they can present to God, and being a good advantage for attending their preparation to the solemn duty, and their demeanour in it. It is St. Paul's counsel, that by consent for a time they should abstain, that they may give themselves to fasting and prayer. (1 Cor. vii. 5.) And though when Christians did receive the holy communion every day, it is certain they did not abstain, but had children: yet when the communion was more seldom, they did with religion abstain from the marriage bed during the time of their solemn preparatory devotions, as anciently they did from eating and drinking till the solemnity of the day was past *. 6. It were well if married persons would, in their penitential prayers, and in their general confessions, suspect themselves and accordingly ask a general pardon for all their indecencies and more passionate applications of themselves in the offices of marriage: that what is lawful and honourable in its kind, may not be sullied with imperfect circumstances: or if it be, may be made clean again by the interruption and it Hoc etiam ex more Christianorum, Tertul. suadens fœminis Christianis nè Paganis nubant, ait, Quis denique solennibus Pascha abnoctantem securus sustinebit? Tertul. ad uxor. 1. 2. Et ex more etiam Gentilium. Plut. sympos. 3. q. 6. Nobis autem, si leges civitatis recte colimus, cavendum est, nè ad templa et sacrificia accedamus, paulò antè re venerea usi. Itaque expedit nocte et somno interjecto, justoque intervallo adhibito, mundos rursum quasi de integro, et ad novum diem nova cogitantes (ut ait Democritus) surgere. recallings of such a repentance of which such uncertain parts of action are capable. But because of all the dangers of a Christian, none more pressing and troublesome than the temptations to lust, no enemy more dangerous than that of the flesh, no accounts greater than what we have to reckon for at the audit of concupiscence, therefore it concerns all that would be safe from this death to arm themselves by the following rules to prevent, or to cure all the wounds of our flesh, made by the poisoned arrows of lust: Remedies against Uncleanness. 1. When a temptation of lust assaults thee, do not resist it by heaping up arguments against it, and disputing with it, considering its offers and its danger, but fly from it, that is, think not at all of it: lay aside all consideration concerning it, and turn away from it by any severe and laudable thought of business *. St. Hierom very wittily reproves the Gentile superstition, who pictured the virgin-deities armed with a shield and lance, as if chastity could not be defended without war and direct contention. No; this enemy is to be treated otherwise. If you hear it speak, though but to dispute with it, it ruins you; and the very arguments you go about to answer, leave a relish upon the tongue. A man may be burned if he goes near the fire, though but to quench his house; and by * Contra libidinis impetum apprehende fugam, si vis obtinere victoriam. S. Aug. Nella guerra d'amor chi fuge vince. handling pitch, though but to draw it from your clothes, you defile your fingers. 2. Avoid idleness, and fill up all the spaces of thy time with severe and useful employment: for lust usually creeps in at those emptinesses where the soul is unemployed and the body is at ease. For no easy, healthful, and idle person was ever chaste, if he could be tempted. But of all employments, bodily labour is most useful, and of the greatest benefit for the driving away the devil. 3. Give no entertainment to the beginnings, the first motions and secret whispers of the spirit of impurity*. For if you totally suppress it, it dies; if you permit the furnace to breathe its smoke and flame out at any vent, it will rage to the consumption of the whole. This cockatrice is soonest crushed in the shell, but if it grows, it turns to a serpent, and a dragon, and a devil. 4. Corporal mortification and hard usages of our body, hath by all ages of the church been accounted a good instrument, and of some profit against the spirit of fornication. A spare diet, and a thin coarse table, seldom refreshment, frequent fasts, not violent and interrupted with returns to ordinary feeding, but constantly little, unpleasant, of wholesome but sparing * Quisquis in primo obstitit Senec. Hippol. nourishment: for by such cutting off the provisions of victuals, we shall weaken the strength of our enemy. To which if we add lyings upon the ground, painful postures in prayer, reciting our devotions with our arms extended at full length, like Moses praying against Amalek, or our blessed Saviour hanging upon his painful bed of sorrows, the cross, and (if the lust be upon us, and sharply tempting) by inflicting any smart to overthrow the strongest passion by the most violent pain, we shall find great ease for the present, and the resolution and apt sufferance against the future danger. And this was St. Paul's remedy, I bring my body under; he used some rudeness towards it. But it was a great nobleness of chastity which St. Hierom* reports of a son of the king of Nicomedia, who being tempted upon flowers and a perfumed bed with a soft violence, but yet tied down to the temptation, and solicited with circumstances of Asian luxury by an impure courtesan, least the easiness of his posture should abuse him, spit out his tongue into her face : to represent that no virtue hath cost the saints so much as this of chastity. 5. Fly from all occasions, temptations, loosenesses of company, balls and revellings, indecent mixtures of wanton dancings, idle talk, private society with strange women, starings upon a beauteous face, the *In vita S. Pauli. + Benedictus in spinis se volutavit. S. Martinianus faciem et manus. S. Johannes cognomento Bonus, calamos acutos inter ungues et carnem digitorum intrusit. S. Theoctystus in sylvis more ferarum vixit, ne inter Arabes pollueretur. company of women that are singers, amorous gestures, garish and wanton dressings, feasts and liberty, banquets and perfumes, wine and strong drinks, which are made to persecute chastity, some of these being the very prologues to lust, and the most innocent of them being but like condited or pickled mushrooms, which, if carefully corrected, and seldom tasted, may be harmless, but can never do good: ever remembering that it is easier to die for chastity, than to live with it; and the hangman could not extort a consent from some persons, from whom a lover would have entreated it. For the glory of chastity will easily overcome the rudeness of fear and violence; but easiness, and softness, and smooth temptations creep in, and, like the sun, make a maiden lay by her veil and robe, which persecution, like the northern wind, made her hold fast and clap close about her. 6. He that will secure his chastity, must first cure his pride and his rage, For oftentimes lust is the punishment of a proud man, to tame the vanity of his pride by the shame and affronts of unchastity: and the same intemperate heat that makes anger, does inkindle lust *. 7. If thou beest assaulted with an unclean spirit, trust not thyself alone, but run forth into company, whose reverence and modesty may suppress, or whose numquid ego à te Magno prognatam deposco consule Velataque stolâ mea cum conferbuit ira ? Horat. Serm. 1. 1. Sat, 2. 1 |