secure, be pleased and be at rest, but when it dwells with holiness: the joys that come from thence, are safe and great, unchangeable and unabated, healthful and holy; and this is true joy and this is that which can cure all the little images of pleasure and temptation, which debauch our nature, and make it dwell with hospitals, in the region of diseases and evil sorrows. St. Gregory well observed the difference, saying that "Corporeal pleasures, when we have them not, enkindle a flame and a burning desire in the heart, and make a man very miserable before he tastes them; the appetite to them is like the thirst and the desires of a fever;" the pleasure of drinking will not pay for the pain of the desire; and "when they are enjoyed, they instantly breed satiety and loathing. But spiritual rejoicings and delights are loathed by them that have them not, and despised by them that never felt them;" but when they are once tasted, they increase the appetite and swell into bigger capacities; and the more they are eaten, the more they are desired; and cannot become a weariness, because they satisfy all the way, and only increase the desire, because themselves grow bigger and more amiable. And therefore when this new and stranger appetite, and consequent joy arises in the heart of man, it so fills all the faculties, that there is no gust, no desire left for toads and vipers, for hemlock and the deadly nightshade. Sirenas, hilarem navigantium pœnam, Fallax Ulysses dicitur reliquisse. Mart. 3. 64. Then a man can hear the music of songs and dances, and think them to be heathenish noises; and if he be engaged in the society of a woman-singer, he can be as unconcerned as a marble statue; he can be at a feast and not be defiled, he can pass through theatres as through a street: then he can look on money as his servant, " nec distant æra lupinis ;" he can use it as the Greeks did their sharp coins, to cast accounts withal, and not from thence take the accounts of his wealth or his felicity. If you can once obtain but to delight in prayer, and to long for the day of a communion, and to be pleased with holy meditation, and to desire God's grace with great passion, and an appetite keen as a wolf upon the void plains of the north; if you can delight in God's love, and consider concerning his providence, and busy yourselves in the pursuit of the affairs of his kingdom, then you have the grace of devotion, and your evil nature shall be cured. 3. Because this great cure is to be wrought by the Spirit of God, which is a new nature in us, we must endeavour to abstain from those things; which by a special malignity are directly opposite to the spirit of reason, and the Spirit of grace; and those are drunkenness and lust. He that is full of wine, cannot be full of the Spirit of God: St. Paul noteth the hostility; "Be not drunk with wine, but be filled with the Spirit" a man that is a drunkard, does perire cito, he perishes quickly,' his temptations that come to him, make but short work with him; a drunkard is dowrоç; our English well expresses it, it is 'a sottishness,' and the man is áкóλaσToç, ἄχρειος, ἄχρηστος, 'a useless, senseless person:' εἴτ ̓ οὐχ ̓ ἁπάν των ἐστὶ τὸ μεθύειν κακὸν μέγιστον ἀνθρώποισι καὶ βλαβερώτατον; "Of all the evils of the world, nothing is worse to a man's self, nothing is more harmful than this;” ἀποστεροῦντα ἑαυτὸν τοῦ φρονεῖν, ὃ μέγιστον ἡμῖν ἀγαθὸν ἔχει ἡ φύσις, said Crobylus; 'it deprives a wise man of his counsel and his understanding.' Now, because it is the greatest good that nature hath, that which takes it away, must needs be our greatest enemy. Nature is weak enough of itself, but drunkenness takes from it all the little strengths that are left to it, and destroys the Spirit; and the man can neither have the strengths of nature, nor the strengths of grace; and how then can the man do wisely or virtuously? "Spiritus sanctus amat sicca corda," "The Spirit of God loves dry hearts," said the Christian proverb; and Josephus said of Samson, Δῆλον ἦν προφητεύσων ἀπὸ τῆς περὶ τὴν διαίταν σωφροσύνης, " It appears he was a prophet, or a man full of the Spirit, by the temperance of his diet;" and now that all the people are holy unto the Lord, they must ἀοίνους ἁγνείας ἔχειν, as Plutarch said of their consecrated persons; they must have "dry and sober purities:" for by this means their reason is useful, and their passions not violent, and their discourse united, and the precious things of their memory at hand, and they can pray and read, and they can meditate and practise, and then they can learn where their natural weaknesses are most urgent, and how r Ephes. v. 18. they can be tempted, and can secure their aids accordingly; but how is it possible, that such a man should cure all the evils of his nature, and repair the breaches of Adam's sin, and stop all the effect which is upon him from all the evils of the world, if he delights in seas of drink, and is pleased with the follies of distempered persons, and laughs loud at the childish humours and weak discourses of the man, that can do nothing but that for which Dionysius slew Antiphon, and Timagenes did fall from Cæsar's friendship; that is, play the fool and abuse his friend; he cannot give good counsel or spend an hour in wise sayings; but half a day they can talk" ut foret, unde corona cachinnum tollere possit," to make the crowd laugh, and consider not. And the same is the case of lust; because it is exactly contrary to Christ the king of virgins, and his Holy Spirit, who is the prince of purities and holy thoughts; it is a captivity of the reason, and an enraging of the passions, it wakens every night, and rages every day, it desires passionately, and prosecutes violently, it hinders business and distracts counsel, it brings jealousies and enkindles wars, it sins against the body, and weakens the soul, it defiles a temple, and drives the Holy Spirit forth, and it is so entire a prosecution of the follies and weaknesses of nature; such a snare and a bait to weak and easy fools, that it prevails infinitely, and rages horribly, and rules tyrannically; it is a very fever in the reason, and a calenture in the passions; and therefore either it must be quenched, or it will be impossible to cure our evil natures: the curing of this is not the remedy of a single evil, but it is a doing violence to our whole nature; and therefore hath in it the greatest courage and an equal conduct, and supposes spiritual strengths great enough to contest against every enemy. 4. Hitherto is to be reduced, that we avoid all flatterers and evil company; for it was impossible that Alexander should be wise and cure his pride and his drunkenness, so long as he entertained Agesius and Agnon, Bagoas and Demetrius, and slew Parmenio and Philotas, and murdered wise Callisthenes; for he that loves to be flattered, loves not to change his pleasure; but had rather to hear himself called wise, than to be so. Flattery does bribe an evil nature, and corrupt a good one; and make it love to give wrong judg ment, and evil sentences: he that loves to be flattered, can never want some to abuse him, but he shall always want one to counsel him, and then he can never be wise. 5. But I must put these advices into a heap; he therefore that will cure his evil nature, must set himself against his chiefest lust, which when he hath overcome, the lesser enemies will come in of themselves. He must endeavour to reduce his affections to an indifferency; for all violence is an enemy to reason and counsel, and is that state of disease for which he is to inquire remedies. 6. It is necessary that in all actions of choice he deliberate and consider, that he may never do that for which he must ask a pardon, and he must suffer shame and smart: and therefore Cato did well reprove Aulus Albinus for writing the Roman story in the Greek tongue, of which he had but imperfect knowledge; and himself was put to make his apology for so doing: Cato told him that he was mightily in love with a fault, that he had rather beg a pardon than be innocent; Who forced him to need the pardon? And when beforehand we know we must change from what we are or do worse, it is a better compendium not to enter in from whence we must uneasily retire. 7. In all the contingencies of chance and variety of action, remember that thou art the maker of thy own fortune, and of thy own sin; charge not God with it either before or after; the violence of thy own passion is no superinduced necessity from him, and the events of providence in all its strange variety can give no authority or patronage to a foul forbidden action, though the next chance of war or fortune be prosperous and rich. An Egyptian robber, sleeping under a rotten wall, was awakened by Serapis, and sent away from the ruin; but being quit from the danger, and seeing the wall to slide, he thought that the demon loved his crime, because he had so strangely preserved him from a sudden and a violent death. But Serapis told him,Oávarov μèv ăλvπον Νῦν ἔφυγες, σταυρῷ δ ̓ ἴσθι φυλαττόμενος, “I saved you from the wall, to reserve you for the wheel;" from a short and private death, to a painful and disgraceful; and so it is very frequently in the event of human affairs: men are saved from one death, and reserved for another; or are preserved here, to be destroyed hereafter; and they that would judge of actions by events, must stay till all events are passed, that is, till all their posterity be dead, and the sentence is given at doom's-day; in the mean time the evils of our nature are to be looked upon without all accidental appendages; as they are in themselves, as they have an irregularity and disorder, an unreasonableness and a sting; and be sure to rely upon nothing, but the truth of laws and promises; and take severe accounts by those lines, which God gave us on purpose to reprove our evil habits and filthy inclinations. Men that are not willing to be cured, are glad of any thing to cozen them; but the body of death cannot be taken off from us, unless we be honest in our purposes, and severe in our counsels, and take just measures, and glorify God, and set ourselves against ourselves, that we may be changed into the likeness of the sons of God. 8. Avoid all delay in the counsels of religion. Because the aversation and perverseness of a child's nature may be corrected easily; but every day of indulgence and excuse increases the evil, and makes it still more natural, and still more necessary. 9. Learn to despise the world; or, which is a better compendium in the duty, learn but truly to understand it; for it is a cozenage all the way; the head of it is a rainbow, and the face of it is flattery; its words are charms, and all its stories are false; its body is a shadow, and its hands do knit spiders' webs; it is an image and a noise, with an hyena's lip and a serpent's tail; it was given to serve the needs of our nature; and instead of doing it, it creates strange appetites, and nourishes thirsts and fevers; it brings care, and debauches our nature, and brings shame and death as the reward of all our cares. Our nature is a disease, and the world does nourish it; but if you leave to feed upon such unwholesome diet, your nature reverts to its first purities, and to the entertainments of the grace of God. 4. I am now to consider, how far the infirmities of the flesh can be innocent, and consist with the Spirit of grace. For all these counsels are to be entertained into a willing spirit, and not only so, but into an active and so long as the spirit is only willing, the weakness of the flesh will in many instances become stronger than the strengths of the spirit. For he that hath a good will, and does not do good |