Catering to the Flesh that will Fade and Fail Us

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Joshua

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What a word from the Reverend George Swinnock (Works, vol. 3, pp. 430-431):

If our flesh will fail us; what fools are they whose whole contrivance is to feed and please the flesh. We laugh at the vanity and folly of children, when we see them very busy and taking much pains to make up a house of cards, or pies of dirt. The greatest part of men are but children of larger dimensions, and are indeed more foolish, because they ought to be more wise. What is their main work, but to make provision for the flesh? to provide fuel enough for the fire of its covetousness, and pleasant water enough for the leviathan of its voluptuousness, and air enough for the chameleon of ambition; as if God had no other design in sending them into the world, but that they might be cooks to dress their bodies as well as possibly might be for the worms. All their care is, What shall we eat? and what shall we drink? and wherewith shall we be clothed? and how shall we do to live in these dear and hard times? As vermin in dunghills, they live and feed on such filth, never once asking their souls in earnest, What wilt thou do for the bread which came down from heaven, and how wilt thou do to put on the robes of Christ’s righteousness, that thy nakedness may not appear to thy shame, and oh, what wilt thou do to be saved, to live eternally? These things are not in all their thoughts. Like flies, they are overcome with the spirits of wine, and nourished with froth.

It is enough, they think, if, when they come to die, they bequeath their souls to God in their wills,—though it is a thousand to one if those wills be proved in heaven; I can tell them of unanswerable caveats, which the judge’s Son will put in against them,—and therefore their whole lives must be devoted to the service of their bodies. Like dying men, they smell of earth, and carry its complexion in their very countenances. If a man that had two houses in his possession, one whereof was his own freehold for ever, and the other his landlord’s, which he agreed to leave at an hour’s warning, should neglect his own house, let all things there run to wrack and ruin, but night and day be mending and adorning his landlord’s house, as if he could never be at cost enough, or make it neat enough, would not every one condemn this man for a fool or a madman? Truly this is the very case of most men. The soul in the body is a tenant in domo aliena, saith the orator. The body is our house of clay, in which we are tenants at another’s will; we may be turned out of its doors without so much as an hour’s warning. The soul is our own everlasting possession, yet generally the immortal spirit is slighted, no time taken for a serious view of its wants, no cost laid out for its supply, as if it were an indifferent thing whether it swim or sink for ever, when men are always plotting and studying to gratify and please their fading flesh. Oh this is one of the dolefullest sights which eyes can behold, the servant to ride on horseback, and the prince to go on foot; the sensitive appetite to be the grave of religion, and the dungeon of reason.​
 
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