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THE
HAPPINESS
OP-
SEPARATE
SPIRITS.
[DISC.
I!
the
shapes,,
and
colours,
and appearances of it painted
upon
fancy.
From
our very
infancy,
our
souls
are imposed upon
by
the
animal
;
we
draw
in
early many
false
judgments, and
establish
them daily.
We are nursed up
in
prejudice
against
a
hundred
truths
both
in
the philosophical, the
moral, and
the
religious
life
;
and it
is
the
labour
of an
age
even for
a wise
and good
man
to
wear
off a
few
of
them and
to
judge
with any
tolerable
freedom, evidence
and
certainty.
A
great
part of
our
life
is
spent
in
sleep,
wherein the
soul
is
bound
up from
exerting
any
regular
thoughts, con-
fined every
night
to a
periodical
delirium, subjected
to
all the fluttering tyranny
of
the
animal
spirits,
and
dragged
away into
all the
wild
wanderings
of dreaming
nature
;
and
indeed
the thoughts
of
many
of
us always,
and of
all
of
us
sometimes,
even when
we
are
awake,
are
but
little better, because
we
perpetually
dance
after
the
motions of
passion
and
fancy,
and our reason seldom
judges without
them. Alas
!
how
imperfect
is
the
best
of
us
in
knowledge
here
!
But
knowledge
is
not
the only good,
of
which
the body
deprives the spirit. The
necessities
of
the body,
hunger
and
thirst, weakness and
weariness, and drowsy spirits,
it
very heavy
upon the
soul,
and hinder
it
in
the
pursuit
of
holy
and
heavenly thoughts, break
off many a divine
meditation,
and
interrupt
and
spoil many a
delightful
Piece
of
worship.
In
sickness
or
in
old age,
what
long
and
weighty
troubles, what tiresome
infirmities
clog
the
soul,
and what
restless
pains of nature
overwhelm
the
spirit, and
forbid the
lively
exercises
of
devotion
!
And
then
also
the
sinful
appetites and perverse
affec-
tions
of nature
are.
very
much seated
in
flesh
and
blood:
So
much,
that
the
apostle
in
many places
calls
the
prin-
ciples
of
sin
by
the general name
of
flesh.
Read
the
lat-
ter
end
of
the
seventh
chapter of
his
Epistle
to
the Ro-
mans.
IIow
Both he
complain of
the
flesh
and
members
of
the body, which
arefatai
instruments of
sin
and Satan
!
Read
the
black
catalogue
of
iniquities,
Gal.
y. 19,
90,
1.
and hear
them called the
works
of
the
flesh.
Pride
and
inaiiee,
and
envy,
and
lust,' and covetousness,
and wrath,
rind
revenge, are found secretly working in
flesh
and
blood. O
how
much
are
the springs
of
these sinful
evils