A Fathers Testament, Chapter 5
CAP. V.
Bodily pleasure, earthly joy, and mirth have nothing to do with blessedness.
PLeasure is the Idol, and God of Epicures: like Childrens Babies, trickt, (without) and trimm'd with toyes, and gauds, but within a rotten stick. It hath a double subject, either the body (where properly it is called pleasure, and luxury) or the soul, where we term it joy, and mirth. Neither of both, if carnal, and earthly, can possibly stand with the blessed estate of man, but are rather unreconcileable adversaries to our blessedness. If we look well upon them, and throughly eye them, and their attendants, we shall find that carnal joy, and mirth dwell, live, and dye with grief. Even in laughter the heart is sorrowful, and the end of that mirth is heaviness, Prov. 14.13. As we say of swine There is a great cry, and little wool; much crackling of thorns, and little heat, Eccles. 7.6. whosoever serves them, they bestow their livery upon them, a fools coat, and cap: (The heart of a fool is in the house of mirth, Eccles. 7.4.) and will soon prefer them from the Hospital to Bedlam. I said of laughter it is mad, Eccles. 2.2. And what is pleasure to the body, but an itching worm, which when it is clawed breaketh out into a scab? a vain tickling of sense, till it end in an Hickup? It is common to a beast, and exists only in that part of man, which is his beast, even flesh.
And their fruits (commonly) very pernicious. Carnal joy turns us out of Gods house: (Ier. 11.15.) ranks us amongst the most lewd, and wicked persons, whom Gods …pirit points out to us, marked with the De…ils brand; who rejoice to do evil, and delight …n the frowardness of the wicked, Prov. 2.14. …leasure is to our estates here a very pick…urse; a slie thief, that unwarily steals us …nto poverty, and misery. God hath blasted …t with his curse. He that loveth pleasure shall …e a poor man, and he that loveth Wine, and Oyl, shall not be rich, Prov. 21.17. It is a pal…ie to our bodies, unsinues them, and makes …hem (as an unstringed Lute, or Voyal) fit …or nothing. As we read of Hannibals souldiers, that when they entred Capua, they were more then men, but dissolved with the pleasures of that rich, and voluptuous City, they went out less than women. To the soul it is a sweet poison; choakes it in the seed, and birth, (Luk. 8.14.) nourishes it to slaughter, Jam. 5.5. To the whole man it is a per…umed grave: They that live in pleasure, are dead while they live, 1 Tim. 5.6. dead to God, dead to men, dead to themselves; the very soul dead in its life, coffin'd, and buried in the body. How impossibly then can a voluptuous man live happily, who is dead while he lives, and lives to an everlasting, and ever-living death?
Lastly it is much more subject to all those defects, which before were mentioned, that make it altogether unfit, and utterly impotent to make up our happiness, or to help us i… the pursuit of it. 1. It is sheer vanity, Eccles. 2.1… nothing else but crackling of thorns under … pot, Eccles. 7.6. 2. It satisfies not: witness tha… Epicure, who proclaimed a reward to Inventers of new pleasures. 3. It lasts not, is but for … moment (Iob 20.5.) and dies in the very birth… 4. It is not so alluring before, as loaths om… after enjoying: witness Amnon, 2 Sam. 13.15. 5. It is far beneath us, as being common with us to beasts. And 6. needless and dangerous… Woe to you that laugh now, Luk. 6.25. Thi… Chapter let me conclude also with the same Philosophical Poet.
Boetius. Libr. 3. Metr. 7.
All Pleasures ride with spurs: they goar the heart,
And drive it first to run, and then to smart.
Pleasures are Bees; Bees have their bag, and sting;
Those drops of sweet, these streams of torment bring.
The bag flies with the Bee; the sting remains:
How flitting are our joyes? how lasting pains?
He that in honied Hive of Pleasure dwells,
Soon dies to Heav'n, lives to a thous…nd hells.
The happiness of man therefore stands not in outward things. They are all heterogenies (of another nature) and cannot piece, or be united with us. They are without us, and we without them happy. But there are other things which close, and are within us. In our bodies Beauty, Strength: in our spirits wisdom, morality. Do not these make us blessed? At least do they not concurr as necessary parts of our happiness? Certainly even these rather follow an happy person, than constitute our happiness.