hinder digestion, as the Phisition placed it amonge their rules of
diet. Moreouer seeing yet men may exercise themselues in many other
maners and sortes of exercises, hee, as mee thinketh openly sheweth,
yet he hath not modesty, nor temperance, nor his health it selfe in
estimation, yet is, he estemeth & regardeth not. &c. which choseth
daunsing for his exercise. Daunses then were neuer heretofore
otherwise accounted of, nether be at this present otherwise thought
of, then mere vilany, & a most certaine, plaine, and evident testimony
of the filthines & intemperancy of them which delighted themselues
therin. Now, that so it is, the Prouerbe sayeth, De la panse, vient la
Danse: from the panch commeth the daunce: [Sidenote: Math. 14.
Mark. 6] And if we durst ioine therto whoredom their elder daughter,
we shal find that she followeth after immediately. which thing we
shall easily fynd, if we consider the most ordinary & common effectes
of daunsing. what was the cause that Herode so lightly promised, to
that goodlye daunser Salome, the daughter of Herodias, euen the one
halfe of his Realme, and kingdome, but that by her vilanous, and
shameles daunsing, shee had stirred up and set on fyre his
concupiscence and lust who was already a villanous adulterer, and
infamous whoremonger, so that the delighte and pleasure which he take
therin, provoked him to be willing to make so excessiue and
unmeasurable a recompence: Moreouer let us marke more narrowly in
Genesis, that which is written of Dina the daughter of Jacob, and we
shall find that daunses were partly the cause of her rauishing, or
deflouring. For albeit, that in that place, there is no expresse
mention made of daunses, yet so it is, that when it is sayde, that
Dina went to see the daughters of the countrey or land, there is some
appearance and likelihod that the daughters had this custome, to
assemble themselues togeather in daunse, and that to the end, that in
shewing the nimblenes of their body, their bewty, and wery conceyts,