6. When pleasing the flesh doth too much pamper it, and cherish filthy lusts, or any other sin, and is not necessary on some other account, as doing greater good, it is a sin. But if life require it, lust must be subdued by other means.[277]
7. When pleasing the flesh doth hurt it, by impairing health, and so making the body less fit for duty, it is a sin. And so almost all intemperance tendeth to breed diseases; and God commandeth temperance even for the body's good.
8. When unnecessary flesh-pleasing hindereth any duty of piety, justice, charity, or self-preservation, in thought, affection, word, or deed, it is sinful.
9. If any pleasing of the flesh can be imagined to have no tendency directly or indirectly to any moral good or evil, it is not the object of a moral choosing or refusing; but like the winking of the eye, which falls not under deliberation, it is not within the compass of morality.
10. Every pleasing of the flesh, which is capable of being referred to a higher end, and is not so referred and used, is a sin. And there is scarce any thing, which is eligible, which a vacant, waking man should deliberate on, but should be referred to a higher end; even to the glory of God, and our salvation; by cheering us up to love and thankfulness, and strengthening or fitting us some way for some duty.[278] This is apparently a sin, (1.) Because else flesh-pleasing is made our ultimate end, and the flesh an idol, if ever we desire it only for itself (when it may be referred to a higher end). For though the sensitive appetite of itself hath no intended end, yet whatsoever the will desireth is either as an end, or as a means. That which is not desired as a means to some higher end, is desired as our ultimate end itself (in that act). But God only is man's lawful, ultimate end. (2.) Because it is against an express command, 1 Cor. x. 31, "Whether ye eat, or drink, or whatever ye do, do all to the glory of God." (3.) Because else we shall take God's creatures in vain, and cast them away in waste. (4.) And we shall lose our own benefit to which the creature or pleasure should be improved. (5.) And we shall silence reason, when it should direct; and we shall suspend the government of the will, and give the government (so long) to the flesh or brutish appetite: for that faculty ruleth, whose object is our end. These reasons clearly prove it a sin to terminate our desires in any act of flesh-pleasing as our end, and look no higher, when it is a matter of moral choice and deliberation.
11. But the sin here is not simply that the flesh is pleased, but that the duty of referring it to a higher end is omitted: so that it is a sin of omission (unless we proceed to refer better things as a means to it).
12. The intending of God's glory or our spiritual good, cannot be distinctly and sensibly re-acted in every particular pleasure we take, or bit we eat, or thing we use; but a sincere, habitual intention well laid at first in the heart, will serve to the right use of many particular means. As a man purposeth at his first setting out to what place he meaneth to go, and afterward goeth on, though at every step he think not sensibly of his end; so he that devoteth himself unto God, and in general designeth all to his glory, and the furtherance of his duty and salvation, will carry on small particulars to that end, by a secret, unobserved action of the soul, performed at the same time with other actions, which only are observed. He that intendeth but his health in eating and drinking, is not remembering his health at every bit and cup; and yet hath such a habit of care and caution, as will unobservedly keep him in his way, and help him to fit the means unto the end. As the accustomed hand of a musician can play a lesson on his lute, while he thinks of something else; so can a resolved christian faithfully do such accustomed things as eating, and drinking, and clothing him, and labouring in his calling, to the good ends which he (first actually, and still habitually) resolved on, without a distinct remembrance and observable intention of that end.