DISCOURSE H. 421 much embarrass and clog the spirit in its pursuit of knowledge, or holiness, or divine joy. The flesh is a dark covering to the soul ; it beclouds our ideas, confuses our conceptions, and prevents a clear and distinct knowledge of a thousand objects. It is a dull dark tabernacle for a spirit's residence. It has windows indeed to let in light, but those very windows, like painted or curled glass, too often dis- colour, the objects, or distort the shape of them. These very senses of ours frequently impose upon us in the searches after truth, and represent things not as they are in themselves, and in their own nature, but as they are useful and hurtful to us; and often we pass a false judgment on the nature of things by their influence, and are led into many mistakes in our enquiries after knowledge. Our fancy or imagination raises up false images of things, and we forsake the solid and real truth, to follow the shapes, and calours, and appearances of it painted upon fancy. From our very infancy, our souls are imposed upon by the animal we draw in early many falsejudgments, 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 awise 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, Confined every night to a periodical delirium, subjected to all the fluttering tyranny of the animal spirits, and dragged away into all the tvild 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 weperpetually 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 spi- rits, sit 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 affections of nature _are very much seated in flesh and blood: So much, that the apostle in many places calls the principles of sill by the general name of flesh. Read the latter end of the seventh chap D d 3
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy OTcyMjk=