Is the servant he says of many mistresses, but all are but his lust, to
which only he is faithful, and none besides, and spends his best blood
and spirits in the service. His soul is the bawd to his body, and those
that assist him in this nature the nearest to it. No man abuses more the
name of love, or those whom he applies this name to; for his love is
like his stomach to feed on what he loves, and the end of it to surfeit
and loath, till a fresh appetite rekindle him; and it kindles on any
sooner than who deserve best of him. There is a great deal of malignity
in this vice, for it loves still to spoil the best things, and a virgin
sometimes rather than beauty, because the undoing here is greater, and
consequently his glory. No man laughs more at his sin than he, or is so
extremely tickled with the remembrance of it; and he is more violence to
a modest ear than to her he defloured. An unclean jest enters deep into
him, and whatsoever you speak he will draw to lust, and his wit is never
so good as here. His unchastest part is his tongue, for that commits
always what he must act seldomer; and that commits with all what he acts
with few; for he is his own worst reporter, and men believe as bad of
him, and yet do not believe him. Nothing harder to his persuasion than a
chaste man; and makes a scoffing miracle at it, if you tell him of a
maid. And from this mistrust it is that such men fear marriage, or at
least marry such as are of bodies to be trusted, to whom only they sell
that lust which they buy of others, and make their wife a revenue to
their mistress. They are men not easily reformed, because they are so
little ill-persuaded of their illness, and have such pleas from man and
nature. Besides it is a jeering and flouting vice, and apt to put jests
on the reprover. Their disease only converts them, and that only when it
kills them.