Part 272

1. Most men are so sensual and selfish, that their own flesh is an insatiable gulf that devoureth all, and they have little or nothing to spare from it to good uses. It is better cheaply maintaining a family of temperate, sober persons, than one fleshly person that hath a whole litter of vices and lusts to be maintained: so much a year seemeth necessary to maintain their pride in needless curiosity and bravery, and so much a year to maintain their sensual sports and pleasures; and so much to please their throats or appetites, and to lay in provision for fevers, and dropsies, and coughs, and consumptions, and a hundred such diseases, which are the natural progeny of gluttony, drunkenness, and excess; and so much a year to maintain their idleness, and so of many other vices. But if one of these persons have the pride, and idleness, and gluttony, and sportfulness of wife, and children, and family also to maintain, as well as their own, many thousand pounds a year perhaps may be too little. Many a conquering army hath been maintained at as cheap a rate, as such an army of lusts (or garrison at least) as keep possession of some such families, when all their luxury goeth for the honour of their family, and they glory in wearing the livery of the devil, the world, and the flesh (which they once renounced, and pretended to glory in nothing but the cross of Christ); and when they take care in the education of their children, that this entailed honour be not cut off from their families: no wonder if God's part be little from these men, when the flesh must have so much, and when God must stand to the courtesy of his enemies, and have but their leavings. I hope the nobility and gentry of England that are innocent herein, will not be offended with me, if I tell them that are guilty, that when I foresee their accounts, I think them to be the miserablest persons upon earth, that rob God, and rob the king of that which should defray the charges of government, and rob the church, and rob the poor, and rob their souls of all the benefits of good works, and all to please the devouring flesh. It is a dreadful thing to foresee with what horror they will give up their reckoning, when instead of so much in feeding and clothing the poor, and promoting the gospel, and the saving of men's souls, there will be found upon their account, so much in vain curiosities and pride, and so much in costly sports and pleasures, and so much in flesh-pleasing luxury and excess. The trick that they have got of late, to free themselves from the fears of this account, by believing that there will be no such day, will prove a short and lamentable remedy: and when that day shall come upon them unawares, their unbelief and pleasures will die together, and deliver them up to never-dying horror and despair. I have heard it often mentioned as the dishonour of France, that the third part of the revenues of so rich a kingdom should be devoted and paid to the maintaining of superstition: but if there be not many (and most) kingdoms in the world, where one half of their wealth is devoted to the flesh, and so to the devil, I should be glad to find myself herein mistaken: and judge you which is more disgraceful, to have half your estates given in sensuality to the devil, or a third part too ignorantly devoted to God! If men laid out no more than needs upon the flesh, they might have the more for the service of God and of their souls. You cannot live under so much a year, as would maintain twice as many frugal, temperate, industrious persons, because your flesh must needs be pleased, and you are strangers to christian mortification and self-denial. Laertius tells us that Crates Thebanus put all the money into the banker's or usurer's hands, with this direction, That if his sons proved idiots it should all be paid to them, but if they proved philosophers it should be given to the poor; because philosophers can live upon a little, and therefore need little. So if we could make men mortified christians, they would need so little for themselves, that they would have the more to give to others, and to do good with.