heriots) redeem them­selves from some mens severe censures: and if they do take any freedome to dress and set forth themselves after the best mode and fashion, it costs them as much as the Romane Captain's freedome did him; when indeed they are (as S. Paul pleaded) free-born, Acts 22. 25. not onely in nature, but as to grace and the new birth, which is no enemy to what fashions modesty may bear, [Page 86] and which decency, civility and custome do require.

Yet your Ladiship hath often heard some persons in point of clothes as highly incensed against all such fashion­able alterations and various adornings, as Saul was against Jonathan's tasting 1 Sam. 14. 29. a little honey; as if all these things of feminine culture, art and invention were no less under a curse or execra­tion then Saul's rash vow and devotion had made that Honey, the tasting of which enlightned Jonathan's eyes, and the liberty of eating it might have re­freshed the wearied spirits of his wan­dering Souldiers.

Truly in these quarrellings of some severer spirits against all auxiliary beau­ty and helps of handsomness in women, I observe that commonly what they want in force of arguments, rational or religious, they make up in clamor and confidence. As the Pope is said to have expressed in his Bull against the Knights Teutonick or Templars, when he confiscated their estates, Although of right and justice we cannot, yet out [Page 87] of our plenary power and will we do dis­solve them: so these many times in stead of convincing the judgements of sober persons (like learned Divines and serious Christians) fall to cavillings and menacings, to bitter and scurrilous re­prochings, imagining that what bum­bast stuff or voluble ratling will serve to scare the superstitious and easy vul­gar (who have always an envy and ma­lignity against their betters) will also serve to resolve more serious judici­ous souls of those persons who are blest with better breeding and exacter un­derstanding.

Such was that Sarcasm which your Ladiship may remember was used by a witty and eloquent Preacher, whom we both heard at Oxford, who speaking against (not the absolute use, but) the wanton abuse of womens curiosities in dressing and adornings, instanced in Je­zebel's being eaten up of doggs; as shewing, saith he, that a woman so poli­shed and painted was not fit to be mans meat. Which expression had more of wit and jest in it then of weight or ear­nest, [Page 88] and might seem to repress either fondness or impudence abusing such ornaments, but it was not valid as to the conviction of any sin in the use of them. Which many boldly assert, rai­sing strange terrors and most Tragick outcries, as if every touch of colouring added to the cheeks were a presage of hell-fire, every curled hair or braided lock were an Embleme of the never-dy­ing worm: Medusa's head is not pictu­red more terrible with her snaky tres­ses, then these men would represent every Lady (never so modest and ver­tuous) whose either hair, or comple­xion, or tiring is not natively their own.

Yea so angry or envious is the rusti­city or simplicity of some against all that either soberly please themselves, or civilly appear less unpleasing to others, by the help of any artificial beautifyings, (though with never so much discretion and modesty) that when they have nothing to object against the Intellectuals or Morals of women, they vehemently quarrel with [Page 89] their artificials, their dressings, clothes and fashions, their looks and complexi­on, if they list but to suspect them to have any thing adventitious to them, li­king them the worse because they look well, and censuring them for evil hearts because they aim at having good faces; as if the Heart received sinful infection by any colour or tincture put to the face, more then it doth moral defilement by any thing that enters into the mouth: against which error our Saviour expresly teacheth us, coun­ting Mark 7. 18. those but Pharisaical fools and supercilious hypocrites who judge and teach men otherwise; as we read, Mark 7. 18.

Yet by a like magisterial rigor do some men seek to confine all women to their pure and simple naturals: as if Art and Nature were not sisters, but jealous rivals, and irreconcileable ene­mies against each other; whereas in­deed they are from the same wise God and indulgent Father, from whom comes every good as well as every perfect gift, James 1. 17. as S. James tells us; who hath given [Page 90] to mankinde, as he did to Bezaleel, Ex­od. Exo. 31. 3. 31. 3. the invention and use of many curious arts, that man might know how with most discretion and advantage to dispose of and improve the great vari­ety of God's bounty, which is first set forth in Natures either plainness or beauty, so as to court and please every of our senses, and to accommodate eve­ry of our occasions, in those several ways and methods which mans industry likes best: who, although he cannot cre­ate the matter and inward essence of things (but works onely upon God's and Natures stock) yet he is in some sense a superficial Creator of several outward forms and shapes, of various use and applications of things; farre beyond that rustick grossness, primi­tive simplicity and confusion, which ei­ther is in the first rudiments or in the effects of Nature, before its materials are subdued, softned and digested by Art, which is as much the good gift of God, and tends to his glory, as Na­ture, and which to deprive mankind of, is to reduce them from the politure [Page 91] and improvement of after-times and long experience to their first caves and cottages, their primitive skins and acorns.

Nor may we think, that the God of Art and Nature, (who gives us liberally 1 Tim. 6. 17. (without any envy or grudging) all things to enjoy in a vertuous and sober way, that is, to good ends) hath so cur­bed us up by religious severities, as to forbid us the use and enjoyment of the fruits of his wisdome, power, and pa­ternal bounty, so as may best please our selves and others, without displea­sing him, who is to be glorified even in that sensible glory of beauty, feature, colour and proportion, which is but su­perficial, and must be done away when a more durable and eternal glory shall appear; of which it hath some em­bleme, type and prefiguration, as the Tabernacle had of Solomon's Temple.

All which superstitious rigor and preciseness is not more contrary to God's munificence and indulgence, then to the very nature and fancy of man­kind, which is so set beyond all crea­tures, [Page 92] that even grace and vertue themselves receive some varnish and gloss, a kind of silent commendation, by the cleanliness and comeliness of our outsides; yea, we think to doe an honor to Religion in its publick servi­ces, by putting our selves, even as to our vestures and gestures, into those forms and fashions which we think are most civil, reverential and comely. As nothing is more humane then the de­light in handsomeness; so it cannot be either irrational or irreligious to hide those our deformities and defects, which we think are prone to diminish us in the eyes and acceptance of those with whom we do converse, either as to ci­vil or religious society.

If a civility both to the living and the dead invites us to wash the bodies and faces of the dead (as they did Tabi­tha's) Acts 9. 37. (to which custome of being ba­ptized for the dead the Apostle seems 1 Cor. 15. 29. to referre, 1 Cor. 15. 29.) as forespeak­ing and hoping for an after-resurrection of the body to an eternal purity and incorruption; also we close the eyes [Page 93] and compose the countenances of our dead friends, so as may most remove them from that gastly and unpleasing aspect which is in the vale and shadow of death: what (I pray) hinders, while we are living and among the living, but that we may study to adorn our looks so as may be most remote from a deathfulness, and most agreeable by their liveliness to those with whom we live?

If it was piety of old to repair the Temple of God, and is still good hus­bandry to mend the decaies of those houses of clay in which our bodies dwell; why should it seem Sacriledge to relieve these Tabernacles of our bo­dies, which are the Hosteries of our Souls and Temples of the holy Ghost, so long as they may be in any decorum serviceable to them both?

Not that I am for those gross Soloe­cisms of Art, which by unseasonable and unsutable affectations (as so many pitiful props and underpinnings) strive in vain to skrew and set up lapsed and tottering age to the semblance and [Page 94] prospect of youthful beauty and vigor; when old women, and men too, with the great neglect of their Souls ador­ning and preparation for Heaven, seek, as it were by Medea's charms, to re­coct their corps, as she did Aeson's, from feeble deformities to spritely hand­someness. When gray hairs are here Hos. 7. 9. and there, it is fit the more to lay to heart our frail estate: but when the pillars of the house do fail, when loud Eccl. 12. summons of aged Infirmities call loud upon poor mortals to make haste for heaven and eternity, to prepare to meet their God, and adorn their souls (with aged and devout Anna) for their spouse Luke 2. and Saviour Jesus Christ, in all those gracious augmentations of piety and holy improvement of vertue which may make them beautiful and lovely in God's sight; there is then no place or season to be curiously patching and superfluously mending, to be painting, polishing and pruning (beyond a ma­tronly comeliness or gravity, which is always lawful while we are alive) our Gibeonitish carkases, those rotten posts [Page 95] which are mouldring themselves away: 'Tis impertinent to trim our cabin with cost and pains when we are upon ship­wrecking, or poorly to furnish a room when the whole house is shortly to be pull'd down. To be deploredly old and affectedly young, is not only a great folly, but a gross deformity. 'Tis ridiculous to spend much of a mo­ments remnant in contending with the invincible wrinkles and irreparable ru­ines of old age, which nothing but a vizard can quite hide, or a miracle can wholly overcome. It is fit for us hum­bly to yield to those decaies and op­pressions of time to which sinful mor­tality hath exposed us. Many times we must be content to be first buried even in the rubbish and ruines of our own vile bodies, whose sad decaies, in­curable diseases, and irreparable defor­mities, ought to serve rather as foils, the more to set off, and less to hinder our meditations of eternal life, health and glory; not impediments or blunt­ings, but rather as Whetstones, to set an edge on our desires after higher [Page 96] and more permanent beauty.

My plea (Madam) is only so farre as Nature and years may both sutably and seasonably bear those discreet and ingenuous assistances of Art, which may give a decency and conformity to our education and other proportions of civil life: where specially there may be some such decaies as are precipi­tant as to years, and exorbitant in one part beyond all the rest, through na­tural infirmity resting thereon, or by some outward occasion that hath be­fallen us. Who doubts but if by the numme palsie one legge or arm be as it were mortified, while the rest of the body is yet strong and vigorous, we may by fomentations and other con­venient means seek to revive and re­cover it? Who scruples but that if one or two or more gray hairs grow up on a youthful head (as is frequent in some colours and constitutions) by an over-early non-conformity to the rest of our hairs that are round about, who (I say) scruples but that they may law­fully be pluckt out? I confess I am [Page 97] prone (civilly) to gratify sober and ver­tuous minds as long as they live, with those ornaments to their out-sides which may keep them in all civil come­liness and cleanliness; which to pre­serve is not onely great discretion, but even good conscience; at least in Wives, who ought not to be either prodigal or negligent of themselves as to outward decency, so farre as it may prudently be obtained, and modestly maintained.

To these (I humbly conceive) that indulgence in point of artificial hand­someness may be allowed, which was permitted by S. Paul to Timothy as to 1 Tim. 5. 23. drinking a little wine for his often in­firmities: yet am I herein as farre from indulging vanity, pride and wantonness, as the Apostle is there from encoura­ging riot, excess and drunkenness.

Nor would I only vindicate the in­nocent use of auxiliary beauty from the unjust suspicions and rash censures of being absolutely and in the very na­ture of the thing a sin, (which some assert, beyond what I can yet see by my [Page 98] own eyes, or the best spectacles they afford me) but my design is to have it so used, as may no more blemish a mo­dest womans discretion then burthen her conscience; that she may be not onely commendable for the innocent purity of her heart, but unblamable for the elegancy and decency of her hand, which useth these, as all things, not only lawfully, but expediently, piously and prudently, conscienciously and be­comingly, onely to conceal or supply such defects as, you confess, may in many other cases admit the help of art without any sin or shame.

As for the words of our Saviour Mat. 5. 36. which your Ladiship cites, when forbid­ding us to swear by our heads, he signi­fies how little power we have of them, since we cannot make one hair white or black; his meaning is, not either to shew the impotency or unlawfulness of all humane skill, as if man could not or might not by any art change the outward colour of his hairs, which is daily and easily done: but our blessed Lord truly urgeth, that as to the in­ward [Page 99] temperament we cannot make one hair grow otherwaies then it doth, either black or white: All dyes and tinctures do but alter the outward form or colour, by hiding what is native, from an internal and (by us) unchange­able principle, which is out of the reach of Art. So when our blessed Saviour tells us we cannot by our taking Mat. 6. 27. thought adde to our real stature one cu­bit, he doth not hereby deny the pos­sibility or lawfulness of setting our selves higher then naturally we are, either by the heels of our shoes, or by patens, or seats, and the like inventions, which seek to give an ad­vantage of procerity and comeliness to our stature; which if shrunk to a dwarfishness and epitomized to a De­cimo-sexto, makes the persons of men and women subject to be as little in the eyes and esteem of others as they are in their own inches or size. No­thing is more obvious then for tall Go­liah to despise little David. But as to the augmenting of our seeming height and stature either by heels, or [Page 100] high-crown'd hats, or seats, none are (I think) so silly as to be scrupulous. Nor do I think it much to be doubted, but if in our youth by sickness or fear (in one night, as I have read (in Ma­ster Howell's Epistles) befel a youthful man in the Low-Countreys upon the false terror he had of being the next day executed by the command of the Duke of Alva) our Hair should turn white, (like snow in Summer falling on green and florid trees) to a kind of monstrosity and deformity; such an one (I doubt not) might lawfully re­deem himself from the uncomeliness of such untimely accidents, either by dy­ing his hair, or by using a Peruke su­table to his graver years, without any enterfearing with our Saviour's mea­ning, which onely shews the unchange­able bounds and principles of Nature as to God's fixation and providence in all things, but not to forbid the in­genuous operations of humane art and invention, to which the works of God in Nature are subjected, so farre as they are manageable within the limits of [Page 101] moral intentions and religious ends.

So that I see no reason or authori­ty, Madam, that the preciser ignorance of any hath from heaven to set either our Leggs in the Stocks, because we wear Polony heels, or it may be Cho­pines; nor yet to set our Heads in the Pillories, either because we wear Hair which is not natively our own, or use, it may be, some little colour and tincture which is not more adventitious to our natural Complexions, then utterly a stranger to all wicked and unworthy intentions.

And thus I have not more largely then fully (I hope) answered this obje­ction your Ladiship was pleased to make against all auxiliary Handsomness.

ANSWER.

MAdam, I will not captiously reply upon your Ladiship, by putting you to plead for your own and your childrens wearing of well-set, curled, gummed, braided and powdered hair, according as the fashions vary; nor will I retort upon your gold- jewels, ear-rings, and costly apparel: in all which your Ladiship, with many other persons of honour and piety, seem ei­ther to have some dispensation for the use of those things, which (by your own allegation) are more expresly against the letter of those Scriptures then any thing you have yet urged against tin­cture or complexioning, which you so much dread and abhorre:

Or else you must interpret those and the like negative places in a soft and right-handed sense, not in a severe and sinister meaning: not as absolutely forbidding all those and the like things of riches and ornaments to all Christi­an men and women, (for so even put­ting on of apparel would seem prohi­bited, [Page 105] and we must run to an Adamitick nakedness or madness) but the injun­ctions or exhortations are only compa­ratively, so as not to make them the objects of their chief study, desire and delight, to the undervaluing and neg­lect of those gracious and internal or­naments which only beautifie the Soul, and are of great price in the sight of God, who only esteems those things as our moral, full and real beauty, which do most assimilate us to himself in true Holiness. Not but that his bounty hath given, and his indulgence allows us, all things of outward splen­dor, riches and ornament, as tokens of God's munificent goodness to us; also as ensigns of civil honor, and notes to distinguish the places and qualities of persons; yea further, to conciliate hereby from the vulgar something of majesty and reverence to their superi­ors, either Princes or Priests.

So that since all wise and holy men have granted thus much as to the law­ful and civil use of those things that are for fine clothing or costly adorning our [Page 106] bodies, (notwithstanding those prohi­bitions, which are onely limited and re­spective as to the main end and design of a Christian) truly I see no cause why they may not with as favourable an indulgence permit to women those modest and discreet helps of beauty as to the face; since there is no letter of the New Testament which bears any shew of forbidding these more then those, which by a just candor of interpretation are allowed.

Yea in particular, as to the advanta­ging of our faces, and adding to the lustre and beauty of our looks, our bles­sed Saviour we see is so farre from be­ing against the Eastern custome of anointing the head and face, (which Mat. 6. 17. doubtless added something to the vi­sible beauty and shining of the counte­nance) that he bids the Jews even in their fastings to use it as at other times, not peremptorily and absolute­ly, but rather then, by Pharisaical and affected abstinence from washing and anointing the face, to bely a fast with hypocritical sadness and sowreness of Isa. 58. 5. [Page 107] looks, which are not accompanied with humble and contrite hearts.

That these anointings of the head and face were apparent, and tended to set forth the beauty and chearfulness or serenity of their faces who used them, is most evident, by Joab's forbidding the widow of Tekoah to use it when she 2 Sam. 14. 2. was to personate a suppliant or mour­ner; and by Naomie's advising Ruth to Ruth 3. 3. use it in order to conciliate the love of Boaz to her.

Yea, although it is evident in Histo­stories, both sacred and civil, that the custome of anointing, (oftentimes, no doubt, mixed with such tinctures as did colour or paint the face and body) was usual among all Nations, civil and barbarous, Greek and Romane, Sou­thern and Northern, East and West Indians, insomuch that the Picts here in Britannie had their Names from their being painted; (not onely as a terror to their enemies in Warre, but as an ornament in peace) though (I say) this fashion be almost epidemical and connate, or at least customary, to all [Page 108] Nations (to which the Grecian and Romane Luxury added (no doubt) whatever wit and art could devise, in order to the setting off of their beauties and handsomeness, according as each Country fancied;) yet we never read either the great Doctor of the Jews, or Gentiles, any where giving any dash of their Pens against these customes, which were so frequent; no, not there where regulations are set to feminine coverings and adornings.

Nor do we find that in the great Acts 25. 23. pomp or Princely parada used by Queen Berenice and her train of women, (among whom, no doubt, all the Ro­mane and Asiatick fashions of improved beauty did appear, as S. Luke intimates) we find not the blessed Apostle ei­ther at all taken, or scandalized with that exquisiteness and glory, of which he wisely takes no notice: so farre is he from finding fault or expressing any dislike, thinking it more becoming the Apostolick gravity to preach those great points of Christian graces and duties, in righteousness, temperance, and [Page 109] judgement to come, then by imperti­nent and unseasonable severity to de­claim against such civil and venial va­nities as women use; which are such, not absolutely in the nature and use of them, but in the mind and intention of the user of them.

Agreeable to which methods of A­postolical prudence, I think the heats of some Preachers in their Sermons and writings were farre better spent in ur­ging the great things of the Law and Gospel (which have moral and clear foundations in Scripture, and so make both easy & potent convictions in Con­sciences) then with a looser zeal and blinder boldness to inveigh most impe­tuously against those things of extern mode & fashion, which will either cease to be doubted of and used when once they appear to a gracious heart any way evil, or else they will cease to be suspe­cted for evil when once they are found to fall under the lawful use and manage­ment of an heart that is truly good in its holy ends and gracious habits, do­ing all things, as in the fear of God, [Page 110] so farre as it sees God allows, so also to the glory of God, as giving him thanks for all things in Nature and Art which are afforded to our necessi­ty, or delight and ornament; securing it self in the use of all these things by those two great assertors of a Christians liberty in use of outward things; the one of the Apostle Paul, who assures Rom. 14. 14. us that nothing is of itself unclean, as to any moral defilement; the other of our blessed Saviour, who tells us, that Mat. 15. 11, 17, 18. no extern applications to our bodies defile us, but the inward fedities of the heart onely; whose emanations if poi­sonous, poison all things through which they pass, but if pure, they purify all things that come within their streams.

As to that dash your Ladiship gives to this quickning of complexion, as if it were an infallible token of a vain mind by this vain conversation; it will then be best taken off, when we both understand what the Apostle means by vain conversation. For either you must interpret it for flatly vicious and wicked; or so impertinent and extra­vagant [Page 111] as is not to be reduced to any rules or bounds of reason and religion, no, not under any intentional piety and habitual or dispositive holiness, to which a gracious heart can and will re­ferre all things, even of superfluity, ci­vility and decency, which are still with­in the general order and proportions of Reason, and no less within the skirts and suburbs of Religion; being then kept from the blemish or brand of any such vain conversation as is vicious, when they are short of sinful inten­tions, and hold within the compass of ingenuous recreations and pleasures.

On the other side, if your Ladiship opposeth vanity to mere necessity or fancy, that by that expression of being redeemed from vain conversation we are forbidden all things of cost or comeliness, of bravery and elegancy, of pleasure and recreation, beyond what the mere necessities or rigidest conve­niencies of humane nature and life re­quire; if this be your sense, truly I think (under favour) the spirit of the Gospel is not so Cynical: God treats [Page 112] his children with more indulgence. Be­sides, your Ladiships own conversation makes me believe this is not the mea­ning of vain; for then you are appa­rently guilty of as many forbidden va­nities as you have superfluities of cost and care, of dressing and lacing, of cur­ling and pleating; you must abate much in your own person and your childrens, in your clothes and furniture; in your buildings, gardens, &c.

But truly I think piety hath so much candor in it, (especially out of cels and cloisters) not onely in Kings courts, Mat. 11. 8. but in meaner persons houses, as to ad­mit of costly and gorgeous apparel, of fine linen, and other things at that rate and proportion, as to the beauty, orna­ment and elegancies of life: Which things (even of a light and lesser na­ture) though they be not of the imme­diate substance of Religion, or solider parts of piety and vertue, yet they are as the fringe and accessaries to them; like the feathers and colours of the Psa. 68. 13. Dove, which adde indeed nothing to its internal innocency, but something [Page 113] to its outward decency; from which Religion is so farre from being an ene­my in civil conversation, that the A­postle exacts order and decency even in 1 Cor. 14. 40. religious duties and devotion. True Piety is not pleased with sordidness or sluttery; nor is God's Spirit grieved with modest care and sober study of outward handsomeness in all kinds.

So that it seems to me no better then a streight-laced superstition which thus pinches God's bounty and a Chri­stians liberty, which makes Christia­nity such a captive to unnecessary ri­gors and pedling severities, as if it were never in a due posture and habit till its nails be pared to the quick and its hair shaven to the skull. Many things certainly are allowed to those that are godly, in this life, not as they are God's children so much as they are the chil­dren of men, that is, in a condition of frailty, a kind of infancy and minority; in which God (as Jacob) clothes his Josephs, and his spouse too, not onely Ps. 45. 14. with garments of necessity, but of beauty, variegated and embroidered. [Page 114] And this he doth, as to the honour of his bounty, so with no blemish to his love, nor diminution to his childrens holiness, of which outward ornaments or sordidness are a very false measure; though some silly souls are prone to place much piety in their mawkingly plainness, and in their censoriousness of others who use more comely and costly curiosities.

'Tis true, Solomon's (now more se­vere, refined and sublimated) wisdome passeth his penitential censure upon all things under the Sun, to be vanity Eccl. 1. 2. of vanities; that is, apart from and in comparison of that true and eter­nal light, life, beauty, riches, strength, love, honor, glory and happiness, which are onely to be enjoyed in a nearer union to and communion with God the supreme and incomparable Good. Yet he was farre from diminishing or reproaching the Creators power, wis­dome, bounty and providential dispo­sure of all things; who made them all very good, in their forms, use and ends, however the sin of man hath drawn [Page 115] over them a black shadow of vanity, and of misery upon himself, until he be redeemed by Christ from that va­nity of vanities, Sin, which makes all to be vanity and vexation to impeni­tent sinners, while such, but not to an humble and holy Christian, who sees and adores God and Christ in all things, and no less in this, which may adde to the momentary comfort and content of its looks, then in other things, which are not therefore sinful vanity, because not of absolute neces­sity.

As for the last place your Ladiship voucheth, of Abstaining from all ap­pearance of evil, which you think as a large net must needs include in its capa­cious bosome all these modes of auxi­liary beauty; even this, as all other Scriptures, must be seasoned with the salt of a right and restrained sense, lest it be corrupted by a loose and false in­terpretation: else we must call no man Mat. 23. 9. Mat. 6. 25. Joh. 6. 27. master or father, nor take care for to morrow, nor labour for our livings, &c.

It cannot be meant that we must [Page 116] abstain from all those actions or things wherein evil minds do oft appear, as most studiously, so most wickedly, while they appear under the mask, colours & pretensions of piety, vertue and sancti­ty, by most affected and rotten hypocri­sies: this were to forbid us all those appearances which most become us: for there is no form or fashion of holi­ness so severe, demure and precise, but it often falls under the devils counter­seit and imitation. We must not abstain from being and appearing as Angels of light, because Satan transforms himself 2 Cor. 11. 14. Mat. 5. 16. Isa. 5. 20. to that appearance: our light must shine before men, though some call their darkness light, and put the beams of light on their darkness. The Pharisees pride and hypocrisie appears in Moses Mat. 23. chair, in long prayers, in fastings and Ch. 6. alms; we must not therefore wholly abstain from these: The sheep must not flea off his skin because the wolf many times puts on its fleece. No, our Saviour teacheth there to adde sin­cerity to the solemnity, and the power of godliness to the form.

[Page 117] I remember in my small reading of the Ecclesiastical stories, both ancient and modern, that the holy severities of watching, fasting, hard lodging, course fare and homely clothing, used by Orthodox Christians, were usurped by most damnable Hereticks and de­sperate Schismaticks, the better to co­ver over their rotten manners and per­nicious doctrines; they will oft give all away to the poor, in order to get greater estates by rapine; they will be, like John of Leiden, Reformers of Church and State, that by sacrilegious arts and rebellious crafts they may mend their own fortunes: Yet these fallacious appearances must not deterre good Christians from real charities and just reformings.

So then, those appearances of evil from which we are bidden to abstain are such, wherein sin and vice do gene­rally appear as in their genuine and proper colours. A Christian must not onely avoid gross sins with open and impudent foreheads, but also keep aloof from the very suspicion of [Page 118] those pregnant sins, as well as from the spot; as Caesar required of his wife.

Further, the Apostles meaning may be this, that we must abstain from all sin, which is notoriously and confes­sedly such, whatever fair semblances and appearances it makes; where sins are so putrid and unsavoury, that no fair pretensions can so perfume them, as to make them pleasant to Chri­stians, that have their senses awake and exercised to discern true holiness.

As to this duty then of abstaining from all appearance of evil, Christians must be first wisely and exactly infor­med, as of the natures, so of the ap­pearances of sins; that they be not gulled and deluded with the devils baits and shews, nor yet scared with every scare-crow, and take every boil for a plague-sore, or every scab for a leprosy: which superstitious fancies are prone to mistake, not grounding their fear upon judgement, but gui­ding their judgements by their fears; not therefore abstaining, because God [Page 119] hath forbidden, but therefore imagining God hath forbidden things, because they have been accustomed to abstain from them.

Whence ariseth not real and true, but false appearances and misprisions of evil, which fall not under the Apostles caution, whose aim is to deterre Chri­stians as well from misapprehensions of good or evil, as from misapplica­tions to them: nor would he have us to abstain from other then those ap­pearances, wherein evil commonly ap­pears like it self, in its proper colours, not onely as to its malice and mischie­vousness, but also as to its disorder and impudence. For to avoid all those customes and manners, civil or sacred, in which sin and superstition may and oft do appear, we must either go out of the world, or not at all appear in it. As all is not good which good men doe or say, so nor is all evil which wicked men make shew of: As infinite shadows make not up one substance, so nor ma­ny appearances onely make up one sin. 'Tis not what superstitiously appears [Page 120] as evil to weak and simple eyes, but what really is and so appears evil to se­rious and judicious minds, which we must avoid; else ignorance, supersti­tion and hypocrisie will (as I said) ob­struct and put in a prejudice against all things, under the seemingness or appea­rance of evil, which are not onely al­lowed of God, but necessary in the out­ward shews and expression of either ci­vility or religion.

As in all other cases (then) so in this of Auxiliary beauty, it must first be convincingly proved that all use of such helps is in its nature a sin; that none can use them in any case, or the least degree, without either breaking an express command of God in right Reason or Scripture, or without a secret purpose and sinister intent to sin; that there must be either a sin in use of the nature of the thing absolutely prohibited, or in the inevitable depra­vedness of the users intention, if in na­ture it be allowed. For the nature of the thing, it is in vain cried down for sin, when nothing is produced [Page 121] against it in Reason or Scripture; nor more pretended against it then may as well be urged against the use of many other things, as helps to natural de­fects, or ornaments to civil life, of which they make no doubt who most deny this of tincture and complexion­ing. So that either they must con­demn other things (with this) which they approve, or approve this with other things which they do not con­demn or disuse.

As to the end and intent of the user, I presume your Ladiship and others too have so much charity, as not to censure or condemn all those for wick­ed and wanton who use any help to their complexions; nor can you justly blot out or forget all the piety, charity, modesty and gravity of those who (otherwise constant & conspicuous for those graces & vertues) have yet either undiscernibly as some, or suspected­ly as others, or declaredly as many, (ac­cording to the general custom of coun­treys) used such additaments to their faces as they thought most advan­ced [Page 122] the beauty or comeliness of their looks.

And however it be true that a ten­der conscience is prone to a commen­dable jealousie in the point of sinning against God, (whereof a good Christi­an cannot be too cautious;) yet it is as true that in the Church of God there is so clear a light and constant a rule to discern good and evil, sin and no sin by, that there is not any thing really a sin but it is easily demonstrated to be such, by such pregnant and constant testimonies of moral light or divine truth as our own consciences must needs consent unto them. Nor is it easie to elude the pregnant convictions of immorality, which appear in all gross sins, either as injurious to God, or our neighbours, or our own souls: Against none of whom (as farre as I can yet find) this use of any relief or addita­ment to our colours and complexions can or doth offend, more then other things, of which no doubt is made, so long as the heart is holy and the mind pure; which yet are either ingenuous [Page 123] reparations of Natures defects, or con­cealments of what we think deformed.

Nor can I see any cause why we should think God less allows us any advantages for our looks or faces, then for other parts of our bodies: since the greatest sweetness, honour and agree­ableness, as to humane society, are (as waters in the Sea, or light in the Sun) gathered together by Nature, and be­stowed on the face of mankind; where to appear lovely or comely is no appea­rance of evil in nature, nor more in art, which keeps the decorum and ends of God and Nature, which I am sure are always good: Nor would God have made any faces beautiful, if there had been evil in beauty, which yet evil minds may abuse, as other good things, that are the fruits of God's bounty and in­dulgence in Nature and Art. Which is all I have to reply as to these cauti­ous scruples of vanity and evil, which your Ladiship makes against all Arti­ficial beauty or helps of handsomness, by way of colour or tincture, ra­ther, I suppose, from vulgar or com­mon [Page 124] jealousies, then your own con­victions.

For sure if it had been so gross and palpable a sin as some suspect and re­port, it would not have been hard for so many learned, wise and holy men and women to have proved it to be such by undeniable arguments: whereas your Ladiship shall easily perceive, if you look near to their discourses upon this thing, that generally those who vehemently fight against Ladies faces, crying down all auxiliary or artificial beauty, doe it more by their Rhetorick then their Logick; they rather strike them upon the cheeks with their palms, then under the eyes with their fists: they make them blush, but not black and blew, by specious more then pon­derous arguments, shewing themselves in this point (for the most part) rather pretty Orators then profound Divines; using not the sharp two-edged sword of God's word, but the blunt foils of hu­mane fallacies and declaimings.

All which amounts to no more then a kind of verbal painting, or oral co­louring; [Page 125] which may be more dange­rous to truth and conscience then that which they inveigh against can be to the faces or complexions of sober and modest women, while they slide from the abuse of things to decry the use of them; drawing conclusions from sus­picions of evil, jealous of the honesty of all minds, because of the pravity of some; denying all ingenuous liberties, because of some persons licentiousness: which is a vile and weak way of search­ing or discovering sin; especially, when it is, I think, a most infallible Truth, That whatever may be abused, may also be well used; what is good in na­ture, may be so in art: since all things are in their kind, they may be so in their various applications, which is their end, and best serve by the apti­tudes which are in them for such ends and uses.

ANSWER.

'TIs true, nothing less becomes Christians then pride, since they profess to follow the example of an humble Saviour, who was content for our sakes to have the beauty of his face Isa. 5. 3. marred, and to appear without form or comeliness, to expiate the spiritual de­formities which sin hath brought on our souls, and bodies too. Yet since Christ came to repair nature, and not to destroy it; since his main design is to reform our inward decayes, without any wast or reproach to our outward comeliness; since to be godly it is not necessary to be ugly, nor doth deformi­ty adde any thing to our devotion; I see no reason why we should imagine that God's mercy to our Souls denies us due care and consideration of our bodies: or that, while he forbids us to be proud, by an overvaluing of our selves or any thing we have beyond our and their due proportion, that he requires us to be so abject and negle­ctive of the outward man as not to [Page 129] know, value and use the gifts he hath given us for his glory and our comfort of life; which none can thankfully and rightly doe, who do not see or dare not use what God in nature or art hath afforded to them. So that it is not pride, but justice and gratitude, that owns and improves to right ends the fruits of God's bounty: not a rest­ing in them, or boasting of them, as our chief blessings and happiness, but re­ferring them as subordinate to superi­our ends. It doth not grieve God to see us pleased with our selves and what we use of his creatures, provided we abuse them not: there may be humble self-complacencies without pride; nor have we cause but to joy in our selves, and what we doe, at all times and in all things, except then when our conscience tells us we offend God.

Nor may the least suspicion of pride fall upon many women, who while they modestly use help to their complexions, are the more humbled and dejected under the defects they find of native beauty or lively colour: the remedying [Page 130] of which by artificial applications can be no more temptation to pride, then the use of crutches or spectacles to those that are lame and dim-sighted, or the applications of other delights and ornaments to our outward man or senses, with an humble agnition of God's bounty and indulgence to ei­ther our necessities or infirmities.

Nor may it more justly be taxed for pride and arrogancy, because in the matter of beauty we challenge to our selves something as contributive to handsomeness, which is not ours by a native, personal and individual title; since many things belong to the use and service of mankind which are fo­rain and besides himself, not as usur­ped by his arrogancy, but as accumu­lated upon him by the Creators boun­ty, who is willing mankind should serve themselves of all his creatures various excellencies, in their strength, weight, light, sweetness, warmness, tinctures, beauties, and colours, not onely to ne­cessity and plainness, but also curiosity and gayness.

[Page 131] Otherwise, I know neither your La­diship nor any others who are so severe censurers of all extern helps to beauty, would be so partial to your selves in other things, as to allow your selves without any blame or guilt of pride ma­ny ornamental actions as well as mate­rials, both private and publick, where­by to set off your self in a farre diffe­rent posture of neatness and handsome­ness, of beauty and majesty, beyond what you have or are in the native de­solation and simplicity of your persons.

Else, why do you (without any scruple) chuse such Stuffs, such Co­lours, such Tailors, such Laces, such Tires, such Fashions, as you fancy best become you? You never are jealous of scarlet, crimson, or purple tinctures in your clothes, wherein you please your self at present more then in any other deader colours, as best becoming you: onely you are scared with the least touch of such orient colours on your face, though they become you never so much, and though you think you need them not a little. Can such [Page 132] tinctures and colours of light be ho­nourable and graceful to your body, and onely shameful and disparaging to your face, when they are but the simple juyce or extract of some innocent herb, leaf, flower or root, of which no other use (in food or Physick) can be made, as we see in many things of Natures store, whereof no other benefit can be made but the extracting and commu­nicating of their tinctures and colours, whereto Nature doth invite Art and ingenuity?

Nor is indeed any thing (as I have heard) more easy and cheap then those applications which advance or quicken the ruddy life of the face, which is done with very little expence of time, without others pains or our own la­bour; and no doubt both may, and very oft is used to very sober ends by humble minds, who venerate God in this, as all his creatures, whereof he hath given man the use and command in all honest and vertuous waies.

And however God challenges his own right and propriety, where wick­ed [Page 133] minds sacrifice to their own net, and glory in God's flax, and wine, and oil, Hos. 2. 5. and corn, as if it were their own merit or acquisition, forbidding us ungrate­fully or excessively to use these his gifts to his dishonour and the detriment of our souls, while we pamper our bo­dies and our sensual lusts; yet where the heart is pure and grateful to God, he no where commands nor expects we should neglect the body, (which is God's too) in the culture of it, for nu­triment or ornament, for necessity or decency, so farre as we make these no hinderance of holiness, and no designed occasion to sin.

Nor do I see any reason why this help to complexion or beauty in the face may not be used, as farre short of any sinful pride as any other adorning your Ladiship useth, who, though plenti­fully furnished with Natures stock of beauty, (of which (like the rich mans barns) your Ladiships face hath great store laid up for many years) yet as I think you are not proud or conceited of it, to any ingrateful [Page 134] neglect or affront to God the giver; so nor do I believe you are so great an undervaluer or slighter of it, as not to preserve it tenderly and thriftily, but fence it against Sun, dust, air, and fire, by masks, fannes, scarfs and hoods; yea, if you find any decaies by wrinckles or roughness, by freckles or tanne, you speedily endeavour by unguents and washes, by forehead-clothes and cere­clothes to clear and smooth your skin, to recover your fresh and orient colour, and to fetch back that Angel which seems to have fled, or to be flying from your face, which even sober and modest women are as loth to let go, as Jacob was that Angel with which he wre­stled, because they think it (and not un­justly) a great blessing among these little momentary ones which our dust is capable of.

Yet in thus doing, endeavouring and desiring to preserve or recover your beauty, neither your own heart nor any others tongue is so cruelly austere, as to smite you or accuse you for any pride or arrogance, nor yet for any in­ordinate [Page 135] esteem of this fading blossom, beauty. And truly since your plenty and liberty exempts you from all envy of others handsomeness, why should you deny your pity and charitable indul­gence to those that do want native co­lour, or forbid them the ingenuous use of artificial complexioning, which may innocently relieve them, without any sin or shame? since God and Nature have as it were offered such helps, which are obvious, cheap, easy, and every way safe. I do not believe your Ladiship wishes all your neighbours poor, that they may the more value, set off and admire your riches. There may be greater pride in the want of charity, and in severe censuring of others for pride in that which they use, as from God, so in his fear and to his glory. It is good to look to the beam in our own eyes of rashness and censoriousness, which is an high arrogating of God's judicial power, and ascending up to his Throne or Tribunal, before we quarrel too earnestly with the mote in anothers eye.

[Page 136] Why should any be judged of Pride for that wherein he owns and vene­rates God, praising him for his boun­ty, and keeping within his bounds? Since God's eye hath been good to poor mortals, not onely in native gifts, but in artificial and adventitious supplies, why should any Christian's eyes be evil, repining at or disdaining ano­thers benefit, who want what God hath not denied? which is as if one should grudge them a plank to save them­selves who have made shipwreck. 'Tis possible for Diogenes his Cynical slovenliness to trample on Plato's splen­did garments with more pride then Plato wore them. Nor is it any strange effect of pride, to deny others that which may make them any way our peers or rivals in handsomeness; which is as strong a leaven to puff the mind as any thing, and no less fer­mentive when natural, then when ar­tificial. And indeed artificial helps of beauty carry with them their own antidote, while they are monitors of our wants and infirmities, which (like [Page 137] the swallowing down the stone) keep us from surfeiting of the Cherries we eat.

We read no where in Scripture that the beauty and bravery of colours is either forbidden or reproved, unless unseasonably worn, when God calls for sackcloth and blackness of faces. Lydia, a seller of purple, (whose dye Acts 16. 14. or finer tincture was of more worth then the substance or stuff it self) yet is not forbidden, when she was conver­ted to be a Christian, either to dye or to sell any more of that rich and orient colour.

Since other diseases or distempers incident to our faces are industriously to be cured without any thought or blame of pride, as flushings, redness, inflammations, pimples, freckles, rug­gedness, tanning and the like; what hinders, that paleness, sadness and deadness may not be remedied? since God hath given to mankinde not onely bread to strengthen, and wine Ps. 104. 15. to cheer mans heart; but also oil and other things proper to make him a [Page 138] serene and chearful countenance. And where oil is not used, other things may be, according to that virtue and property is in them to such an end. Against which honest liberty I see no­thing wars so much as prejudice, and a kind of wontedness to think the con­trary, because they never knew how innocent, as well as convenient, the use of such helps is to sober minds and more pallid looks.

ANSWER.

THis black and ponderous cloud of witnesses which your Ladiship pro­duceth against all artificial beauty, from the suffrages of ancient and later Di­vines, did, I confess, a long time so scare me, that I feared a Deluge of divine wrath in no case to be more unavoi­dably poured forth upon the Soul then in this of giving any assistance to [Page 142] the face and complexion; so terrible presages of storms did the thunder and lightning give both from the Press and Pulpits of grave and godly men. No soul was more shaken then I was, in the minority of my judgement; when I had more of traditional superstition then of judicious religion, and valued more the number of mens names then the weight of their reasons.

But at length, finding by my greater experience in the world that many, if not most, women of more polished breeding, every way vertuous, and most commendable for all worthy qua­lities, yet did use more or less (private­ly, and it may be less discernibly to vul­gar eyes) something of art to retard age and wrinckles, to preserve or recover a good complexion, to quicken that colour which is the life of the face, and to dispel the death of an excessive pale­ness, notwithstanding what was with so great zeal and terror urged by some against all such practices, which are not the less evil because less discovered; I began seriously to examine the grounds [Page 143] of their opinions who were such ene­mies against it, and what dispensations in private those vertuous and modest women had, who more or less used some art, without which their beauty and good complexion would be much abated, if not quite destroyed.

And now out of that nonage and minority which kept me in the ward­ship and awe of mens names and num­bers, I considered, that these alone sig­nify no more to make up any reason, or to prove any thing a sin, (in point of conscience) then so many cyphers can make up a summe which have no fi­gure before them.

In matter of godliness, as to intelle­ctual light and darkness, or moral good and evil, it is not to be regarded who, or how, or when men affirm or deny any thing, but why. This made me at once curious and serious to examine what strong reasons were alledged by them, and on what grounds a thing so small, easy, cheap, safe, and for the most part both inoffensive to and un­discerned by others, should merit so [Page 144] bitter and odious invectives, so as to be banished from all Christian society; which yet admits so many curiosities, elegancies, superfluities, ornaments and delicacies of life, in clothing and dres­sing, in building and Cookery, in gar­dening, and all adornings by hangings, pictures, carvings, guildings, and tin­cturings.

And truly, Madam, after the best search and examining I could make of all that was written, preached, or pri­vately discoursed of by any men against Artificial beauty, (as now by your La­diship) it seems very strange to me how, if the case were so clear as to a noto­rious sin and so flagitious a crime, (which not like the slie fox crops the grapes, but like a wild bore roots up the very plants of all piety and ver­tue) how neither your Ladiship from them, nor any of them from one ano­ther in a continued track, do ever pro­duce such valid Scripture reasons or grounds of Morality (as to piety, equi­ty, charity, or purity) as may make up one solid and pregnant demonstration, [Page 145] rather then multiply long and speci­ous, yet dubious, declamations; which are like ropes drawn out to a length, but not bound or girt about things; having much in shew and extention, nothing in the binding or convincing power.

And such (I must freely tell your Ladiship and all the world) are all those sharp, satyrical and popular inve­ctives which hitherto I have met with­all any where; to which your Ladi­ship hath given as much (or more) edge and smartness as ever I found from any. For otherwhere one shall find, that those good men (without any new strength of arguments) commonly use the same borrowed phrases, those won­ted flowers of Oratory, one after ano­ther, as so many corresponding Echoes; by which they make loud and fierce Declamations against all artificial helps to beauty rather in a sequacious and credulous easiness, then after the rate of any perswasive strictness, either from principles of right Reason, or from Scripture precept and authority, [Page 146] with which your Ladiship began dis­course upon this subject between us; where I think your Ladiship found no such penetrating and confounding thunderbolts as were vulgarly imagi­ned, to be cast in the faces of all wo­men that any way helped the defect of their beauty by ingenuous and mo­dest arts.

So soft and good-natured, for the most part, are good men, as to be ea­sily led away by the authority and repu­tation of other mens names and opi­nions, which (under favour) is but a credulous kind of superstition and pre­sumption, the sap, not the heart of Re­ligion, whose grounds as to matters of conscience, binding or loosing the soul from sin or to judgement, are not the fancies, conjectures, or oratories of men, but the mind, will and oracles of God, whose rule is, To the Law and to the Te­stimony: Isa. 8. 20. if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them; if they speak not contrary to these, there is no sin or darkness in them.

[Page 147] I do humbly acknowledge, it be­comes not the weakness of my sex to contend or argue with those holy Fa­thers of old, men of incomparable lear­ning and sanctity, whom I wish I could as well study and read in their own wri­tings as I do highly venerate their names, for that great authority which they have justly obtained in the Church of Christ, by their zealous and indu­strious pains to deliver to us the great things of God, and those weighty mat­ters of Religion which are necessary to salvation.

Yet I know they were so holy and humble men, as not to think them­selves infallible, nor to obtrude their opinions as dictates, or their Commen­taries for sacred texts, and their wri­tings for indisputable oracles upon the Church of God, or any believers con­science. Who is there in these days of so observant a respect to the Fa­thers, as to forbear as sin all they for­bad, or to perform as duty all they then required? I have heard and read that every one of them had their Er­rors, [Page 148] greater or lesser, even in points of greater concern then this of Ladies beauties: that most of them were An­tagonists in some point or other against some other of like piety and learning with themselves. Good and great men are not set beyond mistakes. Nor is it seldome that passion or prejudice or custome biasseth their judgements wide of truth: Like Eli, a grave and 1 Sam. 1. 14. venerable person, mistaking that for drunkenness in Hannah which was de­votion. S. Peter was dissemblingly divided between scandal and conscience from off the Jews and his judgement, Gal. 2. 11. Acts 10. in point of eating meats and conver­sing with the Gentiles, till God better informed him. The primitive Chri­stians were dubious and abstaining from many things under the notion of sin, till they were better informed Acts 15. 20. of Christian liberty. 'Tis as easie for the conscience to shrink to an over-nice and rigid strictness (as, Touch not, tast not, handle not,) as Col. 2. 21. to be dilated to an over-stretched looseness.

[Page 149] But saving the merited honor and respect I bear to those holy men, what wise man now urgeth all the primitive rigors of Discipline, yea or all the te­nets of Doctrine which the Fathers sometime imposed on Christians as their several judgements? No doubt, the Fathers of the Church, after the severity of those times when Chri­stian Religion was most-what in or ve­ry near to the furnace of persecution, did worthily study the extern honour and gravity of it, so as to decry all those costlinesses, delicacies and soft­nesses bestowed on clothes, or houses, or bodies, or heads and faces, (which must daily prepare to marry with the flames and fagots) as superfluous and less seasonable, and so no way sutable to that Christian simplicity, mortified­ness, modesty and humility which those times required, which gave daily sum­mons to mortification by the sad and frequent alarms of others sufferings, and their own being exposed to like hazards of death or persecution. So this of auxiliary beauty (among [Page 150] other things) they might possibly then decry and deny with some vehemency to Christian women, not as absolutely evil, and in it self unlawful at all times, but as inexpedient and needless at those times, when (as precise virgins) they had more need prepare the lamps of their heart for Christ, then the beau­ty of their looks and faces for their suitors or husbands. Things may be less wholesome to some tempers and constitutions, which yet are not in them­selves poisonous or pernicious.

How zealous were some of them for vowed and perpetual Virginity, even so farre as sometime to speak less ho­norably of Marriage, yea to some bit­terness against second marriages? How do they exclaim as against false hair or Perukes, so against braiding or lay­ing forth, and powdering or colouring their hair; some against cutting or shaving close the beard, against cost, splendor and curiosity of clothes and diet? &c.

Not that they thought these things evil in themselves, but they observed [Page 151] many Christians made an evil (that is, a scandalous and unseasonable) use of them, the abuse of which was not so ea­sily regulated, as the use was utterly decried. Nor do they (as farre as ever I could perceive, by what is urged out of the Fathers by our English Writers) oppose things of this nature argumen­tatively so much as oratoriously; not denying the nature and use of them to some persons, in some cases, and at some times, but onely that usual pride, levity or impudicity which they obser­ved or suspected in many, who (as they represent it) used then such gross and dangerous dawbings of black, red and white, as wholly changed the very na­tural looks and difference of the per­son. Nor did it seem to them onely vain and superfluous in most, also ir­religious in many, but very fulsome, and even uncomely, in all that used so loathsome fashions.

Besides, the greatest strictness of those holy Fathers seems to have been to Votaries or resolved Virgins, in whom they thought it a kind of Apo­stasie [Page 152] to return to those secular toyes and curiosities of extern ornaments, and study of worldly beauty, when they made a profession to abandon them, and to live farre above them, as studi­ous not to please men, but God.

Nor is it strange if those men who generally chose celibacy or single life, were more tetrical or less indulgent in such things to women, whom they most feared, because they less loved or used their company, yea whose conversation they sought wholly to avoid, casting what damps they could on their own inclinations by their distances from them, and Declamations not onely against all feminine arts and ornaments, but even against the very Sex. Yet in their more calm temper there is no question but they made great diffe­rence as to times and persons in the use of the same things.

As the several censures and opinions of the Fathers must give way to the Scriptures authority (out of which no­thing of validity is produceable against Auxiliary beauty:) so they may (with­out [Page 153] injury) be looked upon as farre inferiour to the joynt suffrages or re­solves of Councills; without whose concurrence with the Fathers sense, I can hardly think any thing a sin, or vi­olation of that modesty required by Ecclesiastical Canons and the Disci­pline of the ancient Churches, from whom I find nothing ever cited by any Writer against the use of these feminine helps of complexion, as by a joynt suf­frage and determination of the Church against them; either looking upon such toyes as below the animadversion of so venerable Assemblies, or leaving them to the freedome of every one, whose vertuous or vicious minds best resolved the lawfulness or unlawfulness of them in particular cases and consci­ences, whose nature and use in general was (as all outward things) indifferent. I find no woman (otherwise unblame­able) either censured or excommu­nicated for her colouring and dres­sing: nor did the ancient Confessors or Casuists (any more then at this day) either examine or condemn the [Page 154] use of tincture and complexion to the face as any sin in it self, but onely in reference to the mind and end of the use.

Private mens opinions may not charge the Soul with sin in things of outward use and fashion, where Scri­ptures and Councils are silent.

Nothing is more usual then for single persons (otherwise very learned and godly) to be strangely wedded and ve­hemently addicted to their own won­ted modes, their customary opinions and fashions; of which they at length begin to make some conscience, as if they ought ever to approve and never to recant what they have long liked or disliked, esteeming those things next to sin which are new and unwonted to them.

Which temper (I think) was not only observable in many of those holy Fathers, whose venerable ashes I leave to their rest, (hoping to find them more friends and suffragans to the vertues and modesty of sober women, then enemies to their beauty, or condemners [Page 155] of those things they sometime inno­cently use, to conceal the defects or help the infirmities of their faces in point of beauty:) but (I am sure) no­thing hath been more frequent then such high and affected severities taken up by some of the later and lesser edi­tion of Divines, who would be counted great Reformers of the times, because they were vehement censurers and condemners of whatever they listed to dislike or not to fancy. Thus many of them have not only followed the tract of some of the ancients, in their strictnesses urged upon women as to their dresses, fashions, clothes and ador­nings; but they have horribly in­veighed (at first) against many other things of new, yet civil and convenient, use, as against starch, especially if yel­low, (as if there were sin in that co­lour more then in white or blew) to which at length they were so reconci­led, that they affected to use nothing more in their ruffs and linen. How ear­nest were some Preachers against care­less ruffs, yea and against set ruffs too? [Page 156] Both which they (at length) came to wear, rather then pickadilloes (which they thought had too much of the Courtier) or little plain bands, which they liked not because the Jesuites wore such. How was Tobacco mistaken by many great Masters of the Pulpit & peoples ears, before they generally fell to taking of it themselves, fancying (at last) that they never had more devout meditations or sharp inventions then those which were begotten, or at least brought forth, by the midwifery of a pipe of good Tobacco; which at last perfumed their clothes, their books, their studies, and their Sermons? What enemies were some Ministers to Pe­rukes, to high-crown'd or broad-brim­med Hats, to long Clokes and Cano­nical Coats, and now to long Cassocks, since the Scotch Jump is looked upon as the more military fashion, and a badge of a Northern and cold Reformation?

How have some cried down all Dan­cing, which most sober persons now use? Many are at discord with all Mu­sick and Singing with art and curiosity, [Page 157] in sacred psalmody, from which nei­ther David nor the devoutest Jews of old, nor the holy Christians of former times did abhorre; yea they highly adorned it, and devoted it to God's glory, as one of his special and diviner gifts to manking, which the Church knows best how to improve.

How bitter have some been against all lusory use of Lots, or any play with chance; so against all playing at Cards, though merely recreative, as Bowls and other sports are? Lastly, against all Usury, or profit upon interest from dry money, how vehement hath the tor­rent of some mens judgements been? which yet others reconcile of late (by some distinctions) with God's Laws and a good conscience, as finding that civil commerce cannot else be well car­ried on.

Some can digest the first-fruits of a simple usury upon the principal, but by no means use upon use from the same hand; which yet is but the same thing with the first, unless it alter the case to put out the interest­money [Page 158] to a new hand, or continue it in the old.

Such hasty and over-early blossomes of precipitant censures and preposte­rous zeal do oft arise in very godly minds, out of a principle not onely ve­nial, but so farre commendable, as it argues a cautious tenderness of offen­ding God: which blossomes yet do oft fall off in time upon further trial of truth, as abortives to truth, never bea­ring ripe fruits as to any thing of grace and vertue, though they flourish (for a while) in the warm opinions and de­vout fancies of some Ministers and others, till time correct and cool them, or contrary custome prevailing confute them, as to those clamors they made against them for sins, and a good con­science; when indeed the chief thing that moved their passion and prejudice was but unwontedness and tradition, with want of due consideration.

And certainly, if those eminent He­roes of Religion, (the ancient Fathers) will give us leave to stand as Pygmies on the shoulders of such Giants, that [Page 159] we may the better take a free, full and advised prospect of their private opi­nions; much more freedome may I or any one take to examine the magiste­rial censures and Anathemaes which those men use who are of later edition and lesser print, who bear themselves in some things (as in this case of aiding the complexion by any tincture) as much upon the name and authority of the Fathers, the Fathers, as the Jews did upon The Temple of the Lord, the Jer. 7. 4. Temple of the Lord; when yet they urge neither pregnant Reason, nor any Scripture-proof from the store-houses of the Fathers, but onely follow them more by a credulous easiness of spirit then by any discerning or convincing power, using their bowes and powder rather then their arrows and bullets, more repeaters of their popular Ora­torious vehemencies then urgers and confirmers of their argumentative strength, which either they find not in those Fathers who have been vehe­ment as to this point, or else they can­not tell how to manage it.

[Page 160] Yea I am informed by a person of learned integrity, with whō I conferred oft in this case, that one man of great repute, namely Peter Martyr, is so par­tial an enemy against what he cals pain­ting of the face in any sort or degree, that writing upon the occasion of Je­zebel's Peter Mar­tyr Com­ment on the Kings. fate against this practice in wo­men, he not onely urgeth, but stretch­eth to a falsity, a story out of S. Je­rom, as if it were a dreadful hammer by which to demolish all painting: when indeed S. Jerom doth not in that place so much as mention painting the face; when he tells Laeta (in order to her daughters education, becoming an intended Nun or Recluse) of a woman who, having designed her daughter to be a votary Virgin without her hus­bands consent, was by the husbands command moved to alter the childs veiled dress and over-grave habit, to the wonted fashion and civility of other young Gentlewomen, as to clothes, hair, gemms, &c. For which deed (saith S. Jerome; for painting her daughters face, saith Peter Martyr, besides the [Page 161] text and story) the mother was the following night terrified with dreams and visions, and threatned with speedy death, if she did not restore her daugh­ter to the former mode of votal habi­liments.

Truly the report seems fitted to the pulse and bent of those times, which were high venerators of vowed Virginity: But it is strange that a wife should be threatned by God with death for obeying her husband in such a thing, the contrary to which ought not to have been carried so farre on without or against the husbands and fathers will. But for the more odium of the business, this story is brought in by P. Martyr against all painting of the face, under the name, but not from the true authority, of S. Jerome.

Your Ladiship farther instanceth in one of our later English Divines, to whom I am no stranger, Mr. Downam, a person of primitive piety and great learning (no doubt;) whom who so shall read, in the place you cited, crying down with so great fervour all [Page 162] painting the face, (for so he calls and counts all helps to complexion) must needs be (as I was) much startled, fear­ing lest so great Ordances discharged with so much noise and terror should be loaden not with powder onely, to scare poor souls, but also with deadly bul­lets, to daunt and destroy them. Yet with the peace and favour of so good a man, even my simplicity can easily discern (having oft seriously perused that his vehement discourse and rough Satyr against all helps of beauty) that there is more of sound and terror then of force or execution in what he there sayes against them.

The good man rather took it for granted and indisputable, then serious­ly pondered the grounds of other mens and his own heavy censures, which rank it in the number of absolute and utter sins of a gross nature; never so much as distinguishing between the thing done, and the end or mind of those that doe it: as if the sober relief of a pallid infirmity, or the modest study of out­ward decency, were the same things [Page 163] with levity, pride and wantonness. At the same rate he might have inveighed against quenching ones thirst, or drink­ing to chearfulness, because of the sordid consequences of drunkenness, riot and debauchery.

This worthy man (after S. Cyprian) calls all painting or colouring the face an Invention of the devil: but he proves no such thing by any due reason or authority, onely he seems in this case to believe (what otherwise he wholly disbelieves) that old fabulous fancy, which they say some of the Fa­thers had from the Jews, of Devils be­ing Incubusses, and that in their court­ships to women they gratified them with these inventions which might help their decaying beauties, and make those wanton devils still inamoured of them. Which frivolous and odious reflexion (fitted to vulgar passions and capacities) hath, as no certainty, so no weight of truth in it; unless he fondly imagine with some, that the race of the Giants before the flood were of this progeny, which (it is said) the Sons of God (whom Gen. 6. 4. [Page 164] he must interpret Devils) begat of the daughters of men, whom they took, because they were fair, and to whom they contributed (it seems) this rare art of painting the face to keep them lovely. What sober person can dote so farre as to allow any such mon­strous fictions, and more monstrous productions?

As for the rarity of these Inventions which by any colour or tincture serve to help the ruddiness of the face or the liveliness of complexion, neither Mr. Downam nor the Fathers needed to rake the Devils skull to find them. Alas! it is a most easy and obvious thing, both as to the things used, and also as to the fancy of applying them to the skin or face, as well as in any other ordinary wayes of dying, colou­ring or painting of things. Nothing is and ever hath been more natively com­mon (as I formerly told your Ladiship) to all Nations in the world, then men and women painting and adorning themselves with several colours, juyces and tinctures, being an ordinary cu­stome, [Page 165] and as exposed to humane art and experience as the staining or dying of any clothes, the making of any pi­ctures or statues; to which the various and communicable colours afforded by Nature in feathers, flowers, roots, herbs, beans, stalks and wood, in flies also and fishes, do daily invite mankind to the exercise of their art and fancies in ap­plying of them.

But (Madam) how sad a thing is it to see grave men urge in matters of sin and cases of conscience those putid fa­bles and ridiculous fictions which themselves do not believe? What is this but like the ratling of hail upon tiles, which neither wets with moi­sture, nor pierceth with its strokes and noise? Such downy feathers as these will never make up the ponderousness of a milstone; and such as every gross sin must be (which sinks to hell) both by its offence against God's will, and by that shame, guilt or conviction which riseth in our own consciences either before, in, or after the commis­sion.

[Page 166] His other heap of arguments are only assertory, not probatory: As, that it is an absolute sin in the nature and use of it; which he should have made good by some plain proofs and pregnant instance of right reason or God's word against it: which he doth not so much as offer at in the least kind; when we all know that the for­mal malignity or evil in all sin is from the pravity or contrariety of our wills against the holy will of God, either as revealed in Scripture, or by the com­mon light of Nature.

In which last what he seems to urge as to the reproaching and mocking of God, the deception of others, & the bely­ing our selves, I have already answered, when your Ladiship instanced in them; shewing your Ladiship, that there is no more done in this mending or aiding of the complexion by sober minds and modest persons, then is done in many other practices of humane art and in­vention, which help crookedness, lame­ness, dimness of sight, or any other de­fect and deformity in nature; which [Page 167] no man is so foolish as to impute to the devils invention, or to count them any hurtful imposturage, injury or in­dignity against God, our selves, or others.

For his fear lest women should rather poison or marre their faces, eyes and teeth by the use of such things as help their looks; his care and charity to women in this is not so great, as his ignorance is of those innocent and harmless applications, which are farre enough from what rustical jealousies might possibly fear and imagine, as if women were so mad of a little colour, that they will venture upon uncorre­cted Quick-silver, untamed Mercury, the invincible Aqua fortis, or any such pernicious drugs; which yet (sure) may be used in their several kinds and qua­lities without sin, if they had a face-mending virtue in them. But 'tis cer­tain that tincture which women gene­rally use to quicken their complexion withall, is as safe and inoffensive to their own health as any flower. So that from this error can be no true [Page 168] ground against it, as if it were self­indangering, and so offensive both to God and man.

Lastly, for his censure, that all are proud, lewd, vain and wanton women who use it in any kind, to any end; truly it is as harsh as rash: nor is it to be justified as to the truth of the as­sertion, if any ever did use it soberly and modestly; least of all can it hold in Christian charity, unless he had known the hearts and intents of all those that ever used it to be such as he there expresses, when (alas, good man!) it is very probable he knew very few, it may be not any one, that used it; possibly he, with other men of the same brow and severity, might suspect some unjustly, (which is ordinary in those that cannot live well without censu­ring others for something evil.) No doubt, he highly approved others for very vertuous and good Ladies, who used some art and quickning, while he was never the wiser, nor they the worse, either in his opinion or their own innocent intentions.

[Page 169] So that leaving the cloud and crowd of Authors and Writers, of Fathers and Preachers, whom I shall ever re­spect and value according to what I find of godly wisdome and Christian charity in them; your Ladiship must give me leave rather to look to the more sure word of God and that light of right Reason which enlighten every man, one in the world, both in the Church, as to the knowledge of good and evil, sin and sanctity, vice and vertue. If Fathers or others speak not according to this light, all their Oratorious poli­shings and shinings are but false beams, as the glistering of Glo-worms, from humane, not divine authority, which onely can set a stamp of sin upon our actions. Neither the wit nor tongue of any or many men can be a mint ca­pable to coyn the least farthing sin, much less so large a piece and me­dal as this man pretends to make of any helping our complexion; which seems to him to be as the ta­lent of lead cast into the Ephah, Zach. 5. 8. where the woman sate, when truly he [Page 170] proves it not by any weight of argu­ing (and bare words are but as wind) to be so much as the dust of the ba­lance. And truly I cannot yet see but that in the height of religious severity it may be put among those venial vani­ties of humane life, of which no stricter account in point of morality need to be given or exacted, but onely that divine indulgence by which God in in­nocent freedomes, as a father to his children, gives us leave to adorn and please our selves, without any of his displeasure.

Nor may the violence and bitterness of some good mens censures against all auxiliary beauty seem strange to us; for nothing is more easie and frequent then antique and popular errors, which either cry things up or down as some one or more persons of eminency first fancied and opined; from whom, with­out any further trial, many receive for currant all that is stamped with their name: Thence it grows so common and customary, by the authority of time and multitude, that even learned [Page 171] and sober men in following ages are content to swim down the common stream, rather then trouble themselves to cross or question such vulgar, and therefore authentick, Errors.

Which, I remember, my Lord your Brother, in one of his many excellent discourses (meriting a farre better me­mory and tongue then mine) observed to be so frequent both in politick and pious affairs, in things Civil and Eccle­siastical, because very few examine the marrow and inside of things, but take them upon the credit of customary opi­nings: and what they hold even in ca­pite and corde too, is more by a super­ficial tenure of credulity, then any pregnant proofs and good evidences of Reason or Religion.

Which easiness if it be excusable to humane infirmity in lesser matters, where there may be an adherence in perswasion or practice to either side without any sin or notorious error, yet in things highly charged with sin, even to a more facinorous and notorious degree, (as this of any painting and [Page 172] complexioning the face is by this wor­thy man and others) grave and godly Divines should be very wary what they affirm or deny; lest they be over-righteous beyond what God imposes, Eccl 7. 16. or severe beyond God's smitings, or uncharitably lay either heavier pres­sures on the consciences, or harsher censures on the actions of others, then God himself doth.

Men of never so eminent learning and piety may not either adde or detract from the word of God, lest they be found lyers, as Solomon speaks Prov. 30. 6. Nor ought they to multiply sins by unreasonable and unseasonable severi­ties, beyond what God hath done. For such passionate and precipitant wayes of censuring and condemning in case of sin (where pregnant convictions in Reason or Scripture are wanting) besides that they are most unworthy of a cautious and well-advised Divine, (who, being in God's stead to people, ought not to pretend God's authority where he can produce none) do not onely charge the consciences of Christians with [Page 173] needless burdens, and bind them to unjust bondages, but they very much (also) baffle the credit or honor of Re­ligion, highly diminishing the reverence due to the Ministerial profession, as to that binding and loosing power of the Mat. 18. 18. Keyes which is principally committed to them. For nothing makes people less prone to observe, or more ready to disbelieve their words, as to the avoiding real sins, then when they find them so loose, superficial, and but ver­bally imperious in feigned and forced enormiries, which are not convinced to have in them (if rightly tried and sta­ted) any iniquity against God or man, being injurious to neither, where the heart is upright, as it easily may be, and no doubt alwayes is, in modest women, who generally use in some degree or other (as they best fancy) some things that they think best set off their outside and handsomeness to the world.

Furthermore, from such magiste­rial rigors infinite doubts and scruples are raised among weaker consciences, [Page 174] who dare less trust to their own judge­ments, while they doubtingly use or doe those things which they are loth to want, and against which they see nothing proved as evil; yet are they scrupulous and afraid to use them, be­cause of so much prejudice and clamor against them: So that hence grows their snare and sin too, while they want that faith in using them which is neces­sary to justify, not the nature of the thing done, but the conscience of the doer; as the Apostle requires, Rom. Rom. 14. 23. 14. 23. Whereas, in reference to the nature of the thing done, the Apostle assures us, that the Kingdome of God, as Rom. 14. 17. to gracious power and peace, consists not in any of these things of external use (as meat or drink, and so clothes, colours, &c.) nor ought the conscience in these to be set upon the rack and tainter, but rather acquainted with its liberty, which being kept within the bounds of modesty, sobriety and inno­cency, needs not be scared with the scruple of sin.

And indeed in this very case of [Page 175] Complexioning, I have heard that many learned and wise men, both at home and abroad, who are more remote from vulgar easiness and credulity, do for­bear to condemn (as sin) the use of those things that are ingenuously and innocently helpful to the beauty of mo­dest women; but they rather examine the true state of things, both in the na­ture of what is used, (which must needs be good, as in the order of God's crea­tures) also as to the mind and intent of the doer or user of them: accordingly they determine, That all colourings ad­ded to the face are so farre sin or not sin in the conscience of the doer, as their minds are morally and intentio­nally disposed either to modest and in­genuous decency, which is commen­dable, or to lewdness, pride and lubri­city, which are blameable: And as they find the things used to be in the cabi­net or store-house of nature; also the use of them to be no where forbidden in Reason or Scripture, as a relief to such defects or infirmities of beauty as may befal the face; so they resolve [Page 176] that according to the qualities and apti­tudes which are seen in those things for such ends, they may lawfully be used with humility, charity, purity and thankfulness, without any offence to any relations wherein we stand obliged to God, our neighbours, or our selves.

We see in many cases that time and calmer considerations, together with different customes, which (like the tide or flood) insensibly prevail over both manners and minds of men, do oft take off the edge and keenness of mens spi­rits against those things whereof they sometimes were great abh [...]ers, re­conciling their mortal feuds, and wear­ing off their popular prejudices. Few mens judgements are so died in grain, but they will fade and discolour, be­ing most-what onely dipt by vulgar easiness in common opinions: Nor do I see any thing unlikely, but that upon second thoughts and more exact view, a fair moderation and civil atonement may be mediated between Ladies Coun­tenances and their Consciences, by the intercession of judicious and religious [Page 177] persons, both Ministers and others, who dare to be wise beyond the vul­gar, and who have patience to consi­der better of this case then hath been wonted.

It will (no doubt) appear how little or no ground there hath been for so great reproaches or terrors of sin, in a case no way more dangerous to the Soul or body of a vertuous woman then all other civil and allowed Orna­ments are; where by adding a little quickning and lustre to her looks, she is no way hindred from the Love of God or her neighbour, in chast and charitable wayes: That where no cost is lavished, no time-wasted, no good duty neglected, no vice nourished, no Vertue depressed, but onely a civil de­cency studied (which was never denied to holy women in waies agreeable to nature) there can be no enmity to Grace; nor compliance with sin.

ANSWER.

THE point of Scandal, (which your Ladiship now makes your refuge in this dispute) either given or recei­ved, hath, like a Labyrinth, so many windings and turnings, so many per­plexed cautions and distinctions, that it seems rather a maze to lose the mind in, then any fair retreat where judgement and conscience may repose and secure themselves. None is so simple a Sophister in disputing about things of dubious and indifferent na­ture, but when he is driven by Reason and Scripture from his strong holds of prejudices and confidences, when he sees the thundering Cannons of his cen­sures and Anathemas dismounted or cloyed, he then retreats to this of Scandal, and earths himself in this bur­rough, pleading that he is scandalized with what you doe, (or if he but suspect you doe it) though he give you no rea­son against what you doe, nor can in­deed prove that you doe what (it may be) he suspects. Thus Ignorance, Su­perstition [Page 181] and Suspicion, will be ever over-awing Truth & Christian Liber­ty, both in private persons, and in pub­lick Societies or Churches, imperiously injoyning others to forbear the use of their liberty, merely because this or that poor soul sayes they are offended, though they give no reason why.

Thus the pleaders of Scandal, like soldiers of Fortune, are ingaging in eve­ry quarrel, where they stake nothing against the liberty, peace, order and de­cency of others, but onely their pri­vate fancy, opinion and dislike; who yet are many times most prodigal in gi­ving others great and publick Scan­dals, by using or disusing such things as others no less quarrel at, oft deny­ing Obedience to publick & lawful Au­thority in those things of which they make any scruple, imperiously chal­lenging this liberty to themselves, yea glorying in their scandalous refractori­ness to publick order and constitutions: yet they deny this liberty to others in the same or like cases, about things dubious and indifferent, concerning [Page 182] which there is no precise or express will of God declared, but they are left to prudential freedoms as to private mens use, till the consent and wisdome of the publick hath confined and de­termined them to one way for order sake and uniformity, whereto private freedome (still free as to the opinion of the nature of things) ought yet humbly and charitably to conform it self as to publick practice, for the avoiding of publick scandal and dissension by rea­son of their difformity.

Between superstitious and insolent spirits, (who either dislike all that others doe different from them, or en­joyn others to tread in none but their steps and to dance after their pipe) true Christian liberty (as between two thieves) is crucified; between the up­per and the neather milstone, of Scan­dal given or taken, it is (together with Christian Charity) so ground to pow­der, that a sober Christian hath little left him to doe, say or enjoy, whereat some or other will not take offence.

Not onely bad things or doubtful, [Page 183] but even good things, and the very best, are sometimes to some persons scandalous: So was the believing, yet ceremonious, Jew to the believing Gal. 2. Gentile, and the believing, but incere­monious, Gentile to the believing Jew. Christ himself and the whole tenour of the Gospel was a stumbling-block to the 1 Cor. 1. 23. Jew, and foolishness to the Gentile. Pa­pists are offended with many things which Protestants hold and doe; and contrarily Protestants cry out of the scandals Papists give them. So the most Factions and Schisms in the Church shelter their rents and dissen­sions under the shield of Scandal by them taken, less minding the scandals by themselves given to others; by which (as mad-men with swords) they lay about them, and smite all that come near them.

There is nothing so sober and mo­dest, so civil and decent, so sacred and solemn, at which ignorant, or caprici­ous, or proud and imperious spirits will not take offence, who like nothing in use and custome, never so ancient and [Page 184] innocent, unless they have first ena­cted or setled it: they must be fathers or godfathers to it, either begetting or confirming it, else they will cry it down as scandalous, spurious, impi­ous, Popish and Antichristian; preten­ding they have more cause to be sca­red with other mens shadows and ce­remonies, which they fansy to be sha­ped like Bears and Lions, then others have to be offended with their paws and jaws, the sharp teeth and nails of those real beasts and birds of prey which they carry about them; cal­ling their own rapines religious, and their very Sacriledges sacred, yet high­ly offended if others do by word or deed vindicate their own liberties, cu­stomes and constitutions, never so de­cent and ingenuous, against the rude novelties and riotous invasions of the others supercilious fierceness and inju­riousness. One is scandalized at my using my liberty, though without any prescribing, urging or injoyning upon them: I am no less offended at their invading my liberty by needless strict­nesses [Page 185] and uncharitable censures, which though they wound not my conscience, yet they seek to weaken my credit.

Out of which perplexity or streights of scandals both on the right and left hand, I know no shorter or safer way to redeem a sober Christian, that de­sires to live void of offence before God and man, then seriously to con­sider every thing (before he either pra­ctise it himself, or censure it in ano­ther) by the true notions and internal principles of good or evil, as morally and conscientiously considered. The onely way, as David tells us, to cleanse Psa. 119. 9. our own (or others) wayes, is by taking heed to God's word, regarding what in his precepts negative or affirmative either pleaseth or displeaseth him, whose revealed will is a sufficient and infallible rule of all requisite holiness: According to which, as I have just cause to be offended with my self and others in what I see my self or they doe against the express will of God; so where this doth not appear by [Page 186] any Scriptural reason & demonstration, I have no cause either to scruple in my self, or to suspect as a scandal in others, that against which I see nothing de­clared by God, but a natural, civil and ingenuous liberty left me and others, which is always to be kept within bounds of modesty and discretion; which sober and unblameable conver­sation is enough to satisfy minds truly humble and charitable, who love not as Salamanders to live in the flames of contention, or like Caterpillars to make their cobwebs on bushes and thorns.

And however, in things assuredly lawful, (as to my private conscience) a charitable and discreet tenderness be­comes the modesty and gentleness of a Christian toward others, in those things which have possessed and per­swaded men either by contrary cu­stomes or prejudices, and (it may be) by temporary precepts of God; as in the case of Jewish ceremonies and ex­tern observations, (of whose abrogation some were not soon or easily satisfied;) [Page 187] also in the case of eating things of­fered 1 Cor. 10. to Idols, (which some scrupled out of an abhorrence of all Idolatry) which God had strictly forbidden: in these and the like cases (I say) a condescend­ing for a while, and private forbearance for fear of giving scandal, is very fit, till I have used those means which might best convince and instruct them of mine and their liberty given us now by God. Yet if they carelesly, proud­ly, peevishly and obstinately resist or repell the pregnancy of my reasons, without giving any valid answer to them, or producing ought of right rea­son or Scripture for their continued scruples, scandals and jealousies, they are henceforth to be looked upon and treated, not as weak, but wilful.

Nor can I think it the duty of a Christian, for ever to indulge their fol­ly, fondness and pertinacy, of such for­bearing to use those things for which he brings many pregnant reasons, from the nature, end, and aptitude of things, from their own want and capacity, also from God's permission, of which I pre­sume [Page 188] where I find no prohibition; whenas they produce little or nothing beyond a blind credulity, a bayardly confidence, or an imperious insolence, which delights to find fault with others, & to domineer over them in some petty things, for which at best they urge passion, prejudice, custome, other mens opinions, or such popular stuff of which there is no end, in which what Reason cannot at present, Time will afterward easily confute that crosness and peevish­ness which oft transports men against many things beyond the measure of Reason or true Religion. As I have heard for certain of a Minister of no small print & repute among the people, who took great offence at the great sleeves of a Ladies new-fashioned Gown, calling them antichristian, ungodly, strange apparel, and such as the Lord was displeased with; yet within one year this good mans wife was in the same fashion, without any scandal to her supercilious husband. So crasie are some mens judgements, and so easie their censures, as to matters of Scandal, [Page 189] where Novelty or wontedness sway more with them then either Reason or Religion. Nothing less becomes a grave and godly Christian then to multiply needless scruples and scandals.

As to the pretended scandal which some say they take from womens use of any Auxiliary beauty, truly where modest and sober persons use it dis­creetly, the scandal cannot arise either from the nature of the thing done, or the mind and manners of the doer; (which in all things appear worthy of a good Christian) nor can it arise ea­sily from the certainty of their know­ledge who are offended, but onely from their impertinent curiosity and suspi­cion. As the first is rude and unwel­come; so the other many times false, alwayes unnecessary. It is seldome that any owns their art to them, nor is it oft that these inquisitive pryers can certainly conclude that to be used which they are so jealous of. So that if they could forbear their uncomly inqui­sitiveness & impertinent curiosity, their scandal taken would soon cease; which [Page 190] is more in their own eyes then others faces, where any such thing is soberly and discreetly used, without any haugh­tiness and affectation of looks, or wan­tonness of manners. I believe for the most part such things are so used by all ingenuous persons, that these morose Inspectors of Ladies faces are never the wiser, unless they have more perce­ptive eyes then ever I had. But if it were owned and confessed to them, what I pray are they the worse, or why offended? since neither have any of them as yet proved it to be a sin, ei­ther from any positive Law of God's word, or from any necessary inordina­cy and immorality of mind insepa­rable from the use of such things: nor are they by anothers use of it either urged or tempted to use it, further then they want or approve it. As for that depravedness of mind which they fear may attend the use of these helps of handsomeness; it is as objectable against all those things which either native beauty or art afford, whereof no wise man makes any scruple, yet may they [Page 191] be as much occasions to sin as this whereof they are so cautious. Evil minds, as foul stomacks, turn the best food to corrupt humors. But we must not therefore starve our selves, by for­bearing good victuals.

The work then that grave Ministers and other sober Christians have to doe in this and the like cases of extern use of things is, not presently to cry down every thing as wicked and abominable. because they are at first through incon­sideration or unwontedness scandalized at them, but seriously to examine what cause they have to be so scared and scandalized, as from any moral evil pregnant and inherent in the nature or use of things; and accordingly to state both their own censures and others consciences. If nothing be found justly offensive, they may not from fancy or custome call that unclean which God Acts 10. 15. hath made clean; but rather banish away those finister and silly scandals which arise from the darkness, weak­ness, or wilfulness of their own minds, which are no just barres against ano­thers [Page 192] liberty in things lawful, at which no wise person will be, nor good body ought to be, offended.

And in cases of so private and retired use of such things as these are by which women preserve or advance the hand­someness of their looks, wherewith none are acquainted, and of which none can be assured, unless they list who use them, as I see no cause to own the use of any such thing to them whom I find not to have judgement or charity suffi­cient to interpret or bear such things well, so nor have I any reason to ask their leave, nor more to be shaken with these scandals which are needlesly taken by them, not willingly given by me. Though others, rather out of ob­stinacy then scrupulosity, out of pee­vishness more then tenderness, do pre­tend scandal more then they prove it; yet my care must be, in the use of such things seriously to assert my own free­dome as to my confcience, by being rightly perswaded both of the lawful­ness of the thing, and looking to the innocency of my own intentions in the [Page 193] use of it. Thus the Apostle tels us, some Christians lawfully might observe a day to the Lord, and eat meats offe­red Rom. 14. 5, 6. 1 Cor. 10. 25. to Idols, as to their private pra­ctice, notwithstanding others doubted, and would be offended, if they were acquainted with their so doing: which yet was no hinderance to anothers private liberty, grounded on God's grand Charter and donation, which is, The earth is the Lords, and the fulness thereof. Nor is any thing in nature denied us where the use of it falls un­der the regulation of Reason, Grace and Vertue, which in these things of artificial beauty, as in all extern orna­ments and enjoyments, are strictly re­quired, and being exactly observed, do abundantly vindicate both the good­ness of the things in nature, and the lawfulness of them as to mine or any others use of them.

ANSWER.

MAdam, I find your Ladiship, as a wary combatant, reserves your main forces to the last, that so you may with the greater ease and advan­tage overcome your now-tired and least-suspecting adversary, who might [Page 200] hope your strength had by this time been well-nigh quite spent and exhau­sted. Truly your Ladiship seems to have laid more in this last Objection then in any one you at all urged before, both as to the weight and acuteness of what you alledge against all acquired or artificial beauty.

Yet since it is now brought up to so great a case and dispute of Conscience, whether a sin or no sin, it is fit seriously to examine whether the strength of your Ladiships arguments do answer the shew and pomp of them. Many things are more specious then solid, having, like vermine, a pretty kind of nimbleness, which comes farre short of that real strength or useful activity which is in more noble and solemn crea­tures. I read there were many seeming spots and appearings of leprosie, which upon the Priests due examination were not found to be any Leprosie of unclean­ness Levit. 13. or infection. As I am well plea­sed to hear the freedome and force of your Ladiships Objections, who omits nothing (I think) that can with any [Page 201] reason be objected; so I shall be more pleased to find my self in a capacity of giving your Ladiship those sober and solid Answers which may give you most satisfaction; since nothing is more uncomfortable in cases of Con­science then to leave the mind tottering and unresolved.

First, your Ladiship urgeth against it the evil report it generally hath among people: which I confess may be so farre true, as you onely listen to what is reported and censured here in your own country among the mean and in­feriour sort of people, for the most part; or those that are either leaders or followers of the popular genius, who are commonly Giants in talk, and Pygmies in judgement. One wise and serious man overweighs thousands of them, not in bulk, but in value; as one good Diamond doth many loads of pebbles. Vulgar minds will easily cry up to heaven or down to hell any thing, either as they have been accu­stomed to practise, or as they take it upon trust from those Masters who [Page 202] oft symbolize and comply with the vulgar humour and opinion in lesser matters, that they may have them their disciples and abetters in greater inte­rests and concernments.

A little matter will lure or scare the common people into civil and religi­ous fashions, if they have easy leaders and bold dictators.

I have formerly told your Ladiship, as to Starch and Tobacco, so to black Hoods and all forein fashions, what potent and popular declamations were used by some persons against them. So in religious forms, what ebbings and flowings have been and daily are, as to the vulgar opinion, report and pra­ctice of things, sometimes seditiously destroying, otherwhile pertinaciously retaining Images in Churches? So about Caps and Hoods, Vestures and Gestures, Musick and Organs, Crosses and Weathercocks, Steeple-houses and Churches, what fierce conflicts and Counterscuffles have been among people of various minds? one side gi­ving a good report, the other imputing [Page 203] evil report to the same things. Yea the use of publick Liturgies or solemn form of Common prayers, singing of Psalms, the recitation of the Creed, and concluding with the Lord's prayer, these are fallen under various reports. There are that cast so evil report on them, as they are not pleased, scarce patient, to hear them used by others.

If one had as many ears as Argus is said to have had eyes, they would not suffice to hear the various reports which at several times in several Countreys are given about the same things; yea the same men and women alter their minds and reports with their age, hu­mours, interests, company and adhe­rents, according as the wind blows ei­ther for or against any thing of civil or religious use.

What an ill report do some give of Episcopacy, others no better of Presbytery, and some worst of all of Independency, when yet each of these hath some great sticklers for them and applauders of them? Many men, yea most, are as prone to speak evil of what [Page 204] they understand not, as doggs are to bark at what they see not, onely because they hear others of their kind doe so.

Therefore the Apostle (who knew well how to pass through good report 2 Cor. 6. 8. and evil) doth in that place not onely bid us follow what things are of good report, but also what things are just and true: for as a false report (though good and favourable) cannot justifie that which is truly evil; no more can an evil report justly blast that which is in it self true and good, more then the shout and suffrage of the Jews could make the golden calf a God, when they Exo. 32. 4. unanimously cried, These are thy Gods, ô Israel.

So little heed is to be taken to the vulgar opinion or report of things, as to the motions of the winds and clouds, Eccl. 11. 4. which he that will sow, Solomon tells us, must not regard. Popular lungs are seldome sound, or their breath sweet: Their tongues may sometime hit on the right, as Balaam's ass once spake Numb. 22. 28. reason when it met with an Angel; but commonly the herd brays rudely and [Page 205] ill-favouredly, with as little reason, or­der or civility, (I need not say piety) as those Ephesians cried up their great Diana: as if mere plebeian Acts 19. 34. noise, dust, clamour, credulity and confidence were enough to make a Goddess, or sufficient either to conse­crate or execrate any thing as divine or devilish.

So that the wise and holy Apostles direction, to steer a Christians con­versation by good report, is not to set up any popular vote or vulgar suffrage for a Christians card and compass, which he had found to be vertiginous, heady, inconstant, and for the most part er­roneous, one while crying him up for a God, and presently stoning him for a Acts 14. 11, 19. malefactor; in both extremes injuri­ous and false.

But his meaning is, that in things of less pregnant demonstration or rule for their morality and piety, Christians should follow in point of credit and re­putation of Religion the test or suf­frage of wise and good men, though never so few, and possibly over-born [Page 206] by the number of others who are weak and wilful opiners, but not just arbi­trators, of good or evil report, which must be reduced to the standard of learned, judicious, and unpassionate mens suffrages; who give not their verdict of things as good or evil, till they have duly considered the nature of them, apart from vulgar prejudices and surmises, or obloquies and reproa­ches, with whom Crucifige is as obvi­ous as Hosanna. The rabble, as we read, gave a better report of Barabbas Joh. 18. 40. then of Jesus. The way of Christian Religion was at first every where spo­ken against, as a novel and pestilent heresy. The Apostle Paul heard no very good report of himself from some people who cried, Away with him, he is Acts 21. 36. 22. 22. not fit to live.

The later ages reformation of Reli­gion in these Western Churches had from the most people no very good re­port (at first,) though never so just and orderly and discreet, but followed the fate of all things and persons that en­deavour to rectifie or reform vulgar [Page 207] errors, which is, to be evil spoken of when they offer the greatest good.

Christians and Christianity were to be martyred in their names as well as in their persons and lives. Christ de­nounceth a woe, when all men speak well of them, and a blessing, when all men Luk. 6. 26. speak evil of them falsly. If evil re­port, Matt. 5. 11. as from the vulgar, (who are ve­ry superficial judges of things, like cork always swimming on the top, ne­ver sinking to the bottome of things) is to be much regarded; for what monsters should the primitive Chri­stians have been looked upon, capable to scare all modest and sober persons from coming nigh their doctrine, sa­craments and manners, when they were reported to kill and eat children, to worship an Asses head, to have early and incestuous mixtures in the dark? All which were as false as they were abominable.

If the Echo of common report be so oft false in the greater matters of Religion, where it concerns men to be most accurately informed what they [Page 208] believe or report; how little heed (I pray) may be taken to the common speech and perswasion of people in lesser matters, and in this one particu­lar, which is but a toy or mote in com­parison, take it in any natural, civil, or moral notions? onely the clamor and severe censures of some men have made it so considerable, because they urge it so highly upon the consciences of wo­men both as sin and shame, that truly it now merits exacter scanning then (it may be) it ever had, either by the vul­gar, or those who are their most plau­sible teachers and instructers.

And I believe, Madam, that upon re­view of the evidences of Reason or Religion, whereupon the verdict or re­port of wise and conscientious Chri­stians should be built, you will find that the plebeian report and ordinary sense of all artificial beauty differs from that of the more grave and better ad­vised sort of the world; yea and from the sense of the more serious and bet­ter educated part of the people in this Church or Nation.

[Page 209] As I have been informed of those learned Divines, Schoolmen and Casu­ists beyond Sea, so I am perswaded the ablest Church-men in England, in their most deliberate sentence, dare pass no other censure upon those customes (which are so frequent among persons of more elegant culture and fashion, for the advance of their beauty) then according to the true measures of mo­rality and honesty, which are the mind and end of the doer. Nor will righte­ous judges pass any other report on those ingenuous artifices which are au­xiliary to the faces adorning, more then they do upon those that adorn the head, hands, feet, shoulders, or other parts of the body, according to their several infirmities, necessities or conve­niences; namely that they are then good when done to good ends, and evil when to evil intents. According to these moral and internal principles of good or evil, the censure, judgement and report of things in their nature and use ought to be given, without any regard (in point of conscience) to what [Page 210] the vulgar easiness and prejudice or wontedness either opines or declares.

Nor is the report and judgement of all wise and every good man alwayes to be taken as authentick, by their Oratorious heats and popular trans­ports, (when possibly they would deny or discountenance an abuse, which is most unnecessary in those things that at best are not very necessary, but one­ly tolerable and convenient) but by their calm and sedentary determinati­ons; not as standing before the tribu­nals of humane opinion and applause, but as appealing to God's judgement­seat, which is to be set up in every ones Conscience.

So that the Apostles direction, to attend what report or same things have, is to be understood cautiously and strictly, not loosely and vulgarly. People, like unskilful Apothecaries and Mountebanks, oft put the titles of Antidotes on poisons, and poisonous inscriptions on wholesome Antidotes. Neither this nor the like places in Scripture which concern good manners [Page 211] are to be swallowed without chewing; we must not devour Scripture kernels with the husk or letter unbroken and intire: for by such a fallacy I might find (hard by your place alledged against them) a like place in favour of these feminine artifices, because the Apostle commands Christians to follow all things that are lovely or comely; among Phil. 4. 8. which rank and number many esteem these helps to their complexion, else certainly they would never use them. But this were rather to play with Scri­pture then to apply it seriously, and to make those holy directions rather as Tennis-bals tossed to and fro in idle disputes, then as nails fastned by the ma­sters of Assemblies.

But your Ladiship endeavours to give an account why these complexio­ning arts justly fall under such evil re­port, or so general an infamy, among the meaner sort of people; as being esteemed a cheat and cosenage, a ma­king and acting a lie, a self-Idolatry, a Christian personated with a Comical face, fitter for a stage then a Church; [Page 212] that from a self-shame and secret guilt it affects secrecy; that as a dead fly it corrupts the greatest commendations and perfections of any woman.

These are still but sparks of odium and scorn which fly from the vulgar an­vils and hammers, which commonly both over-heat and over-labour what they undertake to forge or reform.

First then, as to the Deception, which you call a Cheat; truly it is not so much in this of helping the pale­ness or adding a quickness of comple­xion to the face, as it is in other things of lameness and crookedness, &c. there the substance (as it were) and figures, here the colour onely is a little altered: yet these are used with­out any such odious clamors and im­putations, yea they are allowed and commended as indulgences of humane pity and charity, to cover, conceal or supply any defect or deformity in the outward man. Which even Mr. Per­kins himself allows, who (yet) as to the Perkins Cases of conscience. point of complexioning (which he calls painting) cries it down after the won­ted [Page 213] rode, in few words and fewer argu­ments, as against the Laws of Nature and Scripture; but of which he produ­ceth nothing but that circumstance of Jezebel's story, which I have an­swered. And indeed that worthy man seems in this, as in some other Cases of Conscience, rather to pass them over with a popular and plausible easiness, then to examine the true grounds, or to state them after the proportion of that great learning and piety which were in so excellent a Preacher: yet should not any thing (next clearing and stating the saving Fundamentals of Re­ligion) be more accurately done then this work of resolving cases of Consci­ence. Many make pretty Preachers, who come very short of profound Ca­suists or exact Confessors: to both which works he was rarely fitted where he attended the controversie, and made the Scruple his business; not contenting himself, as in this, with easie and ordi­nary answers, which have their autho­rity from wontedness more then truth, and from men more then God.

[Page 214] All ingenuous concealings or amen­dings of what is originally or casually amiss, or seems so, in our bodies and outsides, deserves not the least touch, much less those black brands of cheat­ing and lying, when onely decency and civility are joyned to modesty and hu­mility, which in this case may as easily be done as in any, without any indigni­ty to God or injury to man; yea eve­ry one is well pleased, as in themselves, so in their children and relations, to be thus cheated and deluded, by the handsomeness of such a disguise which seems most native. The blessed A­postles piety justifies that laudable ci­vility 1 Cor. 12. 23. of bestowing more abundant come­liness (by art) there where Nature hath bestowed least on the parts of the body: Nor is it any reproach or in­solence to God's workmanship thus to say or thus to doe. Though, properly speaking, nothing in pure nature is un­comely which God hath formed even as to our vile bodies, since every part hath its form and aptitude to the good ends appointed: yet since sinful infir­mities [Page 215] have befallen our bodies, they are many waies subject to diseases, de­fects and deformities, and nothing is de­nied us in piety and civility which may best rectifie, remove, hide, or dissemble any such natural or accidental pravity. For God hath not so confined us in re­ligious modesty, as not to give us leave to marry Art to Nature, and to use both those portions and stocks which he hath given us to his glory and our own or others sober and chast content­ment. Nor is it other then rustick or Adamitick impudence, to confine Na­ture to it self, and to strip our bodies of all the additaments of fair vestments or other ornaments of humane art and invention. Such naked and forlorn Quakers act a part much more cun­ning, false and histrionical, then those that least affect such pitiful simpli­cities.

To call every thing a Lie which we make shew of beyond the native pro­priety of things, is such a gross and ri­diculous severity as deprives us of all we wear besides our native hair and [Page 216] skins: All colours and dies given to clothes of any sort are also lies; all pictures and statues lively representing the originals are lies; all Parables, Me­taphors and Allegories in our speech must be called lies, because they are one thing in the native phrase or letter, and another in their applied sense or mean­ing: yet are not these thefts, but bor­rowings; not delusions, but allusions; not impious falsities, but elegant flowers of speech, to which the nature & resem­blances of things, as well as humane fan­cies, have an aptitude and invitingness.

Such ridiculous austerity would be a Satyrical Critick upon the very Scri­ptures, upon the Parables of Christ, and Apologies of many holy men, upon the raptures of Moses, Job, David, and others; which ascribe to God all hu­mane senses and passions, who yet is one simple and essential perfection. 'Tis not more ridiculous then insolent to deny the truth of the Scriptures in their holy Tropes and Hyperboles, when it sayes the mountains skipped, and the sea was afraid, or the valleys Psal. 114. [Page 217] did sing and clap their hands, &c.

How supercilious a piece of pedan­try were it here to cry down the man­ner of such expressions, because not native, but adopted to things? Nor does it in my judgement argue much more gravity and discretion, (I need not say piety and religion) to calumni­ate those things for frauds, cheats, lies and hypocrisies, which art, ingenuity and manufacture have invented, where­by to adorn nature in wayes conso­nant to modest ends and intentions, which are the holy measures and, I think, the onely confinements of all things both in nature and in art.

As to the cheat which your Ladiship may fear should befall any man when he thinks he wooes and weds a native beauty, (when it is artificial in some de­gree) if your Ladiship thinks it not onely fit but necessary in all other ad­ditional supplies or concealments as to the bodies defects or deformities, to make such ingenuous discoveries of the truth as may afterward give least cause of such exception or complai­nings [Page 218] (as Jacob used when he found Gen. 29. 25. Leah in stead of Rachel) truly I most willingly advise and assent that such as use such helps to their complexion would use the same freedome in tel­ling it to those whom it onely concerns to know it. As for others curiosities, there is no injury done if they be ever kept ignorant of that which to know would doe them no good, nor yet any harm, if they were as charitable and dis­creet as Christians ought to be.

The retirement or privacy used by sober women here in England, when they apply any thing helpful to their looks or complexions, is no argument of any sinful shame; but of modesty, ci­vility, and that discretion which com­mands us to doe many things apart from any witnesses or spectators, which yet are no sins, but only sensibleness of and reflexions upon those infirmities to which our vile bodies are subject; of which having no cause to boast, we rather chuse to veil them with secre­cie, then to expose them to common view or knowledge, and censure: few [Page 219] persons being of so equal and humble minds as to bear their own praises and perfections without pride, or anothers diminutions or defects without scorn. Evil and envious minds are prone to turn many things to our reproach if they discern them, of which being igno­rant they are also silent.

Furthermore, although in England a commendable discretion is used by women in concealing both their na­tive defects and their artificial addita­ments of beauty or complexion, (of which many persons are more severe censurers, after the vulgar vote and road, then judicious examiners;) yet in other Countries nothing is more frequently done and freely ow­ned: insomuch that the whole cul­ture and office of womens adorning is with some expressed by this, My La­dy is not yet painted; that is, she is not compleatly dressed, or ready. Few wo­men that value themselves are willing to be seen in any discomposure or de­fect, especially if conscious to any de­fect, or so habited as they think less [Page 220] becomes them: which affected priva­cy and obscuring of themselves is no stroke of vanity, much less of sin; but is rather imputable to that prudent modesty which so much becomes every sober woman, that my advice is to them never to be seen by strangers or domesticks in any way to their disad­vantage, by discovering either their defects or their reliefs.

Nor may this be called an histri­onick parada, or stagely visard and hy­pocrisie, while women seek to appear advantaged in stature or in beauty and handsomeness so farre as modesty and vertue permit, by those borrowed ad­ditaments which Art lends to Nature. What is there in any civil order, either of Church or State, which doth not put on something Theatrick and pom­pous, beyond that simplicity and plain­ness which Nature hath put upon the persons of men or women? Both civil and religious actions study to concili­ate to themselves a majesty and reve­rence by habits and ornaments, by comely robes and costly vests; which [Page 221] though they are not of the internal and essential glory which is in Magistratick or Ecclesiastick power and order, (which are both Divine) yet they are so farre not onely convenient, but al­most necessary, as they help to keep both Laws and Religion from con­tempt, and from that vulgar insolence to which seditious and Atheisticall hu­mors are subject.

Yea, who is there, or what is there almost in humane society, which doth not (in some sense) adorn a theatre or scene of life upon the stage of this world? Who is so open-hearted and simple, but they either conceal their defects, or ostentate their sufficiencies, short or beyond what either of them really are? Who doth not as well ad­vise for his fame and credit as for his Conscience? Who is there, if they were anatomized, and every way exposed to others censures in what they are or doe or pretend, but would come many degrees short of that shew they make? As there is no neces­sity to confess many sins to any but [Page 222] to God, to whom onely they are known; so in modesty there is no rea­son for us to own our infirmities to others, or the helps we use for our re­lief, when no person is injured by what we doe, nor at all concerned in it.

Lastly, as to that diminution of ho­nour and esteem which your Ladiship sayes commonly follows, as a black shadow, the most vertuous woman, if this be added after the catalogue of her vertues and good works, O but she paints, she useth some art or wash to her face and complexion; it is first a very partial censure, befitting vulgar and gross minds, (not wise, grave and im­partial persons) in other cases of help­ing or hiding any natural defect (as by false hair, a glass eye, bolstred shoul­ders, heightning heels, sweet smels and the like) to charge no reproach upon any persons, otherwaies sober and mo­dest, and yet to doe it onely in this to those who are every way of unspotted vertue and goodness, which receive no more prejudice or abatement by what shew is made (by art) of ruddiness [Page 223] in womens complexions, then of tall­ness or straightness in their stature and feature, when naturally short or croo­ked. Who is so impertinently severe, as to detract from any womans honor and vertue by saying, O but she wears heels or shoes a handful high; she seems indeed tall and straight, but is really low and crooked, &c? Nor doth it set off from the score of any mans worth to alledge, O but he useth a peruke, or useth such sweet smels as are not natural to his clothes or body; from which occasion Isaac took his rise to bless Esau. Or if this be childish and ridiculous upon these accounts, truly they are no less in my judgement as to this of comple­xion which we now dispute.

Nor is this black tail of detraction less unjust then partial; since no justice will allow us to abate of the merit and honour due to many constant and re­markable vertues, (which are evident and unquestionable tokens of worth) merely upon the suspicion and jealou­sie (for so it is for the most part, vul­gar censures in this point of complexi­oning [Page 224] being rarely upon any certain knowledge) of doing that with all mo­desty and privacy, which is at worst very disputable whether it have any sin at all in it, or be beyond a venial and ci­vil vanity. For your Ladiship sees lear­ned men in severall ages and countreys differ as to their judgement of it: And truely those seem to me most masters of Reason, who own the nature of the thing, as all other things, to be good in it self, as God's creature, and measure the morality or immorality of the use or abuse of it by the universall stan­dard and rule of all humane actions, which is the minde and end of the doer, either conform or disform to the ho­ly revealed will of God; who hath no more declared any positive law against this, then against all other ornaments of our bodies and lives, either naturall or artificiall.

As for the commonness or vulgarity of these censures (which are, you say, so usuall among the meaner sort of peo­ple, or those who are of their size and last) what wise man or woman doth not [Page 225] know that nothing is more slie, tou­chy and boglish, nothing more violent, rash and various, then the opinion, pre­judice, passion and superstition of the Many or common people? How are they swayed even in their loves and hatreds, their perswasions and pieties, their esteem or disesteem, most-what by custome & prepossession, or by adhe­rencies & admirations of mens persons? How do they love an easie and superfi­cial censuring, rather then an industri­ous & strict scrutiny of things? How is their ignorance an enemy to the know­ledge of their betters? How doth their meanness, plainness and rusticity bear a constant antipathy to the politeness, honour & splendor of others? How are they naturally of levelling humours, and envy others whatever they enjoy of estates, houses, or ornaments of life, beyond their tenuity and cottagely ob­scurity? He or she lives nearest the confines of Reason and Religion too, who is most remote from the charms and snares, the sense and censures of the vulgar; into whose minds and over whose consciences many things [Page 226] make intrusions and usurpations, which have no right or title to that power and authority they exercise over them­selves and others.

No wonder then if those that are so subject to erre customary errors in greater matters, doe so in this which is so little and inconsiderable. We see that wontedness makes even Black­mores seem handsome to one another; and by using to look on themselves in their glasses, even hard-favoured faces grow reconciled to themselves so farre as to think themselves tolerable, yea & handsome too, by an happy heresie.

So little regard is to be had in cases of Conscience to the dashes of vulgar tongues and pens; since we see that when nothing of consequence was obje­ctable to Christ, the community of the Jews & supercilious Pharisees find fault with his disciples gathering ears of corn on the Sabbath-day as they passed through Mar. 12. 1. the fields of corn & were hungry; so for his & their eating with unwashed hands. Many things not onely innocent, but commendable, sometimes fall under [Page 227] the reproach of people. As there are factions and parts-taking in religious formes, so in civil uses; every one seeking to advance his own side and way by depressing all others with re­proachfull censures.

Thus have I given your Ladiship the best answer that at present and thus on the sudden I am able, to every par­ticular touch or stroke of your last Ob­jection, which was twisted or combined of many smaller cords or threads, which I have by unraveling so weak­ned, I hope, that they will no more hamper or bind a judicious conscience then the Philistin's withes or cords could do Sampson while his strength continued. Keep but the heart from sinful intentions, that purity and inte­grity, as Sampson's locks, may be pre­served unclipt or unshorn by any sinister and sordid lust; I do not see how u­sing such sober, modest and discreet helps to womens beauty and complexion needs more fear the terrors of some mens censures, then that holy Giant needed be troubled at the alarms gi­ven, [Page 228] The Philistines are upon thee, Sampson: who rowsing himself up in his mighty and miraculous strength, defied or scattered them all.

ANSWER.

MAdam, what validity your Ladi­ship is pleased to impute to my answers, is not from any strength or merit of my particular opinion or ex­pression, but from the force and preg­nancy of those truths which are (it may be) a little retired from the superficies of vulgar fancies and conceptions: possibly some neither search nor dis­cern them; others that find them, yet are hindred most-what and even so over-awed by popular fears and preju­dices, that they dare not own or ex­press them, as loth to seem wiser then their fore fathers, or themselves in former times, when (for want of bet­ter matter) they sometimes wast their glass and fill up their hour with bit­ter invectives against Ladies painting, patching, curling, powdering, perfu­ming and complexioning; which may have less evil in them then some Au­thors they study, and not so much va­nity [Page 234] attending them as doth the long hair, the loose cuffs, the large band­strings, and other fine things with which some of these so rigid, yet very spruce and Lady-like, Preachers think fit to gratifie as their own persons, so their kind hearers and spectators; somewhat wide of those pristine seve­rities which I have been told were re­quired of the Clergy, who by the Ca­nons of the Church and customes of ancient times were denied to wear any silk or softer garments, not because they were sinful in themselves, but less sutable to the strictness of that disci­pline which in those times holy men saw fit to exact, especially of Ecclesi­asticks, as most exemplary for the re­straining of those prodigalities and lu­xuries which in both Clergy and La­icks would soon exhaust that charity which was then most what expended in relieving the poor, in building and adorning Churches, in redeeming ca­ptives, and the like.

I do not less willingly own my weak­ness then my Sex, being farre from any [Page 235] such Amazonian boldness as affects to contend with so many learned and god­ly men who have, and daily do, express in this a contrary sense to mine: yet I think it very venial for me to assert, if I can, both the ornaments and liberties of my Sex, (as to their persons and consciences) by answering specious fal­lacies and producing stronger argu­ments: to which I doubt not but all serious and impartial Christians (not captives to custome, prejudice and po­pularity) will at last subscribe; not as to the sense of a weak woman, but of omnipotent verity and victorious truth, which though late, yet may at last be redeemed by the help of a woman from that long captivity wherein both it self and many worthy persons consciences were unjustly detained.

God oft discovers as female soft­nesses in some mens hearts, heads and hands, so masculine and heroick strength in some womens. We read of two women famous, the one for her Judg. 10. conduct of the warre, the other for her consummating it, by destroying Sisera [Page 236] the chief leader of a great army. Ano­ther woman dashes out the brains of Judges 9. 53. King Abimelech; another saves by her loyal prudence the city Abel from 2 Sam. 20. 16, &c. the miseries of a long siege, and those punishments which justly prosecute, as the heads, so the abettors of Sedition against Lawful Sovereigns.

I know God hath given both Reason and Scripture to women as well as men; nor have we less liberty granted to traffick in all truths both humane and divine: though our talents and treasure may be farre less then the mass of many mens readings, yet they may be as refined and digested; our two mites may not be despised which we of­fer to God's Temple, if they have God's Image and superscription on them, coined and stamped in the mint of all religious Reason, the word of God, whence all things that concern Faith or Manners (as to Salvation and Damnation) receive their authoritative stamp and value.

It is time for us at length to get be­yond that servility and sequaciousness [Page 237] of Conscience, which is but the Pupil­lage, Minority and Wardship of Reli­gion, inquiring and heeding, not what saith the Lord, but what saith such a Father, such a godly man, such a Prea­cher or Writer. It is the priviledge and honour of Christian Religion, for which the Bereans are commended, to Acts 17. 10. search the Scriptures, and examine by them even the Apostolical doctrines. Nor doth our Reformed Religion (where it most merits that name) un­justly glory in that freedome, by which (as to matters of truth or error, of sin or no sin) it is redeemed from the slavery of mans private Traditions, and confined to the oracles of God; to whose general rule, sense and Analogy, all Catholick and unwritten Traditi­ons, as to the practice, discipline and order of Religion, do agree, without any enterfearing with the holy Scri­ptures, to which in matters of internal holiness we are confined, though in things of extern decency the wisdome & custome of the Church is a safe and wholesome rule; to which as we are [Page 238] by Scripture commanded obediently and unanimously to conform in things honest and by general precepts allow­ed, so in matters of saving faith and holy life we must neither believe nor act by an implicite faith and twilight credu­lity, but from a well-informed and rightly-convinced conscience, that for­bids us to be either profane or super­stitious, either over-righteous or over­wicked. Eccl. 7. 16.

Solomon tells us, that the whole duty Eccl. 12. 13. of man is to fear God and keep his Com­mandements: Christ tells us, it is but a Pharisaick pride and vanity to teach Mat. 15. 3. or urge humane traditions or opinions for God's Commands. And truly, after all that your Ladiship hath smartly ur­ged in this case, I cannot but wonder that neither Solomon in his various sen­tences of the Proverbs, nor in his holy Satyr against humane Vanities in Eccle­siastes, no nor yet he that was greater then Solomon, either by himself or his Disciples, should ever particularly in­stance against all or any painting or complexioning of the face; no nor God [Page 239] by Moses: where so many lesser pre­cepts are expresly given, surely they would not (all) have omitted this so wholly, if it had been what some pre­tend, such a flat and downright sin, considering how obvious in all eyes and nations the use of it was and is.

Sure, learned and godly men ought not in wisdome, justice and charity, to extend the cords or curtains of duty and conscience beyond the stakes and pillars of Religion, which are fixed by the word of God, whose service and glory needs not the fancies, fallacies, or flatteries of mans inventions, more then a royal robe needs a beggers patch. It is not for sober men to enlarge the Phylacteries of their own Opinions be­yond God's precepts, nor to comment by false and specious glosses either against or beside his holy will in the Word; which must needs be a farre greater sin then any light applying of some quickning wash or colour to the face, inasmuch as it is more dangerous to injure the Conscience then to alter the skin. Ministers ought not to be as [Page 240] hard-hearted and rude-handed Surge­ons, who make their Probe a Poniard, and will rather make a wound where they search for one, then lose their la­bour, or seem to want either skill or Patients.

As to that practical faith or assu­rance of the lawfulness and liberty granted by God, both as to the thing done and the doer, I presume my grounds are safe and good, since I find that God hath given us, as men and 1 Tim. 6. 17. Christians, all things richly to enjoy; that no creature is forbidden (under the Gospel) to the pure of heart; that there is neither moral light nor Scriptu­ral precept against the ingenuous and modest use of this, more then of other­helps of any bodily infirmity or de­formity; since it may as well as any thing be used soberly, thankfully and harmlesly, without any impediment to grace and well-doing, also without any advantage or intentional occasion to sin.

So that I cannot but vehemently suspect (I leave it to wiser persons [Page 241] peremptorily to conclude) that the dreadful rigors of some Ministers and others have in this case of Artificial handsomeness been too magisterial: Their Divinity relishes too much of inhumanity, and their Piety carries with it too little Charity; while they state a case of Conscience more by the wils, fancies and passions of men then by the word of God, whose thoughts are Isa. 55. 8. not as mans thoughts, nor his wayes as our wayes. Many things are highly esteemed of men as sanctities, which God despiseth; and many things are 1 Cor. 1. lightly condemned by mans imperi­ous rashness, which God doth not con­demn: hence the lawful use of many good things is denied by mans severity and transport, where God's benignity onely forbids us the abuse of them, and in so doing establisheth the lawful­ness of the use, which may in this, for ought I yet see, as well consist with a good Conscience, as it did with Solo­mon's wisdome (amidst his domestick 1 Kings 10. 22. and native plenty) to send his navy upon long and forein voyages for [Page 242] gold, and apes, and peacocks.

Besides this, I cannot but observe the self-confuting severity of these men of later and lesser Editions, who put such strict restraints on womens beau­ties and adornings, when yet they al­low the spiceries and curiosities which merchandizing brings from farre, ra­ther to gratifie luxury then relieve ne­cessity: Nor do they quarrel at super­fluous tables (unless they have but pu­ling stomacks) with the various arts of cookery, which like another Proteus turns the native plainness of things in­to infinite forms and relishes, to please and invite the palate, as Rebeccah did Isaac's blunt aged tast by the savoury Gen. 27. 14. meat she made for him, which it is said that holy man loved. Nor are these Masters such batterers or demolishers of stately and elegant buildings, they can be friends with goodly hangings and rich furniture, with accurate plan­tations and harmonious gardens, with picturings by pencil or embroideries, also with the wearing of silks, linen and woollen of various and orient colours; [Page 243] nor do they frown to see women wear rich Jewels of all colours, as Corneli­ans, Rubies, Saphirs, Emeralds, and Diamonds, on their breasts, necks, ears, wrists and fingers, of which there is no other use in nature, but onely the borrowing and ostentating of their se­veral beauties and colours, by which to render us more conspicuous or comely. As these fixed gemms have their aptitudes for our use on other parts of our bodies; so truly have other diffusive tinctures and colourings their fitness and almost propriety for the face, if they be discreetly ap­plied.

For both these (as all things else of extern ornament) may be so grosly handled and laid on, as they shall seem no more to ones advantage either of comeliness or discretion, then a Jewel in a swines snout, (as Solomon speaks.) Persons of worth and prudence will in the first place keep their hearts in the use of all such things from offen­ding God; next they will preserve themselves from being ridiculous [Page 244] among discreet persons: as those may easily be who know not how to distin­guish a civil quickning or chearful en­livening of the face, (as of old times was done by their anointings) and a slo­venly besmearing themselves, like Bar­tholomew-babies, with fulsome dawb­ings, which proclaim, though not foul, yet foolish hearts.

As for those causless curses and A­nathemas, that God cannot or will not know them, that no painted face shall see the face of God, or the like, which as blind thunderbolts some men by a Papal authority or popular facility promiscuously cast upon all never so modest, humble and vertuous women, who use any relief to their looks: I be­lieve, as Solomon tels us, they shall not Prov. 26. 2. come upon the heads of those who u­sing this, as other creatures of God, for those ends to which they have an aptitude in nature, do yet so watch over their hearts, as not to suffer any out­ward momentary adornings whatso­ever to leven them with any thing of pride of sinful vanity, but alwaies keep [Page 245] within the bounds of modesty and cha­stity, to which cleanliness and decency are no enemies. And even in these so­lemn terrors, by which some men seek to terrifie poor souls, they run more upon the stock of Satyrical wit then solid arguments: as if Conscience were onely to smell on nosegayes or flow­ers, and not to be fed with serious and divine truths, which are the food and physick too of the Soul.

By the same fallacy they may urge that God will not know elderly men in their juvenile perukes, in their sha­ved cheeks and bald chins, (which af­fect youthful smoothness when gray hairs and wrinckles every where call for gravity of aspect as well as man­ners, of which a fatherly, prolix, and reverential beard is a solemn sign and majestick Embleme.) May it not as well be said, God will not admit men or women to heaven with all their pomp and cost of apparel, since he made them naked, and yet not asha­med? Gen. 2. 25. Yea may they not cry down eat­ing, drinking, sleeping, marrying, recre­ation, [Page 246] yea even that part of humane nature which is flesh and blood in us, because none of these things (either of vital use or infirmer nature) shall enter 1 Cor. 15. 50. into the kingdome of heaven, or come into the presence of God, when they shall indeed be superfluous through the bodies higher glory and perfection, which shall then exceed the shining of Moses his face, and equal the transfigu­ration of Christ?

Yet are not these sinful enjoyments or unlawful ornaments in this state of mortality and infirmity, to which man­kind is now subjected by reason of sin: different states admit of different things: many toyes (in comparison) are allowed us by our heavenly Fa­ther while we are children here, which shall be put away when we come to perfect age and stature in heaven. Though the whole need no physician, yet the sick may lawfully use their skill and applications to remedy their infirmities, not onely as to health and strength, but also to the vigour and colour of their looks; else, such as have [Page 247] the Green-sickness, pallor, or the Jaun­dise either black or yellow, or any such deformity, may not use means to cure themselves, both internal and ex­ternal: for as neither of them are for­bidden, so I suppose both to be law­ful in their kind and use.

Like to the feebleness of such mens reasonings against all artificial beauty, are their impertinent and wrested alle­gations of Scripture, whereby to justi­fie their severities: which no doubt your Ladiship hath observed as well as I have; though your discretion thinks not fit to urge them, being as easily answered as they are fallaciously alledged.