say as well as you can, for to give this rule is to suppose two things, both sometimes alike impracticable; the one, that such a man can be found, and the other, that he will be heard with deference. When we are so happy as to find this inestimable treasure, we have found a remedy of marvellous efficacy against the disorders which the passions produce in the mind. Let us make the trial. Suppose a faithful friend should address one of you in this manner. Heaven has united in your favour the most happy circumstances. The blood of the greatest heroes animates you, and your name alone is an encomium. Besides this you have an affluent fortune, and Providence has given you abundance to support your dignity, and to discharge every thing that your splendid station requires. You have also a fine and acute genius, and your natural talents are cultivated by an excellent education. Your health seems free from the infirmities of life, and if any man may hope for a long duration here, you are the man who may expect it. With all these noble advantages you may aspire at any thing. But one thing is wanting. You are dazzled with your own splendour, and your feeble eyes are almost put out with the brilliancy of your condition. Your imagination struck with the idea of the prince whom you have the honour to serve, makes you consider yourself as a kind of royal personage. You have formed your family on the plan of the court. You are proud, arrogant, haughty. Your seat resembles a tribunal, and all your expressions are sentences from which it is a crime to appeal. As you will never suffer yourself to be contradicted, you seem to be applauded; but a sacrifice is made to your vanity and not to your merit, and people bow not to your reason but to your tyranny. As they fear you avail yourself of your credit to brave others, each endeavours to oppose you, and to throw down in your absence the altar he had erected in your presence, and on which no incense sincerely offered burns, except that which you yourself put there. So much for irregular passions in the mind. Let us now lay down a few rules for the government of the senses. yet it cannot excuse those who do not make continual efforts to correct it. To acknowledge that we are constitutionally inclined to violate the laws of God, and to live quietly in practices directed by constitutional heat, is to have the interior tainted. It is an evidence that the malady which at first attacked only the exterior of the man, has communicated itself to all the frame, and infected the vitals. We oppose this against the frivolous excuses of some sinners, who, while they abandon themselves like brute beasts to the most guilty passions, lay all the blame on the misfortune of their constitution. They say their will has no part in their excesses-they cannot change their constitution-and God cannot justly blame them for irregularities, which proceeded from the natural union of the soul with the body. Indeed they prove by their talk, that they would be very sorry not to have a constitution to serve for an apology for sin, and to cover the licentiousness of casting off an obligation, which the law of God, according to them, requires of none but such as have received from nature the power of discharging it. If these maxims be admitted, what becomes of the morality of Jesus Christ? What become of the commands concerning mortification and repentance? But people who talk thus, intend less to correct their faults than to palliate them; and this discourse is intended only for such as are willing to apply means to free themselves from the dominion of irregular passions. Certainly the best advice that can be given to a man whose constitution inclines him to sin, is, that he avoid opportunities, and flee from such objects as affect and disconcert him. It does not depend on you to be unconcerned in sight of an object fatal to your innocence: but it does depend on you to keep out of the way of seeing it. It does not depend on you to be animated at the sight of a gaming table: but it does depend on you to avoid such whimsical places, where sharping goes for merit. Let us not be presumptuous. Let us make diffidence a principle of virtue. Let us remember St. Peter, he was fired with zeal, he thought every thing possible to his love, his presumption was the cause of his fall, and many by following his example have yielded to temptation, and have found the truth of an apocryphal maxim, "he that loveth danger shall perish therein," Eccles. iii. 26. Before we proceed, we cannot help deploring the misery of a man who is impelled by the disorders of his senses, and the heat of his constitution, to criminal passions. Such a man often deserves pity more than indignation. A bad constitution is sometimes compatible with After all, that virtue which owes its firma good heart. We cannot think without trem-ness only to the want of an opportunity for bling of an ungrateful man, a cheat, a traitor, vice is very feeble, and an assassin; for their crimes always suppose liberty of mind and consent of will: but a man driven from the post of duty by the heat of his blood, by an overflow of humours, by the fermentation and flame of his spirits, often sins by constraint, and so to speak, protests against his crime even while he commits it. Hence we often see angry people become full of love and pity, always inclined to forgive, or always ready to ask pardon; while others cold, calm, tranquil, revolve eternal hatreds in their souls, and leave them for an inheritance to their children. However, though the irregularity of the senses diminishes the atrociousness of the crime, argues very little attainment only to be able to resist our passions in the absence of temptation. I recollect a maxim of St. Paul, "I wrote unto you not to company with fornicators," but I did not mean that you should have no conversation "with fornicators of. this world, for then must ye needs go out of the world," 1 Cor. v. 9, 10. Literally, to avoid all objects dangerous to our passions, "we must go out of the world." Are there no remedies adapted to the necessity we are under of living among mankind? Is there no such thing as correcting, with the assistance of grace, the irregularities of our constitution, and freeing ourselves from its domin: ion, so that we may be able, if not to seek our temptations for the sake of the glory of subdu- | of the spirits this way rather than that. What ing them, at least to resist them, and not suffer them to conquer us, when in spite of all our caution they will attack us? Three remedies are necessary to our success in this painful undertaking; to suspend acts-to flee idleness-to mortify sense. We must suspend acts. Let us form a just idea of temperament or constitution. It consists in one of these two things, or in both together; in a disposition of organs in the nature of animal spirits. For example, a man is angry when the organs which serve that passion, are more accessible than others, and when his animal spirits are easily heated. Hence it necessarily follows, that two things must be done to correct constitutional anger; the one, the disposition of the organs must be changed; and the other, the nature of the spirits must be changed, so that on the one hand, the spirits no longer finding these organs disposed to give them passage, and on the other hand the spirits having lost a facility of taking fire, there will be within the man none of the revolutions of sense, which he could not resist when they were excited. A suspension of acts changes the disposition of the organs. The more the spirits enter into these organs, the more easy is the access, and the propensity insurmountable; the more acts of anger there are, the more incorrigible will anger become; because the more acts of anger there are, the more accessible will the organs of anger be, so that the animal spirits will naturally fall there by their own motion. The spirits then must be restrained. The bias they have to the ways to which they have been habituated by the practice of sin must be turned, and we must always remember a truth often inculcated, that is, that the more acts of sin we commit the more difficult to correct will habits of sin become; but that when by taking pains with ourselves, we have turned the course of the spirits, they will take different ways, and this is done by suspending the acts. It is not impossible to change even the nature of our animal spirits. This is done by suspending what contributed to nourish them in a state of disorder. What contributes to the nature of spirits? Diet, exercise, air, the whole course of life we live. It is very difficult in a discourse like this, to give a full catalogue of remedies proper to regulate the animal spirits and the humours of the body. I believe it would be dangerous to many people. Some men are so made, that reflections too accurate on this article would be more likely to increase their vices than to diminish them. However, there is not one person willing to turn his attention to this subject who is not able to become a preacher to himself. Let a man enter into himself, let him survey the history of his excesses, let him examine all circumstances, let him recollect what passed within him on such and such occasions, let him closely consider what moved and agitated him, and he will learn more by such a meditation, than all sermons and casuistical books can teach him. The second remedy is to avoid idleness. What is idleness? It is that situation of soul, in which no effort is made to direct the course must happen then? We have supposed, that some organs of a man constitutionally irregular are more accessible than others. When we are idle, and make no efforts to direct the animal spirits, they naturally take the easiest way, and consequently direct their own course to those organs which passion has made easy of access. To avoid this disorder, we must be employed, and always employed. This rule is neither impracticable, nor difficult. We do not mean, that the soul should be always on the stretch in meditation or prayer. An innocent recreation, an easy conversation, agreeable exercise, may have each its place in occupations of this kind. For these reasons we applaud those, who make such maxims parts of the education of youth, as either to teach them an art, or employ them in some bodily exercise. Not that we propose this maxim as it is received in some families, where they think all the merit of a young gentleman consists in hunting, riding, or some exercise of that kind; and that of a young lady, in distinguishing herself in dancing, music, or needle-work. We mean, that these employments should be subordinate to, others more serious, and more worthy of an immortal soul, that they should serve only for relaxation, so that by thus taking part in the innocent pleasures of the world, we may be better prepared to avoid the guilty pursuits of it. The third remedy is mortification of the senses, a remedy which St. Paul always used, "I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection," 1 Cor. ix. 27. Few people have such sound notions. Some casuists have stretched the subject beyond its due bounds so as to establish this principle, that sinful man can enjoy no pleasure without a crime, because sin having been his delight, pain ought to be for ever his lot. This principle may perhaps be probably considered in regard to unregenerate men: but it cannot be admitted in regard to true Christians. Accordingly, we place among those who have unsound notions of mortification, all such as make it consist in vain practices, useless in themselves, and having no relation to. the principal design of religion, "bodily exercises profiting little:" they are "commandments of men," in the language of Scripture. But if some having entertained extravagant notions of mortification, others have restrained the subject too much. Under pretence that the religion of Jesus Christ is spiritual, they have neglected the study and practice of evangelical morality: but we have heard the example of St. Paul, and it is our duty to imitate it. We must "keep under the body," and "bring it into subjection," the senses must be bridled by violence, innoceht things must often be refused them, in order to obtain the mastery when they require unlawful things; we must fast, we must avoid ease, because it tends to effeminacy. All this is difficult, I grant: but if the undertaking be hazardous, success will be glorious.* Thirty, forty years, employed in reforming an irregular constitution, ought not to be regretted. What a glory to have subdued the senses! What a glory * See a beautiful passage of Plato in his eighth book De legibus. to have restored the soul to its primitive superiority, to have crucified the “body of sin," to lead it in triumph, and to destroy, that is to annihilate it, according to an expression of Scripture, and so to approach those pure spirits, in whom the motions of matter can make no alteration! The disorders produced by the passions in the imagination, and against which also we ought to furnish you with some remedies, are like those complicated disorders, which require opposite remedies, because they are the effect of opposite causes, so that the means employed to diminish one part not unfrequently increase another. It should seem at first, that the best remedy which can be applied to disorders introduced by the passions into the imagination, is well to consider the nature of the objects of the passions, and thoroughly to know the world: and yet on the other hand, it may truly be said, that the most certain way of succeeding would be to know nothing at all about the world. If you know the pleasures of the world, if you know by experience the pleasure of gratifying a passion, you will fall into the misfortune we wish you to avoid; you will receive bad impressions; you will acquire dangerous recollections, and a seducing memory will be a new occasion of sin: but if you do not know the pleasures of the world, you will be likely to form ideas too flattering of it, you will create images more beautiful than the originals themselves, and by the immense value you set upon the victim, when you are just going to offer it up perhaps you will retreat, and not make the sacrifice. Hence we often see persons whom the superstition or avarice of their families has in childhood confined in a nunnery (suppose it were allowable in other cases, yet in this case done prematurely,) I say, these persons not knowing the world, wish for its pleasures with more ardour than if they had actually experienced them. So they who have never been in company with the great, generally imagine that their society is full of charms, that all is pleasure in their company, and that a circle of rich and fashionable people sitting in an elegant apartment is far more lively and animated than one composed of people of inferior rank, and middling fortune. Hence also it is, that they, who, after having lived a dissipated life, have the rare happiness of renouncing it, do so with more sincerity than others, who never knew the vanity of such a life by experience. So very different are the remedies for disorders of the imagination. But as in complicated disorders, to which we have compared them, a wise physician chiefly attends to the most dangerous complaint, and distributes his remedies so as to counteract those which are less fatal, we will observe the same method on this occasion. Doubtless the most dangerous way to obtain a contempt for the pleasures of the world, is to get an experimental knowledge of them, in order to detach ourselves more easily from them by the thorough sense we have of their vanity. We hazard a fall by approaching too near, and such very often is the ascendancy of the world over us, that we cannot detach ourselves from it though we are disgusted with it. Let us endeavour then to preserve our imagination pure; let us abstain from pleasures to preclude the I would advise such a man, when his pas- In fine, to heal the disorders which the passions produce in the heart, two things must be done. First, the vanity of all the creatures must be observed; and this will free us from the desire of possessing and collecting the whole in order to fill up the void which single enjoyments leave. Secondly, we must ascend from creatures to the Creator, in order to get rid of the folly of attributing to the world the perfection and sufficiency of God. Let us free our hearts from an avidity for new pleasures by comprehending all creatures in our catalogue of vanities. I allow, inconstancy, and love of novelty are in some sense rational. It is natural for a being exposed to trouble to choose to change his condition, and as that in which he is yields certain trouble, to try whether another will not be something easier. It is natural to a man who has found nothing but imperfect pleasure in former enjoyments, to desire new objects. The most noble souls, the greatest geniuses, the largest hearts between the motions of my senses and agreeable sensations in my soul, it is God who has established the union between motion and sensa→ tion. The particles emitted by this flower could not necessarily move the nerves of my smell, it is God who has established this law; the motion of my smelling nerves cannot naturally excite a sensation of agreeable odour in my soul, it is God who has established this union; and so of the rest. God is supreme happiness, the source from which all the charms of creatures proceed. He is the light of the sun, the flavour of food, the fragrance of odours, the harmony of sounds, he is whatever is capable of producing real pleasure, because he eminently possesses all felicity, and because all kinds of felicity flow from him as their spring. Because we love pleasure we ought to love God, from whom pleasure proceeds; because we love pleasure we ought to abstain from it, when God prohibits it, because he is infinitely able to indemnify us for all the sacrifices we make to his orders. To ascend from creatures to the Creator is the last remedy we prescribe for the disorders of the passions. Great duties they are: but they are founded on strong motives. Of these St. Peter mentions one of singular efficacy, that is, that we are "strangers and pilgrims" upon earth. "Dearly beloved, I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul." The believers to whom the apostle wrote this epistle, were "strangers and pilgrims" in three senses-as exiles-as Christians-and as mortals. have often the most inconstancy and love of novelty, because the extent of their capacity and the space of their wishes make them feel more than other men, the diminutiveness and incompetency of all creatures. But the misfortune is, man cannot change his situation without entering into another almost like that from which he came. Let us persuade ourselves that there is nothing substantial in creatures, that all conditions, besides characters of vanity common to all human things, have some imperfections peculiar to themselves. If you rise out of obscurity, you will not have the troubles of obscurity, but you will have those of conspicuous stations; you will make talk for every body, you will be exposed to envy, you will be responsible to each individual for your conduct. If you quit solitude, you will not have the troubles of solitude, but you will have those of society; you will live under restraint, you will lose your liberty, inestimable liberty, the greatest treasure of mankind, you will have to bear with the faults of all people connected with you. If heaven gives you a family, you will not have the troubles of such as have none, but you will have others necessarily resulting from domestic connexions; you will multiply your miseries by the number of your children, you will fear for their fortune, you will be in pain about their health, and you will tremble for fear of their death. My brethren, I repeat it again, there is nothing substantial in this life. Every condition has difficulties of its own as well as the common inanity of all human things. If, in some sense, nothing ought to surprise us less than the inçonstancy of mankind and their 1. As exiles. This epistle is addressed to love of novelty, in another view, nothing ought such strangers as were scattered throughout to astonish us more, at least there is nothing Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithymore weak and senseless. A man who thinks nia. But who were these strangers? Comto remedy the vanity of earthly things by run-mentators are divided. Some think they were ning from one object to another, is like him, who, in order to determine whether there be in a great heap of stones any one capable of nourishing him, should resolve to taste them all one after another. Let us shorten our labour. Let us put all creatures into one class. Let us cry, vanity in all. If we determine to pursue new objects, let us choose such as are capable of satisfying us. Let us not seek them here below. They are not to be found in this old Strangers are generally very little beloved in world, which God has cursed. They are in the place of their exile. Although rational the " 'new heavens, and the new earth," which people treat them with hospitality; though nareligion promises. To comprehend all creature inspires some with respect for the wretched tures in a catalogue of vanities is an excellent of every character; though piety animates some rule to heal the heart of the disorders of passion. with veneration for people firm in their religious Next we must frequently ascend from crea- sentiments; yet, it must be allowed, the bulk tures to the Creator, and cease to consider them of the people usually see them with other eyes; as the supreme good. We intend here a devo- they envy them the air they breathe, and the tion of all times, places, and circumstances; for, earth they walk on; they consider them as so my brethren, one great source of depravity in many usurpers of their rights; and they think, the most eminent saints is to restrain the spirit that as much as exiles partake of the benefits of of religion to certain times, places, and circum- government, and the liberty of trade, so much stances. There is an art of glorifying God by they retrench from the portion of the natives. exercising religion every where. "Whether ye eat or drink, or whatsoever you do, do all to the glory of God," 1 Cor. x. 13. Do you enjoy the pleasures of sense? Say to yourself, God is the author of this pleasure. The nourishment I derive from my food is not necessarily produced by aliments, they have no natural power to move my nerves, God has communicated it to them; there is no necessary connexion Jews who had been carried out of their country in divers revolutions under Tiglath Pileser, Salmaneser, Nebuchadnezzar, and Ptolemy. Others think they were the Jewish Christians who fled on account of the martyrdom of Stephen. Certain it is these Christians were strangers and probably exiles for religion. Now people of this character have special motives to govern their passions. Besides, the people commonly judge of merit by fortune, and as fortune and banishment seldom go together, popular prejudice seldom runs high in favour of exiles. Jealousy views them with a suspicious eye, malice imputes crimes to them, injustice accuses them for public calamities we will not enlarge. Let an inviolable fidelity to the state, an unsuspected love to government, an unreserved conformity to religion, silence accusation, and compel, so thrones and crowns which God prepares. His to speak, an esteem that is not natural and free. | riches are not of this world, they depend on Moreover, religious exiles have given up a great treasures in heaven, where "thieves do not deal for conscience, and they must choose either break through and steal," Matt. vi. 20. It is to lose the reward of their former labours, or to allowable for a man educated in these great persevere. A man who has only taken a few principles, but whose infirmity prevents his aleasy steps in religion, if he let loose his passions, ways thinking on them; it is indeed allowable may be supposed rational in this, his life is all for a man, who cannot always bend his mind of a piece. He considers present interest as the to reflection, meditation, and elevation above supreme good, and he employs himself wholly the world; it is indeed allowable for such a in advancing his present interest, he lays down man sometimes to unbend his mind, to amuse a principle, he infers a consequence, and he himself with cultivating a tulip, or embellishmakes sin produce all possible advantage. An ing his head with a crown: but that this tulip, abominable principle certainly, but a uniform that this crown, should seriously occupy such train of principle and consequence; a fatal ad- a man; that they should take up the principal vantage in a future state, but a real advantage attention of a Christian, who has such refined in the present: but such a stranger as we have ideas and such glorious hopes, this, this is endescribed, a man banished his country for reli- tirely incompatible. gion, if he continues to gratify fleshly passions, is a contradictory creature, a sort of idiot, who is at one and the same time a martyr to vice and a martyr to virtue. He has the fatal secret of rendering both time and eternity wretched, and arming against himself heaven and earth, God and Satan, paradise and hell. On the one hand, for the sake of religion he quits every thing dear, and renounces the pleasure of his native soil, the society of his friends, family connexions, and every prospect of preferment and fortune; thus he is a martyr for virtue, by this he renders the present life inconvenient, and arms against himself the world, Satan, and hell. On the other hand, he stabs the practical part of religion, violates all the sacred laws of austerity, retirement, humility, patience, and love, all which religion most earnestly recommends; by so doing he becomes a martyr for sin, renders futurity miserable, and arms against himself God, heaven, and eternity. The same God who forbade superstition and idolatry, enjoined all the virtues we have enumerated, and prohibited every opposite vice. If men be determined to be damned, better go the broad than the narrow way. Who but a madman would attempt to go to hell by encountering the difficulties that lie in the way to heaven! 2. The believers to whom Peter wrote were strangers as Christians, and therefore strangers because believers. What is the fundamental maxim of the Christian religion? Jesus Christ told Pilate, "My kingdom is not of this world," John xviii. 36. This is the maxim of a Christian, the first great leading principle, "his kingdom is not of this world;" his happiness and misery, his elevation and depression, depend on nothing in this world. 3. In fine, we are strangers and pilgrims by necessity of nature as mortal men. If this life were eternal, it would be a question whether it were more advantageous for man to gratify his passions than to subdue them; whether the tranquillity, the equanimity, the calm of a man perfectly free, and entirely master of himself, would not be preferable to the troubles, conflicts, and turbulence, of a man in bondage to his passions. Passing this question, we will grant, that were this life eternal, prudence and self-love, well understood, would require some indulgence of passion. In this case there would be an immense distance between the rich and the poor, and riches should be acquired; there would be an immense distance between the high and the low, and elevation should be sought; there would be an immense distance between him who mortified his senses, and him who gratified them, and sensual plea sures would be requisite. But death, death renders all these things alike; at least, it makes so little difference between the one and the other, that it is hardly discernible. The most sensible motive there fore to abate the passions, is death. The tomb is the best course of morality. Study avarice in the coffin of a miser; this is the man who accumulated heap upon heap, riches upon riches, see a few boards enclose him, and a few square inches of earth contain him. Study ambition in the grave of that enterprising man; see his noble designs, his extensive projects, his boundless expedients are all shattered and sunk in this fatal gulf of human projects. Approach the tomb of the proud man, and there investigate pride; see the mouth that pronounced lofty expressions, condemned The first principle is the ground of the apos- to eternal silence, the piercing eyes that contle's exhortation. The passions destroy this vulsed the world with fear, covered with a maxim by supposing the world capable of midnight bloom, the formidable arm, that dismaking us happy or miserable. Revenge sup-tributed the destinies of mankind, without moposes our honour to depend on the world, on the opinion of those idiots who have determined that a man of honour ought to revenge an affront. Ambition supposes our elevation to depend on the world, that is, on the dignities which ambitious men idolize. Avarice supposes our riches depend on this world, on gold, silver, and estates. These are not the ideas of a Christian. His honour is not of this world, it depends on the ideas of God, who is a just dispenser of glory. His elevation is not of this world, it depends on VOL. II.-11 tion and life. Go to the tomb of the nobleman, and there study quality; behold his magnificent titles, his royal ancestors, his flattering inscriptions, his learned genealogies, are all gone, or going to be lost with himself in the same dust. Study voluptuousness at the grave of the voluptuous; see, his senses are destroyed, his organs broken to pieces, his bones scattered at the grave's mouth, and the whole temple of sensual pleasure subverted from its foundations. Here we finish this discourse. There is a |