Formerly, before women came to the marriage-bed, they were first
searched by the mid-wife, and those only which she allowed of as
fruitful were admitted. I hope, therefore, it will not be amiss to show
you how they may prove themselves and turn barren ground into fruitful
soil. Barrenness is a deprivation of the life and power which ought to
be in the seed to procreate and propagate; for which end men and women
were made. Causes of barrenness may be over much cold or heat, drying up
the seed and corrupting it, which extinguishes the life of the seed,
making it waterish and unfit for generation. It may be caused also, by
the not flowing or over-flowing of the courses by swellings, ulcers, and
inflammation of the womb, by an excrescence of flesh growing about the
mouth of the matrix, by the mouth of the matrix being turned up to the
back or side by the fatness of the body, whereby the mouth of the matrix
is closed up, being pressed with the omentum or caul, and the matter of
the seed is turned to fat; if she be a lean and dry body, and though she
do conceive, yet the fruit of her body will wither before it come to
perfection, for want of nourishment. One main cause of barrenness is
attributed to want of a convenient moderating quality, which the woman
ought to have with the man; as, if he be hot, she must be cold; if he be
dry, she must be moist; as, if they be both dry or both moist of
constitution, they cannot propagate; and yet, simply considering of
themselves, they are not barren, for she who was before as the barren
fig-tree being joined to an apt constitution becomes as the fruitful
vine. And that a man and woman, being every way of like constitution,
cannot create, I will bring nature itself for a testimony, who hath made
man of a better constitution than woman, that the quality of the one,
may moderate the quality of the other.