Abernathy - Houston-Packer Collection BX9178.A33 S4 1748 v.2

Of Temperance. 153 ferving it in a condition for honeft induftry, SERM. and for virtuous and ufeful employments. VI. To conclude this explication, I obferve, '"v that fobriety, as all other virtues, is feated in the mind. The appetites take their rife from the body, but the regulating and reftraining them belongs to the higher faculties of the foul. It is in the fuperiority of the foul in its freedom, and in the dominion of reafon and confcience over the lower defires and paffions that the virtue chiefly confifts. Still I know not how it comes to pafs, though the other branches of religion are acknowleged to lie in the heart, a man, for inftance, is not ac- counted pious for mere external ads of devo- tion, without fuppofing him inwardly a fearer of God, yet he paffes for fober and temperate by the mere outward regularity of his life, and by an abftinence from the groffer as of debauchery and fenfual wickednefs in his con - verfation. Let us not however fo judge of ourfelves, but principally and with the greateft exatnefs obferve the inward difpofitions of our minds. If a man by any outward necef- frty, or by a regard to worldly confiderations, is led to preferve an outward decorum in his behaviour, and to abftain from diffolute and vicious çqurfes, yet unlefs his affections be fet not

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