As the skillfullest artist in the world would make but sorry work of it, should he be forced to make use of tools no way fit for his purpose.

But whether the fault be in the spiritual or corporeal part of our nature, or rather in both, certain it is, that no two things in the world do more rise and grow upon the fall of each other, than the flesh and the spirit: they being like a kind of balance in the hand of nature, so that as one mounts up the other still sinks down; and the high estate of the body seldom or never fails to be the low, declining estate of the soul. Which great contrariety and discord between them the apostle describes, as well as words can do, Gal. v. 17. The flesh, says he, lusteth against the spirit, and the spirit lusteth against the flesh and these two are contrary; like two mighty princes whose territories join, they are always encroaching and warring upon one another. And as it most commonly falls out that the worse cause has the best success; so when the flesh and the spirit come to a battle, it is seldom but the flesh comes off victorious. And therefore the same great apostle, who so constantly exercised himself to keep a conscience void of offense, did as constantly and severely exercise himself to keep under his body, and bring it into subjection, 1 Cor. ix. 27. And the same in all ages has been the judgment and practice of all such as have had any experience in the ways of God and the true methods of religion. For all bodily pleasure dulls and weakens the operations of the mind, even upon a natural account, and much more upon a spiritual. Now the pleasures which chiefly affect, or rather bewitch the body, and by so doing become the very pest and poison of the nobler and intellectual part of man, are those false and fallacious pleasures of lust and intemperance: Of each of which severally and

First, for lust. Nothing does or can darken the mind or conscience of man more: nay, it has a peculiar efficacy this way, and for that cause may justly be ranked amongst the very powers of darkness: it being that which, as naturalists observe, strikes at the proper seat of the understanding, the brain something of that blackness of darkness mentioned in the thirteenth of St. Jude seeming to be of the very nature as well as punishment of this vice.

Nor does only the reason of the thing itself, but also the examples of such as have been possessed with it, demonstrate as much.

For had not Samson, think we, an intolerable darkness and confusion upon his understanding, while he ran roving after every strumpet in that brutish manner that he did? Was it not the eye of his conscience which his Delilah first put out, and so of a judge of Israel rendered himself really a judgment upon them? And when the two angels (as we read in Gen. xix.) struck those monsters, the men of Sodom, with blindness, had not their own detestable lust first stricken them with a greater? Or could Herod have ever thought himself obliged by the religion of an oath to have murdered the Baptist, had not his lust and his Herodias imprisoned and murdered his conscience first? For surely the common light of nature could not but teach him, that no oath or vow whatsoever could warrant the greatest prince upon earth to take away the life of an innocent person. But it seems his besotted conscience having broken through the seventh commandment, the sixth stood too near it to be safe long and therefore his two great casuists, the devil and his Herodias, (the worse devil of the two,) having allowed him to lie and wallow in adultery so long, easily persuaded him that the same salvo might be found out for murder also. So that it was his lust obstinately continued in which thus darkened and deluded his conscience; and the same will, no doubt, darken and delude, and in the end extinguish the conscience of any man breathing, who shall surrender himself up to it. The light within him shall grow every day less and less, and at length totally and finally go out, and that in a stink too. So hard, or rather utterly unfeasible is it for men to be zealous votaries of the blind god without losing their eyes in his service, and it is well if their noses do not follow. From all which it appears, what a paradox it is in morals for any one under the dominion of his lust to think to have a right judgment in things relating to the state of his soul: and the same, in the

Second place, holds equally in that other branch of sensuality, intemperance; whereupon we find them both joined together by the prophet Hosea, iv. 11. Whoredom, says he, and wine take away the heart; that is, according to the lan

guage of holy writ, a man's judging and discerning abilities. And therefore, whosoever would preserve these faculties (especially as to their discernment of spiritual objects) quick and vigorous, must be sure to keep the upper region of his soul clear and serene; which the fumes of meat and drink luxuriously taken in will never suffer it to be. We know the method which this high and exact pattern of spiritual prudence, St. Paul, took to keep the great sentinel of his soul, his conscience, always vigilant and circumspect. It was by a constant and severe temperance, heightened with frequent watchings and fastings, as he himself tells us, 2 Cor. xi. 27, in watchings often, in fastings often, &c. This was the discipline which kept his senses exercised to a sure and exquisite discrimination of good and evil, and made the lamp within him shine always with a bright and a triumphant flame.

But gluttony, and all excess, either in eating or drinking, strangely clouds and dulls the intellectual powers; and then it is not to be expected that the conscience should bear up, when the understanding is drunk down. An epicure's practice naturally disposes a man to an epicure's principles; that is, to an equal looseness and dissolution in both: and he who makes his belly his business will quickly come to have a conscience of as large a swallow as his throat; of which there wants not several scandalous and deplorable instances. Loads of meat and drink are fit for none but a beast of burden to bear; and he is much the greater beast of the two who carries his burden in his belly, than he who carries it upon his back. On the contrary, nothing is so great a friend to the mind of man as abstinence; it strengthens the memory, clears the apprehension, and sharpens the judgment; and, in a word, gives reason its full scope of acting; and when reason has that, it is always a diligent and faithful handmaid to conscience. And therefore, where men look no further than mere nature, (as many do not,) let no man expect to keep his gluttony and his parts, his drunkenness and his wit, his revelings and his judgment, and much less his conscience, together for neither grace nor nature will have it so. It is an utter contradiction to the methods of both. Who hath woe? who hath sorrow? who hath contentions? who hath babbling? who hath wounds without cause? who hath redness of

eyes? says Solomon, Prov. xxiii. 29. Which question he himself presently answers in the next verse, They who tarry long at the wine, they who seek after mixed wine. So say I, Who has a stupid intellect, a broken memory, and a blasted wit, and (which is worse than all) a blind and benighted conscience, but the intemperate and luxurious, the epicure and the smell-feast? So impossible is it for a man to turn sot, without making himself a blockhead too. I know this is not always the present effect of these courses, but at long run it will infallibly be so; and time and luxury together will as certainly change the inside as it does the outside of the best heads whatsoever, and much more of such heads as are strong for nothing but to bear drink: concerning which, it ever was, and is, and will be a sure observation, that such as are ablest at the barrel, are generally weakest at the book. And thus much for the first great darkener of man's mind, sensuality; and that in both the branches of it, lust and intemperance.

Secondly, Another vicious affection, which clouds and darkens the conscience, is covetousness; concerning which it may truly be affirmed, that, of all the vices incident to human nature, none so powerfully and peculiarly carries the soul downwards as covetousness does. It makes it all earth and dirt, burying that noble thing which can never die. So that, while the body is above ground, the soul is under it, and therefore must needs be in a state of darkness, while it converses in the regions of it.

How mightily this vice darkens and debases the mind, scripture instances do abundantly show. When Moses would assign the proper qualifications of a judge, (which office certainly calls for the quickest apprehension and the solidest judgment that the mind of man is well capable of,) Deut. xvi. 19, Thou shalt not, says he, take a gift. But why? He presently adds the reason; because a gift, says he, blinds the eyes of the wise. And no wonder, for it perverts their will; and then who so blind as the man who resolves not to see? gold, it seems, being but a very bad help and cure of the eyes in such cases. In like manner, when Samuel would set the credit of his integrity clear above all the aspersions of envy and calumny itself,'1 Sam. xii. 3, Of whose hands, says he,

have I received a bribe to blind my eyes therewith? Implying thereby, that for a man to be gripe-handed and clear-sighted too was impossible. And again, Eccl. vii. 7, A gift, says the wise man, destroyeth the heart; that is, (as we have shown already,) the judging and discerning powers of the soul. By all which we see, that in the judgment of some of the wisest and greatest men that ever lived, such as Moses, Samuel, Solomon himself, covetousness baffles and befools the mind, blinds and confounds the reasoning faculty; and that, not only in ordinary persons, but even in the ablest, the wisest, and most sagacious. And to give you one proof, above all, of the peculiar blinding power of this vice, there is not the most covetous wretch breathing, who does so much as see or perceive that he is covetous.

For the truth is, preach to the conscience of a covetous person (if he may be said to have any) with the tongue of men and angels, and tell him of the vanity of the world, of treasure in heaven, and of the necessity of being rich toward God, and liberal to his poor brother, and it is all but flat, insipid, and ridiculous stuff to him, who neither sees, nor feels, nor suffers any thing to pass into his heart, but through his hands. You must preach to such an one of bargain and sale, profits and perquisites, principal and interest, use upon use; and if you can persuade him that godliness is gain in his own sense, perhaps you may do something with him: otherwise, though you edge every word you speak with reason and religion, evidence and demonstration, you shall never affect, nor touch, nor so much as reach his conscience; for it is kept sealed up in a bag under lock and key, and you can not come at it.

And thus much for the second base affection that blinds the mind of man, which is covetousness: a thing directly contrary to the very spirit of Christianity, which is a free, a large, and an open spirit; a spirit open to God and man, and always carrying charity in one hand and generosity in the other.

Thirdly, The third and last vile affection which I shall mention (as having the same darkening effect upon the mind or conscience) is ambition. For as covetousness dulls the mind by pressing it down too much below itself, so ambition