Νουν χρη θεασαθαι. Euripid.   

A DISCOURSE OF Artificial Beauty, In point of CONSCIENCE, BETWEEN TWO LADIES. With some Satirical Censures on the Vulgar Errors of these Times.  
LONDON, Printed for R. Royston at the Angel in Ivy-lane. M DC LXII.   

THE PUBLISHER To the Ingenuous READER.  
READER,  
THIS Discourse (of which (as I am certainly informed) a Woman was not only the chief occasion, but (the Author and Writer) coming to my hands, and seeming to refer only to some ornamental toys, fitter for Lady's Cabinets and fingers then for the rougher hands and severer eyes of this Martial Age, I had almost condemned, upon the view of the Title, to eternal silence; partly out of a Principle of Piety, as loath to add to the vanity of a very vain Age; but chiefly out of a worse temper which I had of a long time contracted, by reason of many popular prejudices and sinister censures, which had vehemently set me against all things of Art used by any women, whereby to repair or advance the quickness of their Complexions, or beauty of their Looks, beyond that portion which God and Nature had given them. Not that I am a Cynical or Stoical enemy to that softer Sex, (which tempers humane spirits and societies with so much sweetness and civility:) but (I confess) I was so perfectly scandalised against all Auxiliary Beauty (which applies any colouring or tincture to set off the Face) that I condemned this piece (after the mode of vulgar and precipitant Zeal) unread and unheard, to be burned, as Judah did Tamar, Gen. 38. 24. concluding it to be the Essay of some wanton wit and idle pen, which was more a parasite to Female fooleries and vanities, than a lover of pristine gravity and sobriety.  
Yet by a principle of innate Justice which I owe to Self-preservation, (making me very loath to be hanged without a legal trial) I was secretly ashamed to condemn it till I had made some examination of its guilt. Hence I ventured the loss of so much time as to arraign and read it. Which act of high Justice (before I had far advanced) taught me, to my great reproach and shame, how unjust Judges, how cruel Tyrant's Prejudice and Custom are, which condemn all they disaffect, and disaffect before they understand, and are loath to understand contrary to prepossessions; like Procrustes, either cropping or stretching all new comers to the stinted measure of their wont fancies and opinions.  
But not trusting to the Balance of my own judgement (which now began by a secret charm to be strongly inclined to approve the whole Discourse, for its manner Ingenuous, and for its design Innocent) I put it to the Test of two or three severe Censors, persons of Socratic brows and Catonian looks, wholly bred up in Academical Shades, and no way partial to the delights of Women. These having at first (as I did) with very much coyness and prejudice begun to peruse it, yet, upon sober and second views, they laid aside their ponderous brows, and exchanging their terrible frowns for unaffected smiles, with joint and liberal suffrages they assured me, That never any thing on so slight a Subject was discoursed and written with more ingenuity and elegancy: That although it undertook fairly to discuss things which were but skin-deep and superficial; yet it brought them so home to a profound and notable case of Conscience, that it could not justly be denied its weight and place among the more serious Discourses of this Age, and the more meritorious pieces of that Sex; having that in the Floridness, Candour, and Acuteness of its disputation, which might more than compensate the seeming slightness and inconsiderableness of the things disputed; endeavouring by a gentler kind of Piety and civiler Sanctity (than were heretofore used in England) to reconcile Lady's Countenances with their Consciences, which some either more rustic or rigid spirits have (a long time) sought to keep at most deadly feuds and implacable distances, condemning all women (without miraculous help) for ever to lie under the burden and discountenance of either natural or accidental defects, not allowing them to use the least relief, never so obvious in Nature, and not less innocent than easy in Art.  
The justice or injustice of which severities is here so soberly and impartially considered, that I do not only look upon it as a noble Essay what great wits can do in small matters; but (in good earnest) I esteem it a very necessary debate in a case so much (they say) practised by many women of unspotted worth and honour, and yet so much censured as sinful and abominable by others of very warm and commendable piety.  
This Discourse (as an impartial glass) lets the world see what oppositions and what solutions may be made in point of Conscience, as to any artificial helps of handsomeness; that accordingly every one may practise, either cheerfully and discreetly using them as other innocent ornaments, if hereby satisfied of the lawfulness, or wholly forbearing them if they find the Objections overweigh the Answers. It is pity sober women should be denied such reliefs and advantages as God's indulgence allows them: And it is a shame they should use them (though never so privately and undiscernably) if God hath in Scripture or Nature and Conscience forbidden them.  
Besides this great design of stating Ladies Consciences in a case so much concerning their Faces and Looks (which they cannot but highly consider while they see themselves, or appear to others) some (it may be) will be pleased (as I was) at that generous freedom & civility in it, which dare encounter and discuss so popular and prevalent an opinion as that is which (among us) denies all Subsidies or aids to women's beauties or complexions.  
Lastly, finding it was none of the most dangerous Problems which the audacious liberty of these times hath ventured upon, I conceived it might be as worthy of sober persons leisure to read it, as of my pains to publish it. These three motives, Conscience, Civility and Gain, meeting together, tempted me beyond all resistance to make it what I am,  
Ingenuous Reader, Yours to serve you.   

The Objections contained in this Book.  

OBject. 1. Against all Painting the Face as unlawful. P. 1.  
Object. 2. Jezebel ' s sad fate urged against all Painting the Face. p. 7.  
Object. 3. Other places of Scripture urged against Painting the Face. p. 18.  
Object. 4. Urged against all superfluous Ornaments of women, and so against Painting. p. 33.  
Object. 5. Painting the Face against the Seventh Commandment forbidding all Adultery. p. 44.  
Object. 6. Painting the Face argues an heart unsatisfied with God's works and disposings, Jam. 4. 7. p. 66.  
Object. 7. Painting the Face a badge of Vanity and appearance of evil. p. 101.  
Object. 8. Painting the Face a mark of Pride, Arrogancy and Hypocrisy. p. 126.  
Object. 9 The Fathers and modern Divines much against all Painting the Face. p. 138.  
Object. 10. Painting the Face very scandalous, and so unlawful. p. 178.  
Object. 11. Painting the Face a thing of ill▪ report, and so not to be followed. p. 194.  
Object. 12. Painting the Face unlawful, because doubtful at best, and not of faith. p. 228.  
Object. 13. Of Peter Martyr against Painting the Face, from many Scripture instances. p. 247.  
The moderate and charitable Conclusion of the Dispute. p. 258.   Eccles. 9 8. Let thy garments always be white, and let thy head lack no ointment. Prov. 31. 30. Favour is deceitful, and beauty is vain; but a woman that feareth the Lord she shall be praised.  
A DISCOURSE OF Artificial Handsomeness, In point of CONSCIENCE, between two Ladies.  

OBJECTION I. Against all Painting the Face, as unlawful.  
MADAM,  
I Am not more pleased to see you look so well beyond what you were wont, than I am jealous (to be free with you) lest a person so esteemed as you are for modesty and piety, should use some colour or tincture to advance your Complexion; which indeed I take to be no better than that odious and infamous way of Painting, every where in all ages so much and so justly spoken against, both by God and good men; being a most ungodly practice, though generally (as they say) now used in England (more or less) by persons of quality, who not content with Nature's stock of Beauty, do (not by a fine, but filthy, art) add something to the advantage, as they think, of their Complexions; but I fear, to the deforming of their Souls, and defiling of their Consciences.  

ANSWER.  
I Do not only approve your Ladyship's friendly freedom, 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 backbiting whispers of some, who (less able to confute what they blame, then to justify what they suspect) arraign before the rash Tribunal of their judgements every face whose handsomeness they either envy, if natural, or grievously reproach, if they think it hath any thing artificial beyond what themselves are wont to or acquainted with; who (yet) in other things do as much contend against the defects, deformities and decays of nature and age, as may be, by washings, anointings and plaster, by many secret medicaments and close receipts, 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 tanned and freckled: only in the point of colour or tinctures added in the least kind or degree they are not more scrupulous than 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 myself, 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 do what you are jealous of, if I can assert it to be lawful and good.  
First then, if I should deny what your Ladyship 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 overcurious to find fault at Art there where they have no cause but to commend Nature, unless they were made women's Confessors, which I believe few are in this case; so that they must needs blame most-what rashly, and oft unjustly, because they only guess uncertainly.  
But because I perceive your Ladyship 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 mote any more than the heart can the least wound) I will deal so liberally with your Ladyship 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 Handsomeness.  
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 Ladyship would let me see, by rational and clear arguings, what you have against it, beyond those vulgar flashes and easy flourishes of some great sticklers and declaimers against all such female arts; (to which I have been much wont) who with shame and folly, as Solomon says, (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 very much startle at and condemn all such complexionary adorn, 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 terrors 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 men's words: 'Tis not the cry, but the fleece, which sober persons regard.  
But I will in this rather suspect at present my own incapacity, than 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 Ladyship what may, upon just grounds, make me subscribe to their and your severities in this point: Though, I 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 justify all those that use them, so nor dare I condemn all who may use and do the same things with far different minds and to very distant ends.    

OBjECTION II. Jezebel's sad fate urged against all Painting the Face.  
TRuly, Madam, I absolutely think (without any mincing or distinction) all colour or complexion added to our skins or faces, beyond what is purely natural, to be a sin, as being flatly against the Word of God; which I suppose you grant to be the indispensable and unchangeable Rule of all moral Holiness, from which we may not warp in the least degree upon any pretensions to advance our Honours, Estates, Healths, or Beauties.  
First then, if your Ladyship look into 2 Kings 9 30. you shall see wicked Jezebel, though a Queen, yet not tolerated or excused, but foully branded and heavily punished, for painting her eyes or face: for which she was afterward, by a most deformed destiny, justly devoured of dogs; as the most Reverend Lord Primate of Armagh observes in his larger Catechism upon the 7th Command.  
Which fearful stroke of divine vengeance, and censure of so Learned and Pious a person, (making that her painting a most meritorious and principal cause of her so sad destiny) are sufficient, I think, to scare the most adventurous woman from any such sinful and accursed practice.  

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 Ladyship (as all others in this dispute) doth much refer: 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 than he thought fit (after the wont oratory and freedom 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 only, 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 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 far different end or use, then either to lay the weight of the subsequent punishment, or the guilt of any sin, upon that act more than upon the other concomitant actions therewith recited.  
Among which this of her painting is indeed set down chiefly, to show, 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 Murder, Idolatry and Oppression had done Jezebel's; for which sins (as is expressly 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, 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 toll 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 ruin, or owe her life to such an enemy: and therefore she puts herself into a posture of Majesty; as showing that height and greatness of Mind, which could own herself in the pomp and splendour 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 itself, after the manner of fearful and squalid suppliants, in sackcloth, or to abate any of those accustomed ornaments with which she used (as a Queen) to entertain herself 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 ruin. Which actions in themselves cannot be branded for sins, nor are they noted there for such, further than they may be relatively considered as to the mind and end of the doer or speaker, whereby to gratify pride, passion, or any other wickedness. And in this respective consideration, not only Jezebel's painting and dressing, but her very eating and drinking, her sleeping and clothing, her native strength and beauty, her civil honour and power might be relatively sins; as the Scripture tells us, the ploughing 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 satisfy those lusts, whose inordinateness, 
1 Pet. 2. 11.  and not their desire, fights against God and the Soul.  
So then your Ladyship 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 refer 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 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 freedom 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 burden 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 only because he was a rich man clothed in purple and fine linen, and faring deliciously or sumptuously every day; all which things many persons of as good as great quality, of no less virtue and piety than honour and estate, daily enjoy without any blame. Nor was it Lazarus his poverty and dunghill, 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 Ladyship 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 itself; not only mixed 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 Ladyship and other sober persons, not only 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 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) she or others Dancing, (as to the civil custom of the Country or Court) but her adulterous compliances with Herod's lust: John was not a stumbling-block to her feet, but an eyesore to her eyes, and a corrosive to her ears, by his chaste 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 otherways dressing or adorning herself, set down in that place, to be no more prejudice in point of sin, against a sober, modest and ingenuous use of those things, than Leah's bargaining with Rachel for her sons 
Gen. 30. 15.  mandrakes was any charm or cause of her conceiving that night with child 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 shows of Justice and prefacing of Religion her detestable murder 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 killed both Abner and Amasa; as also Judas did when he betrayed Christ: nay staves, and lanterns, 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, much less these here recorded of Jezebel: whose aim (certainly) was not any allurement, but a defiance and affront to Jehu, showing 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 do, by any the least diminution or abatement of her wont 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 do the same things that worthy persons do to divers ends.    

OBJECTION III. Other places of Scripture urged against painting the Face.  
BUT Painting the face (good Madam) is mentioned in two other places of Scripture, as the practice of lewd and wicked women, and justly falling not only under the reproach of the Prophet and all holy men, but under God's dislike and displeasure, who not only abhors to see the deformities of our hearts, but also of our looks and outsides, when they are altered by any art from what God and nature have made them, whose works must needs be best, and beyond man's amendment. You see Ezek. 23. 40. how with 
Ezek. 23. 40.  a sacred taunt and irony the Spirit of God reproves the Jewish Church in her lewdness and Apostasy: Lo, they come for whom thou didst wash thyself, paintedst thy eyes, and deckedst thyself with ornaments, and sattest in a stately bed, with a table prepared before it. So Jer. 4. 30. Though thou clothest thyself 
Jer. 4. 30.  with crimson, and deckest thyself with ornaments of gold, though thou rentest thine eyes (or face) with painting; in vain shalt thou make thyself fair, etc.  
By which expressions, alluding to the customs of those times, the Lord seems extremely to blame and abhor those practices there mentioned, among which that of painting is expressed.  

ANSWER.  
IF these places be all the strength your Ladyship can produce from Scripture against any colouring of the face, or helping of the complexion, because this, as other usual ways of comely, curious or stately adorn, are there mentioned as the practices of wanton & imperious women; yet your Ladyship will not hence conclude, That only such women did then use those things, who are always so cunning, as not to render themselves notorious by any such outward differences from grave and sober women (as they say the common courtesans of Rome are commanded to do, 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 virtue. For sin is generally so apishly crafty, as to hide itself under the colours and masks of goodness and honesty; as well knowing that it is not only deformed, but very fulsome, if it appear impudently like itself.  
Besides, if your Ladyship 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 tenor? as dressing and decking yourself with any costly and comely ornaments, all sweet perfumes, all sitting on rich and stately beds, with tables before them, etc. From all which I do not find your Ladyship 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 worse marks on it then the rest of the herd or company, which you are content to spare and preserve for your use.  
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 entireness of the whole discourse, which shows 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 wisdom and forecast. So Jacob by his mother's 
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 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 justify 
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 handsomeness, 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 divers seeds, abstaining from swine's 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 Ladyship or any other, by the Chemistry of your wits, extract from these places any drop 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 far 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 
Leu. 19 27. Deu. 14. 21.  their heads and beards, the not seething a kid in its mother's 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.  etc. I cannot (I say) but believe that this gracious God would either in the Old or New Testament have positively and expressly forbidden all such additionals to Beauty, or helps to handsomeness, both as to the face and other parts of the body, if they had been in the use and nature of the things as abominable to him as Idolatry, Theft, Lying, Murder 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 only made such oblique and general reflections upon it in this and other places, not as a thing any where forbidden, but only as a general custom, used by many, and abused by some; not perstringing the nature of that more than other things there mentioned, but only setting forth how far vain and vicious minds were prone to abuse those things to God's displeasure, which virtuous minds (no doubt) did according to the modes and civil customs 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 read she did, all those purifications appointed her? that she applied to her advantage all the attractives of sweet unguents and perfumes, of costly raiment and beaitiful colours, of rich and accurate dress or lovely adorn, such as were usual to the Persian delicacy, softness and luxury, hereby to win and confirm more the King's 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 read 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 ears, 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 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 wherever 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 man's 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 sport of Isaac with 
Gen. 26. 8. Prov. 5. 18.  Rebekah, or the rejoicings with the wife of ones youth, or the moderate use of meats and drinks, even to a festival mirth and satiety of wine; which Christ's 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 hypocrisy; as in Ahab and other Jews. 
Isa. 58. 3, 4, 5.   
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 men's encroachments would wholly abridge us of all God's bounty and Christian liberty. How have the Sun, Moon, and Stars, yea almost every creature on which are any remarkable characters of the Creators' 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 sauces, garlic and onions, because the Egyptians worshipped the Ox 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 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 read 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 wont 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, earrings, bracelets, necklace, crown, works of gold and silver, precious in nature, (at least in humane 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 itself to its best advantage) some tribute of comeliness as an homage to the face: which is not only the Queen and sovereign of humane and visible Beauty, but the Regent and directrix of the whole body's culture, motion, and welfare.  
In that place then of Ezekiel, your Ladyship 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 kind; so, as to their use, he hath fitted mankind with invention, knowledge, fancy, skill, curiosity and art, many ways 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 cheerfulness, 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 only 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.    

OBjECTION IV. Urged against all superfluous ornaments of women, and so against Painting.  
BUT we read the same God, in the third of Isaiah, with displeasure reckoning up those many arts and instruments of dressing and adorning, which either ingenuity and civility, or delicacy and luxury had found out, and fashionably used, to gratify the curiosity, pride and petulancy of the women of Jerusalem, only with those additional ornaments which do not pretend to be natural, as all paint and complexioning doth; wherewith we may very well conclude God is much more displeased, than he is with any of those things which were but professedly artificial additaments to nature, and not counterfeits of nature.  

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 women's 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 alleged. So little reason you have to suppose it more offensive than those other things here mentioned, that I may better argue, It is not at all offensive in itself, 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 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, etc.  
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 
Host 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 honourable state, as befitted mankind in their sociable, orderly and religious living, to their own content, to others benefit, and to the Creator's glory.  
God would not have threatened to deprive those women of all those things if they had been evil or poisonous in themselves; for than 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 showed you, allowed) but to teach them how to prise and use them with more humility and modest piety, as things appointed to far better uses then to serve sensual, impudent and impious either minds or ends. God asserts his right in all these (even so small bagatelloes or toys 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 content, while we own him in all, and bless him for all, even the least help and ornament of life.  
It is an undoubted Maxim both in Reason and Religion, That the Devils or wicked men's 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 virtuous persons to use or enjoy? They must neither eat, nor drink, nor cloth, nor dress themselves to any decency, sweetness, costliness, or delight. Tamar an harlot will dress herself with a vail of modesty, as well as chaste 
Gen. 38. 14. Prov. 7.  Rebekah. The wanton and cunning woman, whom Solomon describes so to the life, decketh herself to all extern advantages, applieth with all amorous civilities, perfumeth her bed and chamber, pretendeth great 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 chaste and loving wives. We may as well forbid the use of a staff 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 politic Treachery, Joab's valiant 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 devil's 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 shows of Truth and Piety? It is a great part of calm and sober wisdom 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 another's abuse of them; That the just use of things may be restrained, though the abuse calls for reformation, and the excess for moderation; That since God doth not annihilate what he hath made (as all) good in nature because of man's 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 virtue and modesty may lawfully challenge, and vindicate to their propriety.  
We must not pull out our Eyes, because some men's and women's are, as S. Peter says, full of adultery; not 
2 Pet. 2. 14.  think Sight and Light unlawful to be enjoyed, because some employ 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 fuel 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 tells 
Mar. 7. 21.  us) first conceived and brought forth, before it is nourished, suckled, or swaddled 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, aught 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, freedom 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 than of other wont adorn of the head, face, and the rest of the body, whereof your Ladyship makes 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 handsomeness: nor doth it import any dislike of outward comeliness when joined 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) always set forth in the holy Scriptures, not by dubious reflections, 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; 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 ourselves 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 than the clear and constant light of true Religion, which moves not by Fancy and Opinion, (as Puppets do with gimmors) but by Reason and divine revelation, as the Body doth by its living Soul.    

OBJECTION V. Painting the Face against the Seventh Commandment forbidding all Adultery.  
BUT, Madam, I have been informed by some Divines and other godly Christians, that all painting the face, or adding to our handsomeness in point of Complexion, is directly against the 7th Commandment, which forbidding to commit adultery with others, as the highest ascent or degree of sin in that kind, doth also forbid all Means and occasions, either necessarily tending to, or studiously intending, that evil End; all leading others, or exposing ourselves into Temptations of Amorous folly, by adding to our comeliness then, when either God in our formation, or age and infirmity, have brought us as it were into the safer harbour or retreat of deformity, either natural or accidental. What folly is it to seek to rig up our crazy vessel, or to expose ourselves by art on new hazards, by putting out again to that tempestuous and (oft) naufragous' Sea, wherein youth and handsomeness are commonly tossed with no less hazard to the body and Soul too, then S. Paul's voyage was to 
Acts 27.  the lives of himself and his company? What truehearted Israelite would have returned back to Egypt, when God had brought them out into the wilderness, whose barrenness was compensated with Safety and God's society; as Egypt's plenty was corrupted with Servility, Luxury and Idolatry? Deformities may be as great blessings to our Souls, as bolts and bars are to our Houses; which keep thiefs not only from rifling, but from attempting those that are thus fortified with lessinviting looks.  
Besides, if all Adultery and adulterating arts (as injurious to others) by the rule of equity and charity are forbidden to us, how much more any such plots and practices as tend to a Self-adulterating, while we disguise and alter our faces, not only as to God's and man's aspect, but even as to our own? so that we are not what we seem to be to ourselves; and being once altered by Art from what is native, we must look for another face, before we can find or see ourselves in that glass which at once flatters, upbraids and deceives us, while it represents our looks other then God hath made them and us: whereas the wise Creator hath by nature impressed on every face of man & woman such characters either of beauty, or majesty, or at least of distinction, as he sees sufficient for his own honour, our content, and others social discerning or difference, whereby to avoid confusions or mistakes; so as there shall not need any further additionals of Art, which put a kind of metamorphosis or fabulous change on God's and Nature's work, whose wisdom and power (yet) purposely (no doubt) order some to be less well-favoured, that they may be as foils to set off the beauty he bestows on others; as we see leaves are to the brighter flowers, or clouds to the Stars. Thus he makes black Night to commend the lightsome Day, the Winter's horror to double the Summer's welcome sweetness and serenity. So that in that variety which God hath chosen to set forth his noblest Creatures in (which are after his own Image) even mankind, (in a kind of checquer-work of some handsome and others unhandsome, some pallid and others ruddy) every one (I think) ought to content themselves with that colour and complexion, as well as feature, which God hath given them, not only in order to their particular subsisting, but as to the general symmetry of his works; in which he hath (as skilful Painters do in their pictures) set forth his more quick and lively colours (which are in some faces) by those deep and darker shadows which are in others. If the most accurate pencils were but blottings which presumed to mend Zeuxis or Apelles works; who may presume to add any thing where God hath put to his last and completing hand, which is both able and wise to do what he sees best?  

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 forbade 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 only 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 than the activity of our hands or outward enjoyment?  
It is indeed a great Truth your Ladyship urges, but very little to your purpose, as I conceive; yea it makes directly against you. For if it be (as it is confessed) most unlawful to abuse good things to evil ends, or to gratify 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 only 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 7th Commandment, where no adulterous, wanton or evil purpose is harboured in the Soul of those that use it, but it is (as all things ought to be) kept within the bounds of Piety to God, Purity to ourselves, 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 far more, as being more inviting: yet are they not forbidden to be used or enjoyed, but only confined to honest, pure and holy ends; not only the last and highest, of God's glory, but also those of the creatures life, health, delight and cheerfulness.  
That in many Country's, and almost in all ages, something which your Ladyship would call painting or complexioning, as washings, anointings, fomentations, tinctures and frictions, etc. have been used by very sober, chaste and virtuous persons, both maids, wives and widows, I think your Ladyship is not so uncharitable as not to grant; since even whole nations (not only the Jews 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 than it is to wash their faces, to comb their hair or to braid it, to anoint their heads and faces, to perfume their clothes, etc. 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 virtue, 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 seen of any men; others of none but their husbands, in reference to whose honest satisfactions they use these customable adorn 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 than when they meet with any object that represents either sordidness, negligence or undervaluing. Your Ladyship cannot think it unlawful for wives to please and gratify their husbands, no less by quickening their complexion then by hiding any other defect and deformity, or using such ways of sweetness, neatness and decency (which are potent Decoys 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 far as the limits of chaste and conjugal love extended. All which S. Jerom's rigour (who they say more loved then favoured our sex) would less approve. Sure if lewd and wanton women find the use of such adorn 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 Church's 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 itself, as the blessed Apostle was persuaded by the Lord Jesus; these will include in their large circumference whatever is used to advance the complexion, 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 far 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 handsomeness 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 go 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 Ladyship objects, That the use of any artificial beauty may be an occasion to another's sin, a snare and temptation to them; Truly so may all outward adorn (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 Ladyship will therefore either deform your beauty, or not both own, esteem and improve it to your civil advantages; else in vain had handsomeness been given by God as a favour to so many sober women, who were as conspicuous for their beauty as their virtue, being every way completely lovely, like apples of gold set in pictures of silver: Such were Job's daughters, etc.  
Thus I have (I hope) answered the Weight of your Ladyship's Argument drawn from the 7th Commandment, which forbids only 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 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 rekindling the fire which God hath quenched, and adventuring again into the storm whence one is happily escaped, etc.  
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 glowworms, than that celestial vigour of divine Truth, whose beams have a starlike sublimity, and constancy of shining.  
As to the change and Alteration which is odiously called a Self-adulterating; 'Tis true, there is some little change of the complexion from a greater degree of pallor to a less, possibly to some little quickening of redness; yet not so as to make any greater change on the face or cheeks then is frequently made by the blush 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 befalls 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 cheerfulness, as if they had begun their resurrection: so that this artificial change is but a fixation of nature's inconstancy, both imitating its frequent essays, & helping its variating infirmities.  
Nor doth all this so terrible a change amount to more than a little quickness of colour upon the skin; it altars not the substance, fashion, feature, proportions, temper or constitutions of nature; which is oft done, or at least endeavoured, by several applications, both inward (as to physical receipts of all kinds) and outward, by more gross and mechanic 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, Legs, 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 thrummed stocking, a bombast or bolstered garment, by iron bodies and high-heeled shoes, endeavour to redeem themselves from that may seem less handsome, and (vulgarly) ridiculous or antic; 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 legs, and the like? wherein Art studiously and speedily either encounters Nature's 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 far more gross alterations and substantial changes of nature, your Ladyship 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 one's honour, chastity or piety: yea, how many grave and godly matrons usually graft or re-implant on their now-more-aged heads and brows the relics, 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 more to be called or counted any adulterating of God's works, or reproach to his power and wisdom, than it is to die woollen, linen or silk, out of their native simplicity; or to wash that scurf and filth off which riseth naturally from our bodies by sweeting or evaporation; or then the polling of men's 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 Countries, 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 scents applied to our hair, clothes, bodies, or to our breath; not only as a delight, but as a remedy to the native rankness or offensiveness which some persons are subject to both in their breath and constitutions; 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 far is the use of such helps from any detriment or diminution to the Creator's glory or work; who oft suffers Nature in its ordinary road or tract to err, 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, above all those second causes and effects which are moved by more blind instincts and confused impulses. Nor is the wisdom, 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, than that substance and subject matter which he offereth to us, as to other creatures, in all those things whose grosseness and confusions are only 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 Father's liberality in order to their own & others honest complacencies and compleating?  
Certainly, true piety permits us to pay an honour, love and reverence to ourselves, 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 ourselves 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 traps or snares: Nay, on the contrary, the use of some pretty artificial reliefs to nature may be a great means to keep, as ourselves 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 byways 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 wisdom of the serpent, without the least of its poison; where the Dovelike 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 virtue and civility.  
Though some vain and wanton minds may turn this, as all things, to a 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.    

OBJECTION VI Painting the Face argues an heart unsatisfied with God's works and disposings.  
BUT (good Madam) laying aside the flourishes of wit and colours of speech, (whereof I am not prone to be guilty) in plain English, ought not a Christian to rest humbly content and satisfied with the will of God, submitting 
James 4. 7.  thereto without any such contending in patching and painting ways, which show a mind so far unsanctified, as it seems unsatisfied with what God hath ordered? Can it be other than an insolence and impatience flowing from a refractory and rebellious spirit, which seeks to cure, remove, or cover what God sees fit to inflict on us and expose to others sight, thereby (as by the man born blind) to set forth his 
John 9 3.  glory in our deformity or defects? which to remedy what can it be but flatly to resist and contradict his will, to run counter to God's providence, which is his real word, and as it were an eventual Oracle, which is sealed with the signet of his hand, which is armed with power, and guided by wisdom? Which considerations may seem sufficient in reason and religion to forbid all face-repairing to any alterations in any kind and in the least degree, if there were no Scripture-testimonies flatly against those arts, which our blessed Saviour intimates to be beyond the moral or lawful power of any one; since he tells us we cannot 
Mat. 5. 36.  (that is, we may not) make one hair of our head white or black. If power of alteration be not granted us over hairs, how much less over our cheeks or faces, our skins and complexions? Again, he tells us, that we cannot add 
Mat. 6. 27.  to our stature one cubit; intimating that we must rest content with that size to which God hath seen fit to confine us in shape, stature and feature, since God doth all things in number, weight and measure.  

ANSWER.  
IT is most true, that a good Christian, who remembers himself to be as clay in the hands of the potter, aught to carry in all things either a thankful contentation, or an humble submission toward the will of God, (not only 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 far 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 wicked endeavours for relief, is no hindrance to pious and ingenuous industry, by which we not only may, but aught to use all those means, spiritual, natural and civil, (as prayer, good counsel, physic, 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 itself; so that many had as lief die 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 women's looks? Certainly those honest endeavours which in fair ways study to relieve or supply our wants in any kind are no rude contestings with God's Providence, nor are to be called cross or opposings of his will; but rather they are servings and obeying 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 ourselves from any evils, either falling or resting upon us: which voice of God within us, sounding with both Reason and Religion, is to be listened to and followed, no less than 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 (which is natural and providential) doth dispose them: which were indeed to be more mad than 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, Surgeons and Apothecaries, as so many bold Giants or Cyclopic monsters, who daily seek to fight against heaven by their rebellious drugs 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 legs, 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 by this argument rather seem enchanted by some evil spirit or Demoniac Water-nymph, then moved by the healing virtue of any good angel.  
By this soft and senseless 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 fallen into it, nor so much as cry to Jupiter to help us; we may not quench those fires which casually seize 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 ourselves with our ruined and illustrious houses, we must wrap ourselves (as we can) in our lazy rags, with the sluggard 
Prov. 6. 6.  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 Torchlight, 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 made, nor alter what he hath ordered) that it is best confuted by continued sickness, lameness, beggary, 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 supper- Stoical piece of Philosophy as is not at all of kin to Christianity, whose complexion is of a far more soft and tender skin then that of the Stoic, Cynic, or Epicurean; nor doth Religion require stupor, but only a patience, so far as is not transported beyond the holy and allowed bounds granted to humane and Christian industry, to relieve itself 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 itself or us, as not to admit us to use lawful means of honest variations and happy changes; which your Ladyship sees are not more frequently applied by us then prospered by God with desired successes. So far is it that we should by any sad events be confined only 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, than 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.  
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 prays 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 than welcome, when by prayers and tears 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 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 than 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 yourself 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 than 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) encumbered with receipts, plasters and medicines of all sorts, which you think most potent and sovereign to remove any pressure or danger?  
Yea, as to those helps which are most mechanic & artificial, having nothing of native virtue, but merely such a formal application as makes but a show of help to nature's defect; whom did your Ladyship 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 withal take away either our wits, our hands, or our freedom, 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 Ladyship scandalised 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 men's and women's warmer heats in Religion do now admit not only borders of foreign hair, but full and fair Perukes on their heads, without singeing one hair by their disputative and scrupulous Zeal, which in these things of fashion is now grown much out of fashion? Your Ladyship's Charity doth not reprove, but pity, those poor Vulcanists who balance the inequality of their heels or badger Legs by the art and help of the shoemaker; nor are those short-legged Ladies thought less godly who fly 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 bolstering? Who fears to set strait or hide the unhandsome warpings of bow Legs, and baker Feet? What is there as to any defect in nature, whereof ingenuous art, as a diligent handmaid waiting on its mistress, doth not study some supply or other, so far as to graft in silver plates into cracked sculls, to furnish cropped faces with artificial Noses, to fill up the broken ranks and routed files of the Teeth with ivory adjutants or lieutenants?  
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 cheerfulness 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 threatenings of sin, hell and damnation, as to cast away (much 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 man's 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 than please ourselves 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.  
Only, 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, easy and 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 ourselves 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 clamours, 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 quicksighted and offended with the least mote they fancy of adding to a Lady's complexion, then with many Camels of their own customary opinions and practices? Good men! though in other things, not only of fineness and neatness, but even of some falsity and pretention, 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 condemn them like Paul's Church to sink under everlasting ruins.  
The most of your plainer-bred and as it were homespun 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 than those birds use which are of their own Country 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 men's and women's more plebeian Zelotry makes, as about Lady's cheeks and faces if they appear one dram or degree more quick and rosy than they were wont; so about the length and fashion of their clothes and hair. One while they are so perplexed about the curl of Lady's hair, that they can as hardly disentangle themselves as a Bee engaged in honey; otherwhile they are most scrupulous Mathematicians, to measure the arms, wrists, necks and trains of Ladies, how far 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 customs of any Country forbids it; but some men's rigour and fierceness is such, that if they espy any thing in the dress, clothes, or garb of women, beyond what they approve or have been wont to, presently the Tailors, 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 only fit to wait upon the whore of Babylon. Nor do the poor Ladies (though otherwise young and innocent, though as virtuous 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 men's severe censures: and if they do take any freedom to dress and set forth themselves after the best mode and fashion, it costs them as much as the Roman Captains freedom did him; when indeed they are (as S. Paul pleaded) freeborn, 
Acts 22. 25.  not only in nature, but as to grace and the new birth, which is no enemy to what fashions modesty may bear, and which decency, civility and custom do require.  
Yet your Ladyship hath often heard some persons in point of clothes as highly incensed against all such fashionable alterations and various adorn, 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 than Saul's rash vow and devotion had made that Honey, the tasting of which enlightened Jonathan's eyes, and the liberty of eating it might have refreshed the wearied spirits of his wandering Soldiers.  
Truly in these quarrelings of some severer spirits against all auxiliary beauty and helps of handsomeness in women, I observe that commonly what they want in force of arguments, rational or religious, they make up in clamour 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 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 reproachings, imagining that what bombast stuff or voluble rattling 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 Ladyship 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 women's curiosities in dressing and adorn, instanced in Jezebel's being eaten up of dogs; as showing, saith he, that a woman so polished and painted was not fit to be man's meat. Which expression had more of wit and jest in it then of weight or earnest, 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 Tragic outcries, as if every touch of colouring added to the cheeks were a presage of hellfire, every curled hair or braided lock were an Emblem of the never-dying worm: Medusa's head is not pictured more terrible with her snaky tresses, than these men would represent every Lady (never so modest and virtuous) 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 their artificials, their dress, 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 than it doth moral defilement by any thing that enters into the mouth: against which error our Saviour expressly 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 rigour 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 irreconcilable 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 to mankind, 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 man's industry likes best: who, although he cannot create the matter and inward essence of things (but works only upon God's and Nature's stock) yet he is in some sense a superficial Creator of several outward forms and shapes, of various use and applications of things; far beyond that rustic grossness, primitive simplicity and confusion, which either is in the first rudiments or in the effects of Nature, before its materials are subdued, softened 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 and improvement of aftertimes 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 virtuous and sober way, that is, to good ends) hath so kerbed us up by religious severities, as to forbid us the use and enjoyment of the fruits of his wisdom, power, and paternal bounty, so as may best please ourselves 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 emblem, type and prefiguration, as the Tabernacle had of Solomon's Temple.  
All which superstitious rigour 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, that even grace and virtue themselves receive some varnish and gloss, a kind of silent commendation, by the cleanliness and comeliness of our outsides; yea, we think to do an honour to Religion in its public services, by putting ourselves, 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 than 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 custom of being baptised for the dead the Apostle seems 
1 Cor. 15. 29.  to refer, 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 and compose the countenances of our dead friends, so as may most remove them from that ghastly 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 decays of those houses of clay in which our bodies dwell; why should it seem Sacrilege 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 unsuitable affectations (as so many pitiful props and underpinnings) strive in vain to screw and set up lapsed and tottering age to the semblance and prospect of youthful beauty and vigour; 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 corpse, as she did Aesons, from feeble deformities to sprightly handsomeness. When grey hairs are here 
Host 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 virtue 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 carcases, those rotten posts which are mouldering 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 pulled 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 moment's remnant in contending with the invincible wrinkles and irreparable ruins 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 decays 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 ruins of our own vile bodies, whose sad decays, incurable diseases, and irreparable deformities, aught 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 blunting, but rather as Whetstones, to set an edge on our desires after higher and more permanent beauty.  
My plea (Madam) is only so far as Nature and years may both suitably 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 decays 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 numb palsy one leg 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 grey hairs grow up on a youthful head (as is frequent in some colours and constitutions) by an over-early nonconformity to the rest of our hairs that are round about, who (I say) scruples but that they may lawfully be plucked out? I confess I am prone (civilly) to gratify sober and virtuous minds as long as they live, with those ornaments to their outsides which may keep them in all civil comeliness and cleanliness; which to preserve is not only 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 far 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 far 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 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 woman's discretion then burden her conscience; that she may be not only 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, conscientiously and becomingly, only 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 Ladyship citys, 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 show 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 temperament we cannot make one hair grow otherways then it doth, either black or white: All dies 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 add to our real stature one cubit, he doth not hereby deny the possibility or lawfulness of setting ourselves 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 epitomised 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 Goliath to despise little David. But as to the augmenting of our seeming height and stature either by heels, or high-crowned 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 howel's Epistles) befell a youthful man in the Low-countrieses 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 suitable to his graver years, without any enterfearing with our Saviour's meaning, which only shows 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 far as they are manageable within the limits of 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 Legs 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 Ladyship was pleased to make against all auxiliary Handsomeness.    

OBJECTION VII. Painting the Face a badge of vanity, and an appearance of evil.  
I Do not (indeed) deny but that in many cases, as lameness, crookedness, blindness, baldness, want of teeth, and dwarfishness, the defects or unwelcome deformities incident to our bodies may be artificially repaired or covered, to the best advantages of our motions and civil conversations; wherein the practice of very grave and godly Christians, no less than the approbation (or connivance at least) of the best Ministers, do confirm me: And truly it were as uncharitable to deny these innocent and ingenuous reliefs to them, as to deny an alms to a poor man, or crutches to one that is lame.  
But as to the helping of the colour or complexion of the face in the least degree, as I do not see it any way necessary or convenient upon a virtuous account, so nor can I think it tolerable for any modest and gracious women, who profess the Gospel of Jesus Christ, which your Ladyship knows is a doctrine of such singular purity and modesty, that both the Apostle of the Jews, and the Gentiles, (S. Peter and S. Paul) enjoin those holy severities 
1 Tim. 2. 9 1 Pet. 3. 3.  even to women, as allow them none but modest apparel, with shamefacedness and sobriety in their looks and gestures; forbidding them broided or well-set hair, also gold, pearls, and costly apparel. How much more, may you infer, do they forbid all painting, patching and powdering, which become none but proud, or light and bold women, who proclaim to the world that they are not yet redeemed from their vain conversation? 
1 Pet. 1. 18.  Whereof these inventions of artificial beauty seem infallible badges, as being servient and accessary to all other vanities; from all which we must needs be divinely forbidden by the force of that one Apostolical Canon, of abstaining from all appearance of 
1 Thes. 5. 22.  evil, which may cast any blemish or reproach on the modesty, purity and sanctity of Christian religion; which (as Truth) needs none but its own native beauties, but teacheth us to turn (by an holy and humble Chemistry of patience and contentedness) the very deformities and decays of the outward man 
2 Cor. 4. 16.  to the advantages and daily renewings of the inward man.  

ANSWER.  
MAdam, I will not captiously reply upon your Ladyship, by putting you to plead for your own and your children's wearing of well-set, curled, gummed, braided and powdered hair, according as the fashions vary; nor will I retort upon your gold- jewels, earrings, and costly apparel: in all which your Ladyship, 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 expressly against the letter of those Scriptures than any thing you have yet urged against tincture or complexioning, which you so much dread and abhor:  
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, 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 beautify 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 splendour, riches and ornament, as tokens of God's munificent goodness to us; also as ensigns of civil honour, 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 bodies, (notwithstanding those prohibitions, which are only 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 show of forbidding these more than those, which by a just candour 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 far from being against the Eastern custom 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 belly a fast with hypocritical sadness and sourness of 
Isa. 58. 5.  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 cheerfulness 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 custom 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 Roman, Southern and Northern, East and West Indians, insomuch that the Picts here in Britanny had their Names from their being painted; (not only as a terror to their enemies in War, but as an ornament in peace) though (I say) this fashion be almost epidemical and connate, or at least customary, to all Nations (to which the Grecian and Roman 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 customs, which were so frequent; no, not there where regulations are set to feminine cover and adorn.  
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 Roman and Asiatic fashions of improved beauty did appear, as S. Luke intimates) we find not the blessed Apostle either at all taken, or scandalised with that exquisiteness and glory, of which he wisely takes no notice: so far is he from finding fault or expressing any dislike, thinking it more becoming the Apostolic gravity to preach those great points of Christian graces and duties, in righteousness, temperance, and 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 far 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 loser 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, so far 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 itself 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 only; 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 Ladyship gives to this quickening 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 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 refer 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 Ladyship 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 his children with more indulgence. Besides, your Ladyships own conversation makes me believe this is not the meaning of vain; for than 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 children's, in your clothes and furniture; in your buildings, gardens, etc.  
But truly I think piety hath so much candour in it, (especially out of cells and cloisters) not only in King's 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 virtue, yet they are as the fringe and accessaries to them; like the feathers and colours of the 
Psa. 68 13.  Dove, which add indeed nothing to its internal innocency, but something to its outward decency; from which Religion is so far 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 than a streight-laced superstition which thus pinches God's bounty and a Christians liberty, which makes Christianity such a captive to unnecessary rigours and peddling severities, as if it were never in a due posture and habit till its nails be pared to the quick and its hair shaved 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 joseph's, and his spouse too, not only 
Ps. 45. 14.  with garments of necessity, but of beauty, variegated and embroidered. And this he doth, as to the honour of his bounty, so with no blemish to his love, nor diminution to his children's 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) wisdom 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, honour, glory and happiness, which are only to be enjoyed in a nearer union to and communion with God the supreme and incomparable Good. Yet he was far from diminishing or reproaching the Creator's power, wisdom, 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 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 add 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 Ladyship voucheth, of Abstaining from all appearance of evil, which you think as a large net must needs include in its capacious bosom 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, etc.  
It cannot be meant that we must 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, virtue 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 devil's counterfeit 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 hypocrisy 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 flay off his skin because the wolf many times puts on its fleece. No, our Saviour teacheth there to add sincerity to the solemnity, and the power of godliness to the form.  
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 Heretics and desperate Schismatics, 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 deter 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 only avoid gross sins with open and impudent foreheads, but also keep aloof from the very suspicion of 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 shows, nor yet scared with every scarecrow, 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 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 deter Christians as well from misapprehensions of good or evil, as from misapplications to them: nor would he have us to abstain from other than those appearances, wherein evil commonly appears like itself, in its proper colours, not only as to its malice and mischievousness, but also as to its disorder and impudence. For to avoid all those customs 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 do or say, so nor is all evil which wicked men make show of: As infinite shadows make not up one substance, so nor many appearances only make up one sin. 'Tis not what superstitiously appears 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 hypocrisy will (as I said) obstruct and put in a prejudice against all things, under the seemingness or appearance of evil, which are not only allowed of God, but necessary in the outward shows 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 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 Ladyship 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 & virtues) have yet either undiscernibly as some, or suspectedly as others, or declaredly as many, (according to the general custom of countries) used such additaments to their faces as they thought most advanced the beauty or comeliness of their looks.  
And however it be true that a tender conscience is prone to a commendable jealousy 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 easy 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 far as I can yet find) this use of any relief or additament to our colours and complexions can or doth offend, more than other things, of which no doubt is made, so long as the heart is holy and the mind pure; which yet are either ingenuous reparations of Nature's 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 Ladyship makes against all Artificial beauty or helps of handsomeness, by way of colour or tincture, rather, I suppose, from vulgar or common jealousies, than 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 Ladyship shall easily perceive, if you look near to their discourses upon this thing, that generally those who vehemently fight against Lady's faces, crying down all auxiliary or artificial beauty, do it more by their Rhetoric then their Logic; 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 blue, by specious more than ponderous arguments, showing 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 declaiming.  
All which amounts to no more than a kind of verbal painting, or oral colouring; 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.    

OBJECTION VIII. Painting the Face a mark of Pride, Arrogancy and Hypocrisy.  
BUT (good Madam) though you may avoid other strokes made against all artificial beauty as to the nature of the things so used, yet as to the mind of the user it is not to be denied, but all adding of colour and complexion to the face comes from Pride, though it do not tend to wantonness, having its rise and temptation from that height of mind, which thinks we deserve more handsomeness than God hath thought fit to give us, glorying inordinately in that which is indeed below the greatness of a Christians spirit and ambition. If it be allowed us to take any humble and modest complacency in those outward gifts and ornaments which God hath bestowed on our persons, to which we have a good title of divine donation, as natively and properly ours; yet sure it cannot avoid the brand of arrogancy, as well as hypocrisy, to challenge and ostentate that beauty or handsomeness of complexion as ours, which indeed is none of ours by any genuine right and property, but only by an adventitious stealth, a furtive simulation, and a bastardly kind of adoption. So that if painting be not rank poison, yet (as mushrooms) it seems to be of a very dubious and dangerous nature; and (to be sure) it cannot be very savoury, wholesome or nutritive to a good Christian: If it be not in the pit of hell, it may be on the brink; if it be not the house, it may be the threshold of death; if it be not of an intoxicating nature, yet it seems to be as a bush, or red lattice, which gives neither honour nor ornament to any beyond the degree of a Taphouse or a Tavern. If nothing else could be said against it, this is enough, that it is an Emblem or token of Pride and Self-conceit, which is bar sufficient to all grace, and overdrops all true virtue.  

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 decays, without any waist or reproach to our outward comeliness; since to be godly it is not necessary to be ugly, nor doth deformity add 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 ourselves 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 know, value and use the gifts he hath given us for his glory and our comfort of life; which none can thankfully and rightly do, 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 superior ends. It doth not grieve God to see us pleased with ourselves 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 ourselves, and what we do, 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 of which by artificial applications can be no more temptation to pride, than 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 ourselves 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 foreign and besides himself, not as usurped by his arrogancy, but as accumulated upon him by the Creator's 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 only to necessity and plainness, but also curiosity and gayness.  
Otherwise, I know neither your Ladyship nor any others who are so severe censurers of all extern helps to beauty, would be so partial to yourselves in other things, as to allow yourselves without any blame or guilt of pride many ornamental actions as well as materials, both private and public, whereby to set off yourself in a far 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) choose 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 yourself at present more than in any other deader colours, as best becoming you: only 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 tinctures and colours of light be honourable and graceful to your body, and only shameful and disparaging to your face, when they are but the simple juice or extract of some innocent herb, leaf, flower or root, of which no other use (in food or Physic) can be made, as we see in many things of Nature's 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 than those applications which advance or quicken the ruddy life of the face, which is done with very little expense 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 virtuous ways.  
And however God challenges his own right and propriety, where wicked minds sacrifice to their own net, and glory in God's flax, and wine, and oil, 
Host 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 far as we make these no hindrance 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 far short of any sinful pride as any other adorning your Ladyship useth, who, though plentifully furnished with Nature's stock of beauty, (of which (like the rich man's barns) your Ladyship's face hath great store laid up for many years) yet as I think you are not proud or conceited of it, to any ingrateful 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, fans, scarves and hoods; yea, if you find any decays by wrinkles or roughness, by freckles or tanne, you speedily endeavour by unguents and washeses, 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 loath 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 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 Ladyship 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 another's eye.  
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 only in native gifts, but in artificial and adventitious supplies, why should any Christian's eyes be evil, repining at or disdaining another's 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 than 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 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 than the substance or stuff itself) yet is not forbidden, when she was converted to be a Christian, either to die 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 mankind not only bread to strengthen, and wine 
Ps. 104. 15.  to cheer man's heart; but also oil and other things proper to make him a serene and cheerful 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.    

OBjECTION IX. The Fathers and modern Divines much against all Painting the Face.  
BUT (good Madam) although you may safely contend with my weakness of understanding and want of memory, which are prone to betray the strength of a good cause; yet I beseech you beware how you dash against that great rock, which I confess gives me such terror as I dare not touch it, any more than the people or beasts might Mount Sinai: I mean the uniform judgement and concurrent Testimony of very many learned and godly men, both the holy Fathers of old, and the most reformed Ministers of later times, who (as I am informed) almost with one voice absolutely cry down and even damn to hell all painting or colouring the face in order to advance the beauty of it, as a sin not small and disputable, but of the first magnitude. Which dreadful censure myself have read (not without some horror) as in others of our English Divines, so especially in Mr. Downam's 
Downam's Christian Warfare, c. 14.  Christian Warfare, the first Book and 14th Chapter; where from the Father's sense he calls painting of the face, The Devil's invention, absolutely a sin, not only in the abuse, but the very use; in the nature of the thing, and not only in the intention of the doer: that it is utterly wicked and abominable, against the law of God, the light of nature, against self-shame and conviction; a reproach of God, a perverting of his works in nature, a cheat of others, a lure and bait to sin, a fruit of pride and vanity, poisonous to the body, and pernicious to the Soul: That it is the proper practice of harlots and lewd women; that it is inconsistent with a Christian profession and a good conscience.  
He brings Tertullian arguing against it, as the Devil's counterfeiting and mocking of God, by seeking to mend his works, as if God needed his enemies help to complete his creatures. So he citys S. Cyprian, telling the veiled Virgins, that the devil by these arts doth but distort and poison what God hath made handsome and wholesome. He might have added many more, as I find otherwhere in our English Authors, who produce the authority of S. Ambrose, S. Austin, S. chrysostom, and S. Jerome, against all additional beauties.  
Thus I perceive English Divines (for the most part) are as Boanerges, sons of Thunder, against these Complexionary Arts: nor do I find any (almost) that are Barnabasses, or sons of comfort, as to the use of it in any kind, at any time, or by any person that pretends to piety. Which makes me wonder how your Ladyship hath the courage and confidence to encounter such an host of Worthies, men of renown; or whence you are furnished with such Arms both offensive and defensive in this contest, beyond what I have heard or read from any one, in defence of Auxiliary beauty; which must not seem to me any beauty, since to so many pure eyes it appears deformity; so that a painted Lady is to be looked upon rather as some Spectre or Empusa, then as an handsome woman.  

ANSWER.  
THis black and ponderous cloud of witnesses which your Ladyship 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 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 than 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 men's 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 virtuous, 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 wrinkles, 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 of their opinions who were such enemies against it, and what dispensations in private those virtuous 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 men's 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 sum 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 alleged 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 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 adorn by hangings, pictures, carvings, guildings, and tincturing.  
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 Ladyship) 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 sly fox crops the grapes, but like a wild bore roots up the very plants of all piety and virtue) how neither your Ladyship from them, nor any of them from one another in a continued tract, 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, rather than 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 show and extension, nothing in the binding or convincing power.  
And such (I must freely tell your Ladyship and all the world) are all those sharp, satirical and popular invectives which hitherto I have met withal any where; to which your Ladyship 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 wont 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 persuasive strictness, either from principles of right Reason, or from Scripture precept and authority, with which your Ladyship began discourse upon this subject between us; where I think your Ladyship 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 men's 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 losing the soul from sin or to judgement, are not the fancies, conjectures, or oratory's 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.  
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 forbade, or to perform as duty all they then required? I have heard and read that every one of them had their Errors, greater or lesser, even in points of greater concern than this of Lady's 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 seldom that passion or prejudice or custom 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 easy for the conscience to shrink to an overnice and rigid strictness (as, Touch not, taste not, handle not,) as 
Col. 2. 21.  to be dilated to an overstretched looseness.  
But saving the merited honour and respect I bear to those holy men, what wise man now urgeth all the primitive rigours 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 faggots) as superfluous and less seasonable, and so no way suitable 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 other things) they might possibly then decry and deny with some vehemency to Christian women, not as absolutely evil, and in itself 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, than 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 far as sometime to speak less honourably 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, splendour and curiosity of clothes and diet? etc.  
Not that they thought these things evil in themselves, but they observed 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 far 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 only that usual pride, levity or impudicity which they observed or suspected in many, who (as they represent it) used then such gross and dangerous daubings of black, red and white, as wholly changed the very natural looks and difference of the person. Nor did it seem to them only 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 Apostasy to return to those secular toys and curiosities of extern ornaments, and study of worldly beauty, when they made a profession to abandon them, and to live far 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 only 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 injury) be looked upon as far inferior to the joint suffrages or resolves of Councils; without whose concurrence with the Father's 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 joint suffrage and determination of the Church against them; either looking upon such toys as below the animadversion of so venerable Assemblies, or leaving them to the freedom of every one, whose virtuous 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 than at this day) either examine or condemn the use of tincture and complexion to the face as any sin in itself, but only in reference to the mind and end of the use.  
Private men's 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 wont 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 virtues and modesty of sober women, than enemies to their beauty, or condemners 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 than 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 adorn; 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 than in white or blue) 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? Both which they (at length) came to wear, rather than pickadilloes (which they thought had too much of the Courtier) or little plain bands, which they liked not because the Jesuits wore such. How was Tobacco mistaken by many great Masters of the Pulpit & people's ears, before they generally fell to taking of it themselves, fancying (at last) that they never had more devout meditations or sharp inventions than 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-crowned or broad-brimmed Hats, to long Cloaks 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 Music and Singing with art and curiosity, in sacred psalmody, from which neither David nor the devoutest Jews of old, nor the holy Christians of former times did abhor; yea they highly adorned it, and devoted it to God's glory, as one of his special and diviner gifts to mankind, 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 men's 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 interest-money to a new hand, or continue it in the old.  
Such hasty and over-early blossoms of precipitant censures and preposterous zeal do oft arise in very godly minds, out of a principle not only venial, but so far commendable, as it argues a cautious tenderness of offending God: which blossoms 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 virtue, 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 custom prevailing confute them, as to those clamours 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 Pigmies on the shoulders of such Giants, that we may the better take a free, full and advised prospect of their private opinions; much more freedom 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 storehouses of the Fathers, but only follow them more by a credulous easiness of spirit then by any discerning or convincing power, using their bows and powder rather than their arrows and bullets, more repeaters of their popular Oratorious vehemencies than 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.  
Yea I am informed by a person of learned integrity, with whom I conferred oft in this case, that one man of great repute, namely Peter Martyr, is so partial an enemy against what he calls 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 only 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 daughter's education, becoming an intended Nun or Recluse) of a woman who, having designed her daughter to be a votary Virgin without her husband's consent, was by the husbands command moved to alter the child's veiled dress and over-grave habit, to the wont fashion and civility of other young Gentlewomen, as to clothes, hair, gems, etc. For which deed (saith S. Jerome; for painting her daughter's face, saith Peter Martyr, besides the text and story) the mother was the following night terrified with dreams and visions, and threatened 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 threatened by God with death for obeying her husband in such a thing, the contrary to which ought not to have been carried so far 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 Ladyship 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 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 only, 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 satire against all helps of beauty) that there is more of sound and terror then of force or execution in what he there says against them.  
The good man rather took it for granted and indisputable, then seriously pondered the grounds of other men's 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 do it: as if the sober relief of a pallid infirmity, or the modest study of outward decency, were the same things with levity, pride and wantonness. At the same rate he might have inveighed against quenching one's thirst, or drinking to cheerfulness, 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, only 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 Incubuses, 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 enamoured of them. Which frivolous and odious reflection (fitted to vulgar passions and capacities) hath, as no certainty, so no weight of truth in it; unless he fond 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.  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 far 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 Devil's 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 ways of dying, colouring or painting of things. Nothing is and ever hath been more natively common (as I formerly told your Ladyship) to all Nations in the world, than men and women painting and adorning themselves with several colours, juices and tinctures, being an ordinary custom, 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 putrid fables and ridiculous fictions which themselves do not believe? What is this but like the rattling 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 millstone; 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.  
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 ourselves, I have already answered, when your Ladyship instanced in them; showing your Ladyship, 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 no man is so foolish as to impute to the devil's invention, or to count them any hurtful imposturage, injury or indignity against God, ourselves, or others.  
For his fear lest women should rather poison or mar 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 far 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 Quicksilver, 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 withal, is as safe and inoffensive to their own health as any flower. So that from this error can be no true ground against it, as if it were self-indangering, 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 virtuous and good Ladies, who used some art and quickening, while he was never the wiser, nor they the worse, either in his opinion or their own innocent intentions.  
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 wisdom and Christian charity in them; your Ladyship 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 virtue. If Fathers or others speak not according to this light, all their Oratorious polishings and shining are but false beams, as the glistering of Glowworms, from humane, not divine authority, which only 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 coin 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 talon of lead cast into the Ephah, 
Zach. 5. 8.  where the woman sat, when truly he 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 only that divine indulgence by which God in innocent freedoms, as a father to his children, gives us leave to adorn and please ourselves, without any of his displeasure.  
Nor may the violence and bitterness of some good men's censures against all auxiliary beauty seem strange to us; for nothing is more easy 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 and sober men in following ages are content to swim down the common stream, rather than trouble themselves to cross or question such vulgar, and therefore authentic, Errors.  
Which, I remember, my Lord your Brother, in one of his many excellent discourses (meriting a far better memory and tongue than mine) observed to be so frequent both in politic 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 opining: and what they hold even in capite and cord too, is more by a superficial tenure of credulity, than 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 persuasion 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 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, 
Eccls 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, than God himself doth.  
Men of never so eminent learning and piety may not either add or detract from the word of God, lest they be found liars, 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 ways 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 only charge the consciences of Christians with needless burdens, and bind them to unjust bondages, but they very much (also) baffle the credit or honour of Religion, highly diminishing the reverence due to the Ministerial profession, as to that binding and losing power of the 
Mat. 18. 18.  Keys 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, than when they find them so lose, 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 always 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 rigours infinite doubts and scruples are raised among weaker consciences, who dare less trust to their own judgements, while they doubtingly use or do those things which they are loath 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 clamour 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 Kingdom 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, etc.) 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 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 colour added to the face are so far 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 unblamable: 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 befall the face; so they resolve 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 ourselves.  
We see in many cases that time and calmer considerations, together with different customs, which (like the tide or flood) insensibly prevail over both manners and minds of men, do oft take off the edge and keenness of men's spirits against those things whereof they sometimes were great abh●●●ers, reconciling their mortal feuds, and wearing off their popular prejudices. Few men's judgements are so died in grain, but they will fade and discolour, being most-what only dipped 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 Lady's Countenances and their Consciences, by the intercession of judicious and religious persons, both Ministers and others, who dare to be wise beyond the vulgar, and who have patience to consider better of this case than hath been wont.  
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 virtuous woman then all other civil and allowed Ornaments are; where by adding a little quickening and lustre to her looks, she is no way hindered from the Love of God or her neighbour, in chaste and charitable ways: That where no cost is lavished, no time-wasted, no good duty neglected, no vice nourished, no Virtue depressed, but only a civil decency studied (which was never denied to holy women in ways agreeable to nature) there can be no enmity to Grace; nor compliance with sin.    

OBjECTION X. Painting the Face very scandalous, and so unlawful.  
BUT (good Madam) suppose Artificial beautifying of the face be not in itself absolutely unlawful, but may in some Countries and some cases be used by some persons privately and soberly, without the confidence of sinning against God; yet what shall we say to the Scandal and offence it gives, when known to many zealous Preachers and Professors here in England, whose spirits are much grieved and offended if they do but suspect (how much more if they palpably discern?) any Lady or Gentlewoman professing godliness to use any paint or tincture to help their complexions? Ought not (I beseech you) all worthy women therefore to abstain wholly from it, because it is a thing prone to grieve the spirits of good people, although they do not think it absolutely a sin? Is it not better to want a little colour in the cheeks, then to damp God's Spirit in any one's heart; or to offend 
Mat. 18. 6.  one of those little ones, as Christ speaks, by abating that good hope and joy they had in our graces?  
The Apostle's rule is, even to those who were (as he was) fully persuaded of the lawfulness of many things as to their consciences (that they were of free and sinless use in themselves) yet (saith 
Rom. 14. 15.  he) if thy brother be grieved, or stumbleth, or is offended, or made weak by the use and exercise of this thy freedom, Charity here forbids thee to use this thy liberty, lest thou destroy by it those for whom Christ died. Though things are pure and lawful in their nature, and in God's general permission, yet they become then evil and unreformed when they give uncharitable scandals to others: So that the point of scandal (which is in this very great and ordinary) seems bar sufficient to keep off all painting or artificial tincture from the faces of pious and charitable women.  

ANSWER.  
THE point of Scandal, (which your Ladyship 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, than 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 than retreats to this of Scandal, and earths himself in this burrow, pleading that he is scandalised with what you do, (or if he but suspect you do it) though he give you no reason against what you do, nor can indeed prove that you do what (it may be) he suspects. Thus Ignorance, Superstition and Suspicion, will be ever over-awing Truth & Christian Liberty, both in private persons, and in public Societies or Churches, imperiously enjoining others to forbear the use of their liberty, merely because this or that poor soul says they are offended, though they give no reason why.  
Thus the pleaders of Scandal, like soldiers of Fortune, are engaging in every quarrel, where they stake nothing against the liberty, peace, order and decency of others, but only their private fancy, opinion and dislike; who yet are many times most prodigal in giving others great and public Scandals, by using or disusing such things as others no less quarrel at, oft denying Obedience to public & lawful Authority in those things of which they make any scruple, imperiously challenging this liberty to themselves, yea glorying in their scandalous refractoriness to public order and constitutions: yet they deny this liberty to others in the same or like cases, about things dubious and indifferent, concerning which there is no precise or express will of God declared, but they are left to prudential freedoms as to private men's use, till the consent and wisdom of the public hath confined and determined them to one way for order sake and uniformity, whereto private freedom (still free as to the opinion of the nature of things) ought yet humbly and charitably to conform itself as to public practice, for the avoiding of public scandal and dissension by reason of their difformity.  
Between superstitious and insolent spirits, (who either dislike all that others do different from them, or enjoin others to tread in none but their steps and to dance after their pipe) true Christian liberty (as between two thiefs) is crucified; between the upper and the nether millstone, of Scandal given or taken, it is (together with Christian Charity) so ground to powder, that a sober Christian hath little left him to do, say or enjoy, whereat some or other will not take offence.  
Not only bad things or doubtful, 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 tenor 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 do; and contrarily Protestant's 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 madmen 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 custom, never so ancient and innocent, unless they have first enacted or settled 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 men's shadows and ceremonies, which they fancy to be shaped like Bears and Lions, than 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 Sacrileges sacred, yet highly offended if others do by word or deed vindicate their own liberties, customs and constitutions, never so decent and ingenuous, against the rude novelties and riotous invasions of the others supercilious fierceness and injuriousness. One is scandalised at my using my liberty, though without any prescribing, urging or enjoining upon them: I am no less offended at their invading my liberty by needless strictnesses and uncharitable censures, which though they wound not my conscience, yet they seek to weaken my credit.  
Out of which perplexity or straits 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 only way, as David tells us, to cleanse 
Psa. 119. 9  our own (or others) ways, 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 myself and others in what I see myself or they do against the express will of God; so where this doth not appear by any Scriptural reason & demonstration, I have no cause either to scruple in myself, 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 persuaded men either by contrary customs 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;) 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 carelessly, proudly, peevishly and obstinately resist or repel the pregnancy of my reasons, without giving any valid answer to them, or producing aught 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 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, custom, other men's opinions, or such popular stuff of which there is no end, in which what Reason cannot at present, Time will afterward easily confute that crossness 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 man's wife was in the same fashion, without any scandal to her supercilious husband. So crazy are some men's judgements, and so easy their censures, as to matters of Scandal, 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 women's 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 only from their impertinent curiosity and suspicion. As the first is rude and unwelcome; so the other many times false, always unnecessary. It is seldom 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 uncomely inquisitiveness & impertinent curiosity, their scandal taken would soon cease; which is more in their own eyes than 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 Lady's 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 another's use of it either urged or tempted to use it, further than 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 be as much occasions to sin as this whereof they are so cautious. Evil minds, as foul stomaches, turn the best food to corrupt humours. But we must not therefore starve ourselves, by forbearing good victuals.  
The work then that grave Ministers and other sober Christians have to do 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 scandalised at them, but seriously to examine what cause they have to be so scared and scandalised, 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 custom 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 bars against another's 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 needlessly taken by them, not willingly given by me. Though others, rather out of obstinacy than scrupulosity, out of peevishness more than tenderness, do pretend scandal more than they prove it; yet my care must be, in the use of such things seriously to assert my own freedom as to my confcience, by being rightly persuaded both of the lawfulness of the thing, and looking to the innocency of my own intentions in the use of it. Thus the Apostle tells 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 hindrance to another's private liberty, grounded on God's grand Charter and donation, which is, The earth is the Lords, and the fullness thereof. Nor is any thing in nature denied us where the use of it falls under the regulation of Reason, Grace and Virtue, 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.    

OBJECTION XI. Painting the Face a thing of ill report, and so not to be followed.  
BUT suppose (Madam) these artificial helps of women's beauty should not be in the nature and use of them absolutely sinful, so as to violate the conscience; yet since it cracks women's credits, and exposeth them to reproach, which the Apostle calls the 
1 Tim. 3. 9  snare of the devil, it ought to be wholly avoided, not only as to others scandal and perception, but also as to our own private use; since the Apostles tenderness bids us not only provide things honest before all men, but also to follow things of good report; that we 
Phil. 4. 8.  may not only be good, but preserve the fragrancy of a good name, which 
Prov. 22. 1.  gives a great sweetness to goodness, and is as perfume to a good garment, or as incense to the Temple: consequently we ought to avoid those things which are under any cloud of infamy, or blasted generally with an ill report, (though not so notoriously convicted of immorality.) I am sure the art and mode of adding any tincture or colour to the face or complexion generally hears ill with us, though it shows never so well done; and is not so much to the advantage of women's aspects, as to the disadvantage of their reputation and honour, which is and hath been the sense almost of all people in all times that had any remark for civility and piety; yea the vulgar simplicity is every where severe against those that are but suspected to use any such arts. No Lady or Gentlewoman is so commendable for her piety, chastity and charity, but this comes in as a dead fly in a precious confection, 
Eccl. 10. 1.  when it is suggested, O but she painteth. A little false colour, though but fancied, discolours all her other lustre; because it makes such generally esteemed as the cheats, deceivers and impostors of mankind; the greatest Hypocrites and Jugglers, because they use artifice and falsity in that which they pretend, not to say or to do, but to be. What credit can they deserve in other things (which are far inferior to themselves) when they are not upright or sincere as to their very Being, but by such disguises and dissemble make themselves a real and visible (though a silent) Lie? Although their tongues do not speak untruths, yet their hands make lies, 
Rev. 22. 15.  and their faces proclaim falsehood, which is abominable to God; yea as the Prophet speaks of other Idolaters, Isai. 44. 20. so these self-Idolaters, when they take the fucus or false colours to sacrifice to the Idol of their looks, may justly say, Is there not a lie in my right hand? No person but concludes that if God threaten to punish strange apparel, he will not spare strange 
Zeph. 1. 8.  faces, which in spite of God and Nature will pretend to handsomeness, and make that to be which is not.  
Yea, the self-guilt of every one that useth such arts, though never so soberly and discreetly, (as you advise) is such, that they retire and hide themselves from the sight of others while they apply their face-physicks, by a strange riddle being ashamed to be seen doing that which they purposely do to make them more worthy to be seen of others. If it be a practice of honesty or ingenuity, why is it attended with shame and self-guiltiness? which are black shadows following sin and unworthiness, justly meriting to be entertained by others with reproach and disrepute, when they are self-discountenanced and condemned. As worthy actions bring forth honour, and are accompanied with a generous boldness, so also they are followed with good report and clear reputation, which attends virtue as light doth the Sun. If the light then of Scripture were less clear against all painting the face; yet the rule of reputation, which is common fame, the law of honour & light of Nature, seems to discover the uncomeliness and dishonour of this practice. The voice of people in this and many other cases is as the voice of God, which is oft to be learned from the common notions and suffrages or sense of mankind, which the Apostle owns in the case of women's habits and adorn, as the law and dictate of Nature's teaching 
1 Cor. 11. 14.  them, where Scripture is less evident. None but persons impudent or foolish will neglect what is generally said of them: next our Consciences and our eyes our credit should be most tender; especially in our Sex, who have always a hard task to play a second or aftergame at reputation: if a woman once dash upon this rock of Reproach, she hardly ever recruits her credit (as a grave, sober and modest person) though she should not absolutely shipwreck her conscience with God. And truly, Madam, this sense of common fame and repute hath always in the case of Ladies complexioning arts so overawed me, that I neither durst ever use it, nor take their parts or excuse those (otherwise very good women) who did or were but thought to use it; yea it seemed a note of godliness to me, to declaim bitterly against both the thing, and the persons suspected or voiced to use it; when indeed I had no cause to conclude that any such thing was practised by them, further than I heard it from more prying eyes and censorious tongues; which as it had been hard to prove, so it may be there was no such thing: only in this, as other cases, fame oft over-balances the truth of things; and our credit depends not on what we do, but on what others list to think of us or impute to us: which should make all wise women the more cautious how they occasion any sinister reports of themselves, which (like evil spirits) are easier raised then allayed; one spark ofttimes kindles that fire which many tuns of water cannot quench.  

ANSWER.  
MAdam, I find your Ladyship, 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 hope your strength had by this time been well-nigh quite spent and exhausted. Truly your Ladyship 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 allege 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 Ladyship's arguments do answer the show and pomp of them. Many things are more specious than solid, having, like vermin, a pretty kind of nimbleness, which comes far 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 leprosy, which upon the Priests due examination were not found to be any Leprosy of uncleanness 
Levit. 13.  or infection. As I am well pleased to hear the freedom and force of your Ladyship's Objections, who omits nothing (I think) that can with any reason be objected; so I shall be more pleased to find myself in a capacity of giving your Ladyship 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 Ladyship urgeth against it the evil report it generally hath among people: which I confess may be so far true, as you only listen to what is reported and censured here in your own country among the mean and inferior 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 Pigmies 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 oft symbolise 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 dictator's.  
I have formerly told your Ladyship, as to Starch and Tobacco, so to black Hoods and all foreign fashions, what potent and popular declamations were used by some persons against them. So in religious forms, what ebbings and flow 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, Music 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 evil report to the same things. Yea the use of public 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 Country's 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 they understand not, as dogs are to bark at what they see not, only because they hear others of their kind do so.  
Therefore the Apostle (who knew well how to pass through good report 
2 Cor. 6. 8.  and evil) doth in that place not only 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 justify that which is truly evil; no more can an evil report justly blast that which is in itself true and good, more than 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, o 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 seldom sound, or their breath sweet: Their tongues may sometime hit on the right, as Balaam's ass once spoke 
Numb. 22. 28.  reason when it met with an Angel; but commonly the herd brays rudely and 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 overborn 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 men's 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 obloquys and reproaches, with whom Crucifige is as obvious as Hosanna. The rabble, as we read, gave a better report of Barrabas 
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 rectify or reform vulgar 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 falsely. 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 bottom 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 Ass' 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 believe or report; how little heed (I pray) may be taken to the common speech and persuasion 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? only the clamour 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.  
As I have been informed of those learned Divines, Schoolmen and Casuists beyond Sea, so I am persuaded the ablest Churchmen in England, in their most deliberate sentence, dare pass no other censure upon those customs (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 than 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 the vulgar easiness and prejudice or wontedness either opines or declares.  
Nor is the report and judgement of all wise and every good man always to be taken as authentic, 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 only 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 judgement-seat, which is to be set up in every one's 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 are to be swallowed without chewing; we must not devour Scripture kernels with the husk or letter unbroken and entire: for by such a fallacy I might find (hard by your place alleged 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 fastened by the masters of Assemblies.  
But your Ladyship 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 cozenage, a making and acting a lie, a self-Idolatry, a Christian personated with a Comical face, fitter for a stage then a Church; 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 overheat 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, etc. there the substance (as it were) and figures, here the colour only is a little altered: yet these are used without any such odious clamours 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 wont road, 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 controversy, and made the Scruple his business; not contenting himself, as in this, with easy and ordinary answers, which have their authority from wontedness more than truth, and from men more than God.  
All ingenuous concealings or amending 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 only decency and civility are joined 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 do. Though, properly speaking, nothing in pure nature is uncomely which God hath form even as to our vile bodies, since every part hath its form and aptitude to the good ends appointed: yet since sinful infirmities have befallen our bodies, they are many ways subject to diseases, defects and deformities, and nothing is denied us in piety and civility which may best rectify, 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 chaste contentment. Nor is it other then rustic or Adamitick impudence, to confine Nature to itself, 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, than those that least affect such pitiful simplicities.  
To call every thing a Lie which we make show 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 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 borrow; 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 Satirical Critic 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 than insolent to deny the truth of the Scriptures in their holy Tropes and Hyperboles, when it says the mountains skipped, and the sea was afraid, or the valleys 
Psal. 114.  did sing and clap their hands, etc.  
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 ways consonant to modest ends and intentions, which are the holy measures and, I think, the only confinements of all things both in nature and in art.  
As to the cheat which your Ladyship may fear should befall any man when he thinks he woos and weds a native beauty, (when it is artificial in some degree) if your Ladyship thinks it not only 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 complain (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 freedom in telling it to those whom it only 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 do 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 do many things apart from any witnesses or spectators, which yet are no sins, but only sensibleness of and reflections upon those infirmities to which our vile bodies are subject; of which having no cause to boast, we rather choose to veil them with secrecy, then to expose them to common view or knowledge, and censure: few persons being of so equal and humble minds as to bear their own praises and perfections without pride, or another's 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 women's adorning is with some expressed by this, My Lady is not yet painted; that is, she is not completely 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 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 domestics in any way to their disadvantage, by discovering either their defects or their reliefs.  
Nor may this be called an histrionick parada, or stagely vizard and hypocrisy, while women seek to appear advantaged in stature or in beauty and handsomeness so far as modesty and virtue 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 though they are not of the internal and essential glory which is in Magistratick or Ecclesiastic power and order, (which are both Divine) yet they are so far not only convenient, but almost necessary, as they help to keep both Laws and Religion from contempt, and from that vulgar insolence to which seditious and Atheistical humours 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 anatomised, and every way exposed to others censures in what they are or do or pretend, but would come many degrees short of that show they make? As there is no necessity to confess many sins to any but to God, to whom only 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 do, nor at all concerned in it.  
Lastly, as to that diminution of honour and esteem which your Ladyship says commonly follows, as a black shadow, the most virtuous woman, if this be added after the catalogue of her virtues 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, bolstered shoulders, heightening heels, sweet smells and the like) to charge no reproach upon any persons, otherways sober and modest, and yet to do it only in this to those who are every way of unspotted virtue and goodness, which receive no more prejudice or abatement by what show is made (by art) of ruddiness in women's 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 woman's honour and virtue by saying, O but she wears heels or shoes a handful high; she seems indeed tall and strait, but is really low and crooked, & c? Nor doth it set off from the score of any man's worth to allege, O but he useth a peruke, or useth such sweet smells 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 than partial; since no justice will allow us to abate of the merit and honour due to many constant and remarkable virtues, (which are evident and unquestionable tokens of worth) merely upon the suspicion and jealousy (for so it is for the most part, vulgar censures in this point of complexioning 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 Ladyship sees learned men in several ages and countries differ as to their judgement of it: And truly those seem to me most masters of Reason, who own the nature of the thing, as all other things, to be good in itself, as God's creature, and measure the morality or immorality of the use or abuse of it by the universal standard and rule of all humane actions, which is the mind 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 natural or artificial.  
As for the commonness or vulgarity of these censures (which are, you say, so usual among the meaner sort of people, or those who are of their size and last) what wise man or woman doth not know that nothing is more sly, touchy and boglish, nothing more violent, rash and various, than the opinion, prejudice, passion and superstition of the Many or common people? How are they swayed even in their loves and hatreds, their persuasions and pieties, their esteem or disesteem, most-what by custom & prepossession, or by adherencies & admirations of men's persons? How do they love an easy and superficial censuring, rather than 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 & splendour 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 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 err customary errors in greater matters, do 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 far as to think themselves tolerable, yea & handsome too, by an happy heresy.  
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 only innocent, but commendable, sometimes fall under the reproach of people. As there are factions and parts-taking in religious forms, so in civil uses; every one seeking to advance his own side and way by depressing all others with reproachful censures.  
Thus have I given your Ladyship 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 weakened, I hope, that they will no more hamper or bind a judicious conscience than the Philistin's withes or cords could do Samson 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 women's beauty and complexion needs more fear the terrors of some men's censures, than that holy Giant needed be troubled at the alarms given, The Philistines are upon thee, Samson: who rousing himself up in his mighty and miraculous strength, defied or scattered them all.    

OBJECTION XII. Painting the Face unlawful, because doubtful at best, and not of faith.  
I Must confess (Madam) your Ladyship says more in vindication of these Artificial helps of handsomeness, and better avoids all those odious objections made against them by my weakness, than ever yet I heard or read; nor can I but agree with your Ladyship's just sense and expressions how partial unjust judges of things, how petulant and passionate censurers of persons and actions common people are, and those masters of them who have most of a plebeian stroke in their temper and education, or who affect a vulgar empire by vulgar easiness and compliances. 'Tis true, they frequently save or damn as they are swayed, not with judgement and charity, but with prepossession or fury, being content to opine not with the wisest, but the most, glorying more in the number of their abetters then in the strength and weight of their reasons.  
But yet in this case, so much controverted and so oft concluded against your sense by learned and godly men, I know your Ladyship is so humble and modest as to consider, that your thoughts are but the thoughts of a woman, who is the weaker vessel, of greater frailties and less capacity, therefore not to be laid in the least balance of contradiction against those many worthy and famous men, who very probably had more strong reasons and Scripture-instances for what they thus eagerly and bitterly decried, then either they have expressed by writing or we can now comprehend: nor is your Ladyship in any sort to measure the validity of their Arguments against it by the infirmity of later allegations, either by others or now by myself, who like Ruth have not so much as the glean of those Boazes large fields and plentiful harvests.  
And yet, in the general prospect of the whole matter, doth it not seem very strange and improbable to your Ladyship that so many holy men should have been without due cause so severe and so cross against our Sex, in those ornaments and reliefs of beauty, the concessions of which (though with all those sober and moral restraints which are justly imposed in all other enjoyments) had been a very great indulgence and ingratiating to women of greatest quality and best breeding, who might the easier have been won to greater rigours of Religion if in this they might have been allowed, with the credit of Christianity and peace of their Conscience, what they generally so covet for the advantages of their looks and countenances?  
I have observed in my days, that many Preachers (otherways very commendable) are less acceptable to Ladies of quality and Gentlewomen of the noblest and fairest editions, because of their severe and damning rigours frequently uttered against all auxiliaries of beauty, or set-offs to handsomeness; so scandalised at Ladies powdering, curling and gumming their hair, so jealous of their using any quickening to their complexion, though neither they nor any other know of it, so impatient of any black patch, though it be but a plaster to a pimple, that they degrade those from all degrees of grace and virtue, modesty and chastity, whom they find or suspect guilty of these in the least kind.  
I am sure some of them thunder against all these and other like ornaments of women with the ancient terror; though, as your Ladyship thinks, they do not shine with the potent convictions and lightnings of the Fathers (but make their Auditors more afraid than hurt:) yet ought we not by an implicit credulity ascribe that honour to the Fathers and their followers, as not to doubt or contradict their judgements, though we see not their grounds or reasons? And will it not (at best) seem too great an arrogance for your Ladyship or any of our Sex to contend in a case of Conscience with so many of our own later Reform Divines, who have one from another taken this point to be so clear and granted as a gross sin, that few or none of them ever went about seriously to discuss it, or solidly to prove it to be any sin at all?  
However (Madam) in the last place, since it is a disputable point, and so dubious as to conscience and practice, is it not wisdom to follow the safest part, which is not at all to use any such toys and tinctures? In which negative of abstaining there can be no danger; which may be great on the other side of using, if either it should be a sin in itself, or at least go under such scruples and uncertainties as can hardly be cleared or avoided as to the conscience of the doer. Where the opinions of so many eminent persons make (as you see) such potent batteries against it, what shield of persuasion can be sufficient to defend us from great shake and some impressions of terror?  

ANSWER.  
MAdam, what validity your Ladyship 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 hindered most-what and even so overawed by popular fears and prejudices, that they dare not own or express them, as loath to seem wiser than their fore fathers, or themselves in former times, when (for want of better matter) they sometimes waste 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 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 Ladylike, Preachers think fit to gratify 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 customs of ancient times were denied to wear any silk or softer garments, not because they were sinful in themselves, but less suitable to the strictness of that discipline which in those times holy men saw fit to exact, especially of ecclesiastics, as most exemplary for the restraining of those prodigalities and luxuries which in both Clergy and Laics 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 far from any 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 custom, 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 itself and many worthy persons consciences were unjustly detained.  
God oft discovers as female softnesses in some men's hearts, heads and hands, so masculine and heroic strength in some women's. We read of two women famous, the one for her 
Judg. 10.  conduct of the war, the other for her consummating it, by destroying Sisera 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, etc.  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 traffic in all truths both humane and divine: though our talents and treasure may be far less than the mass of many men's 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 of Conscience, which is but the Pupillage, Minority and Wardship of Religion, enquiring 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 privilege 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 freedom, by which (as to matters of truth or error, of sin or no sin) it is redeemed from the slavery of man's private Traditions, and confined to the oracles of God; to whose general rule, sense and Analogy, all Catholic 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 wisdom & custom of the Church is a safe and wholesome rule; to which as we are 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 implicit 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 over-wicked. 
Eccl. 7. 16.   
Solomon tells us, that the whole duty 
Eccl. 12. 13.  of man is to fear God and keep his Commandments: Christ tells us, it is but a Pharisaic pride and vanity to teach 
Mat. 15. 3.  or urge humane traditions or opinions for God's Commands. And truly, after all that your Ladyship hath smartly urged in this case, I cannot but wonder that neither Solomon in his various sentences of the Proverbs, nor in his holy satire against humane Vanities in Ecclesiastes, no nor yet he that was greater than Solomon, either by himself or his Disciples, should ever particularly instance against all or any painting or complexioning of the face; no nor God by Moses: where so many lesser precepts are expressly 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 wisdom, 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 man's inventions, more than a royal robe needs a beggar's 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 far greater sin than any light applying of some quickening 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 hardhearted 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 than of otherhelps of any bodily infirmity or deformity; since it may as well as any thing be used soberly, thankfully and harmlessly, 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 peremptorily to conclude) that the dreadful rigours 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 wills, fancies and passions of men then by the word of God, whose thoughts are 
Isa. 55. 8.  not as man's thoughts, nor his ways as our ways. Many things are highly esteemed of men as sanctities, which God despiseth; and many things are 
1 Cor. 1.  lightly condemned by man's imperious rashness, which God doth not condemn: hence the lawful use of many good things is denied by man's severity and transport, where God's benignity only forbids us the abuse of them, and in so doing establisheth the lawfulness of the use, which may in this, for aught I yet see, as well consist with a good Conscience, as it did with Solomon's wisdom (amidst his domestic 
1 Kings 10. 22.  and native plenty) to send his navy upon long and foreign voyages for 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 women's beauties and adorn, when yet they allow the spiceries and curiosities which merchandizing brings from far, rather to gratify luxury then relieve necessity: Nor do they quarrel at superfluous tables (unless they have but puling stomaches) 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 taste 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 picturing by pencil or embroideries, also with the wearing of silks, linen and woollen of various and orient colours; nor do they frown to see women wear rich Jewels of all colours, as Cornelians, Rubies, Saphires, Emeralds, and Diamonds, on their breasts, necks, ears, wrists and fingers, of which there is no other use in nature, but only the borrowing and ostentating of their several beauties and colours, by which to render us more conspicuous or comely. As these fixed gems have their aptitudes for our use on other parts of our bodies; so truly have other diffusive tinctures and colour 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 grossly handled and laid on, as they shall seem no more to ones advantage either of comeliness or discretion, than a Jewel in a swine's 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 among discreet persons: as those may easily be who know not how to distinguish a civil quickening or cheerful enlivening of the face, (as of old times was done by their anointings) and a slovenly besmearing themselves, like Bartholomew-babies, with fulsome daubings, which proclaim, though not foul, yet foolish hearts.  
As for those causeless 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 virtuous women, who use any relief to their looks: I believe, as Solomon tells 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 adorn whatsoever to leven them with any thing of pride of sinful vanity, but always keep 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 terrify poor souls, they run more upon the stock of Satyrical wit then solid arguments: as if Conscience were only to smell on nosegays or flowers, and not to be fed with serious and divine truths, which are the food and physic 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 grey hairs and wrinkles every where call for gravity of aspect as well as manners, of which a fatherly, prolix, and reverential beard is a solemn sign and majestic Emblem.) 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, 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 kingdom 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 toys (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 only as to health and strength, but also to the vigour and colour of their looks; else, such as have the Green-sickness, pallor, or the Jaundice 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 men's reasonings against all artificial beauty, are their impertinent and wrested allegations of Scripture, whereby to justify their severities: which no doubt your Ladyship hath observed as well as I have; though your discretion thinks not fit to urge them, being as easily answered as they are fallaciously alleged.    

OBJECTION XIII. Of Peter Martyr against Painting the Face, from many Scripture-instances, Answered.  
SUch as those which I have read in an Author of no mean note or obscure name, who dreadfully and purposely inveighing against all use of art to advance the beauty or colour of the face, with great gravity and vehemency tells us, as from the Apostles mind, that we cannot be the servants of the 
Gal. 1. 10.  Lord, if we seek to please men: therefore women may not use any such complexioning to please their own, or their husbands, or others aspects. O weighty and profound Divinity! by which neither wives may please their husbands, nor children their parents, nor subjects their Princes, nor servants their masters, nor tradesmen their customers: but, like the serpent's teeth, Christians must rise up to a constant antipathy and mutual displeasings of each other, else they cannot please God. What can be more absurd in Reason, or ridiculous in Religion? When the meaning of the Apostle is, if by any ways displeasing to God I seek to please men, or if I so seek to please men as I neglect God, I cannot be God's servant. But in all such lawful ways as were neither against piety, nor truth, nor charity, no man was more a pleaser of all men, to whom he became 
1 Cor. 9 22.  all honest things, that he might gain some.  
So again he brings, that Christians must keep the Passeover, which is 
1 Cor. 5. 8.  the feast of Christian conversation, in which we partake of Christ, with sincerity and truth; therefore we may make no simulations or shows of any thing that is not really true, and such as we make show of: which not only debars us of all helps of art against paleness, but of whatever may remedy baldness, blindness, lameness, crookedness, and the like, which are at once both helps and hidings of our infirmities. Which gloss is far wide of the Apostles sense, who tells us what leaven must be purged out (not of all art and ingenuity, of decency and civility) but of malice and wickedness, of hypocrisy and uncharitableness, which may very much embitter and abase the spirits of Christians even there where their looks, words and gestures are composed to most cynical clouds and Pharisaic frowns. Where the heart is pure as to all maliciousness against God and man, there all outward things are pure and lawful.  
He adds, since God in the old Law 
Deut. 22. 5.  forbade to disguise the sex by clothes, he (consequently) forbids to disguise our persons by any change of our faces or complexions. 'Tis true, the God of order forbids the first, so far as it breeds those confusions and reproaches in humane life and constant converse which are attended with very foul and wicked consequences: But in cases either of declared mirth or necessary safety, which draw no injury, indignity or disorder of life after them, but are only occasional and innocent, I do not think that Text ought to be urged. To make such a change of our faces as we cannot be known to be the same persons (which yet is oft done by sickness or distempers) as I think it not lawful in ordinary conversation, so no wise woman doth ever aim at it, so as not to be known to be herself, but rather to be known as herself, with some advantages only for complexion, which alter not the feature, but only quicken the colour. But in case of life and escape, I believe this good man would not deny an innocent person leave so to disguise his looks by vizard or colour as might best deceive his guard or keepers; which yet he might not once do, though to save his life, if it were an absolute and gross sin in itself, as some pretend.  
He further instances, that every one ought to glorify God in their bodies; 
1 Cor. 6. 20.  which (saith he) no woman can do that useth art to her complexion. This is easily said, but never proved, against those modest and sober women who glorify God in a thankful, humble, chaste and virtuous life, as well when they use this as when they use any other helps or ornaments to their outward aspect and comeliness; not abusing these by doting on them or resting in them as the highest beauty and ultimate glory of a Christian, but using and referring all to a higher end and glory.  
Lastly, he very gravely and sadly tells us, as we may not make any members 
1 Cor. 6. 15.  of our bodies (which are Christ's) the members of an harlot; so nor may we make our faces the faces of harlots, whose property (he saith) it is to paint their faces, if they think they need such helps. The answer is, that it is no prejudice against honest women's use of things, that dishonest use them; that helping the complexion, and setting forth the looks to the best advantages by ingenuous arts and adorn, is not the property of harlots, but the study and care of virtuous women, though accompanied with, and inferior to, that care they have of their Souls adorning. I believe this good man, whatever he boldly guesses at, knew fewer dissolute than sober women who used such helps, far enough from his scandal or perception. Nor can he say it is the property of lewd women, unless he knew none other used it, or could by better arguments then by begging the question prove it to be so by God forbidden, as no gracious woman can lawfully or modestly use it; which he neither doth, nor endeavours to prove, either by apposite Scriptures, or pregnant reasons from the nature of the thing used, or the necessary pravity of the mind using such artificial beauty: one of which at least (if not all) should have been proved; which neither he nor any man else, that ever I saw or heard, hath yet done; contenting themselves with strong presumptions & weak probations. Which poverty & tenuity of argumentation in a matter pretended to be a gross & notorious sin, is no way becoming learned & grave Divines, who ought not to play with cases of Conscience, nor adventure to create sins, calling light darkness, 
Isa. 5. 20.  or darkness light, evil good, or good evil.  
How much more worthy of their holy calling were it for Ministers to meddle less with Lady's faces, & more with their hearts; rather encouraging them to study all the holy ornaments of grace and virtue; also confining them to the undoubted limits of Sanctity, Modesty, Chastity and Humility, (which none is so impudent as to dispute against or question) rather (I say) then by little Oratorious circles and sophistries to seek to ensnare their Consciences, and discourage their spirits by endless and needless severities against these petty ornaments, which may (no doubt) be as easily kept in all sober, civil and harmless bounds, as any other things by which Art assists Nature, and adds by clothes, colours, jewels, and many curiosities, to the advantage of humane honour, beauty, and majesty?  
The mischief is, not so much that many women are denied by these rigours the use of such things as would please and become them in an innocent cheerfulness; but all that ever was said against these helps of beauty seems to many wise women so weak and sinnewless, that being not convinced of any sin in the use of them, they venture to use them privately, (yet not wholly without some doubt and scruple, arising from the confidence and clamours of some godly men against them:) hence they are uncomfortably divided and perplexed even in their greatest purity of mind and holiness of life; while on the one side they are shaken and terrified by what such men forbid them, on the other side they see not but God and Nature allow it to them. Nor do even virtuous women contentedly want (while they are capable of them) those things that may render them most acceptable to their own and others eyes; being loath to draw the curtains of obscurity or uncomeliness quite over them till it be dark night, when they must hide their faces in the dust, in hope to recover that perfect beauty which shall admit no decays, and needs no repairs.  
What your Ladyship intimates in the last place, that it is safest in a case disputed or dubious, rather to abstain then use what many deny, though many allow, since there is no necessity of using it at all: I answer, there are many things which are not absolutely necessary, which yet we would be loath to part with or be disputed out of under the pretence of superfluity and sinful; since God allows us, not with niggardly restraints, but with liberality worthy of divine benignity, all things richly to enjoy, even to delight, conveniency, elegancy and majesty. Nor are we in cases of Conscience or scruples of sin to tell noses, or meet by the pole, how many, but value upon what grounds men affirm or deny things to be lawful or unlawful. Errors and Idols have many times more eyes and hands lifted up to them then truth or the true God. One Athanasius is recorded to have sustained the truth of Christ's Divinity against the sea and moles of all the world, pressing against him, as great waters upon a firm sluice. Truth is not less itself because in solitudes; and Error ceases not to be Error amidst crowds and multitudes. If any be so weak, as to be swayed and divided more by numbers and Oratorious fervors then by clear and potent reasons; the penance they must do for their want of judgement is, to be deprived of those things they doubt of, yet would willingly use, and do desire, if they thought them lawful. But those who are by a clear light of Reason and Religion redeemed from these scrupulosities, so as to see and enjoy the freedom God hath given them, as in the nature and fitness of his creatures, so in the indulgence and silence of the Scriptures (which have set us under the Gospel only moral and internal bounds of holiness, by which the heart circumscribes and limits the outward man in the use of all things, not as to their nature, but their ends) these (I say) may as freely use their affirmative freedom of using and enjoying according to their conscience, as the other do the negative, who therefore forbear to use them because they either doubt, or conclude against their unlawfulness. For as no man's dissenting may hinder the stating of my judgement, according as truth appears to me; so no more may their different practice hinder me from doing and enjoying agreeable to my judgement.   

The moderate and charitable Conclusion of the Dispute.  
THus have I endeavoured to give your Ladyship a full and good account of my thoughts in this dispute or case touching artificial helps of beauty, such as humane invention hath many ways found out; whereto as your Ladyship hath given the occasion, so I wish I were so happy as to afford you any satisfaction: which if a weak woman may in any degree be able to do in so disputed a point, how much more may you hope for from learned and able men, if they have but courage to declare their judgements in it?  
As for your Ladyship's particular, however you shall not need to think (yet) of borrowing any helps from art, either to preserve or repair your beauty, (being blest with a great and lasting stock of handsomeness, for which you have cause humbly to thank God;) yet (possibly) by what I have answered to your several Objections, (not wholly void, I hope, of Reason and Religion) your Ladyship and others by your candour will be more favourable in their censures of those whose infirmity may invite them soberly to use what they do not find God hath denied them; who (yet) had rather choose the most sad and sordid deformities (as Job on a dunghill putrifying in his own sores) with a good conscience, than the greatest pomp and beauty of Queen Esther, or Berenice, with the sting and plague of an evil conscience. Nor do I doubt but many worthy women, who discreetly use these little private helps to their looks, are very far from that ungrateful impudence which dares to displease God, by any thing his indulgence allows them to please themselves withal in sober and ingenuous ways.  
To the favourableness of your Ladyship's future censure (of those who with modesty and discretion use these helps to complexion, by which neither themselves nor others are hurt) be pleased to add the favour of your pardon to the length of my Answers, which, conscious to their weakness, I have sought, as we do with lesser threads, to wind them the oftener about, that their length may make some amends for the want of that strength in which they come short of stronger twisted cords. If I may obtain the one or both of these requests, I shall not think my time, or your Ladyship's patience, wholly lost; though I am not so vain as to boast of any victory, or peremptorily to decide the controversy on my side, which I leave to your Ladyships and others better judgement.  
Madam, I must not only grant you your so-well-merited requests, which you shall find have with me the power of commands, being so just and ingenuous: but I must add those most hearty thanks which I owe you for the generous freedom of your discourse, which hath the courage and ability to bring to the review of Reason and true Religion a case of Conscience which few dare touch or try, contrary to the common vote and credulity, which (for aught I see) may in this, as in other things it oft doth, prove a common error: wherein you deserve the more applause, because in this I do not think you are any way partial to yourself, or so much pleading your own cause, as civilly affording a charitable relief and protection to others, whose infirmity may require or use such helps.  
For myself, as I wish I may never need any such aids, so truly I should not scruple to use God's and Nature's indulgence with those cautions of modesty and discretion which are necessary to accompany all our actions natural, civil, and religious; which falling under the Empire of our will and choice, are subject to the Judicature of God and of our own Consciences.  
Mean time your Ladyship hath by the clearness and force of your Reason redeemed me from that captivity wherein, by a plebeian kind of censoriousness and popular severity, I sometime delighted, to disparage and lessen those who are reported or suspected to use any auxiliary beauty, notwithstanding I saw in all things else their worth and virtue every way commendable, imitable, and sometime admirable. So much have you made me a cheerful Conformist to your judgement and charity, which I find follows not easy and vulgar reports, but searcheth the exacter rules of Reason and Religion; which lights, as they now shine in the Church of God, I do not think have left mankind in the dark as to any thing morally and eminently either good or evil. In the discerning of which, so as to follow the one and fly the other, I pray God ever guide us by his truth and grace.  Tit. 1. 15. To the pure all things are pure; but to the defiled and unbelievers nothing is pure, but even their mind and conscience is defiled. 
The End.