Left at any time your hearts be overcharged with furfeiting and drunkenness, and cares Doing to others as we would be done unto. MATT. vii. 12. Therefore all things, whatfo- ever ye would that men fhould do to you, do SER SERMON I Preference of the foul to the body, and diligence.for its welfare.. JOHN vi. 27: the former part. Labour not for the meat which perisheth, but for that meat which endureth unto everlasting life. ST T. Paul, fumming up the duty which we are taught by the grace of God in the Gofpel, expreffes that to ourselves, Tit. ii. 12. by living foberly or with a found mind, as the word cogóvws fignifies... We confift of body and mind; but by this we are especially directed to fee that our mind be in a found flate. The powers of the mind are vastly superior to those of the body; and they were defigned by our great Creator to fit at helm over the whole man. Now to live with a found mind, is to conduct ourselves as those who have, an intelligent fpirit to prefide in body, to direct and govern the whole. The apoftacy hath inverted this, order, fet the inferior powers in the throne, and inflaved the mind to the body; fo that the appetites and paffions we have.by occafion of the body have the most commanding influence; the in terefts terefts of the meaner part are apt to be moft regarded; and reason, and the higher powers, inftead of giving law, receive law from appetite, and are preffed into its fervice to minifter to it. Chriftianity is defigned to bring us to our-felves, or to our right mind; to reinstate the reasonable spirit in its juft empire over the whole man. And in this view we may eafily. difcern the feveral branches of the temper becoming us, with reference to ourselves. We owe it to ourselves in the firft place. to prefer the interefts of our immortal fouls before thofe of our perifhing bodies: Which is only to form a right judgment upon comparing the different value of foul and. body... Hereupon we should exercife care and difigence to fecure our beft interefts, and anfwerable to their fuperior value and excellence; in oppofition to negligence and floth. And as we fhould judge fairly between our own higher and lower interefts, fo we should make a juft eftimate of ourselves compared. with other beings; not thinking of ourfelves above what we ought to think: And that will lead us to humility. We should regulate our bodily appetites and paffions conformable to the dictates of reafon, and the higher interefts of our fouls. This will be done by the graces of purity, and temperance, and meeknefs. And laftly, We ought to moderate our defires after any prefent good, and our refentment of prefent evils to the body, according to the necef |