"the shadowy phantasms of such souls have some"times appeared." For being utterly unacquainted with the pleasures of spirits, they have nothing in all the spiritual world to feed their hungry desire; which makes them, when they are permitted to wander, to hover about and linger after their bodies; the impossibility of being reunited to them not being able to cure them of their impotent desire of it, but still they would fain be alive again, and reassume their old instruments of pleasure; -Iterumque ad tarda reverti Corpora : -Quæ lucis miseris tam dira cupido? And hence, among other reasons, it was, that the primitive Christians did so severely abstain from bodily pleasures, that by this means they might gently wean the soul from the body, and teach it beforehand to live upon the delights of separated spirits; that so, upon its separation, it might drop into eternity, like ripe fruit from the tree, with ease and willingness; and that, by accustoming it before to spiritual pleasures and delights, it might acquire such a savoury sense and relish of them, as to be able, when it came into the spiritual world, to live wholly upon them; and to be so entirely satisfied with them, as not to be endlessly vexed with a tormenting desire of returning to the body again. For so Clemens Alexandrinus, Ἡμῖν δὲ τοῖς θηρωμένοις τὴν βρῶσιν τὴν ἐπουράνιον, ἄρχειν ἀνάγκη τῆς ὑπὸ τὸν οὐρανὸν γαστρὸς, ἔτι τε μᾶλλον καὶ τῶν ταύτῃ προσφιλῶν . "We that are hunting after "the heavenly food must take heed that we keep our earthly belly in subjection, and to keep a strict 66 66 66 government over those things that are pleasant to "it." For, saith he, a little before, Oure yàp epyou nμir ἔργον ἡμῖν ἡ τροφὴ, οὔτε σκοπὸς ἡδονή. ὑπὲρ δὲ τῆς ἐνταῦθα δαιμονῆς, ἣν ὁ λόγος εἰς ἀφθαρσίαν παιδαγωγεῖ “ Neither,” saith vó eis he," is food our work, nor pleasure our aim; but "we use them only as necessaries to our present "abode, in which our reason is instituting and training us up to a life incorruptible:" i. e. they did so use them, as that, as much as in them lay, they might wean their souls from the pleasures of them, that so they might have the better appetite to that spiritual food upon which they were to live for ever. 66 And therefore thus to temperate and restrain ourselves in the use of bodily pleasures is one of the necessary virtues of the Christian life: for hitherto tend all those precepts concerning abstaining from fleshly lusts, which war against our souls, 1 Pet. ii. 11. and mortifying the deeds of the body, Rom. viii. 13. and keeping under the body, 1 Cor. ix. 27. and putting off the body of the sins of the flesh, Col. ii. 11. And we are strictly enjoined to be temperate in all things, to watch and be sober, and walk honestly as in the day, not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in excess of wine, revellings, and banquetings. The sense of all which is, that we should not indulge our bodily appetites to the vitiating and depraving of our spiritual; that we should not plunge ourselves so far in the pleasures of the flesh, as to drown our sense and perception of divine and heavenly enjoyments: but that we should so far subdue and mortify our sensuality, as that it may not have the dominion over us, nor be the prevalent delight Pædag. lib. ii. c. 1. p. 139. and complacency of our souls; but that the commanding bias and swaying propension within us may be towards divine and heavenly enjoyments; that so, when we leave this body, we may not be so wedded to the pleasures of it, as not to be able to be happy without them; but that we may carry with us into eternity such a quick sense and lively relish of the pleasures above, as to be able to live upon, and be for ever satisfied with them. So that at first view it is evident how much the practice of this virtue conduces to our future happiness. For by taking us off from all excess of bodily pleasure, it disposes us to enjoy the pleasures of heaven, and connaturalizes our souls to them: so that when, after a long exercise of temperance, we come to leave the body, our soul will be so loosened from it beforehand, and rendered so indifferent to the delights of it, that we shall be able to part both with it and them, without any great regret or reluctancy, and to live from them for ever, without any disquieting longings or hankerings after them. For as, when we are grown up by age and experience to a sense of more manly pleasures, we despise nuts and rattles, which, when we were children, we accounted our happiness, and should have reckoned ourselves undone had we been deprived of them; so when, by the practice of a severe temperance, we have acquired a through sense of the pleasures of virtue and religion, we shall look upon all our bodily pleasures as the little toys and fooleries of our infant state, with which we pleased our childish fancies when we knew no better. And whereas had we been deprived of them then, we should have cried and bemoaned ourselves, as little children do when they lose their play-games, and reckon ourselves undone and miserable; upon the experience we have had of the nobler and more generous pleasures of religion, we shall be able to despise these little, poor entertainments of our infancy; to take our leave of them without a tear in our eyes, and to live eternally without missing them. For our minds being for the main reconciled to rational and spiritual pleasures, we shall put off all remains of bodily lust with our bodies, and so fly away into the spiritual world with none but pure and spiritual appetites about us; where meeting with an infinite fulness of spiritual joys and pleasures, of which we had many a foretaste in the body, our predisposed mind will presently close with and feed upon them with such an unspeakable content and satisfaction, as will ravish it for ever from the thoughts of all other pleasures. So that now we shall not only be able to subsist without fleshly delights, but to despise and scorn them; our faculties being treated every moment with far nobler fare and better joys. V. Another of those virtues which belong to a man considered merely as a rational animal, is humility; which consists in a modest and lowly opinion of ourselves, and of our own acquisitions, merits, or endowments; or in not valuing ourselves beyond what is due and just, upon the account of any good we are possessed of, whether it be internal or external. For pride, or an overweaning self-conceit, is the bane of all our virtue and happiness. It causes us to overlook our defects, and thereby hinders us from making farther improvement; and it possesses us with an opinion, that we deserve more than we have, and thereby renders us dissatisfied with our present enjoyments. For by how much any man overvalues himself, by so much he undervalues what he enjoys; because while he compares what he enjoys with the fond opinion that he hath of himself, he always finds it short of his desert, and so can never be satisfied with it. Yea, such is the cross and capricious humour of a proud spirit, that the more it possesses, the bigger it swells with the opinion of its own desert; and the more it is opinionated of its own desert, the less it is satisfied with that which it possesses and enjoys. For when a man is exceeding apt to flatter and coax himself, he will catch at any pretence to exalt his own merit and desert, and be ready to measure it, not only by what he is, but by what he has too; and then reckoning his outward possessions to be the rewards or products of his inward worth, the more he has, the more he will still imagine he deserves to have. So that his opinion of his own desert will still run on so fast before his enjoyments, that though they should follow it never so close, as the hinder wheels of a chariot do the fore ones, yet it would be impossible for them to overtake it: and so long as he conceives his enjoyments to be behind his desert, he will be always discontented and dissatisfied with them; and while he continues of this humour, the utmost bliss and glory that heaven affords would not be able to satisfy him. For if he were set equal in glory with the highest saint, he would be so puffed and exalted by it in his own conceit, that he would fancy he merited the glory of an angel; and if from thence he were advanced to the throne of an archangel, he would flatter himself into a conceit, that he deserved the glory and dignity of a god: and so long as he |