God envies not any true, rational, and proper pleasure to men or vi'omen ; when he bounds them in by his command, within the al- lowance whereof, sufficient provision is made for the benefit and de- light of propagation. And though it be all men's duty to tremble at the awful solemnity, yet it would be any man's sin to repine and murmur at the strictness and severity of his command, delivered with thunder and lightning from mount Sinai, Thou shall not commit aduU tcry. Man's honourable liberty, and God's wise and just restraint and limitation thereof, are both set together before our eyes, in that one scripture, Heb. xili. 4. " Marriage is honourable in all, and the bed undefiled ; but whoremongers and adulterers God will judge." Here is a liberal allowance granted, and a severe punishment threat- ened for the inordinacies and exorbitancies of boundless and un- governable lusts. God will judge with temporal judgments in this world ; and upon impenitent persistents, with eternal judgments in the world to come.
§ 2. Such is the corruption of man's nature by the fall, that it hates inclosures, restraints, and limitations. These things which were in- tended to regulate, serve only to sharpen and enrage their sensual ap- petite. No fruit so sweet to corrupt nature, as forbidden fruit, ^iti- mur in vetitum semper, cupimusque negata. The very restraint of evil, makes it look like a pleasant and desirable good. Sons of Belial can endure no yoke of restraint. There is a great truth in that ob- servation of the divine Herbert, That if God had laid all common, man himself would have been the incloser. For his reason and ex- perience would have plainly informed him of the great and manifold advantages of distinction and propriety. How many quarrels and barbarous murders have been occasioned by whores ! which by keeping within God's bounds and rules, had been both honestly and honourably prevented.
Were men left to that liberty brutes are, to scatter their lusts pro- miscuously, fathers would not know their own children, nor children their fathers; whereby both their duties and comforts would be pre- scinded together. Such mischiefs as these, would make men glad of that inclosure, which the laws of God have made for them. But be- hold with admiration the perverse wickedness of corrupt nature mani- fested in this, that because God hath inclosed and secured their rela- tions to them by his laws, (which inclosure is every way to their advan- tage;) yet this makes their lusts the more headstrong and outrageous, and they cannot take that comfort in their own, because their own, that they think to find in another's, because another's.
Remarkable to this purpose is that* relation of Mr. Firmin's, which
• Real Cliristian, p. 60.
514 THE REASONABLENESS OF TERSOXAL REFORM ATIOK.
he received from his near relation, ivho was minister to the company of EngUsh merchants in Prussia. The consul, or governor of that company, being a married man, and that to a very proper and comely woman, was yet enslaved to others, not to be compared with his own wife for comeliness. This minister dealt with him about it. One argument he urged was this : That of all men he had the least temp- tation, having a wife so comely, that few women were hke her. He answered, yea, were she not my wife, I could love her. Had she been his whore, he could have loved her ; he thought none like her ; but because she was his wife hedged in by God, he cared not for her. O what hearts have men, that they should ever think that to be best for them which is most cross to God ? Why should stolen waters be sweeter than those of our own fountains !
§ 8. God's choice must needs be far better for us, than our own. Ordinate and lawful pleasures and enjoyments,, are far better and sweeter, than exorbitant and forbidden ones. And the reason is evi- dent and undeniable : For amongst all the operations of the mind, its reflex acts are the acts that best relish pleasure. And indeed, without self-reflection, a man cannot tell whether he delights or no. All sense of pleasure implies some reflection of the mind : and those plea- sures of a man musts needs be the sweetest, which afford the sweetest reflections upon them afterward ; and those the basest pleasures, which are accompanied and followed w4th present regret, or the stinging and cutting reflections of the conscience ujion them afterwards.
1. Lawful and ordinate enjoyments, are as honey without the sting. Forbidden pleasures, are embittered and extinguished by these regrets and reflections of the conscience. They are like those pleasant fruits, which the Spaniards found in the Indies, which were sweet to the taste, but so environed and armed on every side with dangerous briers and thorns, that they tore not only their clothes off* their backs, but the skin off* their flesh, to come at them ; and therefore they called them conifits in hell. And such are all forbidden, and unlawful pleasures.
A merchant (saith the fore-mentioned author *) dining with the friars at Dantzick, his entertainment was very noble. After he had dined, and seen all, the merchant fell to commending their pleasant life. ' Yea, said one of the friars to him, we live gallantly indeed, if we had any body to go to hell for us when we die.'* You see what mingles with men's sensual and sinful lusts.
2, Your honour is secured, by keeping within God's bounds and limits: Marriage is lioyionrable in all. Here guilt can neither wrong your consciences, nor infamy your reputations. Fornicators and adul- terers go up and down the world, as men burnt in the hand : Their conscience lashes them within ; and men point at them abroad. I'hey are a terror to themselves, and a scorn to men.
3. The health of the body is secured by chaste and regular enjoy-
* Real CUiistian, p. Q3*
THE EEASONABLEKESS OF PERSONAL JIEFORMATION. 515
Wients, but exposed to destruction the other way. God hath plagued the inordinacy of men's lust, with most strange and horrid diseases. That Morbus Gallicus, Sudor Anglicus, and Plica Polonica, were judgments sent immediately by God's own hand, as the witnesses of his Ingh displeasure, against the bold and daring contemners of his sacred and awful command. Thus, as Prov. v. 11. " They mourn at last, when their flesh and body are consumed." Other sins are committed in the body ; but this against it, as well as in it.
4. The blast and waste of our estates (which is the usual conse- quence of uncleanness) is prevented and avoided, by keeping within God's rules. The truth of what the scripture tells us, Prov. x. 5. is often exemplified before your eyes ; that, " by reason of a whorisli woman, a man is brought to a morsel of bread." Adultery gives a man rags for his livery ; it lodgeth his substance in the house of strangers, and entails wants and curses on him and his.