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us to put away all bitterness and wrath, all clamour and evil-speaking, and malice, Eph. iv. 31. to lay aside all malice, and to be children in malice, 1 Pet. ii. 1. 1 Cor. xiv. 20. to be strengthened with all might unto all patience and longsuffering, Col. i. 11. And accordingly all the virtues which are comprehended in this of fortitude are reckoned among the fruits of that blessed Spirit, by which we are to be guided and directed; Gal. v. 22. But the fruit of the Spirit is peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, and meekness: all which are nothing but this great virtue of fortitude, severally exerting itself upon those several irascible affections that are in us, and guiding and regulating them according to those laws and directions which right reason severally prescribes them; and setting such bounds and limits to each of them, as are necessary to the peace and happiness of our rational natures; that so when outward dangers or evils do excite them, they may not start out into such wild excesses as to become plagues and diseases to our minds.

Now how much the practice of this virtue conduces to our heavenly happiness is evident from hence, that all the diseases and distemperatures which our mind is capable of are nothing else but the excesses of its concupiscible and irascible affections; nothing but its being affected with good and evil beyond those limits and measures which right reason prescribes. Did we but love outward goods according to the value at which true reason rates them, we should neither be vexed with an impatient desire of them while we want, nor disappointed of our expectation while we enjoy them. And when our desires towards these outward goods are reduced

to that coolness and moderation, as neither to be impatient in the pursuit, nor dissatisfied in the enjoyment of them, it is impossible they should give any disturbance to our minds. And so on the other hand, did we but take care to regulate our resentments of outward evils and dangers as right reason advises, they would never be able to hurt or discompose our minds: for right reason advises that we should not so resent them, as to increase and aggravate them; that we should not add the disquietude of an anxious fear to the dangers that threaten us; nor the torment of an outrageous anger to the indignities that are offered us; nor the smart of a peevish impatience to the sufferings that befall us; in a word, that we should not aggravate our want through an invidious pining at another's fulness, nor sharpen the injuries that are offered us by a malicious and revengeful resentment of them. And he that follows the advices of reason, and conducts his irascible affections by them, has a mind that is elevated above the reach of injury; that sits above the clouds in a calm and quiet ether, and with a brave indifferency hears the rolling thunders grumble and burst under its feet. And whilst outward evils fall upon timorous and peevish and malicious spirits, like sparks of fire upon a heap of gunpowder, and do presently blow them up, and put them all in combustion; when they happen to a dispassionate mind, they fall like stones on a bed of down, where they sit easily and quietly, and are received with a calm and soft compliance. When therefore, by the continual practice of moderation and fortitude, we have tamed and civilized our concupiscible and irascible affections, and reduced them under the government of reason, our minds will

be free from all disease and disturbance, and we shall be liable to no other evil but that of bodily sense and passion. So that when we leave our bodies, and go into the world of spirits, we shall presently feel ourselves in perfect health and ease: for the health of a reasonable soul consists in being perfectly reasonable, in having all its affections perfectly subdued to a well-informed mind, and clothed in the livery of its reason. And while it is thus, it cannot be diseased in that spiritual state, wherein it will be wholly separated from all bodily sense and passion; because it has no affection in it that can any way disturb or ruffle its calm and gentle thoughts. And then feeling all within itself to be well, and as it should be, every string tuned into a perfect harmony, every motion and affection corresponding with the most perfect draughts and models of its own reason; it must needs highly approve of, and be perfectly satisfied with itself: and while it surveys its own motions and actions, it must necessarily have a most delicious gust and relish of them, they being all such as its best and purest reason approves of with a full and ungainsaying judgment. And thus the soul, being cured of all irregular affection, and removed from all corporeal passion, will live in perfect health and vigour, and for ever enjoy within itself a heaven of content and peace.

IV. Another virtue which appertains to a man, considered merely as a rational animal, is temperance; which consists in not indulging our bodily appetites to the hurt and prejudice of our rational nature; or, in refraining from all those excesses of bodily pleasure, of eating, drinking, and venery, which do either disorder our reason, or indispose us

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to enjoy the pure and spiritual pleasures of the mind. For besides that all excesses of bodily pleasures are naturally prejudicial to our reason, as they indispose those bodily organs by which it operates, (for so drunkenness dilutes the brain, which is the mint of the understanding, and drowns those images it stamps upon it in a flood of unwholesome rheums and moistures; and gluttony clogs the animal spirits, which are, as it were, the wings of the mind, and indisposes them for the highest and noblest flights of reason; so wantonness chases the blood into feverish heats, and by causing it to boil up too fast into the brain, disorders the motions of the spirits there, and so confounds the phantasms, that the mind can have no clear or distinct perception of them; by which means our intellectual faculties are very often interrupted, and forced to sit still for want of proper tools to work with; and so, by often loitering, grow by degrees listless and unactive, and at the last are utterly indisposed to any rational operations :) besides this, I say, (which must needs be a mighty prejudice to our rational nature,) by too much familiarizing ourselves to bodily pleasures, we shall break off all our acquaintance with spiritual ones; and grow, by degrees, such utter strangers to them, that we shall never be able to relish and enjoy them and our soul will contract such an uxorious fondness of the body, (that being the shop of all the pleasure it was ever acquainted with,) that it will never be able to live happily without it. For though in its separate state it cannot be supposed that the soul will retain the appetites of the body; yet if, while it is in the body, it wholly abandons itself to corporeal pleasures, it may, and doubtless will, retain a vehement hanker

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ing after it, and longing to be reunited to it; which, I conceive, is the only sensuality that a separated soul is capable of. For when such a soul arrives into the spiritual world, her having wholly accustomed herself to bodily pleasures, and never experienced any other, will necessarily render her incapable of enjoying the pleasures of pure and blessed spirits. So that being left utterly destitute of all her dear delights and satisfactions, which are such as she knows she can never enjoy but in conjunction with the body, all her appetite and longing must necessarily be an outrageous desire of being embodied again, that so she may be capable of repeating her old sensual pleasures, and acting over the brutish

scene anew.

And this, as some think, is the reason why such gross and sensual souls have appeared so often, after their separation, in the churchyards or charnel houses where their bodies were laid; because they cannot please themselves without them: Ἡ δὲ (ψυχὴ ἐπιθυμητικῶς τοῦ σώματος ἔχουσα, περὶ ἐκεῖνο πολὺν χρόνον ἐπτοημένη, καὶ περὶ τὸν ὁρατὸν τόπον, πολλὰ ἀντιτείνασα, καὶ πολλὰ παθοῦσα, βίᾳ καὶ μόλις ὑπὸ τοῦ προστεταγμένου δαίμονος οἴχεται ἀγομένη. "The soul that is infected with a

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great lust to the body continues so for a great "while after death; and suffering great reluctances, "hovers about this visible place, and is hardly "drawn from thence by force, by the demon that "hath the guard and care of it." Where, by the visible place, he means περὶ τὰ μνήματά τε καὶ τοὺς τάφους, περὶ ἃ δὴ καὶ ὤφθη ἄττα ψυχῶν σκιοειδή φαντάσματα : that is, "about their monuments and sepulchres, where

a Plat. Phæd.
p. 398.

b Ibid. 386.

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