328 POWERS AND CONTESTS OF FLESH AND SPIRIT. netted together when that leading image was first paintedon the brain through the organs of sense. Sb one line ofa comedy, or the door of the play-house, or the sound of an actor, or a hero's name, shall call over again all those alluring and mischievous scenes which first drew the heart away from God and religion, spoiled the labour of a pious education, and plunged the young sinner into early debaucheries. Besides all these mischiefs that arise from the recollection of past occurrences, there is an infinite variety of new scenes ofvice, that fancy can furnish out on the sudden, by mingling, joining, enlarging, Iuultiplying, and compounding thevicious images that the brain can supply it with. Thus in this shop of vanity,-this workhouse of sin, and these secret chambers of imagery, new- devised iniquities are coined continually ; new engines are forged every minute, by S. busy and fruitful fancy, to charm the soul, and transport it tofresh guilt and ruin. Thus the treasury ofthe brain and those inward and hidden parts of the flesh, become many times as effectual occasions of sin, as all the outward senses joined together, and an army of tempting objects. 6. There is another consideration too, that will make it ap- per to any person ofan enquiring and thoughtful genius, that sin has much of its seat and root in the flesh, if we do but reflect how many iniquities wecommit, which, in their outward appearance, are very nearly imitated by brute creatures, which have no intel- ligent spirit, no rational soul ; whose bloodis the very soul, spirit, and life of them, as The scripture speaks. Lev. xvii. 14. Berl. iii. 21. Is "there not something like envy working in a dog, whenhe forbids the ox from the crib or the manger, and yet he neither wants nor tastes the hay nor thecorn himself ? Is he not the pic- ture of malice, when he grins with fury, and grows mad with rage, against the harmless traveller; Does not the wasp, that little angry insect, fix a sting in us sometimes'without any provo- cation ? And thus it becomes the very image and proverb of nature as well as the dog ; so that men of such a temper are called dogged and waspish. Does not our Lord Jesus. himself give Herod the name of a. fox for the same reason, viz. because ofthe craft, the plunder, and the various and bloody injuries which wire practised by that man amonghis subjects, and are well re- presented by the natural actions of that subtle and mischievous animal among his fellow brutes. Sec Luke xiii. 32. Is not the swine often overwhelmed with food by its own gieediness ? And does not that foul animal imitate the glutton well ? You grant all this proceeds from the very make and frame, the blood and juices of these animals, and from the keenness or other peculiar qualities of their natural spirits : And why may not the first motions and stirrings of the same vices in
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