were an easy matter to bring the Greeks and Romans hither to pass
sentence upon the glutton and the drunkard, and all the luxury of the
taste; for it is too mean an indulgence either for a man or a christian.
It does not become human nature to endanger the welfare of all its
powers, and enslave them all to the single sense of tasting, “I am
greater, says Seneca, and born to greater things, than to be a slave to
this body, or to live merely to become a strainer of meats and drinks.”
The wisest of men, and the best writers of all ages, even in the heathen
nations, have passed their heavy censures on these impure and brutal
follies, whereby we are reduced to the rank of beasts that perish, or
perhaps sunk below them by the practices of intemperance; for there are
but few of that lower rank of creatures, who swill themselves beyond the
demands of nature; or, at least, beyond what nature is able to bear.
Let us argue a little upon this head from the principles of reason, and
consider that the chief designs of food are these two, the support of
our nature, and the refreshment of our spirits. Therefore give food to
him that is hungry, that life may be maintained: Give drink to him that
is thirsty, to assist the supports of life, and to refresh it. Give
strong drink to him that is ready to faint, that his spirits may be
recruited: and wine to him that is heavy of heart, that he may forget
his sorrows; Prov. xxxi. 6, 7. It is evident that every thing, which
goes beyond the mere necessity of nature for its support, does not
presently become sinful; because the refreshment of nature is also one
end and design of our food. Remember that the supports of nature are
designed by the God of nature to make us fit for all the services and
duties of life, and the refreshments of it are ordained by the same
Author of nature, to render us chearful in the discharge of those
duties. The one is necessary to give us a capacity to perform, and the
other proper to render the performance chearful and delightful to us,
and to intermingle our labour with such innocent delights as may awaken
our thankfulness to the bounty of our Creator.
Thence it will follow, that the rich are allowed to furnish their tables
with a variety of pleasing and grateful food; and that feasts designed
for chearful enjoyment of our friends, are by no means forbidden by the
light of reason, or of scripture: For we gain vigour for action, by
having the spirits raised and exhilerated. But it will follow also, that
when we have our choice of what we shall eat or drink, we ought to
determine not merely by pleasure and appetite, nor feed till we are
unfit for service. If we know, or have a good guess beforehand, that
this cup, or this dish, will render us unfit for the proper business of
the day, or incapable of the several duties we are called to; yet if,
for the sake of mere sensuality, we venture upon it, God will number it
among our sins against the light of nature. Those ends therefore for
which God hath ordained our various food, both in his creation and in
his providence, namely, the support of nature, and its refreshment; let
these be our designs in eating, and give rules for our determination
what food we should partake of.
It must be granted indeed, that a sickly person may be indulged in more
solicitude about food, and may make it a matter of more distinguishing
choice than persons vigorous and healthy. But then the great end must
still be kept in the eye, that is, the recovery of strength for future
service, where they are much cut off from present work: For neither the
sick nor the healthy, should live for the sake of eating, but both
should eat for the sake of living and working.
Now if the light of nature requires such purity and temperance, how much
more doth the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ oblige us to it?
I. It is the command of our Redeemer, “that we take heed of surfeiting
and drunkenness, lest our hearts at any time be overcharged with them;”
Luke xxi. 34. And what charge doth the holy apostle give, Eph. v. 18.
_Be not drunken with wine_, wherein is excess, _but be ye filled with
the Spirit, speaking to one another in psalms and hymns, and spiritual
songs_. Do not be so indulgent to your palate and your glass, as to let
excess of wine overtake you, lest you christians should do as heathens
have done, and break out into irregular songs, and licentious or profane
mirth; but seek rather the largest influences of the blessed Spirit, and
give a sacred loose to a devout frame: Break out into divine psalms or
songs; comfort yourselves, and edify your neighbours thereby. In Rom.
xiii. 13, 14. St. Paul advises us how we should behave ourselves in this
point; _Let us walk honestly, as in the day; not in rioting and
drunkenness;—but put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision
for the flesh, to fulfil it in the lusts thereof._ Put on the spirit of
the gospel, and the ornaments of christianity, and then you cannot for
shame seek the pleasures of the brute, nor sink down into the base
impurities of the animal nature: If you have put on the Lord Jesus
Christ, and are his disciples indeed, then look like christians; let the
very life of Christ be manifest in your lives: Live above these animal
desires, these lower designs of the flesh, which is not the chief nature
of the man, much less should it be the chief end of christians to
gratify it.
II. Let christians consider, that the original ruin of their natures,
soul and body, arose from the indulgence of a foolish appetite. When our
mother Eve saw the fruit of the forbidden tree, she thought it was
pleasant to the eye, and good for food: She tasted it herself, and
tempted Adam to the sin that ruined him and all his offspring. When
therefore a temptation to this sort of guilt appears, let us think of
all the miseries of our fallen state, and not dare to repeat that crime,
which had such dismal consequences. It brought iniquity, pain, and death
into human nature, and begun all that dishonour to God, and all that
mischief among men, that ever was found in this lower world.
III. Every saint ought to have a mortal quarrel with the flesh, because
he carries about the seeds of iniquity in it, and the springs of
perverse appetite which ought always to be kept under, lest our very
spirits become carnal, and we lose our heavenly crown. Therefore saith
the apostle; 1 Cor. ix. 27. _I keep under my body, and bring it under
subjection_, and endeavour to be temperate in all things, that running
in the christian race, I may obtain the prize. It is the business of a
christian to eat and drink in due season, for strength and refreshment,
not for luxury and drunkenness, which Solomon forbids to princes; Eccl.
x. 17. It was an excellent saying of that holy man, Mr. Joseph Allein;
“I sit down to my table not to please my appetite, or to pamper my
flesh, but to maintain a servant of Jesus Christ, that he may be fit for
the Lord’s work.”
IV. The saints should be pure and holy; even in the affairs of the
natural life; for they have meat to eat, that the world knows not of:
they drink of the pleasures that flow from God, and from his covenant;
and therefore should not be over-solicitous about pleasing their meaner
appetites. Those that indulge themselves in carnal delicacies, and make
enquiry for the pleasures of the flesh, as the main business of life,
what shall I eat, and what shall I drink? Those that live in a round of
sensuality, they debase their souls, make themselves unfit for the
duties and pleasures of a christian, unfit for divine communications,
for holy fellowship, heavenly meditation, and lively exercises of faith,
upon unseen things; they damp their zeal for God, blunt their relish for
religious delights, and are perpetually defiling their own consciences.
These are they that _make their God their belly_, while they profess to
be christians. But the apostle, in Phil. iii. 18, 19. tells us,
“whatsoever they profess, _they are enemies of the cross of Christ_, and
I cannot speak of it, says he, without weeping.”
Now if there be any such sinners amongst us, such slaves to a paltry
appetite, that make it a business of too solemn and solicitous enquiry,
“How we shall regale the palate, and gratify the taste:” If there are
any of us that know not how to forbid ourselves a savoury or luscious
dish, even though we know or expect it will discompose the flesh or the
mind: If we have not temperance enough to deny the superfluous or
excessive glass, when it comes to our turn, nor virtue nor courage
enough to refuse it, let us take our share in the reproofs of this
discourse; and let us remember that we have had fair warning this day
from the word of God, that we may not drown our souls in sensual
indulgences, and make ourselves unfit for the duties of life, or for the
business or the joy of heaven.
HYMN FOR SERMON XXVI.
_Christian Morality_, _viz._ _Temperance_.
Is it a man’s divinest good,
To make his soul a slave to food?
Vile as the beast, whose spirit dies,
And has no hope above the skies?
Can meats or choicest wines procure
Delights that ever shall endure,
Was not I born above the swine,
And shall I make their pleasures mine?
Am I not made for nobler things?
Made to ascend on angel’s wings?
Shall my best powers be thus debas’d
And part with heaven to please my taste?
Can I forget the fatal deed,
How Eve brought death on all her seed,
She tasted the forbidden tree,
Anger’d her God, and ruin’d me.
Was life designed alone to eat?
What is the mouth, or what the meat?
Both from the ground derive their birth,
And both shall mix with common earth.
Great God new-mould my sensual mind
And let my joys be more refin’d;
Raise me to dwell among the blest,
And fit me for thy heavenly feast.
Footnote 30:
Bishop Patrick.
SERMON XXVII.
_Christian Morality_, _viz._ _Chastity_, &c.
PHILIP. iv. 8.—Whatsoever things are pure, &c.—think on these things.
Οσα αγνα, &c.
Purity of heart and life, in the perfect beauty of it, belongs to no man
since our original apostacy. That foul and shameful departure from God,
has rendered us all unholy and unclean. But we are recalled to seek our
ancient glory, by the messengers of heaven, and the ministry of the
gospel. The apostle exhorts us to it in the text. If the word pure be
taken in its largest extent, it may include in it temperance in meats
and drinks, as well as chastity in behaviour. You have heard already a
discourse of temperance, with so hateful an account of the crimes of
gluttony and drunkenness, that I hope my hearers have conceived a sacred
aversion of such sensualities.
Let us now proceed to the second sense implied in the word, and that is,
modesty and chastity of speech and behaviour. This is a most eminent,
and most undeniable part of that purity, which St. Paul here requires;
and this, in many of his epistles he insists upon as necessary, in order
to make up the character of a christian, and render it honourable; and
St. Peter recommends it to the pious women in his day, as a means of the
conversion of their husbands, who were gentiles: _That they who obeyed
not the word of the gospel, might be won to a_ good esteem of
christianity, _while they beheld the chaste conversation of their
wives_; 1 Pet. iii. 1, 2.
This virtue stands in opposition to those several vices, which are
distinguished by different names in scripture, such as adultery,
fornication, lasciviousness. 1. Adultery, when one of the persons who
are guilty of impure embraces, is under the sacred bonds of marriage. By
the commission of this sin there is injury done to another family, and
thus it is not only an offence against the laws of purity, but a
violation of the laws of justice. 2. Fornication, when both the guilty
persons are free and unmarried. It has been sufficiently proved by many
writers, that this is utterly unlawful, however some have attempted to
varnish the guilt, and excuse the crime. 3. Lasciviousness, which
consists in giving a loose to those impure thoughts, words, and actions,
which have an apparent tendency toward the sins before-mentioned.
Besides these, there are other names and instances of unclean
abominations, which I wish could be utterly rooted out from human
nature, by burying them in everlasting silence.
If I were to fetch arguments from reason and the light of nature, I
might make it appear that these things are criminal and contrary to
those rules of morality, which were written in the heart of man. And
perhaps they would have appeared in the same guilty colours to all men,
if the light of nature were not obscured by corrupt passions, and
licentious appetite. The practice of these impure vices is inconsistent
with the great ends for which God has formed our natures, has raised us
above the beasts that perish, and has inclined mankind to form
themselves into societies for mutual benefit. The brutes, who have no
nature superior to the animal are not governed by the same laws. But the
God of nature, who has made us compound beings and (shall I say?) hath
joined an animal and an angel together to make up a man, expects that
the angel should govern the animal in all its natural propensities and
confine it within the rules of religion and the social life.
These vices are also contrary to the solemn ordinances of marriage which
the blessed God instituted in paradise in a state of innocency, and
designed to continue through all generations. If these impurities of
conversation were publicly permitted, all the tender and most engaging
names of relation and kindred, such as father, sister, and brother,
would be confounded, and almost abolished among mankind; and what dismal
consequences would hence ensue? In what helpless circumstances would
children be then brought into this world? And many of the ends of human
society would become frustrate and vain.
I confess indeed, that several of these vices were practised in the
heathen world without any inward remorse of the mind, without private
reproof or public shame. Some of these impurities were allowed by the
laws of their country; some were indulged at festivals, and sometimes
they were mingled with their religious ceremonies, and made part of the
worship of their gods; Idol gods! Abominable religions! Base and
shameful worshippers! _For it is a shame_, saith the apostle, _even to
speak of those things that are done in secret; those unfruitful works of
darkness_: Eph. v. 11, 12. Yet there have been several of the grave, the
sober, and the wisest among the Gentiles, who being constrained by the
mere force of reason, have spoke against these corrupt practises, and
have adorned the virtue of chastity with many honourable encomiums.
But how doubtful soever this duty hath been reckoned among the heathen
nations, yet it is made necessary by the principles of the christian
religion, and a strong and severe guard of prohibitions and threatenings
is set all around to secure the practice of it. Now that I may speak of
this subject as becomes me, and recommend it in language pure and
undefiled, I shall set before you some of these scriptures, that bear
witness against all the violations of it, under the following heads:
I. The express precepts of the law of God demand the first place in this
catalogue of divine testimonies against impurity, for they were
delivered at Mount Sinai to many hundred thousands at once, they were
ushered in with lightning, and pronounced with thunder. Ex. xx. 14.
_Thou shalt not commit adultery._ This is the seventh command: And that
there may not be the least tendency toward this sin, the tenth command
is set as a preservative and defence, _thou shalt not_ so much as _covet
thy neighbour’s wife_, verse 17. In this epitome and sum of the laws of
God, whereby he rules his creatures, which is called the decalogue or
ten commandments, you find this vice of impurity is twice forbidden;
once in the perfect act, and again in the criminal wish and intention.
Observe here, that though the words of these commands directly point to
adultery, yet it appears by the very reason of things, as well as from
other passages of scripture, that all unchaste thoughts, words, and
actions, are here forbidden, as our younger years have been taught in
the catechism.
Nor is this a law that belonged only to the Jews, for the New Testament
mentions and enjoins this command with the rest, which are of equal
force under the gospel. The law forbids all manner of lust, and saith;
_Thou shalt not covet_; Rom. vii. 7. The great apostle puts the
Thessalonians in mind of what he had taught them as the law of Christ. 1
Thess. iv. 2, 3, 4, 5. _For ye know what commandments we gave you by the
Lord Jesus. For this is the will of God, even your sanctification, that
you should abstain from fornication: That every one of you should know
how to possess his vessel in sanctification and honour; not in the lust
of concupiscence, even as the Gentiles which know not God._ It is as
much as if he had said, it is a dishonour to christianity, and a step of
return to heathenism, to give a loose to impure lusts. He repeats the
same thing; Eph. iv. 17-21. “This I say therefore, and testify in the
Lord, that ye henceforth walk not as other Gentiles walk, in the vanity
of their minds, having the understanding darkened, and being alienated
from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them; because of
the blindness of their heart: Who being past feeling, have given
themselves over to lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness with
greediness. But ye have not so learned Christ;” “if so be ye have been
led by him, and taught the truth as it is in Jesus.” In vain ye profess
to have learned the truth as it is in Jesus, or to have put on Christ,
while you practise the same abominations as ye did before, while ye walk
and live as the heathen world.
II. The hateful description of these sins which is given us by the holy
writers, should print the same odious image of them upon our minds, and
for ever forbid the practice. Solomon, a great king, and a man of
excellent wisdom, had well known the mischief and madness of this sort
of vice; he gives his son the most solemn charge against it in various
parts of the book of Proverbs, more especially in the vi. and vii.
chapters, which he spends entirely upon this theme, and in the ii. and
vi. and the ix. chapters, where he applies near half of them to the same
design; wherein after he has shewn the insinuating flatteries of the
wanton woman he never fails to give notice of the terrible attendants of
those that follow her. _For her house inclines to death, and her paths
unto the dead; none that go to her return again, neither take they hold
of the paths of life._ There is scarce any iniquity that does so
effectually harden the heart, and prevent all repentance. _Let not thine
heart therefore decline to her ways; go not astray in her paths: For she
has cast down many wounded, yea, many strong men have been slain by her:
Her house is the way to hell, going down to the chambers of death._ This
leads me to the next particular.
III. If we consider the dismal effects of these impure practices, as
they are recorded in sacred history, they should keep our souls awake,
and keep us always to the watch, lest we be ensnared. Behold Sampson the
strongest of men, who was a holy Nazarite, and devoted to God; how was
he brought down shamefully from the heights of his glory to prison and
slavery, to blindness and death by the love of strange women! Behold the
Jewish hero lying like a thoughtless fool upon the lap of Delilah, while
the _seven sacred locks of his head were shaven_, and his divine
strength _went from him, for the Lord departed_! Behold the wretched
captive with his eyes bored out by the Philistines, bound with fetters
of brass, and grinding in the prison-house! Behold the man who was once
their terror, now become their sport, their mockery, and their
laughing-stock in the house of Dagon their god: See him there crushed to
pieces, and expiring under the weight of his own revenge upon his
Philistine enemies; and all this for the love of a harlot! Mark the
mischiefs, the calamities, and the bloodshed that pursued the house of
David, when adultery and guilt in the matter of Uriah had provoked his
God! See how sin and death made wide inroads into his household! See
there his son Amnon slain by his brother Absalom for the folly he had
wrought in Israel, and the incest with his sister Tamar? Think of
Solomon the wisest of men, whose heart was enticed away by strange women
from the God and religion of his fathers, when he paid such profane and
criminal regard to the idols of his mistresses, as to build temples for
them near the temple of Jehovah; and “the Lord was angry with Solomon,
when his wives turned away his heart after other gods, and he rent the
kingdom from him in the days of his son Rehoboam,” and made a long and
fatal separation between the tribes of Israel for many generations. And,
to name no more, turn your eyes to Sodom and Gomorrah, and the cities of
the plain, _giving themselves over to fornication, and going after
strange flesh_; mark how the Lord _rained fire and brimstone out of
heaven upon them_, and they are _set forth for an example suffering the
vengeance of eternal fire_; Jude 7.
IV. Think of the dreadful threatenings that are denounced against impure
sinners in the word of God, and you will find these are flaming
witnesses against their practice; Hos. iv. 1-5, “The Lord hath a
controversy with the inhabitants of the land, because of killing,
stealing, and adultery: therefore shall the land mourn.” And God seems
to forbid the prophets to give them reproof, as though he resolved to
destroy them. _Let no man strive and reprove another._ His mercy and
forgiveness seem to be put to a stand; Jer. v. 7, 9. “How shall I pardon
thee for this? saith the Lord; thy children have forsaken me when I fed
them to the full, they then committed adultery, and assembled themselves
in troops in the harlots’ houses. Shall I not visit them for these
things, saith the Lord? and shall not my soul be avenged on such a
nation as this?” When the apostle Paul had represented this sort of vice
in 1 Cor. vi. 18, 19. “as a defilement of the body, which is the temple
of God, and the habitation of the Holy Spirit;” he adds this word of
terror; iii. 17. “If any man defile the temple of God, him shall God
destroy; for the temple of God is and ought to be holy,” and not kept as
a nest for unclean vermin. “Be not deceived; neither fornicators, nor
idolaters, nor adulterers, nor those who indulge vile impurities, shall
inherit the kingdom of God;” 1 Cor. vi. 9, 10. _Such were some of you_,
indeed, says St. Paul to his converts, _but ye are washed and
sanctified_ from these pollutions, or you could never have been saved.
Therefore saith the same holy writer, “let neither fornication, nor any
unclean practices be so much as once named amongst you as becometh
saints;” that is, let them never be named without abhorrence. “For this
ye know, that no whoremonger, nor any unclean person, nor covetous man
who is an idolater, hath any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of
God. Let no man deceive you with vain words; for because of these things
cometh the wrath of God upon the children of disobedience;” Eph. v. 3-6.
The visions of St. John in the book of the Revelation, pronounce the
doom of _whoremongers_ with the rest of notorious sinners, and give them
“their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone, which is
the second death;” Rev. xxi. 8. How impiously bold are those sinners,
who dare venture through all these terrors to gratify a sensual
appetite! Who can rush upon the point of the avenging sword of God, and
plunge themselves into everlasting burnings, to taste the deceitful
baits of impure and forbidden pleasure!
Before I conclude this head, I would just hint a few directions to those
who would preserve their modesty and virtue, and prevail against all
temptations to impurity.