346 POWERS AND CONTESTS OF FLESH AND SPIRIT. 2. Keep out of the way of temptation. Whatsoever place, company, diversion, or unnecessary business, you have found ready to provoke a corrupt passion, avoid it as much as possible. Remove thy way ofr of, and come not nigh the door of her house ; Prov. y. 8. 3. Deny the flesh sometimes in itslawful appetites, to teach it subjection, and let it learn to be governed, by being sometimes restrained and disappointed in its innocent desires, that it may with more ease be withheld when unlawful objects appear. The holy apostle seems to have - this in his eye, when he tells the Co- rintliians that he that striveth for the mastery must he temperate in all things: And he assures them, that he keeps his own body under,ancrbrings it into subjection ; 1 Cor. ix. 25, 27. And in the last verse of the eighth chapter, he will eat no flesh while the world stands rather thanmake hisbrother offend. Surely then he would use the same self-denial, rather thän he in danger of giv- ing himself leave to offend. 4. Keep the body in such temper and circumstances as may render it fittest for the present duty. If excess of faintness and feeble spirits make it unfit for service, refresh it with the proper comforts of life. If through excess of vigor and a florid state of the blood, it grow unfit for any duties of religion, or lead the mind astray to dangerous vanities and allurements, it may some- times be kept underby diligence in labour, by sparing diet, and diminished hours of sleep. When Jeshuran Waxed fat, he kick- ed ; Deut. xxxii. 15. And the danger of Sodom was plenty and luxury, which the scripturedescribes by fulness of bread, joined with abundance of idleness ; xvi. 49. And it is upon this account that you find fasting joined with prayer, in the New Testament as well as in the Old ; and perhaps the word watching, which is coupled therewith, may.in somepla- ces be supposed to include its literal sense also : for abstinence from full measures of food and sleep may give occasional assis- tance to the soul in devout - exercises ; and where experience finds that a full indulgence either of sleep orfoodunfits the body, or clogs the soul in any dutiesof religion, there those appetites of theflesh are certainly to be restrained. I might add, in the last place, that if any -sharp diseases of the body, or disordered humours, awaken the sinful ferments of any passionor appetite, ina more than ordinary manner, seek re- lief from the physician, to restore the flesh to its best state of ser- vice to the soul; that it may be delivered, through the divine blessing, from vexing disduietudes, from sudden surprises of sin, from the feeble flutterings of animal nature, from languor and heaviness, and every other infirmity ; and may join chearfully and regularly with thy willing soul, to glorify God, thy Maker and thy Saviour.
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