food, into what it is changed. Are you not disgusted at its being named? Why then be eager
for such accumulations? The increase of luxury is but the multiplication of dung! For nature
has her limits, and what is beyond these is not nourishment, but injury, and the increase of
ordure. Nourish the body, but do not destroy it. Food is called nourishment, to show that
its design is not to injure the body, but to nourish it. For this reason perhaps food passes
into excrement, that we may not be lovers of luxury. For if it were not so, if it were not useless
and injurious to the body, we should not cease from devouring one another. If the belly re-
ceived as much as it pleased, digested it, and conveyed it to the body, we should see wars
and battles innumerable. Even now when part of our food passes into ordure, part into
blood, part into spurious and useless phlegm, we are nevertheless so addicted to luxury, that
we spend perhaps whole estates on a meal. What should we not do, if this were not the end
of luxury? The more luxuriously we live, the more noisome are the odors with which we
are filled. The body is like a swollen bottle, running out every way. The eructations are such
as to pain the head of a bystander. From the heat of fermentation within, vapors are sent
forth, as from a furnace, if bystanders are pained, what, think you, is the brain within con-
tinually suffering, assailed by these fumes? to say nothing of the channels of the heated and
obstructed blood, of those reservoirs, the liver and the spleen, and of the canals by which
the fæces are discharged. The drains in our streets we take care to keep unobstructed. We
cleanse our sewers with poles and drags, that they may not be stopped, or overflow, but the
canals of our bodies we do not keep clear, but obstruct and choke them up, and when the
filth rises to the very throne of the king, I mean the brain, we do not regard it, treating it
not like a worthy king, but like an unclean brute. God hath purposely removed to a distance
those unclean members, that we might not receive offense from them. But we suffer it not
to be so, and spoil all by our excess. And other evils might be mentioned. To obstruct the
sewers is to breed a pestilence; but if a stench from without is pestilential, that which is pent
up within the body, and cannot find a vent, what disorders must it not produce both to body
and soul? Some have strangely complained, wondering why God has ordained that we should
bear a load of ordure with us. But they themselves increase the load. God designed thus to
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detach us from luxury, and to persuade us not to attach ourselves to worldly things. But
thou art not thus to be persuaded to cease from gluttony, but though it is but as far as the
throat, and as long as the hour of eating, nay not even so long, that the pleasure abides, thou
continuest in thine indulgence. Is it not true that as soon as it has passed the palate and the
throat, the pleasure ceases? For the sense of it is in the taste, and after that is gratified, a
nausea succeeds, the stomach not digesting the food, or not without much difficulty. Justly
then is it said, that “she that liveth in pleasure is dead while she liveth.” For the luxurious
soul is unable to hear or to see anything. It becomes weak, ignoble, unmanly, illiberal,
cowardly, full of impudence, servility, ignorance, rage, violence, and all kinds of evil, and
destitute of the opposite virtues. Therefore he says,
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1 Timothy 4:11-14