A plan for establishing a charity-house, or charity-houses, for the reception of repenting prostitutes. To be called the Magdalen Charity / [Anon].

  • Jonas Hanway
Date:
[1758]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A plan for establishing a charity-house, or charity-houses, for the reception of repenting prostitutes. To be called the Magdalen Charity / [Anon]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    14/80
    [ * ] only promote virtue and induftry, but alfo beauty and ftrength to defend the produce of our labors: it will preferve us from the fad effects of thofe impurities, which not only prey on our vitals, but alfo efface the imprefiions of all moral rectitude. Divines and philofophers are not perfectly agreed how far virtue is natural to the foul of man j and yet it is confeffed, that man is by nature a reafonable being, and furely reafon declares againft whatever we believe to be vicious. Whatever name we give to the propetifity in queftion, we know that nothing unhinges the whole frame, and diftem-pers the foul as well as body, more than giving up ourfelves to an unbounded gratifi¬ cation of this appetite. The exprefs command of God, as I have juft obferved, both in the literal fenfe, as well as the fpirit of the chriffiart law, is undoubtedly againft it. Thofe who preferve their native modefty, and are not given up to what is emphatically called an impudent mind, will ever lament that illegal commerce, which is productive of fo much miP chief. And as it is the duty of men, it will ever be their honor, to endevor to reflore things to that order t which the God of nature certainly in¬ tended they fhould be in, namely that reafon fhould prevail over pajjion and appetite. It has been often debated how far it is advifeable, fuppofing it were practicable, totally to fupprefs profiitutes. The fubjeCt is delicatei and will hardly admit of a ftriCt examination. Let it fuffice that it is, or fhould be, in the power of the civil magiftrate, to drive common prof- titutes from the public flreets, and remove every dangerous temptation to the unwary youth. It
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