Keep Watch against Excess in Eating and Drinking 99 STUDY THE NEED OF THE BODY 20. If we give more to the flesh than we ought, we nourish an enemy; if we give not to her necessity what we ought, we destroy a citizen. 21. The flesh is to be satisfied so far as suffices to our good; whosoever alloweth so her as to make her proud, knoweth not how to be satisfied. much to 22. To be satisfied is a great art, lest by the satiety of the flesh we break forth into the iniquity of her folly. 23. Have a due care of your bodies, that no distemper be cherished in them which causeth the distemper of the soul. Passions have a very great dependence on the temperament of the body; and much of the cure of them lieth in the body's emendation. 24. Reason alone may do something to call up a man from this felicity of a beast, but faith and love, which feast the soul, must do the cure. 25. Know ye not that they which run in a race run all, but one receiveth the prize? So run, that ye may obtain. 26. And every man that striveth for the mastery is temperate in all things. Now they do it to obtain a corruptible crown; but we an incorruptible. 27. I therefore so run, not as uncertainly; so fight I, not as one that beateth the air : 28. But I keep my body under, and bring it into subjection: lest that by any means, when I have preached to others, I myself should be a castaway. CHAPTER XXXIII MAN'S BODY IS THE TEMPLE OF HIS SOUL 1. Better is the poor, being sound and strong of constitution, than a rich man that is afflicted in his body. THE BLESSINGS OF HEALTH 2. Health and good estate of body are above all gold, and a strong body above infinite wealth. 3. All healthy things are sweet-tempered. 4. The first wealth is health. Sickness is poor-spirited, and cannot serve any one: it must husband its resources to live. 5. But health or fulness answers its own ends and has to spare, runs over, and inundates the neighbourhoods and creeks of other men's necessities. 6. No labour, pains, temperance, poverty, nor exercise, that can gain health, must be grudged. For sickness is a cannibal which eats up all the life and youth it can lay hold of, and absorbs its own sons and daughters. 7. I figure it as a pale, wailing distracted phantom, absolutely selfish, heedless of what is good and great, attentive to its sensations, losing its soul, and afflicting other souls with meanness and mopings and with ministration to its voracity of trifles. 8. Thou shalt not kill, is the commandment of God, yet scarce observed by any man; for I perceive every man is his own Atropos, and lends a hand to cut the thread of his own days. THE DUTY HEALTH 9. The preservation of health is a duty. Few seem conscious that there is such a thing as physical morality. 10. Men's habitual words and acts imply the idea that they are at liberty to treat their bodies as they please. 11. Disorders entailed by disobedience to Nature's dictates, they regard simply as grievances: not as the effects of a conduct more or less flagitious. 12. Though the evil consequences inflicted on their dependents, and on future generations, are often as great as those caused by crime, yet they do not think themselves in any degree criminal. 13. The body must be kept in that condition that is fittest for the service of the soul; as you keep your horse, neither so pampered as to be unruly, nor yet so low as to disable him from travel: but all that health and strength which makes it not unruly, maketh it the more serviceable. 14. It is not the life of the body, but the health and the cheerfulness, which maketh it fit for duty. 15. And so much pleasing of the flesh as tendeth but to its health and cheerfulness, is a duty. 16. A heavy body is but a dull and heavy servant to the mind: yea, a great impediment to the soul in duty, and a great temptation to many sins. 17. It is as great a duty to help the body to its due alacrity and fitness for service, as it is to tame it and bring it under. CHAPTER XXXIV CHASTITY IS A MANLY VIRTUE 1. Lust is an immoderate wantonness of the flesh, a sweet poison, a cruel pestilence, which weakeneth the body of man, and effeminateth the strength of an heroic mind. PURITY IS TARNISHED 2. Chastity is a delicate, tender grace, and can scarcely endure the much naming of itself, far less of those things that are contrary to it. 3. Be exceedingly quick in turning aside from the slightest thing leading to impurity, for it is an evil which approaches stealthily, and in which the very smallest beginnings are apt to grow rapidly. 4. It is always easier to fly from such evils than to cure them. 5. Remember that there are things which blemish perfect purity, without being in themselves downright acts of impurity. 6. Anything which tends to lessen its intense sensitiveness, or to cast the slightest shadow over it, is of this nature, and all evil thoughts or foolish acts of levity or heedlessness are as steps towards the most direct breaches of the law of chastity. 7. Avoid the society of persons who are wanting in purity. 8. No man doth safely appear abroad, but he who can gladly abide at home, out of sight. SHUN OCCASIONS OF SIN 9. Meet not with an harlot, lest thou fall into her snares. 10. Let not thine heart decline to her ways; go not astray in her paths. 11. For she hath cast down many wounded; yea, many strong men have been slain by her. 12. Her house is the way to hell, going down to the chambers of death. 13. There is not anything will more readily dry up the sweetness and spiritual moisture of the soul, and cause the graces in it to wither, than the impure fire of lust. 14. Therefore, thou, who hast any beginnings of grace, and wouldst have them flourish, beware of this, and quench it in its first sparkles. 15. Self-indulgence is the soul's languor, which numbs it and deprives it of all energy for doing good. 16. But it is a very treacherous languor SIN RELAXES MANLY VIRTUE secretly exciting the soul to sin, and hiding a devouring fire beneath its seeming slow ashes. 17. Self-indulgence deprives a man of everything that might make him great. 18. When lust By unchaste looks, loose gestures, and foul talk, But most by lewd and lavish act of sin, Lets in defilement to the inward parts, |