It
is certainly innocent, virtuous and prudent, or the puritans would not
have permitted it to prevail among their offspring, for whom in general
they would suffer crucifixion. Children brought up with the chastest
ideas, with so much religion as to believe that the omniscient God sees
them in the dark, and that angels guard them when absent from their
parents, will not, nay, cannot, act a wicked thing. People who are
influenced more by lust, than a serious faith in God, who is too pure to
behold iniquity with approbation, ought never to _bundle_. If any man,
thus a stranger to the love of virtue, of God, and the Christian
religion, should _bundle_ with a young lady in New England, and behave
himself unseemly towards her, he must first melt her into passion, and
expel heaven, death, and hell, from her mind, or he will undergo the
chastisement of negroes turned mad--if he escape with life, it will be
owing to the parents flying from their bed to protect him. The Indians,
who had this method of courtship when the English arrived among them in
1634, are the most chaste set of people in the world. Concubinage and
fornication are vices none of them are addicted to, except such as
forsake the laws of Hobbamockow and turn Christians.
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