In all cases where our thoughts are confined to ourselves, and we aim only at our own interest and pleasure, we act on a principle destructive of morality: the ability we have of extending our views beyond ourselves, and considering what is fit, proper, and reasonable, with regard to others, is the foundation of morality: this subject extended, and various instances given, in which sensuality makes a man overlook what is due to others, and lose all regard for justice, equity, and compassion.

Hence it is plain that the virtue of a man consists in bounding his desires within the limits of reason and morality: these limits the lusts of the flesh are perpetually transgressing; every such transgression is a wound to the soul, which weakens its natural faculties, and renders it less able to discharge its proper office, &c. Hence arises another consideration, showing how effectually sensual lusts do war against the soul, by extinguishing natural conscience, and not leaving a man reason and religion enough to repent of his iniquities: for the mind grows sensual by degrees, loses all relish for serious thought and contemplation, and contracts a brutal courage that cares neither for God nor man: this point enlarged on. The sensual man has but one hope with respect to futurity, and a sad one it is, that he may die like the beasts that perish: but nature, reason, religion, deny him this comfort, and with one voice proclaim, that God has appointed a day in which he will judge the world. The terrors of that day to sensualists and sinners described. Conclusion: a return to the argument: the sensual man's condition briefly reviewed: the sum of his account is, that he has his portion of enjoyment in this world with the brutes, and in the next his punishment with wicked spirits: this is the war which the lusts of the flesh wage against the soul: from such enemies a wise man ought to fly, for they have power to cast both body and soul into hell.

DISCOURSE XXIII.

I PETER, CHAP. II.-VERSE 11.

Dearly beloved, I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul.

PART I.

THE exhortations of Scripture to abstain from fleshly lusts, or lusts of the flesh, are so many, the expression itself is so familiar to Christians, and so well understood, that there is no need, I think, of many words to explain the subject matter of the advice now before us. Some sins are privileged by their impurity from being exposed as they deserve: a modest tongue cannot relate, nor a modest ear receive an account, without great pain, of the various kinds of lewdness practised in the world; for as the Apostle to the Ephesians remarks, ‘It is a shame even to speak of those things which are done of them in secret.' Had he lived in our times, he might perhaps have varied his phrase, and said, which are done of them in public.' These impurities are, in one sense of the word, no longer works of darkness,' they appear at noon-day. Since therefore they no longer affect to be disguised, they will speak for themselves what they are: I have no mind to speak for them.

The Apostle in the text has pointed out to us the common source from whence vices of this kind proceed: they arise from 'fleshly lusts' words which carry a reason in them, to all who value their reason, not to give themselves up to the dominion of appetites, made not to govern, but to serve the man. But reason, when it becomes a slave to vice, must do the drudgery of vice, and support its cause: and therefore, on this topic, vice has borrowed some assistance from reason, and made a show of arguing in its own defence. These fleshly lusts,' as

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the Scripture calls them, others are willing to call natural desires; and then the question is asked, how it becomes so heinous an offence to comply with the desires which God, for wise reasons, has made to be part of the nature which he has given us? Were this question asked in behalf of the brute creatures, we would readily answer, we accuse them not; but when man asks it in his own behalf, he forgets that he has another question to answer before he can be intitled to ask this, for what purpose was reason and understanding given to man? Brutes have no higher rule to act by than these instincts and natural impressions; and therefore, in acting according to these, they act up to the dignity of the nature bestowed on them, and are blameless. But can you say the same of man? Does he act up to the dignity of his nature, when he makes that his rule which is common to him and the beasts: when he pursues the same inclinations, and with as little regard to virtue and morality? Why is man distinguished from the brute creatures by so superior a degree of reason and understanding, by a knowlege of moral good and evil, by a notion of God his Creator and Governor, by a certain expectation of judgment, arising from a sense of his being accountable, if, after all, there is but one rule of acting for him and for the beasts that perish? Let these desires be natural; yet tell me, does the addition of reason make no difference? Is a creature endowed with knowlege at liberty to indulge his desires with the same freedom as a creature that has no reason to restrain it? If this be absurd, it is to little purpose to plead that the desires are natural, since we have reason given us to direct them, and are not at liberty to do whatever appetite prompts us to do, but must in all things consider what is reasonable and fit for us to do for surely there is no case in which a reasonable creature may renounce the direction of reason.

It will be farther urged, to what purpose were these desires given, which are apparently the cause of much mischief and iniquity in the world, and oftentimes a great disturbance to the best in a life of religion? In reply to this, it will be necessary to consider how far these desires are natural.

If we look into mankind, we shall find that the desires which are common, and therefore may be called natural, are

such as are necessary to the preservation of individuals, and such as are necessary for the preservation of the species. At the same time that we find these natural desires, we discover the ends which nature has to serve by them; and reason from thence discerns the true rule for the government and direction of them. Our bodies are so made, that they cannot be supported without constant nourishment: hunger and thirst therefore are natural appetites given us, to be constant calls to us to administer to the body the necessary supports of the animal life. Ask any man of common sense now, how far these appetites ought to be indulged; he cannot help seeing that nature calls for no more than is proper for the health and preservation of the body, and that reason prescribes the same bounds; and that when these appetites are made occasions of intemperance, an offence is committed against as well the order of nature, as the rule of reason. The excess therefore of these appetites is not natural, but vicious: the intemperate man is not called on by his natural appetites, but he does, in truth, call on them to assist his sensuality, and often loads them so hard that they recoil, and nauseate what is obtruded on them. An habitual drunkard may have, and has, I suppose, an uncommon craving on him; but the excess of his craving is not natural it is not of God's making, but of his own, the effect of a long practised intemperance and such an appetite will be so far from being an excuse that it is itself a crime.

In other instances of a like nature, they who have inflamed desires, commonly owe the excess of them to their own misconduct. There is a great deal of difference between men of the same temper, where one shuns, and where the other seeks the temptation; where one employs his wit to minister to his appetite, and the other uses his reason to subdue it: the passions of one, by being used to subjection, are taught to obey; the appetites of the other, knowing no restraint, take fire on every occasion; and the corrupted mind, instead of opposing, endeavors to heighten as well the temptation as the sin and often it is seen that the relish for the sin outlasts the temptation a plain evidence that there is a greater corruption in sensual men than can be charged on natural inclination.

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Since therefore the desires of nature are in themselves inno

cent, and ordained to serve good ends; since God has given us reason and understanding to moderate and direct our passions; it is in vain to plead our passion in defence or excuse of sensuality, unless at the same time we could plead that we were void of reason, and had no higher principle than passion to influence our actions: for if it be the work of reason to keep the passions within their proper bounds, the reasonable creature must be accountable for the work of his passion. And so the case is in human judicatures: anger and revenge, pride and ambition, are very headstrong passions, and the cause of great mischief in the world; but they cannot be alleged in excuse of the iniquity they produce, because the reason of the offender makes him liable to answer for the extravagance of his passion. Take away reason, and bring a madman or an ideot into judgment, and the magistrate has nothing to say to him, whatever his passions, or the effects of them, may be.

It is the work of reason then to preside over the passions: and seeing it is so, let us consider what great motives we have to guard against the irregularities of them. St. Peter is very earnest in the exhortation of the text, Dearly beloved, I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul.' Here are two things offered to our consideration as motives:

First, that we are 'strangers and pilgrims,' and ought therefore to abstain from fleshly lusts.

Secondly, that fleshly lusts war against the soul,' and therefore we ought to abstain from them. I shall consider them in their order.

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First, we are strangers and pilgrims,' and ought therefore to abstain from fleshly lusts.

St. Peter directs this epistle to the strangers scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia ;' which has led some to think that he applies to them in the text under the same notion, and calls them strangers and pilgrims' on account of their dispersion on the earth. But I see no force in the exhortation on this view. With respect to religion and morality, there is no more reason to abstain from vice in a foreign country than in your own. There may possibly be sometimes prudential reasons for so doing: but this is too