immortal beings inade for eternity? May God grant, we may be infinitely more desirous to see them happy in heaven than prosperous on earth! May God continue these children, so necessary to the pleasure of our lives to our last moments! God grant, if we be required to give them up to the grave, we may have all the submission that is necessary to sustain such violent shocks! My brethren, this article cuts the thread of my discourse. May God answer all the prayers I have uttered, and that far greater number which I have suppressed! Amen. SERMON VIII. The Passions. 1 PETER ii. 11. Dearly beloved, I beseech you, as strangers and pil grims, abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul. THE words you have heard, my brethren, offer four subjects of meditation to your minds. First, the nature of the passions-secondly, the disorders. of them-thirdly, the remedies to be applied-and lastly, the motives that engage us to subdue them. In the first place we will give you a general idea of what the apostle calls fleshly lusts, or in modern style the passions. We will examine secondly the war which they wage against the soul. Our third part will inform you of the means of abstaining from these fleshly lusts. And in the last place we will endeavour to make you feel the power of this motive, as strangers and pilgrims, and to press home this exhortation of the apostle, "Dearly beloved, I beseech you, as strangers and pilgrins, abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul." 1. In order to understand the nature of the passions, we will explain the subject by a few prelimiinary remarks. 1. An intelligent being ought to love every thing that can elevate, perpetuate, and make him happy; and to avoid whatever can degrade, confine, and render him miserable. This, far from being a human depravity, is a perfection of nature. Man hath it in common with celestial intelligences, and with God himself. This reflection removes a false sense, which the language of St. Peter may seen at first to convey, as if the apostle meant by eradicating fleshly lusts to destroy the true interests of man. The most ancient enemies of the Christian religion loaded it with this reproach, because they did not understand it; and some superficial people, who know no more of religion than the surface, pretend to render it odious by the same means. Under pretence that the Christian religion forbids ambition, they say it degrades man, and under pretence that it forbids misguided selflove, they say it makes man miserable. A gross error! A false idea of Christianity! If the gospel humbles, it is to elevate us; if it forbids a self-love ill-directed, it is in order to conduct us to substantial happiness. By fleshly lusts St. Peter doth not mean such desires of the heart as put us on aspiring after real happiness and true glory. 2. An intelligent being united to a body, and lodged if I may speak so, in a portion of matter, under this law, that according to the divers motions of this matter he shall receive sensations of pleasure or pain, must naturally love to excite within himself sensations of pleasure, and to avoid painful feelings. This is agreeable to the institution of the Creator. He intends, for reasons of adorable wisdom, to preserve a society of mankind for several ages on earth. To accomplish this design, he hath so ordered it, that what contributes to the support of the body shall give the soul pleasure, and that what would dissolve it would give pain, so that by these means we may preserve ourselves. Aliments are agreeable; the dissolution of the parts of our bodies is painful; love, hatred, and anger, properly understood, and exercised to a certain degree, are natural and fit. The stoics, who annihilated the passions, did not know man, and the schoolmen, who to comfort people under the gout or the stone, told them that a rational man ought not to pay any regard to what passed in his body, never made many disciples among wise men. This observation affords us a second clue to the meaning of the apostle: at least it gives us a second precaution to avoid an error. By fleshly lusts he doth not mean a natural inclination to preserve the body and the ease of life; he allows love, hatred and anger to a certain degree, and as far as the exercise of them doth not prejudice a greater interest. Observe well this last expression, as far as may be without prejudice to a greater interest. The truth of our second reflection depends on this restriction. 3. A being composed of two substances, one of which is more excellent than the other; a being placed between two interests, one of which is greater than the other, ought, when these two interests clash, to prefer the more noble before the less noble, the greater interest before the less. This third principle is a third clue to what St. Peter calls lusts or passions. Man hath two substances, and two interests. As far as he can without prejudicing his eternal interest he ought to endeavour to promote his temporal interest : but when the two clash he ought to sacrifice the less to the greater. Fleshly lusts is put for what is irregular and depraved in our desires, and what makes us prefer the body before the soul, a temporal before an eternal interest. That this is the meaning of the apostle is clear from his calling these passions or lusts Aeshly. What is the meaning of this word? The scripture generally uses the word in two senses. Sometimes it is literally and properly put for flesh, and sometimes it signifies sin. St. Peter calls the passions fleshly in both these senses; in the first because some come from the body as voluptuousness, anger, drunkenness; and in the second, because they spring from our depravity. Hence the apostle Paul puts among the works of the flesh both those which have their seat in the body, and those which have in a manner no connection with it. Now the works of the flesh are these, adultery, lasciviousness, idolatry, heresies, envyings. According to this the works of the flesh are not only such as are seated in the flesh (for envy and heresy cannot be of this sort) but all depraved dispositions. This a general idea of the passions: but as it is vague and obscure, we will endeavour to explain it more distinctly, and with this view we will shewfirst, what the passions do in the mind-next, what they do in the senses-thirdly, what they are in the imagination-and lastly, what they are in the heart. Four portraits of the passions, four explications of the condition of man. In order to connect the mat |