400 RUIN AND RECOVERY, &C. under these miseries, till the addition of new calamities, from their own crimes andmadnesses, their ungoverned appetites and passions, swells the load to a hugeand painful degree ? They practise what they have seen with their fathers, and are plunged into early mischief. As youth advances, the ferments of the blood rise higher, and the appetites and the passions become much stronger, and give more abundant vexation to the race of mankind, than they do to any of the young brutal creation, whether in air, earth, or sea. Their natural appetites are abundantly relieved and satisfied without those vèxing cares, anxieties and inconveniences, which beset mankind of both sexes in the same partof life. The same desires and inclinations which belong to the rest of the animal kind, attack the human race also,, but withgreater rage and vio- lence, and seem to demand their present gratification : And that, as has been observed by moralists, not at one season of the year only, but at all seasons, with more constancy than in other crea- tures, and give the younger crouds of mankind many more dis- turbances. The all-wise God the Creator, for just and kind designs and reasons, has limited the gratification of these appe- tites by rules of virtue and piety : But perhaps these very rules and confinements, however hold, just and good, have served very much through the corruption of our nature, to irritate and pro- voke mankind to greater excesses, and pursue their vitiated animal inclinations with warmer violence than ever man would have been exposed to in the days of innocence. So the heathen writers confess : "Nitimur in vetitum semper, cupimusque negata." a We are ever desiringforbidden things, and press after unlaw- ftddelights. So St. Paul acknowledges ; Rom. vii. S. Sin, taking occasion by the commandment, wrought inme all manner of concupiscence. So a wild young bull or a lion would beat themselves against the grates and restrainingbars of their prison, and make more furious assaults there to gain theirfull freedom. And in the midst of these distracting circumstances of mankind, between the law of God and their own appetites, they lead some- times but a miserable and most unquiet life. If their inclinations are gratified in an unlawful manner, what anguish of conscience, what inward vexations and keen reflections of mind perpetually haunt and- torment them ! What terrible and pressing tempta- tions assault them to'conceal their shame, by the murder of them- selves, or the harmless babes to whom they gave birth and life ! Vow shameful and hateful are the scenes of life into which they bring their wretched offspring ? H6w innumerable and grievous the inconveniences which they entail upon their young spurious descendants ? What lasting reproach and distress, with beggary and lung sorrow ì
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