that he shall infallibly have the biggest damnation. And then let it be considered how forced a joy that is, that is at the end of an intemperate feast; Nec bene mendaci risus componitur ore, Nec bene sollicitis ebria verba sonant. Certain it is, intemperance takes but nature's leavings; when the belly is full, and nature calls to take away, the pleasure that comes in afterward is next to loathing: it is like the relish and taste of meats at the end of the third course, or the sweetness of honey to him that hath eaten till he can endure to take no more; and in this there is no other difference of these men from them that die upon another cause, than was observed among the Phalangia of old, rà μèv Toleî μὲν ποιεῖ γελῶντας ἀποθνήσκειν, τὰ δὲ κλαίοντας, “some of these serpents make men die laughing, and some to die weeping:' so does the intemperate, and so does his brother that languishes of a consumption; this man dies weeping, and the other dies laughing; but they both die infallibly, and all his pleasure is nothing but the sting of a serpent, immixto liventia mella veneno b; it wounds the heart, and he dies with a tarantula, dancing and singing till he bows his neck and kisses his bosom with the fatal noddings and declensions of death. 4. In these pretenders to pleasure,-which you see are but few, and they not very prosperous in their pretences,-there is mingled so much trouble to bring them to act an enjoyment, that the appetite is above half tired before it comes; it is necessary a man should be hugely patient that is ambitious, Ambulare per Britannos, No man buys death and damnation at so dear a rate, as he that fights for it, and endures cold and hunger, patiens liminis et solis, the heat of the sun, and the cold of the threshold;' the dangers of war, and the snares of a crafty enemy; he lies upon the ground with a severity greater than the penances of a hermit, and fasts beyond the austerity of a rare penitent; with this only difference, that the one does it for heaven, and the other for an uncertain honour and an eternity of flames. But however, by this time that he hath won something, he hath spent some years, and he hath not much time left him to rest in his new purchase, and he hath worn out his body, and lessened his capacity of feeling it; and although it is ten to one he cannot escape all the dangers he must venture at that he may come near his trifle, yet when he is arrived thither, he can never long enjoy nor well perceive or taste it; and therefore there are more sorrows at the gate, than there can dwell comforts in all the rooms of the houses of pride and great designs. And thus it is in revenge, which is pleasant only to a devil, or a man of the same cursed temper. He does a thing which ought to trouble him, and will move him to pity what his own vile hands have acted; but if he does not pity, that is, be troubled with himself and wish the things undone, he hath those affections by which the devil doth rejoice in destroying souls; which affections a man cannot have unless he be perfectly miserable, by being contrary to God, to mercy, and to felicity; and after all, the pleasure is false, fantastic, and violent, it can do him no good, it can do him hurt, 'tis odds but it will, and on him that takes revenge, revenge shall be taken, and by a real evil he shall dearly pay for the goods that are but airy and fantastical; it is like a rolling stone, which, when a man hath forced up a hill, will return upon him with a greater violence, and break those bones whose sinews gave it motion. The pleasure of revenge is like the pleasure of eating chalk and coals; a foolish disease made the appetite, and it is entertained with an evil reward; it is like the feeding of a cancer or a wolf; the man is restless till it be done, and when it is, every man sees how infinitely he is removed from satisfaction or felicity. 5. These sins when they are entertained with the greatest fondness from without, it must have but extreme little pleasure, because there is a strong faction, and the better party against them something that is within contests against the entertainment, and they sit uneasily upon the spirit when the man is vexed that they are not lawful. The Persian kinge gave Themistocles a goodly pension, assigning Magnesia with the revenue of fifty talents for his bread, Lampsacum for his wine, and Myos for his meat; but all the while he fed high and drunk deep, he was infinitely afflicted that every thing went cross to his undertaking; and he could not bring his ends about to betray his country; and at last he mingled poison with his wine and drank it off, having first entreated his friends to steal for him a private grave in his own country. Such are the pleasures of the most pompous and flattering sins: their meat and drink are good and pleasant at first, and it is plenteous and criminal; but its employment is base, and it is so against a man's interest, and against what is and ought to be dearest to him, that he cannot persuade his better parts to consent, but must fight against them and all their arguments. These things are against a man's conscience, that is, against his reason and his rest: and something within makes his pleasure sit uneasily. But so do violent perfumes make the head ache, and therefore wise persons reject them; and the eye refuses to stare upon the beauties of the sun, because it makes it weep itself blind; and if a luscious dish please my palate and turns to loathing in the stomach, I will lay aside that evil, and consider the danger and the bigger pain, not that little pleasure. So it is in sin; it pleases the senses, but diseases the spirit, and wounds that: and that it is as apt to smart as the skin, and is as considerable in the provisions of pleasure and pain respectively; and the pleasures of sin to a contradicting reason, are like the joys of wine to a condemned. man. Difficile est imitari gaudia falsa; Difficile est tristi fingere mente jocum. It will be very hard to delight freely in that which so vexes the more tender and most sensible part; so that, what Pliny said of the poppies growing in the river Caicus, ἔχει ἀντὶ καρποῦ λίθον, ‘it brings a stone instead of a flower or fruit ;' so are the pleasures of these pretending sins; the flower at the best is stinking, but there is a stone in the bottom; it is gravel in the teeth, and a man must drink the blood of his own gums when he manducates such unwholesome, such unpleasant fruit, Vitiorum gaudia vulnus habent h; they make a wound, and therefore are not very pleasant; τὸ γὰρ ζῆν μὴ καλῶς, μέγας πόνος, 'it is a great labour and travail to live a vicious life.' 6. The pleasure in the acts of these few sins that do pretend to it, is a little limited nothing, confined to a single faculty, to one sense, having nothing but the skin for its organ or instrument, an artery, or something not more considerable than a lute-string; and at the best it is but the satisfaction of an appetite which reason can cure, which time can appease, which every diversion can take off; such as is not perfective of his nature, nor of advantage to his person; it is a desire to no purpose, and as it comes with no just cause, so can be satisfied with no just measures; it is satisfied before it comes to a vice, and when it is come thither, all the world cannot satisfy it: a little thing will weary it, but nothing can content it. For all these sensual desires are nothing but an impatience of being well and wise, of being in health, and being in our wits; which two things if a man could endure, and it is but reasonable, a man would think, that we should, he would never lust to drown his heart in seas of wine, or oppress his belly with loads of undigested meat, or make himself base as the mixtures of a harlot by breaking the sweetest limits and holy festivities of marriage. Malum impatientia est boni, said Ter [Tibull., lib. iii. el. 7. lin. 1.] [Leg. Plut. de Fluv., tom. x. p. 791.] -Virtutum gaudia vulnus habent.-S. Prosp. Aquit. epigr. 88. de Venia. p. 94 E.] i [Eurip. Hecub. 378.] tullian, it is nothing else; to please the sense is but to do a man's self mischief; and all those lusts tend to some direct dissolution of a man's health or his felicity, his reason or his religion; it is an enemy that a man carries about him: and as the Spirit of God said concerning Babylon, Quantum in deliciis fuit, tantum date illi tormentum et luctum', 'let her have torment and sorrow according to the measure of her delights,' is most eminently true in the pleasing of our senses; the lust and desire is a torment, the remembrance and the absence is a torment, and the enjoyment does not satisfy, but disables the instrument, and tires the faculty; and when a man hath but a little of what his sense covets, he is not contented, but impatient for more; and when he hath loads of it, he does not feel it. For he that swallows a full goblet does not taste his wine, and this is the pleasure of the sense; nothing contents it but that which he cannot perceive, and it is always restless till he be weary, and all the way unpleased till it can feel no pleasure; and that which is the instrument of sense is the means of its torment; by the faculty by which it tastes by the same it is afflicted; for so long as it can taste it is tormented with desire, and when it can desire no longer it cannot feel pleasure. 7. Sin hath little or no pleasure in its very enjoyment; because its very manner of entry and production is by a curse and a contradiction it comes into the world, like a viper through the sides of its mother, by means unnatural, violent, and monstrous. Men love : sin only because it is forbidden; "sin took occasion by law," saith St. Paulm; it could not come in upon its own pretences, but men rather suspect a secret pleasure in it because there are guards kept upon it. Sed quia cæcus inest vitiis amor, omne futurum 'men run into sin with blind affections, and against all reason despise the future, hoping for some little pleasure for the present; and all this is only because they are forbidden.' Do not many men sin out of spite? some out of the spirit of disobedience, some by wildness and indetermination, some by impudence, and because they are taken in a fault, frontemque a crimine suiunt P; some because they are reproved; many by custom, others by importunity: Ordo fuit crevisse malis ; it grows upon crab-stocks, and the lust itself is sour and unwhole [De patient., § 5. p. 143 B.] [Apoc. xviii. 7, ed. vulg.] [Rom. vii. 11.] n [al. 'quam.'] • Claudian. In Eutrop., lib. ii. 50.] P Vid. Juv. vi. 285.] some and since it is evident that very many sins come in wholly upon these accounts, such persons and such sins cannot pretend pleasure; but as naturalists say of pulse, cum maledictis et probris serendum præcipiunt, ut latius proveniat, the country people were used to curse it and rail upon it all the while that it was sowing, that it might thrive the better,' 'tis true with sins; they grow up with curses, with spite and contradiction, peevishness and indignation, pride and cursed principles; and therefore pleasure ought not to be the inscription of the box, for that's the least part of its ingredient and constitution. 8. The pleasures in the very enjoying of sin are infinitely trifling and inconsiderable, because they pass away so quickly; if they be in themselves little, they are made less by their volatile and fugitive nature; but if they were great, then their being so transient does not only lessen the delight, but changes it into a torment, and loads the spirit of the sinner with impatience and indignation. Is it not a high upbraiding to the watchful adulterer, that after he hath contrived the stages of his sin, and tied many circumstances together with arts and labour, and these join and stand knit and solid only by contingency, and are very often borne away with the impetuous torrent of an inevitable accident, like Xerxes' bridge over the Hellespont; and then he is to begin again, and sets new wheels a-going; and by the arts, and the labour, and the watchings, and the importunity, and the violence, and the unwearied study and indefatigable diligence of many months, he enters upon possession, and finds them not of so long abode as one of his cares, which in so vast numbers made so great a portion of his life afflicted ? Πρόσκαιρον ἁμαρτίας ἀπόλαυσιν, the enjoying of sin for a season,' St. Paul' calls it; he names no pleasures; our English translation uses the word of 'enjoying pleasures; but if there were any, they were but for that season, that instant, that very transition of the act, which dies in its very birth, and of which we can only say as the minstrel sung of Pacuviuss when he was carried dead from his supper to his bed, βεβίωκε, βεβίωκε. A man can scarce have time enough to say it is alive, but that it was: nullo non se die extulit, it died every day,' it lived never unto life, but lived and died unto death, being its mother and its daughter: the man died before the sin did live, and when it had lived it consigned him to die eternally. Add to this, that it so passes away that nothing at all remains behind it that is pleasant: it is like the path of an arrow in the air, the next morning no man can tell what is become of the pleasures of the last night's sin; they are no where but in God's books, deposited in the conscience, and sealed up against the day of dreadful accounts; but as to the man, they are as if they never had been; and then let [Plin. Hist. nat., xix. 36.] [Sen. ep. xii. tom. ii. p. 41.] |