As excessive eating or drinking both makes the body sickly and lazy,
fit for nothing but sleep, and besots the mind, as it clogs up with
crudities the way through which the spirits should pass,[54] bemiring
them, and making them move heavily, as a coach in a deep way; thus
doth all immoderate use of the world and its delights wrong the soul
in its spiritual condition, makes it sickly and feeble, full of
spiritual distempers and inactivity, benumbs the graces of the Spirit,
and fills the soul with sleepy vapours, makes it grow secure and heavy
in spiritual exercises, and obstructs the way and motion of the Spirit
of God, in the soul. Therefore, if you would be spiritual, healthful,
and vigorous, and enjoy much of the consolations of Heaven, be sparing
and sober in those of the earth, and what you abate of the one, shall
be certainly made up in the other.
[54] Technical phrases of an obsolete System will yet retain their
places, nay, acquire universal currency, and become sterling in the
language, when they at once represent the feelings, and give an
apparent solution of them by visual images easily managed by the
fancy. Such are many terms and phrases from the _Humoral_ Physiology
long exploded, but which are far more popular then any description
would be from the theory that has taken its place.